The upcoming trip to Disney World has me pretty excited. After thinking about it a while, I realized why. It goes back to roughly the year 1988. I was seven years old and my beloved grandmother was dying of ovarian cancer. Grandmom was a saintly figure within the family and remains the kindest human being I have ever been privileged to know. She and my equally beloved grandfather took me on my on my first trip to Disney World, which would've been around 1984-1985. Honestly, I was too young to remember much of that trip. Some details I can recall include how she bought me an alligator bath toy with which I would play in obsessive glee and some sort of puppet show involving fruit that I found strangely engrossing. Clearer are my memories on that same trip of the Don Cesar Hotel, where I was impressed with the ocean view our room offered, exclaiming, "What a view!" A steel drum band featured at the hotel and tiny me got up and danced with them in a display of adorable uncoordination. Those are happy memories, but they are not my point. My point goes deeper. Although I've been trying to get together a Disney trip for about a year, greater urgency has presented itself as of late and I think I know why.
My second trip to Disney World came during the middle of Grandmom's battle with ovarian cancer. It so happened that my mother was attending a banking meeting in Orlando and, having a seven-year-old in the midst of learning about death and preparing to grieve, not to mention the obvious convenience of not having to find a babysitter along with me, she took me along and turned it into a Disney vacation. Although my great-grandfather had died a few years earlier, he had only been a babbling bedridden man with Alzheimer's to me, so it wasn't much of a lesson in grief. Grandmom was going to be hard though, and I damn well knew it. So the happiest place on Earth was going to have a hell of time making me happy, or so I thought. All of the effort Disney puts into the experience worked wonders. I marveled at 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, cowered at Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, and was awestruck by Epcot's display of human culture and innovation. Every day, I'd call Grandmom on pay phones around the park and tell her how awesome it all was, even mailing her a message in a bottle from Pirates Of The Caribbean. Even something as sad as cancer couldn't stop Disney's magic.
There have been two more trips to Disney World for me since 1988. The third involved my whole stepfamily and was definitely a blast, although it was most memorable for the improbable encounter we had with family friends who I knew were going to be at Disney World the same time we are, although that was mostly memorable because my mother insisted the park was too big for a random meeting like that to happen. Most recently, I went with my father and stepmother in 1993, which I recall as a nice bonding experience with him. However, that trip is slightly tarnished by an obnoxious 12-year-old me making fun of Pluto and calling him, "Odie," repeatedly. If I run into Pluto this time, I must remember to apologize. Ultimately, the most important trip for my purposes now was the one in 1988. Grandmom's impending death was my darkest hour at that time and the mouse broke through that sadness and allowed me to experience complete happiness for a while. So now, staring down the barrel of a life with autism that will mean no useful work and no love, I once again face my darkest hour. Turning to the mouse once more, I say, "Make me feel better. Take the burdens of a regrettable life away for a few days. Be the happiest place on Earth one more time.
-Frank
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