King Triton and the Dolphins

(There are only two people out there who will find this post humorous, but just the thought of hearing their laughter makes it worth it.)

You may have noticed that its been a while since I last posted. Well, I've been away. I've been on a boat on a lake in The Middle of Nowhere Missouri with my family and best friends-- far away from computers and blogs and emails and twitters. It was amazing.

You know that feeling of laughing so hard that you can't speak? That point when just the thought of the words that you're about to say coming out of your mouth makes it completely impossible to say the words and share the thoughts with anyone else in attendance? Well, I got there this weekend on the back of a boat on a tube with Meggie Sue and Larn.

The words were 'King Triton and the dolphins' and the feeling was a high that you get only from that specific form of laughter (we really should have more than one word for 'laughter.' I'll bet the Greeks do. Like, 'happy is to laughter as euphoric is to _____.') It took me about five minutes to spit those words out and when I finally did we all fell down laughing at the realization that we might be pseudo-adults in our mid twenties but underneath our veneer of patent leather pumps, fancy careers, engagement rings, and house payments, we are still the girls we've always been with crazy dreams and huge imaginations.

In that moment we all reverted back to our 5-year old selves and talked about what it was like to see The Little Mermaid for the first time. It might have been the first movie I'd seen at the movie theater, I don't know. Is that possible? Well, its the first one I remember.

I was in the first grade and my Grandpa Timmerman (who turned 79 this weekend!) took me to see The Little Mermaid in Omaha. I remember that he let me pick out a candy bar--which was a really big deal-- and I chose a 3 Musketeers, most likely because it had a shiny wrapper (I loved all things metallic, even then.) I sat in that theater and watched a redheaded mermaid fall in love with a gorgeous prince under a magic spell and never wanted that movie to end.

Ariel sang songs with fishes, she brushed her hair with a fork, she twirled around in that gorgeous blue dress and (almost) kissed her prince under a weeping willow and a firefly filled night sky. It was back when Disney made movies for little girls without considering updated humor for their parents and before they complicated them with grown-up plots and special features. It was simple, it was lovely, and it was the first movie I fell in love with. I remember holding my grandpa's hand as we left under my own spell of sugar and contentment.

I left the Ozark mountains this weekend with a similar feeling. Lots of sugar, lots of laughter, and the utmost of contentment. I flew into LaGuardia from Springfield rested and happy. I crossed the BQE with a view of Manhattan at dusk out one window and a full moon with a sapphire sky out the other. It's not playing all day in the water, being the five-year-old version of ourselves, but it is summer and in this city we still get to play. We aren't adults, not yet at least. And I'm in no rush to get there.