Celebrate Today
My children are sleeping deeply tonight — three days of magic will do that to a 7-year-old.
We are home now, back in Silicon Valley where neighbors are milling around on a Sunday afternoon; there’s homework to be done and nothing seems to have changed in 72 hours. Funny. It has for us.
I watched my kids, exhausted, full and happy walking off the airplane after the weekend filled with the kind of emotion that only Disneyland can offer. They seem so carefree now, my boy’s blue Micky Mouse wizard hat casting a shadow on the jetway; my girl’s hair still perfectly in-tact after two days since being coifed by the Bippity-Boppety-Boutique maidens. Even I felt free. Disneyland will never know how much their “Celebrate Today” theme moved me to tears, and how it has left me inspired to live in the moment — today, and more than ever, tomorrow.
As I type, clothes are in the dryer. In the morning, I will re-board a different flight, this time to The Mayo Clinic in a Hail-Mary type pass to see if the doctors there can help my mom. By now you know the story of my mom…
All through the Disneyland park, you feel the passion of Celebrate Today. Anything, anyone is worth celebrating. It’s hard to remember that life itself is worth celebrating, especially when life isn’t playing nice. But, inside Disneyland, there is a celebration for everything! A celebration at the extraordinarily lit “it’s a small world,” every 15 minutes when the clock strikes and children of the world dance. Did you ever notice that at Disneyland? The children of the world are dancing, just because.
I watched celebrations of children’s first visit to the Magic Kingdom, an old man’s birthday, an informal family reunion, a marriage, a life beginning, and in one special case we saw this weekend, a life ending. We saw the Make-a-Wish Foundation in action with a massive group of people boarding the Toy Story ride, partying like there was no tomorrow. Why? Because they were Celebrating Today for a child in their family that won’t have many more tomorrows. I asked a cast member on the ride what the impromptu FastPass was about and he told me, “They are Celebrating Today.” Yeah, baby. They are.
Celebration is Disney. My mom celebrated her high school graduation in 1962 with my step-dad at an all-night fete at Disneyland. I celebrated many birthdays here, my grandmother brought my cousins and me here. My mom brought us here just because. My aunt performed here, my father was one of the original Mouseketeers (shhh, don’t tell!). I’ve celebrated summers and winters and random school breaks here at Disneyland. One day, my mom and teenage brother went to Disneyland on a whim, ditching life and celebrating their day. There are so many celebrations of my family life on the streets of Disneyland over the past 50 years.
Disney is celebrating holidays today and every day for the next six weeks. Celebration is different than decoration. Decoration are designs and wreaths and bulbs. Celebration is the understanding that there is something in the air that enlightens people. We celebrated this weekend — and for us, where the holidays will be uncertain with my mom’s health — it might be the single greatest holiday celebration of our year.
I was not paid for this post, however, my children and I were treated to an extraordinary weekend of holiday magic at Disneyland, courtesy of #Disneylandmoms.
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My Gift
I’ve been a part of online communities for so long, it’s hard to remember life without it. I can recall running to RadioShack in the early 90s to hook my then-smoking hot computer to the small but growing America Online in order to chat with a group of triathletes. Connecting with people of like-minds has always been one of my great passions. However, being a part of communities online means that our communities offline have to be balanced. Over 15 years later, I’m still trying to work the balance of managing relationships online without it affecting my relationships offline. It’s not that I’m bad at it. Actually, I’m good at it! But it’s work. And my gift to my children this Christmas was going to be a work-free mommy.
Today is the last day I will Tweet until the kids go back to school on January 4. I won’t peek, lurk or wish-wash my way into Twitter. I’ll mostly avoid all other social media sites as well. I have already removed all social media apps from my iPhone. I’ll reinstall them in a couple weeks. And with few exceptions, I plan on being radio-silent in my online life. Being fully engaged with my children during their time off from school is the best present I can think of to give them.
Hey, Twitter: See you on the other side of the decade.
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Side Gigs
