the magic kingdom

I wish I could say that my memories of being five years old at Disneyland with my Nini and Bumpa and cousin S were giddy with cotton candy and Mickey and friends.

They aren’t.

What I remember in high relief is the ambient anxiety that colored everything, edged in the fierce competition that I felt with my cousin, who’s not even a month younger than I am (I'm the tall one).

I remember silently gloating when S put her shoes on the wrong feet and my Nini suggested that she should try to get it right -- like I had. The sweet relief and triumph when her mouse eared balloon popped against the rough cottage cheese of our hotel ceiling and mine did not.

I remember the fierce jealousy I felt when S got to hold Nini’s hand and I had to hold my Bumpa’s, who scared me a little. The keen disappointment when a moshpit of goats ate my brand new white cashmere sweater at the petting zoo (which I suspect must have been Knott’s Berry Farm).

I suspect the adrenal charged moments that fill my memories had a lot to do with circumstances that were, at five years old, out of my control. We’d just moved cross-country from New York to Sonoma, and my Dad hadn’t moved with us. I don't remember that anyone ever explained why, but I do remember one rare and distant phone call when he told me he was living in a place called Denver, which sounded lonely and lost and far away.

I remember the way the sunshine hit the curved steps that we climbed before the large unsmiling building where I received my social security card, how I whined to be in my mother’s arms, how my younger brother was instead. I remember the unkind look of the lady behind the desk, and hearing the word welfare for the first time ever; hearing the shame in my mother’s voice that was tangled in relief.

The slides from the Disneyland trip -- which my Nini set aside for me some time ago but that I only really studied for the first time this weekend -- told me what I couldn’t know then but know now, looking back. Of a gift given by my grandparents: a safe harbor in the storm, a magical kingdom in a world that was unraveling to be anything but. A place of soft velvet giant chipmunk arms that serve up the kind of hugs that still the waters, if only for a little while.