Retroblog

A first trip to Disney World

It’s funny what sticks in your brain. You’d think it’d be the big moments, like graduation day or the first time I drove a car. Or my first trip to Walt Disney World. But vacations from years ago have melted away like so many peppermint patties. Save for the pleasant aftertaste of photos and ephemera, there is little left in my foggy memory of that thirty-second ride on Dumbo the Flying Elephant.

And here’s why that’s weird. I’m fanatical about Disney parks. Those whirlwind tours of the Magic Kingdom were the happiest moments of my youth. But try as I might, I just can’t remember the finer details of my meetings with the Mouse—except for one. One single, solitary moment of a trip to Florida in 1987 remains my most vivid memory, and it didn’t even take place inside the gates.

It was probably about 6:00 AM, and I woke up snug in my Care Bear sleeping bag, tucked securely (though, in hindsight, not at all safely) between the back seat and the tailgate of our brand-new Plymouth Voyager. My parents had driven through the night to make the most of our paltry seven-day spring break, and we were on our way to Wallyworld.

The rest of the van was asleep, except—thankfully—for my father at the wheel. He caught my eye in the rear-view mirror and waved. “Where are we?” I whispered. He told me that we’d crossed the Florida line already. I quietly bemoaned the fact that we’d missed the Welcome Center and their complimentary cups of freshly-squeezed OJ. He gave me a rueful smile, and then reached down at his side to grab a packet of yogurt-covered raisins… the strawberry kind, my favorite. Then he threw them over the sleeping heads of my mom and brother, and I caught them, one-handed. Breakfast.

I don’t know what the particular significance of this memory is to my brain. It is not the happiest moment of my life, or even of that week. Do all our brains hold on to the most trivial of things? Are the destinations, the events, the momentous occasions, the memorable ones? Or is the journey along the way—an uneventful morning, a step along the highway of life, a secret sleepy connection between a father and daughter on the road—that is pictured in sharpest relief.