Chapter 16 - Magic Kingdom
Coincidence Speaks
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Happy Friday friends! Welcome to Chapter 16 of Coincidence Speaks. Don’t worry if you’re new here, or aren’t caught up—all chapters are crafted to be read on a standalone basis. For the full experience head this way to start at the beginning!↩️
Many thanks to
for a better synopsis of the previous chapter than I could’ve done myself. 🤩
Chapter 16 finds Paul ready to honor a long-forgotten childhood promise...
Chapter 16
Magic Kingdom
“Space Mountain is pretty much the coolest thing ever.” The boy at the desk next to Paul gave him a grave, self-important look.
Paul could tell it was true. Oh how he yearned to go to Disney World and see for himself.
“It’s all inside. And you go flying in the dark!”
Disney was a mythical wonderland of pure awesomeness, reserved for the lucky few whose parents “could afford it,” whatever that meant. The select Chosen Ones who got to go disappeared from school for weeks on end—an eternity in kindergartner time—and came back all-knowing and wise, with tales to match.
Paul never got to go to Disney World.
And while that yearning was slowly swallowed within the coalescing layering of time, it was then that the first inklings of his sacred childhood vow began to percolate:
“I’m NEVER going to forget what it’s like to be a kid. If I am ever a dad, I am going to do things MY way. I’m going to make time to be with them, no matter how important ‘work’ is.”
Thirty years later, it was time to honor that promise no matter what.
Paul had no clue he was harboring an unmet desire from kindergarten until his childhood memories began flooding back in. In a fitting stroke of timing, Clara had booked a family trip to Disney World nearly nine months prior, and that trip now fast approached, less than a month away.
Now it was as if his adult life had suddenly plugged back into his childhood, and he experienced its subtle yet potent reverberations existing within the present moment, like an echoing symmetry.
For starters, Paul resolved to stop working so many late nights, holidays, and weekends. Plenty of waking hours were still spent handling paperwork at the office and out on site visits with clients—but at least now he was getting home while the sun still hung low in the sky, in time for family dinner. For the very first time since his children were born, he was able to give them his unadulterated time—genuine time, real time—time without the constant work attachments he’d always brought home with him.
“Of course on the other side of the token, it’s not like all the long hours I’ve been putting in were in vain!” His rapid rise in the ranks had brought much more financial freedom for their family.
And the same spirit of adventure that had blazed the pathway of his meteoric career climb seemed to permeate Paul and Clara both now—their old familiar suburban lifestyle just didn’t quite fit like it used to.
It felt somehow restrictive now, its… sameness. Cookie cutter box houses lined up in tidy rows. Numbered nameless mailboxes and neatly trimmed lawns. Suburban subdivisions expanding, always expanding… a civilized cellular mitosis subdividing over and over. Beneath their familiar homogenous lifestyle flowed a new yearning for adventure, for freedom—now ripe to be explored.
While Paul and Clara both yearned for something new with their home life, they had no idea what that might even look like.
Maybe Disney would provide the spark.
The work week leading up to any vacation was always insane, but the roller coaster of a week leading up to this one took their breath away. An incoming Friday morning text from Clara’s cousin kicked things off innocuously enough:
“Check out this place that just came on the market out near us—what a great location!”
The house was thirty miles away in a picturesque rural area, yet still just five minutes from local shops and schools. Impressed by the pictures in the real estate listing, Clara contacted the realtor for access and took the Endrum family out for a scenic country drive that weekend.
At the tail end of a forty minute ride, Clara took the final left turn into a private gravel drive. After winding down a tree-lined path for a half mile or so, the driveway suddenly opened up into a spectacular, tucked away paradise. A simple but stately white house sat perched atop acres of open rolling meadows embraced by crisscrossing pines, cedars and oaks, its natural property borders slowly carved into the earth over the centuries by a trickling creek in the surrounding forest.
The children shrieked in excitement, leaping out of the car to run through a wide expanse of open fields and open sky, muffled yelps of laughter and play floating back from a hundred yards.
Paul and Clara looked at one another in wordless communication. “Are you kidding me? We could live HERE?!”
The realtor said there were already two offers in play since the property had been listed on Friday morning, and more were expected over the weekend. Paul and Clara put in an offer that night, crossed their fingers, and left it up to fate.
The phone rang the very next morning: “Congratulations—your offer was accepted! Will send you the signed paperwork shortly.”
“Shortly” went from seconds, to minutes, to hours, to a deafening silence dragging the rest of the day with it.
Finally the realtor reached back out that evening—not with the promised paperwork, but with a nervous clearing of the throat: “We’ve gotten several more offers since yours, and the seller thinks we set the price too low. So we are giving all prospective buyers to the end of the weekend to put in their highest and best offer.”
Oof.
Jaded and disheartened, Paul and Clara sharpened their pencils, did their best to put themselves in the seller’s shoes, and put their best foot forward with a new contract.
Paul was in a business meeting later in the week when Clara’s name lit up his phone. He didn’t want to be rude in the middle of a meeting, but his client grinned encouragingly at him, knowing Paul was waiting to hear back on the contract.
“Take it… Yeah take the call! Good luck…”
Clara’s breathless voice shot over the airwaves. “We got it! We got the house!”
Paul felt his own breath catching in his throat. In excitement and elation, of course, but now the jagged edges of anxiety pressed into the corners of his stomach. As the more financially-oriented one in their relationship, it was time for him to step up to the plate for a hard reality check on what it would actually take to execute the move.
Per the aggressive contract they’d submitted, they now had just 45 days to sell their existing house, obtain mortgage financing, and close on the new one. Not to mention move more than a decade’s worth of furniture and accumulated possessions from their old house, clean it from top to bottom, and move into the new one.
And starting the next morning, the next ten days would be spent traveling out of state.
To Disney World.
With his kindergartener daughter’s help, Paul staked an official “For Sale By Owner” sign in the front yard of their suburban home, and the next morning they piled into the family car for a fifteen hour drive to Florida.
“Wallyworld, here we come,” Paul grinned to himself as he pulled out of the driveway, feeling like Clark Griswold of National Lampoon’s Vacation in the flesh.
If he’d have known what was just over the horizon he might not’ve been grinning quite so widely.
End Chapter 16
Chapter 17 - Tomorrowland will post next week. Thanks for being here in interactive real time! Comments and feedback always welcome.
In gratitude,
E.T. Allen
Oh man! Next Friday seems like a long ways away 😉
Great ending to this chapter. I hope Paul doesn’t have to sell his soul in the process. I guess I’ll just have to wait.