Purely Painful Delight

At Animal Kingdom we watched two shows and I experienced two poignant moments.

The first show was the Lion King. Matias was totally enamoured. He danced, clapped, laughed and squealed his way through the show. Other than wiggling to the music, he never tried to get off his uncle's lap (being still is a rare event for our boy). I sang at the top of my lungs through all the songs I remembered, reminisced with the sensations of flame throwers, and was caught off guard by the song "The Circle of Life." Tears, smiles, sorrows & joy.

Then came more sitting in a wheelchair feeling sorry for myself as everyone else ran around going on rides.

Another last minute decision was to made to watch a second show. Finding Nemo. And another character parent who'd died. This time, I watched the father/son relationship and cried. And this time I also asked to hold my son through the show as he'd done so well the first time. He sat completely still on my lap for 45 min! I'm pretty sure its been almost a year since that's happened. I just snuggled him in and kissed his head as often as I could... and cried and laughed.

My legs don't have much meat or fat on them and it hurt to have him sit on me... but no amount of pain could have stopped me in that moment. Purely painful delight.

The boy's dinosaur eating his uncle's nose.

The light & heat of the flame throwers

Snuggling the boy during the show.