vacations.
i don’t have any specific memories of orlando, florida. mostly, i think, it’s because i’ve been so many times that the visits themselves blur together until everything is vague walkings through sunlight. ridings in a rental convertible ( red ) with the top down and the smell of tar and new cars. standings in interminable lines in disney world. wadings through pools at resorts, swimmings, sunnings, hey mom look what i can do!s.
i think about the heat, and the way those long straight roads bisected by palm trees and fast food restaurants seemed to go on forever. about the same mickey mouse ice cream bar mom buys me, every time we visit magic kingdom. about the tram from the infinite parking lots, please keep your hands and feet inside the tram until it comes to a complete stop, welcome to disney world, welcome to florida. about the tacky, tacky restaurant called Jungle Jim’s we frequent, where they give us tiny plastic animals attached to straws, sometimes there are live animals, only on tuesdays, oh we’re leaving on sunday, too bad, too bad. the welcome staleness of the a/c, hours in front of the television, sleeping in king size beds. walks at night through pathways lit behind bushes, ambient lighting made for sentimental fools like me, trying not to step on the tiny gecko lizard things whose names i will never learn.
it’s always the same.
