The day didn’t start at Disneyland. It started with hold music.
Before we ever saw a dole whip, I was on the phone booking a CT scan and MRI for July 8, lining up the next round of, “So what does the inside of Traci’s head look like now?” It’s become its own weird administrative season of life: scan dates, follow-ups, MyChart messages, repeat.
Then Dr. Chen called.
He’s Traci’s primary oncologist and while he’s not exactly Mr. Personality, I trust his brain more than his small talk, but this one was pretty straightforward: he was taking Traci off Keppra and reducing her steroid dose. Less anti-seizure meds, less steroids. In our world, that’s like somebody quietly turning down the “emergency” knob a click or two. I’m not throwing a parade over the phone or anything, but it landed in the “this is a good sign” column.
So that’s the medical prologue. Scans booked. Steroids down. Keppra gone. Same fight, slightly different settings.
After that, the day shifted into its “normal” gear, which is a word I use very loosely. I parked myself at Mission HQ, fired up the laptop, and went into builder-sales mode. Emails, quotes, follow-ups, calls—nothing cinematic, just the thousand tiny pings that make up a full workday. The kind of day where you blink and somehow it’s 4:30 and your water bottle is empty and your inbox is not.
Somewhere in there, Vicki came over.
In this season, Vicki showing up is like the cavalry and the emotional support team arriving in the same car. She floated into the mix, checking on Traci, talking, laughing, doing that quiet Vicki thing where she makes everything feel a little more possible without making a big deal out of herself. I stayed in work mode, because that’s the deal: I sell things on a screen while the women I love hold our home together around me.
The whole time, there was this loose idea in the air: “Maybe we’ll go to Disneyland for dinner.”
Nothing ambitious. Not “park open to close.” Not “let’s hit every land.” More like, “We live fifteen minutes away, and we haven’t eaten at Café Orleans in a bit, and it might be nice to get Traci some Main Street air.” In our world, even that is a big ask. There’s always the energy question, the pain question, the “Will today be a good day or a pay-for-it-for-two-days-after day?” question.
Work finally wound down. I shut the laptop. We did the little family version of a pre-flight checklist: How’s Traci feeling? How’s her balance? Do we have meds? Do we have the wheelchair? Do we have the emergency snack funds that are “for Traci” but also suspiciously for me (ok they’re always for me)?
Everyone was a “yes.” So we rolled the dice.
We piled into the car—me, Traci in her pink hat and mask, Vicki loaded up with her Mickey Ears and a bag with all the tiny things that keep the big thing going—and did the deeply unfair fifteen-minute drive to Disneyland. I will never be over the fact that some people need flights and hotels and we need to decide whether to take the 5 or just cut through the back streets.
My original plan was still simple: dinner. That’s it. In, Monte Cristo, out. Responsible adults with annual passes and realistic expectations.
But then we walked through the gates.
And something in the air just felt…lighter.
We headed to Galaxy’s Edge first, mostly because if you give me the choice between “go eat” and “go pretend you’re in Star Wars,” I’m going to pick the Millennium Falcon ten out of ten times. Plus the last time we were there they shut the ride down just before we boarded and both Traci and I wanted to see the new scene. The question was never whether I wanted to ride Smugglers Run. The question was: could Traci?
Smugglers Run starts with a transfer.
Wheelchair to seat. Seat back to wheelchair. In a normal marriage, you don’t think twice about that. In ours, it’s a full-body, full-brain project. But she wanted to try. So we lined up the chair, took a breath, and did our careful, practiced dance.
And she nailed it.
She got herself into the gunner seat. Strapped in. Stayed balanced through the bumps and jerks and Mando yelling at us about whatever was in this mission. I’m half playing the game, half doing husband math in my head: “Is she okay? Is that grimace pain, or maybe it was joy, or maybe it was both—but she came back grinning like she’d won a tiny, improbable war. I tried not to cry. Failed in a whisper.
After that, because momentum is a real thing at Disneyland, we swung over to Winnie the Pooh and ducked into a WAVE vehicle. Watching her settle into that little chair and laugh at the hunny pots and bob her head to Heffalumps and Woozles felt like watching someone relearn a small, private language with the world. Vicki was in full proud-mom mode, taking in the moments on the sly, and I kept thinking, out loud and loudly, “Yep, this is definitely self-care. Also, calories don’t count when you’re supporting your spouse emotionally.”
Finally it was dinner time, the reason that we came. We headed over to one of my favorite spots in all of Disneyland, Café Orleans. Vicki and I both had Monte Cristo sandwiches—me because I’ve eaten that thing hundreds of times, and Vicki because this was her first visit to Café Orleans despite a thousand Disneyland trips of her own. She loved every bite, sampled my gumbo, and happily stuck with her salad instead of fries, which somehow didn’t make the night any less celebratory. Traci joined us happily inside and at our table. While she didn’t eat—she was on her tube feed— she still sat with us, smiling and part of the whole thing, which made the meal feel like more than a dinner.
But we weren’t done. Jungle Cruise called us for its patented awkward captain humor, then Buzz Lightyear where I probably scored worse than the kids and blamed it on “being a tactical decoy.” We wandered, people‑watched (someone was wearing a full Darth Vader romper? why), and let the park do what it does best: make the ordinary feel a little magical for a night.
Then came the fireworks in front of it’s a small world—those projections just hit different at night—and we stayed for Small World itself with the lights and the music, which somehow felt holy without being religious. Paint the Night rolled through and we realized we’d accidentally done the thing we always talk about: stayed until close. There’s a weird, soft triumph to leaving with the last group of people; it’s like being the final note at the end of a song.
On the bus home, Traci texted me: “I think I did amazing today. Felt really normal… Beyond what I thought I could do.” I saved the message like it was a receipt for something priceless. It landed in my chest the way good news does when you’ve been living mostly on worry for a while—small and bright and oddly heavy at the same time.
Back at home, the nurse-resume hit: breathing treatment, meds, PJs, lights lower, pillows fluffed. We did the slow, grateful undoing of a big night—helping her settle, checking pain meds, retucking, the whole intimate adulting thing that used to be invisible but now feels sacramental. We fell asleep like people who had spent themselves entirely on joy and then paid the bill with exhaustion.
The day had a medical headline in the morning—scans scheduled, meds adjusted, a quiet win on the Keppra front—and then a thousand normal minutes where the work inbox kept doing its thing and life kept needing tending. But that evening was proof, plain as a Monte Cristo on a plate: that you can have an ordinary day of obligations and still accidentally stack a tiny miracle into it.
So we closed the park. We closed the day. We opened a small, stubborn window of “normal” and lived in it for a few hours. I’m not saying everything’s fixed—July 8 is still on the calendar and Dr. Chen still talks like he’s the body’s not-always-charming but competent landlord—but for one night, we were more than caregivers and schedules and scans. We were people who ate too much fried food and laughed at bad jokes and watched fireworks until our faces hurt.
And yeah, I’ll admit it: when she sent that text, I whispered “you did,” like a husband who has no other moves left. It felt right.
By morning it was back to work: inboxes, quotes, and the slow, steady business of keeping the house running. The scans and meds are still on the calendar, the worry hasn’t gone anywhere, and July 8 is a bright, sharp dot on the horizon. But last night matters—Traci rode Smugglers Run, Vicki discovered her first Monte Cristo, and for a few hours we weren’t scheduling care so much as making a memory. That’s the thing I keep writing about: the small, stubborn windows of normal that you stack when you can, because they’re the proof that life still lives between the appointments.
Paul Ellis 
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