Back from Outer Space

Well, we're back. The reason I haven't posted in the last week is that we took a vacation. I brought the computer and could have posted, but decided it was better to focus on the present and try to enjoy our family vacation.


Normally, we would have headed to the ranch in Arizona, but we would not have been able to enjoy that. So, instead, we took a trip to a place we never visited as a family - Disney World. Emma went to Disney two years ago with her high school band for a music festival. Sarah and Peter and I went down, too, so that we could see her concert. But Emma traveled through the various parks with her school mates and Peter, Sarah and I were on our own. It meant that this trip to Disney seemed almost normal.


I thought about Emma constantly, of course. Mostly, I was thinking about how glad I was that we had spent our vacation times together going to the ranch, where each of us seemed to find our own niche and could relax and enjoy ourselves. There was so much about Disney that was not to Emma's liking: the high noise and stimulation experiences and scary rides, for example. I think Emma managed to enjoy herself when she went two years ago, but I also know that she didn't feel like she ever needed to go back.


There were three times when we experienced or saw something at Disney that I thought was right up Emma's alley. The first was when I saw a little girl who was fresh from a makeover at the Bippity, Boppity, Boo-tique. For the uninitiated, this is a place where little girls can pick out a Disney princess gown and then get hair and makeup done for a complete transformation. When Emma was a little girl, she would have been all over this. In fact, even as a big girl she enjoyed these type of princess makeovers. She got to to have hair and makeup done as part of her cousin Liz's bridal party and ate it up. And last spring, she loved getting her curled and styled in preparation for her Juior Prom.  Yes, Emma would have definitely visited the Bippity, Boppity Boo-tique.


The second experience was watching the Disney Celebration parade. As the parade came down Main Street USA, despite the fact that I was embarrassing Sarah, I couldn't help but wave back to the Dinsey characters when they waved to the crowd. Emma shared this trait. Whenever we went to parades, or Sesame Street Live, or the circus, the two of us would be madly waving to the characters and clowns as if we were sure they were waving only to us. In fact, I remember one time at a Sesame Street Live show when Emma turned to me after exchanging waves with Ernie and said, "I think Ernie was really happy to see me here!"


The last experience was on our last night at Disney when we went to the Spirit of Aloha show. The show is full of traditional music and dance, but also has a healthy dose of cheesiness. Emma would have loved it all. I know that she wouldn't have been able to resist moving to the beat and imitating the hula dance movements. And I also know that she would have enjoyed retreating into the  Disney-esque portrait of the world - where everyone is nice and smiling and all conflicts can be solved in a half hour, usually with an irresistibly corny song and dance routine.