Chapter 17 - Tomorrowland
Coincidence Speaks
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Happy Friday friends! Welcome to Chapter 17 of Coincidence Speaks. No worries if you’re new here, or aren’t all the way 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!↩️
Chapter 17 finds Paul and Clara on the better side of a fifteen hour drive to Disney World, having finally reached their destination…
Chapter 17
Tomorrowland
“Shirt’s stuck on something,” a distracted Paul muttered as he threaded through a growing morning crowd, trying to make it into Tomorrowland before the lines got too long. Clara pushed a double jogging stroller in his wake, half of it filled by their happily babbling toddler son. Disney was a full on feast—or assault—to the senses, depending upon whether one had a child or parental perspective.
Another little tug snagged at Paul’s shirt, still subtle, but a little more insistent this time.
Paul looked down to the source of the tug and into the eyes of his six-year-old daughter. Noel. They shined like twin suns, lighting up her cherubic face.
“Daddy… will you ride Space Mountain with me?” Noel asked.
He saw himself in her eyes, and time melted around them both.
Three decades merged together, and he was six years old again, yearning to visit Disney and ride Space Mountain, now about to experience the real thing.
Meanwhile the outer world around them had gone fluid, dreamlike, archetypal, as Paul and Noel zipped straight to the front of an empty queue and buckled giddily into their seats.
She threaded her hand into his, in that breathless moment before their adventure began, and he felt her nervousness, feathered heartbeats fast pulsing through her tiny hands. She’d never been on a roller coaster before.
With a reassuring squeeze, he poured all of the excitement and fatherly comfort he could muster into it. “It’s OK—you’re going to love it!” He felt her relax.
As if in spontaneous affirmation, a neon sign lit up above them —“Energy Transfer”— and the car began moving.
Paul and Noel were enveloped in a swirling tunnel, an elongated corridor filled with spiraling kaleidoscopic blue lights, like a birth canal into another dimension. It felt as if a time portal had been created just for them.
They shot through the portal together, and Paul was flying once more, this time through the darkness of the indoor rollercoaster that was every bit as awe-inducing as he’d imagined when he was six years old. Tiny pinpricks of starlight punctuated the darkness, speed felt only through the pits of their stomachs and the wind in their face.
As they coasted back into the light at the end of the ride, the exhilaration on his daughter’s face was so much more than anything he could have imagined for himself thirty years ago. He reveled in the experience of simultime… through his own immediate perspective, through the reflection of his daughter, and through the remembrance and actualization of his childhood memories, all at once. But everything, everything, was held within the shining joy of her eyes.
“Daddy can we go again?”
There were two tracks to choose from, appropriately named Alpha and Omega. Mirrored opposites of the same track. Two different timelines happening at the same time—same start, same destination.
One for her, one for him.
From a child’s perspective, the entire “Magic Kingdom” was exactly that. In addition to her newfound Space Mountain bravery, Noel was already a certified Disney princess maniac, and Paul and Clara couldn’t help smiling at her constant unabashed awe and wonder.
Luke, now two and a half, was a slightly different story. Having recently located his navel, other pressing priorities were top of mind. He found a single support pole in Tomorrowland, and spent hours running around it in circles in perfect contentment, stopping only to lift up his shirt and show his belly button to fortunate passersby.
Space Mountain and Tomorrowland support poles notwithstanding, Paul and Clara soon found much of Disney World to be an exponential amplification of all the parts of their lifestyle they were ready to leave behind. Suffocating crowds vying to be first in line, the best dinner reservations accommodations needing to be made months in advance, $15 ice cream cones, a mad stroller-pushing dash from one attraction to another… a theme park exaggeration of their own frenetic suburban life.
It was almost too much to digest.
They caught their breath during a rare moment of rest near the end of the day—both kids had finally fallen asleep, little heads nudged together napping in the double jogging stroller.
Paul looked around at the recreational carnage unfolding around them, bearing witness to the last climactic power struggles between exhausted parents and their overstimulated sugar-filled children. “Maybe this is why my parents didn’t take me thirty years ago,” he chuckled ruefully, marveling at the buzzing human swarms frantically pollinating the attractions and shops and rides before they closed, trying to cram it all into eleven hours of daylight, and then doing it all over again the next day.
Indeed there was no rest for the weary at Disney, not least for parents, and the joy of Space Mountain was fast eclipsed by the reality of adult responsibilities. Per the aggressive 45-day sales contract on their new country home which had been accepted the day before they’d left, Paul now had a house to sell and financing to arrange before they could close on the new one. Overflowing work from the office came along too—several complex transactions needed to be orchestrated remotely at month-end, and suddenly a new hire he’d been recruiting for the better part of a year was now ready to sign on.
Paul toiled away working every night at the hotel, eventually getting their house listed for sale by owner on MLS, the official tracking system for buying and selling primary homes. Soon after, they were fielding multiple offers, and he had to excuse himself many times a day in between rides to answer questions and negotiate.
It took Paul several more late nights at the hotel to compile and electronically submit all of the different phases of financial items necessary for the mortgage financing. Between perpetual negotiation and work orchestration and parental obligation and park navigation, he was exhausted.
Nevertheless, by week’s end, they had been officially approved for financing to purchase their new home, subject to the sale of their current one. Two of the offers turned out to be for full asking price, and on the very last day at Disney, they accepted an all cash contract from a woman who wanted to move to be closer to her grandchildren, who was ready and willing to close within the 45 day timeline.
Paul breathed a great sigh of relief.
Success!
On the final night, Paul and Clara celebrated their rapid-fire accomplishments with dinner at one of the most sought-after restaurants in the park.
“This is the one I had to reserve six months in advance just to get,” Clara said as they navigated towards the entrance, their jogging stroller parting roiling human waves like the bow of a ship.
“Six months…jeez… this place must be incredible.” The menu didn’t look like anything especially remarkable, but Paul wasn’t picky, and the kids were always happy with spaghetti.
He went with the rockfish special, and it was a bit of a letdown, at least relative to the effort it had taken Clara to get the reservation.
In fact it tasted a little funny.
After a less than stellar night’s sleep, Paul woke up early in the morning hotel darkness feeling ominously nauseous. Furiously packing the car with every last bit of skilled efficiency he’d acquired through his first six years of dadhood, he got the family checked out of the hotel and buckled in for departure by 7:00 a.m.
“Clare I really don’t feel good—don’t know what the deal is—do you mind starting out driving?”
“Uh-oh… that’s not good…” she nodded and took the wheel, while Paul strapped into the passenger seat.
They made it a grand total of five minutes.
“Right there—pull over there,” a desperate Paul begged Clara to detour into an imminent gas station parking lot.
With a roar Clara would later describe as the “sound of a wounded bear,” Paul flung open the passenger door and deposited the entire six month dinner reservation all over the pavement, traumatizing his children in the back seat, in addition to the two innocent people in bright orange vests who had just walked out of 7-Eleven with their morning coffees.
Clara didn’t know whether to laugh or be appalled. “My God Paul… those poor construction workers… they will never be the same…”
She then proceeded to drive the full fifteen hours back home with two needy children in the back, and a groaning husband in front curled up in the stomach flu fetal position the entire way.
“Out with the old, make way for the new,” Paul moaned to himself as he rolled out of the car at the end of the trip, weak and utterly spent. Empty.
Later that night Paul tried to document the family trip in his journal, but only made it through two sentences before passing out:
“A bridge to the past is a bridge to the future...
And maybe the bigger the change, the bigger the purge...”
End Chapter 17
Chapter 18 will post next week. Thanks for being here in interactive real time! Comments and feedback always welcome.
In gratitude,
E.T. Allen
While I love this ; “Their two-year-old son was a slightly different story. Having recently located his navel, he had other pressing priorities in mind.”
I’m pretty sure these two have the greatest significance, though only you know the answer. I’m just along for the ride. No more amusement rides for me please, or I may end up ‘losing’ my cotton candy and such.
“A bridge to the past is a bridge to the future...
And maybe the bigger the life change, the bigger the purge.”
What a light-hearted chapter…minus the ending of course.:) I loved how you described Magic Mountain, you brought me right back to that mysterious, thrilling star-studded darkness!