Zippity Do Da Dizzy World

Every few years we spend the vacation week between Christmas and New Year's in Disney World. I love Disney, really, and I love watching my children love Disney, but truthfully after the first visit the magic kind of wears off. At some point you can no longer suspend the conscious reality that those bears in the County Bear Jamboree aren’t really singing and they aren’t really bears. Yet wherever you go these robotic happy creatures are constantly popping out and singing Zippity Do Da (or “Symphony Do Da” as my son Ben confused the words). But then he is the one who calls Disney, "Dizzy World."

Every morning we were the rise and shiners trudging across the well-clipped lawn of the Coronado Springs Hotel to catch an early breakfast in The Pepper Market (a food court made to resemble a Mexican village square) in order to be at the gate when the parks opened. Each time we rounded the corner of a quadrangle of hedges a little bunny rabbit hopped across the sidewalk in front of Ben and dashed back under another row of tightly packed shrubbery. Ben ran after it hoping to catch the furry animal. I thought that was rather cute, but it happened five mornings in a row at exactly the same spot and exactly the same time, and by Wednesday I began to question whether that bunny was real. On Thursday after it tumbled out across our path yet again, I was certain it could not be real. What real bunny keeps a schedule perfectly timed down to the nanosecond? But the rabbit looked so convincing with none of the robotic tail waggings and head bobbings given to all other Disney animals, I was left perplexed. Maybe Disney trained live bunnies to dash across the paths of their guests each morning giving us yet again a sense that we were having a true adventure; when in fact, like everything else at Disney, it was just part of a staged production show.

In The Magic Kingdom you can circumnavigate the whole two and a half acre park by riding the steam train on the Walt Disney World Railroad. This allows you to see Tomorrow Land, Adventure Land, and Frontier Land. Across the lake on Tom Sawyer’s Island, a log cabin is on fire. After our interminable fourth trip around, my son Joey commented, “You’d think Disney would have put that fire out by now.” In everything else, Disney Imagineers are hyper-vigilant in their attention to detail- roping off sections of the street for parades and sweeping up spilled Funnel Cake powder- so the lack of attention to fire safety was indeed perplexing.

The train ride also allows you to pass an undeveloped marshy area from which the park was carved out. Just to keep this side of the park interesting, Disney placed robotic alligators on the side of the marsh to signify some imagined danger to the train occupants. According the Unofficial Guide to Disney World (2005), every now and then a real alligator swims up the canal, reaches the marsh, and takes a bite out of the plastic imposters, thus creating the irony of fake alligators suffering real wounds inflicted by genuine prey. Now that would be worth a few circular rides on the Walt Disney World Railroad.

It isn’t that I mind Disney’s efforts to provide adventure with no risk – their Asian Jungle cruises, African safaris or even the space mission to Mars (though I didn’t appreciate the very real G-forces imposed on my motion sick body), but sometimes I want to see the real bunnies. I want my children to see the rabbits, the armadillos, and the swamps filled with alligators. I want us to experience real life from a safe distance as required of real alligators and real life from an up close and personal view. I want my children to know that real bunnies really do run away and live in hollowed out parts of trees, not in clay fashioned briar patches singing “Zippity Do Da.” But I guess that is the challenge in a quick and easy world to find, as someone once said to child named Virginia, the “most real things in the world.” Happy Holidays!

Teaching Existentialism to a Hop on Pop Crowd

While driving my two sons home after an inspired field trip to the Natural History Museum, backseat questions arose regarding the dinosaur exhibit and a blinking chart tracking the migration of Homo sapiens. My opportunity to pontificate magically appeared. Let me briefly add that practicing law never allowed me the opportunity to orate on such a variety of endless topics to a captive audience like motherhood has. Anyway, Joey asked a brilliant question, and I was elated to be prepared for it – for it raised in essence the dilemma inherent in creation and evolution beliefs. Actually the question was:

“If God created the world in seven days how did the dinosaurs live before that?”

I knew what he was really asking. How do we resolve the conflict that religious culture has provided with stories of a deity creating human life in the face of clear scientific evidence to the contrary? What are we to believe? I felt these questions – and my answer - would shape their future and their spirits as they grew to be young men.

I gripped the steering wheel and looked in the rear view mirror. Their faces were young, innocent, trusting and a bit salty from the fistful of French fries they were holding in their hands. Boldly I began. I explained the fascinating phenomena of single celled organisms growing in the organic soup of Earth’s oceans billions of years ago. How these single cells adapted and grew into fish and then finally through a long period of adaptation crawled out of the water onto their bellies as the first amphibians. How more and more Earth creatures grew in this evolutionary capacity until finally the first known species of Man walked upright and with an extraordinary intellectual capacity dominated the Earth.

Using my hands to indicate the import of my next philosophical explanation, I held fast to the steering wheel with one hand and waved the other hand in an expansive explanation of the universe. They both stared at me, wide-eyed and fascinated. Traffic loomed by. I continued.

However, a life lived on the pure rational model of a scientifically calculated universe is not much of a life. Man needs to understand himself and his existence, to know that life has meaning. And for this we create myths that help us define and understand our life. Myths are not necessarily literally true, but they are true in a metaphorical way that profoundly defines us as more than evolving creatures, but in fact spiritual beings with a connection to God and the spiritual powers of the Universe, however they may choose to define that in their own lives.

In a grand gesture of their spiritual internal essence I raised both hands prayer-like toward the ceiling, locking the steering wheel with my knees, as traffic slowed to a near halt. Concluding, I awaited some question that would show me they had grasped the ungraspable. I hoped to have condensed my own belief to its purest state, rendering its meaning simple enough for the smallest child.

Joey looked at me quizzically, his head tilted and his mouth opening in contemplative thought. Then he asked,

“Mommy, do you know anyone that can drive a car with their feet?”

Hmmmm. A long silence. I sighed and shook my head.

“No, Joey, I do not know anyone that can drive a car with their feet.”

Then Ben interjected, “Ari’s mom can drive a car with her feet.”

Despite my deflated silence they continued for several miles discussing who they knew that might be able to drive a car with their feet.

Oh well, maybe this new topic (fascinating as it is) will allow me to research and pontificate on the Americans with Disabilities Act for next week. Hmmm. Maybe that would lead to a field trip to FDR’s Little White House. Existential life continues.

How to Find Dalai Lama Meaning in a Minivan World

December 10, 2007

I love my life – I really do. I have two little loony toon boys – Joey and Ben who are eleven and nine – and who keep me going at a hectic pace. I have a Type A investment banker husband who travels regularly, but likes to keep a hand in everything that goes on at home. I work part-time from home as a lawyer/writer; volunteer at school and the community center; and try to get the dogs walked everyday. But I will admit that sometimes I feel that I am mostly a minivan driving mom traveling the same concentric circle everyday in a path of children, errands, and what-not and wondering, like the rat on a spinning wheel, “Is this all there is?”

Recently I determined that I what I needed to achieve was a state of Zen like peace, a Dalai Lama level of happiness and contentment. That was the thought anyway which led me to yoga and a certain organic grocery store that I will call “Holy Foods.” Exercise and the grocery store - where else is there to start?

After a lifetime of Jane Fonda aerobics, step aerobics, spinning, and marathon training, yoga is like nirvana. No more sweaty rooms jammed with bulky bikes or benches or oversized balls. No more frantic step changes or blaring music or perky little gymnasts leading the conga line over a thin step. No more endless clocking of miles or aching butts from the cycle. Yoga is all soft lights, loose clothing, thin mats and chanting music. A core part of the program is sitting cross-legged while breathing and lying prone in the dark with your eyes closed in a period of “relaxation.”

But then a certain amount of contortion is also required. Body parts face one position while corresponding limbs must go in the opposite direction. Joints I was unaware I had must be bent and stretched. Noses must touch knees while eyes must gaze at the ceiling. Feet must face the back wall while waists twist and face the mirror. Instead of Dalai Lama peace this began to feel like a scene from the Exorcist. I appreciated the breathing and relaxation and all the Indian inspired music, but I left limping and sore like I had been mangled in a car accident and the first tingles of whiplash were setting in.

Next stop in my newly inspired life – “Holy Foods.” This organic grocery chain caters to our inner Uma Thurman. Stacked in farmer’s market baskets, the vegetables beckon with exotic names -- bok choi, white eggplant, broccolini -- though they admittedly lack the shiny luster of the local grocery store produce. Along the aisles, recycled cardboard boxes of whole-wheat pastas tout the product’s freedom from genetic engineering and animal testing. Customers lean to thin women in yoga clothes and Birkenstock wearing mothers with babies wrapped in slings around slim hips. The size of the grocery cart suggests, “Less is more.” I deduce that stacking a week’s worth of family groceries in a staggering mound as I strain to push the cart to the checkout was a bad idea. Zen like mothers must shop every day apparently.

A juice bar beckons to me as I round the produce area. This is confusing. Just when I had finally mastered the art of ordering a coffee in Starbucks, another drink market arises with so many different choices of unknown ingredients that I stand like a tourist in a third world country wondering how to speak the native tongue. Yes, there are smoothies with fruit, but they can also contain protein powders, wheat germ, wheat grass, saw grass, and yesterday’s grass clippings. I’m sticking with the strawberry lemonade. But that apparently requires the squeezing of fresh lemons, the dicing of whole strawberries, the blending of ice and then the final master juicing. Apparently Zen like peace requires a life not bound by time or carpool schedules. What is lovely about the robust organic community one finds at “Holy Foods” is that no one is in a hurry. What is equally troubling about this robust community (particularly its employees) is that, well, no one is in a hurry.

Having tried to achieve a Dalai Lama level of inner happiness, I am instead torn limb from limb by yoga, have overpaid for a week’s worth of organic produce, am saddled with beans and lentils that will require days worth of soaking before anything edible appears, and I am late for carpool.

Maybe I should try a pilgrimage to Nepal. But instead of seeking out the counsel of His Eminence, I am going to find the cook – who is surely an old woman squatting over an open fire trying to make dinner with a pile of mung beans and bok choi – and I’m going to ask her the secret to a happy life.