My wife, Donna, and I were sitting on a bench at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, watching our son Mark’s children roll down a grassy slope and listening to their peals of laughter.
But I guess Mark sensed my unease.
Our older son, Bo, and his wife, Vicki, were organized. They made a plan. They went here, they went there, they saw this or that on the way. They got tickets when it was too crowded, which allowed them to go to the head of the line. They didn’t waste a minute. They and their children, Joy and Eli, were seeing and doing pretty much everything worth seeing and doing.
Mark is, how shall I say? Not that way. He is so laid back sometimes he could pass for limp.
Donna and I would go around Disney World with one family for a while, then the other, then by ourselves. This particular afternoon we were with Mark, his wife, and their four children. The kids had been resting, and playing, on that grassy bank for quite a while.
[Note: You can roll down a grassy bank back in Raleigh. For free. We were wasting time.]
I was busy biting my tongue when Mark asked me, “Do you think they’re having fun?”
Well, that was obvious from their laughter. They were having a wonderful time.
“Isn’t that the whole point,” he said.
Coming Friday: The Good Fairy, Part 1