Mickey Mouse & Aunt Dolly

We spent a long weekend in Florida..... visiting my Aunt Dolly for her 98th birthday, and also walking around just about every inch of Disney World. We thought we would take Aunt Dolly to Disney for her birthday, but it was just too hot, and she didn't want to be 'pushed around in one of those chairs' and she thought she would be in the way of everyone who could walk faster than she can. Although, for being 98 years old, my Aunt Dolly can still walk circles around a lot of people that we know.

Florida is definitely hotter than Texas...... our temperatures may be higher, but we don't have all of that humidity (unless it rains, and we've seen precious little of that since February). Aunt Dolly spends most of her time in the air-conditioned house where she lives with my cousin S. She keeps the kitchen clean, and tidies up here and there, making the beds look perfect and the sidewalk in front of the house never has so much as a stray leaf on it.

Aunt Dolly doesn't much like the neighborhood-- it's very pretty and very quiet she said, but it's like living in a 'retirement home' because 'everyone here is so old.' Which, of course, isn't true...... everyone is younger than my aunt, but they all just move slower so she thinks they're older. For as long as I can remember, Aunt Dolly has been in constant motion. If someone told her to sit down and relax, she would tell them: "I'll be dead a long time when I go, so I'll relax then." Maybe that's why she's still very much alive and healthy at 98. My husband asked my aunt what her secret was for living so long. Aunt Dolly looked at him and said "Eat good. Think good. Be good."

My husband and I have been to Disney World before... it was a bunch of years ago, and it was a short trip so we didn't get to see everything Disney had to offer in Florida. This time, we did. We spent every morning in the parks, then visited with my aunt and cousins during the hot afternoons, then went back to the parks at night. We stayed at one of the Disney hotels, so we were able to take advantage of the extra hours at night-- the parks close at 10:00 or so, everyone leaves except the Disney hotel guests, and we were able to stay till 2:00 in the morning on one night.

There's no way you can not be happy when you enter the gates at Disney. Music is playing, bands are marching, parades and shows are going on all around you. Everyone who works at Disney just smiles, smiles, smiles..... they make you think they were waiting just for you to arrive. And the fireworks every night..... amazing...... both at The Magic Kingdom and at EPCOT. They give you a fireworks display like it's the 4th of July and New Year's Eve rolled into one...... and they do this every night, every single night. My husband and I spent an entire day at EPCOT, from 9:00 in the morning till after twelve that night. We had lunch in France, dinner in Germany, gelato in Italy, and strolled through all of the other countries' pavillions and shops. Before we left the park, my husband bought me a Murano glass-beaded bracelet in one of the Italian shops, and he found a Walt Disney poster to have framed for his office.

At The Animal Kingdom, we saw "The Lion King" show...... the costumes were beautiful, the dancing was so perfect, and the music..... those Elton John songs....... I was sitting there with tears in my eyes because I thought of my friend Fran. She loved Elton John, and she loved the music from "The Lion King." Before I knew it, tears were just rolling down my cheeks as I thought of Fran not being with us anymore. That fact alone just breaks my heart, with or without Elton John's music. I thought of Fran a lot over the weekend.... on the planes, at Disney, in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep. There was one point when I looked out the plane window at the clouds and said to myself "Are you out there, Fran?"

For Aunt Dolly's birthday, my husband found an Italian restaurant and we got two shopping bags filled with dinners to go.... we brought them back to the house and had dinner in the dining room-- much better for my aunt because it was quiet and not too cold. She wears hearing aids to help her with conversations, but in a noisy crowded restaurant, the hearing aids are useless. She was much more comfortable at her own table, and we all had a delicious dinner with her and my cousins, and no one was freezing in a too-cold restaurant.

Aunt Dolly has been going through the packing boxes that were shipped from my grandparents' home in NY..... she's finding things in those boxes that haven't seen the light of day for decades. She sent me home with three of them, with the promise of more to come in the mail as she gets to the bottom of the larger boxes.

Two of the items were watches that my dad had given to my mother.... one I remember distinctly-- a gold watch that hangs from a pin in the shape of a bow, with little ruby-colored stones in the bow's center. My mother wore that little bow-pin watch just about every day when I was a kid.... and I absolutely remember that she was wearing that watch on a white blouse on the day I started first grade. We were both wearing white blouses that day... I thought she would stay at school with me, but of course she had to leave me at the door. I didn't know that little watch was engraved on the back..... daddy gave it to my mother on their six-month anniversary, which is evident from the date engraved underneath the words "To my adorable wife."

The other surprise was a gold wristwatch, also engraved with a date for the second Christmas after I was born... my dad had it engraved "To our dear wife and mother..." and then he had his name and my name engraved underneath. The wristwatch fits me...... I put it on and wound it up..... and it still works, as does the little bow-pin watch. I sat there in my Aunt Dolly's Florida living room and put the watches up to my ear and listened to them ticking. I felt that if I closed my eyes and wished hard enough, it would be 1953 again and everyone would be together. Oh well. Not even the magic of Disney could make that wish come true.

There was a third little surprise, wrapped up in a tiny piece of tissue-paper..... a lock of my sister's hair, from her first haircut, May 14th, 1961...... it was Mother's Day, and my Uncle Mino cut her hair for the first time. Aunt Dolly tied the curl of hair with a pink ribbon, wrote the date and her name on the paper, and folded it up into a neat little square. That tissue paper probably hadn't been unfolded since that Mother's Day weekend in 1961 when my sister was almost two years old.

Aunt Dolly also sent me home with three of my grandmother's hats. My cousin L had told Aunt Dolly that I had Victorian lady statues in our house, and she thought I would put the hats on the heads of the statues. I did just that after I took the hats out of my suitcase. I remember two of the hats as if I'd just seen my grandmother wearing them yesterday. The third hat, I don't remember it at all..... it looks brand new, as if she had bought it and never got to wear it.

One thing is for sure..... Aunt Dolly was (and is) the 'memory keeper' of the family. Every little thing that could possibly have sentimental value was packed safely away in the attic..... decades went by.... family passed away, or divorced, or moved out of state as the old NY neighborhoods went through changes. Every little memory just stayed right where it was, and if my aunt hadn't had to move out of the house in NY, all these things would still be up there in the attic of that big old house that grandpa built in 1922. Little by little now, as Aunt Dolly goes through the boxes, she's making sure that everyone gets what belongs to them, or had belonged to their parents (which would be her brothers and sisters, my aunts and uncles).

While we were at Disney World, one of the songs that we heard was "When You Wish Upon A Star," sung by Disney's Jiminy Cricket. That song makes me cry every time. When I was a little kid in the 1950s, my dad and I would watch Walt Disney's television show every Sunday night...... daddy would sing that song all the time. It always gets to me. And so does Disney.

My Mickey Mouse watch is back in my jewelry box...... we're on Texas time now, not Disney time. I forgot to bring my Minnie Mouse ears when we left, but I took them out of the box when I got back home and they're on my desk as I type. I came home with more Disney pins for my collection...... and I bought Disney gifts for my cousin F.... I wish she had been able to come with us this time. But there will be another trip to Disney, and I'm hoping that we can take F with us to Disney, and to see Aunt Dolly. For her 99th birthday? Or for her 100th?

Surely, if we go back to Florida for Aunt Dolly's 100th birthday... surely she will let us take her to meet Mickey Mouse for that extra-special birthday. When you wish upon a star.....