On the Way to the Kingdom

You can design and create and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it takes people to make the dream a reality.  –Walt Disney

Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.    –Psalm 127:1a

The week before Thanksgiving, we took our first family airplane trip, using the money we had paid Southwest for the ill-fated Boston Marathon/California trip(s).  Long story there, and not really relevant.  Since the money was already paid and had to be used before Christmas, we decided it was a good time to visit Disney World.  At ages four and seven, our children are at the prime ages for wonder and magic and animated characters come to life.  We were prepared for them to be enchanted, transfixed, and thoroughly delighted by every experience available at what is arguably the best theme-park on Earth, a place carefully engineered and bountifully financed to be meticulously clean, generously courteous, and fully centered around the delight of the paying public.

Disney World is all of those things.  It’s spotless.  There are employees paid to rove the park and move ill-placed strollers to the designated stroller areas.  If anyone litters in Disney World, one would never know.  The whole time we were there, I saw one abandoned water bottle.  (Another do-gooder and I had to compete to recycle it.  I won.)  Disney employees are never tired or grumpy or even just ordinary.  They sell you your grilled-vegetable sandwich with pleasure and send you off on the Winnie-the-Pooh ride as though they can’t wait for you, and you in particular, to experience the wonders that await you.  And most of the rides are truly wonderful.  They are iconic and sweet, like It’s a Small World or physically and emotionally shocking, like Dinosaurs, or full of possibilities like “Living with the Earth” and “Spaceship Earth.” They are technological marvels, like the new Toy Story 3 ride, and the “It’s Tough to Be a Bug” show.  The shows and drawing studios and parades are filled with talented, trained, and beautiful people.  Everest, the newest roller coaster is the best of all possible coaster experiences: fast, tall, forwards, backwards, light, dark, monsters.  Every little girl at Disney World is “Princess.”  It is, or at least ought to be, everything Walt Disney dreamed that it could be.

And yet.

The worst part of Disneyworld, in my opinion, is the people who go to Disneyworld.  As winter approaches and I consider the next several months of darkness and bitter bitter cold, making even a trip to the library or grocery store seem onerous and unpleasant, as I try to rack up the miles before I am running on sheets of black ice in the dark, as I mourn my garden and the absolute lack of any fresh produce grown within thousands of miles of this colorless, frozen center of the continent, I sometimes ask myself why it is that I live here.  The answer, of course, is the people who live here with me.  This place is home because it is filled with family, both genetic and chosen.  Grace enters my life through the people who, out of the abundance of their hearts, choose to show me love and kindness and set for me an example of what life on earth has the potential to be.  Thanks to them, I occasionally glimpse the kingdom I’ve been promised is among us, and it’s a magical, awe-inspiring place.

Orlando, Florida, on the other hand is lovely and warm.  The highs were around 80 every day of our tenure there.  In spite of the deliciousness of wearing shorts and sunglasses and occasionally sweating just standing around in the sun, the Magical Kingdom failed to be the kingdom in which I would choose to live.  People were pushy.  They were in a hurry.  The children, mine included, were whiney (disclaimer: they have been known to whine in the cold center of the continent as well, but stay with me anyway) and dissatisfied.  We had an occasional moment of community, as when, late in the evening, there was a long line of people waiting to catch a bus from one of the parks back to the hotel.  We did not all fit onto the first bus to arrive, and so we were planning to have to stand around waiting for another 20 minutes for the next one.  Unexpectedly, a second bus followed close on the tailpipe of the first one, and when an employee announced the destination, we all cheered.  He grinned and announced it again and again, and we all cheered every time.  But most of the time the other people at the park were people who would potentially get to the good rides first.  And clearly, we were the same to them.  We were the people who were in line for the bus before they were, but who could easily be pushed past.  There was no sense of community at all.

I had a microcosmic view of this cross-section of fare-paying humanity before we even arrived at Disney World.  The morning we left for Disney World, we didn’t leave our house in time.  Maybe it was my fault.  Maybe we should have planned all along to leave earlier.  Whatever the cause, we somehow found ourselves trapped in the early-morning rush hour on the way to the airport.  Adam became convinced that we were never going to move again, that we were not ever going to make it to Disney World, and that, as a result of his extreme anticipation and subsequent motionlessness he was going to die. 

In spite of Adam’s conviction, we did eventually arrive at the airport.  We hustled into the terminal as best we could with two enormous suitcases and two small children.  In a stroke of what we thought brilliant good luck, the line to check in was nearly non-existent.  Even so, our bags were labeled with “late check in,” as we were there less than an hour before our flight.  We hurried to a bathroom and then to the security lines.  Clearly, the traffic in which we had found ourselves earlier in the day had consisted of people destined for the security lines at Midway Airport.  Gretchen was getting over a touch of pneumonia, so we had to go through the “Family and Medical Liquids” line for her last two doses of antibiotics.   Of course, this was the longest line.  To make matters worse, the security guards kept pulling people with strollers out of line behind us and hustling them up to the front of the line.  While we were waiting, our flight was called for boarding.  Then it was called again.  Finally, our individual names were called.  And there we stood, nearly motionless in the liquids line.

When we finally arrived at the first check-point, I handed over my driver’s license and asked the man to whom I gave it if there was any way we could get into a shorter line since our names had been called and we were worried.  I spoke in my sweetest, least demanding voice.  It was a plea, not a demand.  I imagine those security people get a lot of similar such requests made at varying levels of perceived entitlement, so I don’t blame him for saying “no,” which is what he said.  I was, however, rather appalled that before saying “no,” he looked at me for a long time, looked at my driver’s license for a long time, looked back at me for a while, looked back at the license… and then repeated the process with Doug.  He took noticeably longer with us than with most people, us two frazzled parents trying to get to Disney World.  I thanked him anyway and entered the next phase of the Family and Medical Liquids security line.

In the line where you must take off all coats, sweaters, and shoes, the kids and I came through slowly (and after a long wait during which strollered parties were kindly escorted ahead of us) but uneventfully.  Doug came through last, and for whatever reason, his backpack triggered some sort of suspicion and was pulled off the conveyor belt for closer examination.  I was hastily putting my shoes and sweater back on, flanked by kids, when Doug told me to take the kids and hurry to our gate.  There was a good chance that we would not make it anyway, but we certainly would not if we waited for him.  So we ran.

We arrived at the gate, panting, both kids with a look of terror on their faces, just as the flight attendants were closing up shop.  They were leaving the desk, taking down the rope line guides, and gathering near the door.  I hastily offered the man closest to the door our three boarding passes.  He looked at them suspiciously.  “May we still get on?  My husband is right behind us, in the security line,” I said.  The flight attendants exchanged glances and sighed heavily before letting us on.  My heart was pounding out of my chest as we walked through the frigid hallway to the door of the plane, but I was determinedly trying to maintain a calm voice as I explained to my kids about getting on a plane, a new and strange experience for them.

Once on the plane, things did not improve.  Southwest is a first-come-first-seated airline, and we were certainly last.  Adam entered first, and I instructed him to keep walking towards the back of the plane in hopes that we might find two or three seats somewhat near each other.  We made it to the back of the plane without any such luck, so we turned back around.  My heart was still pounding, and I was sweating.  Just then a stewardess came down the aisle toward us with the news that she had three seats near each other.  “Oh thank goodness,” I sighed and turned my kids around. 

The seats were, I suppose, somewhat near each other.  All three were middle seats, two across the aisle from each other, and so separated by two large men and the aisle, and one was two rows ahead of the others.  Oh my.  “We need to make some decisions here!” the flight attendant told me. 

Deep breath.  “OK, Adam?  You go sit in that seat up there.  Gretchen, you are going to sit in that seat,” I pointed to a seat flanked by two large men, “and I’ll be right over here.”  I pointed to the middle seat on the other side of the aisle.  Under the best of circumstances, this is not a thing that my four year old daughter would ever agree to, and even less so the first time in an airplane.  She began to scream.  What else was there to do?  I faced the two men sitting in the aisle seats and, with all the sincerity of a mother facing two and a half hours of screaming child hell (and so were they, incidentally) said, “I know this is not ideal, but it would be so extremely kind if you could each move over one seat so that I could at least be directly across from my daughter.  I think that would really help her.”  The daughter, of course, was shrieking and clinging to my leg and refusing to sit by herself between two large unfamiliar men.   The two men to whom I had addressed my plea did nothing.  They did not move.  Their facial expressions were carefully blank.  They looked at me.  Behind me, the flight attendant who had been insisting that I “make some decisions” now said to the non-responsive men with the power to prevent the entire airplane from enduring half-a –continent’s worth of screaming, “Of course you do not have to move.”  At that point I had to be careful to keep my own face expressionless.  Of course they were not going to move after she said that.  Thanks for your help, lady. 

The flight attendant again requested that I sit down, and I looked at my screaming heap of daughter in resignation.  I was bending down to physically lift her over one of the expressionless non-moving large men, which was going to be uncomfortable and awkward for everyone, when a man several rows back stood up from his aisle seat.  He was also a big man—not fat, but tall and solid, and between his large frame and his orange hair, he reminded me a bit of my brother-in-law.  He volunteered to trade with one of the expressionless men and to sit in the middle seat on the other side of the aisle, allowing me to sit next to my terrified preschooler on her first flight.  I exhaled enormously and gasped out a breathless and enthusiastic thanks.  He responded that it wasn’t that big of a deal, and he faced the guy he proposed to trade with. 

The large expressionless man continued to be still and expressionless.  He did not stand and move back a few rows.  “Really,” the nice man told him, “my seat is an aisle seat.  You’d be moving from this aisle seat to that one.”  The motionless man did not acknowledge the request.  Baffled, the would-be hero stood right in front of motionless-man, waiting, repeating his request.  Everyone within seven rows in either direction were staring, silent, watching the stand-off.  The hero stood his ground.  Not angry, just not sitting back down.  So crammed into the little aisle next to the motionless man was a screaming four year old, her breathless sweating mother, an anxious and fidgeting flight attendant, and a large red-haired hero.  If he could have played oblivious before, which was never entirely believable, he certainly could not keep up the act much longer.  Finally, the large motionless man heaved himself up and lumbered back a few rows to take a different aisle seat. 

The heroic man took his place in the middle seat next to the other expressionless large man, and I took the other middle seat, putting Gretchen between me and the aisle.  I buckled her in and talked soothingly to her until she lowered her objections to some sniffles.  Then I stood up to try to see how Adam was doing two rows ahead of me.  The very kind woman sitting next to him caught my eye and said that he was fine.  She had buckled him in and ended up spending a good portion of the flight bent over him and his workbook.   Bless her. 

And bless bless bless the hero on the plane who sacrificed his rightfully-earned paid-for aisle seat to help out a frazzled mother and her terrified four-year-old daughter.  I had thanked him profusely when the transfer took place, and again after the flight I thanked him.  He acted slightly embarrassed, as though the strength of my gratitude was out of all reason, but it was not.  I told him that I was adding him to my list of things for which I am thankful.  He chuckled and nodded his head and left the plane, walking off into the sunset that was Orlando International Airport, never to be seen again.  I didn’t tell him that I was going to be writing about him as one of the highlights of my trip to Disney World.   But he was.

The citizens of Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom—the beautiful and friendly Princess Aurora, the conscientious Jiminy Cricket, the everyman Mickey Mouse—played their parts perfectly, and we dutifully photographed them hugging our children.  I, however, was more impressed by the kind of unscripted magic of the real-life hero on the plane, citizen of another kind of kingdom altogether.  It takes a lot of vision and a lot of money and time to transform thousands of acres of central Florida swampland into the land where dreams come true but only a little compassion and a bit of self-sacrifice to make wherever you happen to be the most blessed place on earth.