Seeing My Feet

Last year I blogged about the difference between our Christmas outings of 2005 at King's Island Amusement Park and 2006 at a Santa shop in a local farm implement store. This year, my mind is drawn to reflect on the difference between Christmas Day of 2007 and New Year's Day of 2008--not as long a march of days between but certainly as much diversity.

Christmas Day our family had the unique experience of being campers at Disney World's Fort Wilderness Campground. A full moon, perfect weather, friendly squirrels and absolutely no bugs made the camping experience almost surreal. That strange quality bled from Christmas Eve into Christmas Morning as I listened through the tent walls while other families observed their "private" Christmas morning rituals. I heard the crackle of gifts being unwrapped and heard children squealing over the just-revealed gifts. That strange freedom to observe swelled as I walked to the bathhouse. One extended family had rented adjacent campsites, put a tree up between them, and all sat circling the tree in camp chairs, opening the family gifts. I felt like I was a secret observer being transported by one of Scrooge's ghosts, except that these people saw me and paused in their unwrapping to wave to me.

New Year's Day we are back at home and having a very private holiday. No one is visiting; in fact each of us is enjoying the holiday in our own solitary way. We gathered to make fried doughnuts and watch part of the parade this morning (using the new deep fryer that was a Christmas gift to the family.) But over all, the holiday is restfully solitary for each of us.

On Christmas Day I walked...a lot. All over Epcot we went that day. I saw the world past, present and future as told by Disney. I saw Santa under every name and guise of cultural diversity. Mostly I remember being in crowds so thickly massed that I often couldn't see my feet, particularly in a few of the "new" style of queue lines that aren't really queue lines at all, but rather something we coined the term "mob lines" to describe. I hope the trend to use this method of herding people onto rides is one that dies a quick death.

On New Year's Day I walked, too. All over the neighborhood I went. I saw a total of 8 people on that snowy, windy walk but I still couldn't see my feet, as I had myself utterly wrapped in a deep fluffy red scarf under a grey hood to keep the cold sting off my nose and eyes. At Disney the mass of humanity in that ideal climate and that ideal playground was unavoidable. But here in the neighborhood, humanity's presence was far more subtle. A track of three parallel lines in the scant snow on the sidewalk--some child hoped the snow deep enough on a nearby communal hillside to send a small sled forth--a less exciting activity than many of those found at the end of the long queue lines at Disney but surely rewarding in its own way.

Both walks ended. I saw my feet again.