Orlando

[Castor]

Well friends I just got back from a family vacation in Orlando: to Disney World & Universal Studios. And this post has little to do with watches...

I feel real weird. The trip to Disney Land was a promise kept to the kids about taking them to Disney Land & also as a gift for graduating from college & university. But it really felt more like an end. Like a soft closing of a garden gate that you know you're leaving for the last time. After this is over my kids are going on to start their own lives. It was like when they were older kids playing on a merry-go-round & begged me for just one more spin... one more laugh... of course I gave it to them & it was a lot of fun, but it was also the last time we played in the park.

Matt said that that the trip to Orlando was kind of like a last 'hurrah' & I think he's right. But I'm glad we did it. I now really understand the look that was on Mom's face when I left home by deciding to walk across Western Canada. Her & Dad dropped me off at the Yellowhead Highway & Mom had this very strange look on her face... I think I understand now.

I feel strangely lonely remembering Stephanie's first rhythmic gymnastics practice in her ill-fitting leotards & trying to twirl a baton & ribbon. Or Matt's first hockey evaluation while wearing an ancient pair of leather & horse-hide pads, with the stuffing falling out onto the ice. I keep thinking how much I'd really like just one more hockey game... just one more twirl of the baton. Impossible. But would it really kill the universe to give that to me. Would it really kill the universe to give me one more day of play with my kids. And pretend, if only for a little while, that they are kids.

On the other hand, perhaps that's what Orlando was.....