About that time we got evacuated from It's a Small World
This really might be about Advent, after all
Hi there!
Nearly three years ago, my husband and I decided to take the plunge and take our boys to Disneyland. We bought tickets. We found a dog sitter. We rallied for a little road trip south over spring break.
And then the world shut down, like global pandemic-shut down.
For a little while there, when it seemed like that thing called Covid-19 was only going to keep the kids out of school for a couple of weeks, I held onto hope that we would still get to pay Mickey a visit. But lo and behold, it wasn’t until we realized that the tickets would expire if we didn’t use them that we booked the trip for a second time.
We didn’t have matching shirts with mouse ears on them (because, for the love, never have I witnessed so many grown men sporting varmints on their chests). We stayed in a hotel down the street, one that required us to use our legs and walk half a mile to the entrance, and we didn’t go bananas when it came to souvenirs. Ours was a weekend of budgeted frugality, if that much can be true of a place known for commercialism and overindulgence in a happiest-place-on-earth sort of way.
But Disneyland, God. What a trip.
The churros. The pretzels with cream cheese in the middle. The turkey leg my younger son devoured with vengeance.
The songs I’ve been singing since I was a child. The invitation to play and be, laugh and delight, thrill and be dazzled by the magic of it all. It was an utterly delightful weekend.
Even when we had to be evacuated from It’s a Small World.
Now, people. Some of you followed along with this adventure of evacuation over on social media. It wasn’t nearly as thrilling as I’d prefer the story to go, but I’ll tell you this: when our boat stopped moving, like it began to trail twenty, thirty, then forty feet behind the boat in front of us, I broke the rules. Along with my younger son, I stuck my hands outside the limits of the boat, and began to paddle. I was saving the day! I was doing something to get us out of a sticky situation!
Of course, my husband and my older son believe that this little life-saving attempt, as well as my very cheerful banter with the security guards to “pretty, pretty please let us see [and expose] the inner workings of Disneyland,” is why the two boats in front of us got be rescued from inside the ride, while why we then had to wait another twenty minutes for evacuation from the main port.
It’s a crying shame we didn’t get to see the secret entrances or have a strong man in a sailor’s outfit rescue us from a two-foot canal and pull us onshore to the Hawaiian Islands with a paddle.
But at least they stopped playing that damn song for a little while there.
So, Advent. Can we really turn this week’s newsletter around and point to the season of Advent? I hate to even try, but I’ll still make a minor attempt at it: there are times when we’re stuck, stuck on a ride in the middle of Disneyland with no chance of escape.
We wait with eager expectation for that which is to come (more churros, a Genie Pass to Indiana Jones, or perhaps a gigantic turkey leg). For awhile there, we find ourselves in darkness, not knowing which way is up or which way is down; we wonder if a strong man in a sailor’s outfit really is going to show up and rescue us from the destruction of a broken ride.
But in the meantime, we wait.
We enter into darkness. We sing along to the song that won’t stop playing. We stick our hands out of the side of the boat and we paddle, hard.
We do the only thing we can, for this is the joy of every longing heart.
Come, Thou long expected Jesus
Come, thou long expected Jesus,
born to set thy people free;
from our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in thee.
Israel's strength and consolation,
hope of all the earth thou art;
dear desire of every nation,
joy of every longing heart.
A couple of housekeeping notes:
All the Holiday Feels: A Writing Workshop with poems in progress and me is this Saturday! We hope to fill about four more spots, so head over to my website to sign up or email me directly for sliding scale information.
I think you’re great. That is all. Thanks, team!