If You're Young at Heart

This evening I was thinking about some of the vacations I’ve taken in the past, places I’ve gone, sights I’ve seen, and came to the decided conclusion that the very best time I’ve ever had was in Orlando. I booked 5 days at Disney World for Liam and myself, for his 10th birthday and now I wonder if was as much for him as for me.

When I was a child my family never took vacations, never went away. I admit to being envious of some of my classmates who took vacations in various exotic places (to my young impressionable mind) all over the globe - France, Germany, Egypt - their parents being professors and such at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where I grew up. But my family, being of the working class and only marginally educated, took day trips. Well, I think there were two at most, one to the Bronx Zoo and the other to someplace called Freedom Land, wherever the heck that was.

So in 2000, an entire lifetime later, I had an opportunity to give Liam something special, something that I’d never had … an honest to goodness vacation. And since he was 10 and we lived on the East Coast, Disney World seemed like the logical destination for him to really enjoy himself. Yes, I keep saying it was for him, don’t I?

We rode all the fastest rides and sat in the front cars and screamed our heads off. Well, I did anyway. We took photos with Mickey and Goofy, climbed on dinosaurs and rode spaceships; I wanted Liam to experience everything. And then there was the Big Show – Fantasmic! – an exciting fireworks and water show featuring all the best Disney characters. We queued up early because I wanted to get a decent seat. But we ended up with the very best seats of all – front row center! It was my Karmic destiny, no doubt. I ooohed and ahhhed and grinned and tingled - pure childlike joy!

And then it happened. I flashed back to the age of 6 and sitting in front of our black and white television in the living room of our home on Cross Street watching The Wonderful World of Disney on a Sunday evening. Donald Duck and Goofy; Mickey and Pluto; Cinderella and Snow White; Evil Queens and Wicked Stepmothers. I re-experienced the way I had felt at that young age, the hope I held in my heart and, most of all, the magic that I didn’t simply believe in but truly counted on. It was all so easy then - just wish upon a star, simply be pure and beautiful, never tell lies, fill your heart with love and all will be right with the world in the end. You’ll see.

The feeling I had at that show was so powerful that I felt it again this evening, more than 9 years later. And some days I become disenchanted and cannot find the strength to believe in magic or the heart to be pure and beautiful. Other days I don’t care to embrace the world of grown-ups, responsibilities, worries and have to’s. So then I go looking for my magic wand and once in a great while, when I am very, very good and hold love in my heart in the purest way I know how, when I become 6 again, my wish comes true.