Cognitive Dissonance, Baby

We're, just now, planning a trip to the Happiest Place on Earth. It's an American child's right of passage to pose for a picture in front of a gigantic fake castle with a gigantic fake mouse. True?

And yet, I am keenly aware that "happy" isn't reality for many.

A friend received an awful diagnosis.

My mom-in-law is trying to stitch together a world that works for a boy who is living through stuff that would make anyone threadbare.

There are babies in Haiti, and Alemeda County, and everywhere that are just now, as we plan our vacation, experiencing the neglect that leads to attachment disorders. And, dammit, I keep bumping up against the truth of it when I'd rather forget.

The very going to Disneyland is an irony, actually. I'm trying to decide if we need to get a "guest assistance pass" for our littlest since her's are invisible disability. The sensory overload and transitions could be unmanageable without accommodation. But we accommodate so well, and she CAN behave so typically that I'm afraid that people will think we are just cutting in line. So I thought...I'll just get her one of those t-shirts like the kids with autism get, so people won't judge me us if there is a melt-down. You know the ones that say, "I'm not being naughty, I have autism." - or whatever. I don't think this dilemma would exist if the Mouse could truly deliver utopia. The happiest place on earth is still a broken place.

Tangent: So is giving a kid a t-shirt that spells out her diagnosis to random strangers just totally jacked, or only a little jacked? The fact is that when they see her "behaviors" they are already labeling her (bratty), but the t-shirt would at least give the correct label, right? K. Probably jacked. And I'm probably wanting to go the whole t-shirt route because I want for people to think I have it together-ish. Which is pretty lame. Tangent finished.

So the cognitive dissonance is wrapped around the idea that I shouldn't really be spending money on vacation when the world is broken. I should be doing something about the brokeness, like beyond Space Mountain. Or, at least, we should be using the money to buy new tires, and put some into a 401k. Disney is so playful and frivolous and exorbitant and I am a grown up...

But the world is broken. And I have this little tiny window to lean into where I am - with these 4, and this man. We are within a days drive to vacation central. We are buying a memory, and investing in relationships. And these are the good things in the broken. So we will celebrate them. There is no dissonance in that. It is a chord resolved. Intentionally, we fuel relationships so that we have the relational capital to influence our children to see a world beyond themselves. And the venue of choice happens to have an animated human-sized rodent as it's mascot. This makes sense, people, it does.

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