"I want to hold Mickey's hand and watch the stars!" There is just no way to convey how compelling those words were when uttered by Maggie when she was about 3 years old and Disney was running ads about dreams coming true for the millennium and a child is holding Mickey Mouse's hand and watching the fireworks. Maybe if you'd seen her wide brown eyes begging from under bangs that had needed trimming for about two months as she clasped one hand into the other in illustration of holding Mickey's you'd get it. But you weren't there and it wasn't your heart being squeezed in between those hands. I actually burst into tears and promised I would someday take her.
I looked into it, was going to take out a 401k loan to take her, but decided to use the money to move to Albuquerque that year instead. Sorry Maggie.
About a year and a half later, though......Spring Break Kindergarten for Maggie, my BFF Melissa and her son Dakota, (7 months older than Maggie) flew into Albuquerque for the 13 hour drive to LA--destination DisneyLand. It was truly a magical kingdom and fun. I had the most fun, followed by the 5 and 6 year olds, followed by the only adult in the group, Melissa. Yeah, I admit it. I acted like a giddy child. I'd never been, Melissa had been countless times, and, well, youth is wasted on the young...so I had the most fun. (I remember it all. Maggie has vague memories augmented by the 20+ rolls of film I acquired of our experiences over 5 days. 3 days in the park, 1 cold rainy-ish day at the ocean, 1 afternoon at the top of the precipice of the Grand Canyon, and then two or three days of travel, which barely count.)
At the time of the trip of a lifetime, Maggie was obsessed with Little Mermaid. I say obsessed only because it's true and she got it from me. I went to it when it first came out in theaters about 9 times. First on our agenda was to go to see Ariel. (If you've never been to Disney theme parks, the characters are live, life size (or larger) and all over! You can stand in line and see them and get photos and autographs and I'm getting excited all over again just TYPING about it!) *Deep breath--inhale slowly, exhale slowly.....* Ok, I can continue. Maggie had been working on coloring pictures to give to her idol. The photos I have from that experience are priceless. She was so excited about the experience that before falling asleep in her bed that night, she colored about 10 more pictures for Ariel. Day 2 was an opening repeat of Day 1. Ariel first. Maggie was giddy.
So because of her love of Ariel, and she was going to need a new backpack ANYHOW, I found one with Ariel on it when I was Christmas shopping. And since I had already spoiled her rotten with items from me, I thought it would be cute to give her the backpack and sign the card "Ariel". (And if anyone gets their underpants in a wad about it, there better be nothing under YOUR tree from Santa Claus.) Oh, the look of joy on her face that her friend Ariel remembered her! It was the best face ever. Too bad nobody but me got to see it. Eh, stinks to be you guys. Sorry, I was actually IN the moment rather than viewing it from behind the camera. You'll get over it. Of course, you'll never see that face again because of what happened a few years later.
She found out the truth. It took a couple of years. I don't remember when exactly she realized it. But she yells at me constantly about it. "YOU RUINED MY LIFE!" Yes, sometimes she means this because I "lied" to her about Ariel giving her that backpack. She was more upset about THIS than when she figured out Santa=me in our house too. (I wonder if she would rather think she'd been on the naughty list all of those years.)
So, in one year, I made her dreams come true and shattered them. (The shattering actually came a few years after, but hey, it doesn't sound as cool.) And I'm sure that since she just turned 15, she will utter those words again for various reasons. But I would do it again given the chance.
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