OutLoud

by Sally Sheklow

A NORMAL FAMILY

Sally braves a trip with a 7-year-old and the Matterhorn

I come from a Southern California tourist town. Those of us who grew up there remember Palm Springs as hot and desolate and boring, even if it is the home of our first hickey. I couldn’t wait to move away from the desert. To this day I’m amazed anyone would go there if she didn’t absolutely have to.

Because my hometown radiates glamour and leisure, planning a winter vacation there is different for me than it is for folks from, say, Omaha. They don’t inspire much awe and envy when they book their flights to the meatpacking capital of the world. But when SoCal escapees return to visit family, they aren’t heading toward the carefree world of the Dinah Shore Classic. Instead of golf and fun in the sun, we’re traveling back along the space-time continuum. Back to the heartland of our desolate, boring childhoods.

Throughout my college years, being a dutiful daughter, I braced myself and made regular pilgrimages south. The year I came out to my parents, they showed their delight by “forgetting” to invite me home for winter break. It was a particularly gray December in Oregon, and the clear desert skies beckoned. Besides, I had my first real girlfriend, and I wanted to show her off. Ignoring their little social slip, Barbara and I showed up for the so-called holidays. Even though I denied it during fervent private discussions with Mom, I can see now that I did, at least a little, want to “rub our noses in it” (quoth my liberal, open-minded mother).

Why was I surprised the relatives I had traveled a thousand miles to visit were not impressed with “that athletic girl Sally brought home.” After only a few hours in my childhood habitat, I needed a break.

For some reason—explainable only by the holiday visit stupidity vortex—I volunteered to take my seven-year-old niece to Disneyland. Surrendering their granddaughter to us perverts made my parents uneasy, but the free child-care argument won out. Girlfriend and I would show my folks that lesbians do so have family values. Could there possibly be a more normal, family-oriented activity than driving a rented Buick for two hours with an impatient kid who has a bladder the size of a filbert?

I hadn’t visited the Magic Kingdom since my Palm Springs High graduation party. A bunch of us rode up and down the Matterhorn all night. We screamed and laughed our heads off. Now I was in college, an activist challenging sexism and homophobia. Life had become serious. I needed to lighten up and enjoy my vacation, do something fun and frivolous.

My niece, a normal seven-year-old, said it was stupid to wait an hour in a crowded line for a three-minute ride. But I was hell-bent on reliving Grad Night. My gallant girlfriend took the kid to Adventureland and left me to my reminiscence.

The tram car whizzed around hairpin turns just like it did years ago, but the Matterhorn had lost its thrill. To me the man-made roller coaster and fake rocks only wasted natural resources and generated wealth for the patriarchy. So much for nostalgia.

I had grown up. Childhood thrills were giving way to more mature insights, such as if you agree to reconnect with someone at the Fantasyland bridge, you are likely to end up listening to Snow White’s aria about 15 gazillion times (La-ha-ha-ha-hah). Our 6 p.m. meeting hour had long passed. I stood at the castle gate—like the trusty, normal family person I was proving myself to be—waiting and listening to that damned song while elegant swans, who must have been wearing tiny little ear plugs, swam lazy circles in the moat.

The security guards started clearing the park. Where were they? A real family—which I was desperately trying to show my parents lesbians could be—always meets at the meeting place. Unless someone’s hurt! The guards assured me no injuries had been reported and shooed me through the exit.

My missing family du jour had to be somewhere out there in the Disneyland parking lot, which is approximately the size of Liechtenstein. I marched toward the general longitude and latitude of the Buick, Snow White’s damned aria pounding in my skull. Far in the distance I saw the silhouettes of their disloyal little heads. I tromped across the asphalt. What were they thinking? No, meeting in the parking lot was not plan B. No, I did not think they were smart to figure I’d eventually show up at the car. And no, I did not want any damn mouse ears.

I steered us back onto the freeway toward Palm Springs. I was a wreck. My parents needn’t have worried about leaving their granddaughter with us lesbians. We were just like all the other crabby, cranky, normal families driving away from the Happiest Place on Earth.

Sally Sheklow writes and lives child-free with her domestic partner in Eugene, Oregon.

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