Castles and rocketships

The first time I saw the castle, I was very small and it was very large.

I was standing beside my father, and I barely came up past his knees. I held his hand as we walked down the long Main Street with its music and colorful flags, and my eyes were fixed on the giant castle at the end of the street.

But we didn’t walk up to the castle. Instead we turned right, past clouds of colorful balloons under the shining California sky, and suddenly there were spaceships flying over my head.

I stood there marveling at the rocketships soaring so high in the sky, holding my father’s hand. The castle and the rocketships, and a world full of wonder.

It is my first memory.

I know now that I was barely three years old, and that the magic place with the castle and rocketships was Disneyland. There are no pictures of this moment — at least, none that I have seen, which is a minor miracle in a family that documented its moments in photography at a near-relentless pace.

My father grew up in Orange County, approximately 1.5 suburbs away from the Happiest Place on Earth. He was there the day it opened in 1955, and later as a young journalist, he interviewed Walt himself. This was a fact that kept me in awe as a child.

Logic and the family timeline suggests that the first trip was just before or after my baby sister was born, but I don’t know if she was with us that day.