A memory

We were all still alive then. It was the late 1970’s and my family was on vacation. My parents ponied up the cash for the record-high gas, piled their six kids in a maroon Chevrolet suburban, and drove from Rexburg, Idaho, still reeling from the flood caused by the burst Teton Dam, across the shimmering deserts of Utah and Nevada, to Disneyland, the greatest place in the world. I was three years old and that trip is my first memory.

I don’t remember the fifteen hour drive. Having been a few places with my own kids, I could be persuaded that it sucked mightily for my parents.

What the hotel looked like is lost to me, though there is a vague notion that it was quite close to the theme park because it seems as though it wasn’t necessary to drive. It may even have been called Disneyland Hotel. I don’t even remember much of the park to be quite honest, but one thing about the trip is very clear. Two things, actually.

We had spent the day on the roller coasters, the teacups with their endless chiming of “It’s a Small World, After All”, shaking hands with and taking pictures of the whole cast of oversized celebrities, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, et al. I’m sure it was grand.

Here’s where it comes into focus. It was night, probably around 9 or 10 o’clock. Other than my younger brother Joshua, who was only one year old, the kids were headed to the pool. Mom and Dad stayed with Joshua in the room. It may seem like a bad idea to send children that young to swim unaccompanied by adults, but we were all precocious swimmers—I was swimming at two.

I remember the sidewalk to the pool was lit with a greenish hued lamp, the same color, incidentally, as illuminated pool water. Johnny, the oldest at thirteen, had his towel rolled lengthwise and he had it around the back of his neck, holding the two ends with his hands at his sides. He looked so cool, walking with his towel like that. So of course I copied him. As I was rolling my towel, trying to keep up with the others, I tripped and fell.

It couldn't be as bad as I remember, but memory tells me I scraped the hell out of my knees. I wailed.

Thinking about it now, I was probably upset as much by my failure to imitate my older brother as I was by the pain. Either way, I sat there and I screamed in the night. Because of my little injury, we all had to go back to the hotel room. None of us swam. My siblings were slightly pissed. I don’t blame them. I couldn’t stop crying. I don’t remember who held me, my mom or my dad. I cried myself to sleep.

It’s interesting to me that my very first memory is one of pain.

The second memory is from the next day. It’s of riding “The Matterhorn Bobsled” with my dad. Fashioned after the real Matterhorn in Switzerland, the roller coaster ascends to the top of an artificial mountain. After peaking, the bobsled flies down, looping in and out of tunnels that cut through the mountain. In one of the tunnels is a giant Abominable Snowman with glowing red eyes. He scared me to death. I loved it. Dad and I rode it again and again. We spent the day on that ride, just us.

Years later, I understood what he had done for me. I didn’t know it at the time, but my dad had an intense fear of heights. He also got motion sickness. It turns out that he absolutely hated roller coasters. In all our subsequent trips to amusement parks, I can’t remember him ever going on any rides. He joked that he didn’t feel comfortable sitting on park benches without a seatbelt. He just watched the rest of us and waited for us to get off before walking us to the next ride. I can only imagine the physical misery he put himself through to ride that bobsled with me.

I get a little sentimental this time of year. In a couple of months it will have been three years since he died. It is a huge and silent reality that so many have gone that way. I’ve looked in every room of my soul for the answers. If they’re there, I’m not yet equipped with the ability to understand them. I've talked very little about it, have written less. The whole thing is pushing at me these days.

At the beginning of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Phaedrus says, “Truth comes knocking at the door, and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth.’ The ghost may have something there.

Whether it's familiarity that's blinding me or something else, I don't know. I do know that we all search for something. Here's to looking.

I was worried about ending here because I was afraid it would come off as overly sentimental. But I figured out how to say it: My first memory is of pain. My second one isn't.