{Start with Part 1}

Day 3

My neck hurt, my stomach hurt, my heart hurt. I didn’t sleep well. Between the awful hotel’s extra-springy mattress and the couple next door arguing all night, along with the news from the night before, sleep just wasn’t meant to be. I laid awake thinking about how I could break the news to my two excited little boys. I also wondered what this would mean for the near future. Would schools close too? They would almost have to right? Will wedding season happen? I’m a photographer, what if venues close? Surely they’ll get this sorted out before my busy season begins in May.

Over the course of a few hours we had figured out a new plan. July. We would just go in July. Everything would have to be rescheduled, which sounded promising based on conversations with my family (the rest of our Disney crew), the parks and resort. It was only another 4 months to wait. But driving again sounded…exhausting. Maybe a bit prematurely, I booked our flight for July. Let me tell you, flights were cheap! That quickly, travel prices plummeted.

I heard a little sigh coming from the child sleeping beside me. He began to stir. I knew they’d be awake soon.

Before long, Bennett was up and bouncing around. He’s like a light switch, on or off. From the moment his eyes pop open in the morning until his head hits the pillow at night he’s go-go-go. So with his energy filling the room, Andrew and Lincoln promptly joined him in the land of the living once again. We muddled through our morning routine and let ourselves wake up a bit before having the talk. I looked at my husband and he looked at me. “Alright, let’s tell them what’s going on.”

I braced myself for the tears.

“Hey guys, I need you to come sit over here on the bed. We have something important to talk about.”

They must have caught on that I was serious because they actually listened the first time I asked.

“Have you ever heard the word “Coronavirus?”

They shook their heads. “What is it?” Bennett asked.

“Coronavirus is like the flu or a cold. There’s an icky germ that’s been traveling all over the world and now it’s in our country and it’s making people feel sick.”

Lincoln chimes in, “That’s a mean germ!”

“You’re right, it is! The thing is, this is a new kind of germ and doctors and scientists have to learn about it so they can figure out how to stop it from making people sick. Someday there will be medicine to kick its butt, but right now they just want us to try really hard to keep the germ away from us.”

Their eyes are glued on us, curiosity has consumed them. “How do we do that?” Bennett questions.

“We have to wash our hands a lot and also stay away from crowds of people because germs like to jump from one person to another. So even though we know how excited you are to go to Disney World, we won’t be able to go right now. Mickey decided it would be the safest thing to close the parks and send everyone home so they don’t get sick.”

We looked at them, they looked at us. Then in unison they say, “okay.”

That’s it. Okay. Just, okay. Where were the tears? The tantrums? The but, but, buts…

Maybe they don’t understand what I meant. “So you understand that Disney World is closed?”

“Yep.”

They get it. But do they REALLY get it? “And we have to turn around and go back home?”

“Yeah. Hey, what’s for breakfast?”

Andrew and I exchanged glances. Well, they took that well. We ate our granola bars, drank some juice and hit the road. It may not be Disney, but the Space and Rocket Center was still open and we needed to go somewhere fun!

Exploring the Space center was a cool experience. It was like this had been our destination all along. Or at least that’s what we pretended. The boys enjoyed looking at the displays, riding the up-and-down ride, playing in the “Energy Depletion Zone,” and acting like they were real astronauts. The guys all went in one of those wind tunnels, where Lincoln came up with the brilliant idea to (despite the discussion of germs a few hours prior) lick the inside of the glass door. If we ended up getting sick with Covid-19, I now knew the exact moment it was contracted.

Despite our whole vacation going sideways, we had a good time. Until the incident happened.

Andrew and I were sitting on the edge of the indoor playground the boys were excited to find, chatting about boring grown up stuff, when we heard an ear-piercing scream. Turning our heads in that direction I saw Bennett standing like a statue with a worried look plastered on his face. Lincoln was getting up from the floor holding the side of his head. It was him. He was the one screaming. We jumped to our feet and scooped him up. Bennett couldn’t tell us what happened. To this day I don’t really know, other than Lincoln slammed his head into the corner of a shoe cubby. Hard. It immediately began to swell and bruise. We rushed to a nearby customer service center to ask for an ice pack. They had none. But we had ice in the cooler so it was time to go.

On our way out we had to walk through the gift shop. Bennett was over the whole Lincoln getting hurt thing and moved on to whining about wanting a toy. We had promised them something on the way out though, and as much as every fiber of my being wanted to keep going with my injured baby, I let Andrew take him to the van and get the ice on his eye while I helped Bennett pick something out from the gift shop. He chose a rover building kit and we found a cute stuffed astronaut puppy for Lincoln. By the time we got out to the van Lincoln had stopped crying and was holding ice up to his eye. The swelling had come down some but it still looked terribly painful. The puppy instantly made everything better and Link was actually pretty proud of his “action eye,” or so he called it.

The moral of the story…kids are resilient.

Day 4

After staying another night in another hotel, we were finally on the last stretch of our little road trip to nowhere. The drive home seemed eerier than the drive down. I don’t know if it was the world shutting down around us or the Mickey-Mouse shaped pit in my stomach. But things had definitely changed in just two short days. People at rest stops were keeping their distance from one another. There were a lot of side eyes and questionable looks between them. I was now nervous to cough or sneeze within ear shot of another human being. I started seeing pictures on Facebook of empty store shelves, which made me nervous. We hadn’t been home to stock up on anything and I had no clue how many rolls of toilet paper we had left.

We had one more pit-stop to make on the way home. Metropolis, the home of Superman himself. We ran through the rain to the tiny museum filled with merchandise and memorabilia. It was a quick stop but really neat. My kids love super heroes so they were thrilled to see all of the things. We didn't stay long though, all of us were pretty anxious to get home.

Pulling up to our house was definitely bittersweet. It was by no means the trip we had planned. But you know, we made memories that we’ll hold on to forever. And I learned that my kids can handle whatever life throws at them like champs. We made lemonade out of some really sour lemons and for that I am grateful.

Today

It’s now March 12, 2021. A year has passed since our little road trip adventure. We didn’t go to Disney World in July either. Some obligations came up and as we now know, Covid wasn’t wrapped up neatly with a bow by May, June, July or the rest of the year.

When we again rescheduled for March of 2021 we thought, there’s no way it’ll still be an issue by then. While it’s still not what we thought it would be a year ago, and the experience will look a little different, we’re ready to try this again. So wish us luck tomorrow because once again, we’re trying to go to Disney World!