Day two at Disney somehow managed to pack even more into a day than the first. We spent fifteen hours inside Magic Kingdom, which was certainly not the plan when we walked through the gates that morning. At some point late in the day, I reached that familiar moment when the sensible voice in my head started making its case. We had done plenty. We were tired. My feet had already submitted their resignation. There was absolutely nothing wrong with calling it an evening, heading back to the hotel, and getting some rest. Normally, that argument probably would have won. But before this trip I made a commitment to myself that when those moments came, I was going to try to stay a little longer, do the extra thing, and allow the experience to keep happening instead of deciding prematurely that I had experienced enough. So we stayed.
And damn, am I glad we did. Staying gave us an incredible fireworks display over the castle, but strangely enough, that isn’t even the part I’ll remember most. I’ll remember walking through Magic Kingdom at night with Mary and Jett after spending an entire day together. I’ll remember the lights, the exhausted happiness, and that strange feeling of knowing, while something is still happening, that you’re probably going to miss it someday. There was no additional attraction we needed to unlock at that point. Nothing left to accomplish. We were just three people walking together through a ridiculous magical kingdom after a very long day, and I was present enough to notice it. The committee had done its job. Instead of telling me it was time to leave, somewhere in there was a voice saying, Stay. You don’t get this particular night again.
The other thing I kept noticing yesterday was Jett. She’s eight now, and I’m getting to see pieces of the person she’s becoming emerge right in front of me. My first instinct is to call her fearless, but I don’t think that’s actually what I’m seeing. Fearlessness would mean the fear isn’t there. I can see that it is. When we’re approaching a new roller coaster, I can watch the nerves arrive. Her face changes slightly, she gets quiet, and I can almost see the conversation happening inside her head. There is a little battle being fought in there. One part says this is new and scary and maybe we shouldn’t do it. Another part talks her through it. She doesn’t pretend the fear isn’t there. She works with it, gets on the ride, and discovers on the other side that she could do the thing she wasn’t entirely sure she could do. Watching that happen as her dad is fucking awesome.
Maybe that’s what courage actually looks like most of the time. Not some heroic absence of fear, but a quiet internal negotiation nobody else gets to hear. Fear makes its argument. Something else makes a better one. Then you take the next step. I’ve spent so much time thinking about my own committee that it’s fascinating to realize I’m watching hers begin to form. I can’t know exactly what the voices inside her are saying, and I don’t need to. My job isn’t to make sure she never feels afraid. My job is to give her enough safety, encouragement, and room to discover that fear gets a vote, but it doesn’t always get to make the decision. Yesterday, standing outside roller coasters at Magic Kingdom, I got to watch her practice that for herself.
Meanwhile, I was undergoing an important transformation of my own. I completed the side quest from the previous day and found the giant Sorcerer Mickey hat I had been searching for. One could reasonably argue that placing an enormous piece of thick polyester on your head during peak Florida summer is not the optimal thermodynamic decision. That person would be correct. They would also be missing the point. The moment that ridiculous blue hat went onto my already sweating head, something changed. It was like equipping the correct item finally unlocked the full Disney experience. Whatever remaining attempt I had been making to maintain adult dignity disappeared. I was no longer a middle-aged father spending an irresponsible amount of money in a theme park while slowly dehydrating. I was Sorcerer Mickey Dad, and Sorcerer Mickey Dad was here to play the game.
There might actually be something useful buried underneath all that silliness. We spend so much of adulthood learning how we’re supposed to behave that joy sometimes requires giving ourselves explicit permission to look ridiculous. Put on the giant hat. Take the picture. Ride the ride. Stay for the fireworks. There will always be a reasonable argument for conserving energy, avoiding embarrassment, spending less money, getting more sleep, or making the efficient choice. Sometimes that voice is absolutely right. But efficiency is a tool, not a purpose, and if we’re not careful we can become so good at optimizing our lives that we start optimizing the life right out of them. The inefficient choice is sometimes the one that becomes the memory.
Maybe that’s what yesterday was really about. Jett felt the fear and rode anyway. I felt the exhaustion and stayed anyway. Neither of us ignored what our minds or bodies were telling us; we simply didn’t allow the first impulse to automatically become the decision. We stayed open to the possibility that there might be something on the other side worth experiencing. For her, it was the exhilaration of discovering she could handle another coaster. For me, it was fireworks over the castle and a nighttime walk through Magic Kingdom holding onto two people I love very much. Neither reward was guaranteed. We just had to stay in the experience long enough to find out.
This morning, Mary and Jett are sleeping in a little before we head to EPCOT, and I’m perfectly happy letting them. We’re abandoning any illusion that we need to be standing at the gates for rope drop because today we’ve acquired perhaps the greatest Disney power-up of all: we can skip the lines for the rides. A previous version of me might already be calculating how many additional attractions we could squeeze into the day with this newfound power. Today’s version is sitting here writing while my family sleeps, wearing no giant polyester hat for the moment, and excited to see what happens next.
Besides, there’s really no reason to rush.
You can’t responsibly start drinking your way around the world at EPCOT at 8:00 in the morning.
I assume.
We’ll see what the committee says.