I realized yesterday that the last time I really wrote about “normal life” a trip to Disneyland, the night we literally closed the park together. So I’ve got a few stories to share about the last week which involve our Anniversary Day, Abby and Andrew’s Bon Voyage to their honeymoon, Fathers Day, and a Kaiser visit for Traci which delivered a confirmation on some news that we kind of already knew. I’ve been busy enough that I haven’t sat down to recap it, but let’s start with the first story about the anniversary day and keep it going.
Traci and I decided on celebrating anniversary 17 at our happy place, Disneyland. It wasn’t one of those rope-drop, go-hard-all-day trips. We rolled in later in the afternoon, moving at the speed of “what does Traci’s body have in the tank today?” instead of “how many rides can we crush before noon?” And still, somehow, it ended up feeling kind of perfect.
We grabbed a few rides, just enough to feel like we were actually IN the parks and not just passing through it. But the real anchor of the night for me was dinner at Wine Country Trattoria, our favorite spot. It’s one of the last places where it still feels like “us” in the old sense: sitting together, sharing a meal, pretending we’re fancy people who know things about wine, even though my drink of choice is usually “cold water, please and thank you.”
The food was great, the view was great, but honestly, the win was that we were there at all. After everything her body’s been through, every time we can get Traci out into the world and she’s engaged and smiling, it feels like we stole something back from the last few years.
We wandered out of California Adventure right as the fireworks were going off right in front of us. Not standing on Main Street with perfect sightlines, not jockeying for the best spot—just two people shuffling toward the exit, with explosions of light in the sky like the park was sending us off. It was this weird, quiet, magical little moment where we wandered in between the two parks and stopped and gazed at the show: we didn’t plan it, we didn’t earn it by doing sixteen hours on our feet… we just happened to be there when it happened.
That night ended up being a kind of timestamp in my head. “Okay, that’s where I left off. That’s the last chapter I told.” Since then, life has kept happening—beautiful stuff, hard stuff, and a lot of stuff that’s both at the same time. So this is me picking the story back up from there.
On the way home that night, somewhere between the parking structure and the freeway, my phone lit up with a text from Abby. I wasn’t expecting to hear from her for a while—they were supposed to be in that “settled into the flight, turning airplane mode on, see you on the other side” zone.
Instead I get:
“Just to keep someone in the loop because i feel like i should- weather in montreal has diverted us to Toronto (we just touched down safely). There’s no gate for us here just yet, and it’ll be 30-45 minutes according to the captain before we get one. hoping to make it on a flight out of toronto to Rome tonight, but we’ll see how it plays out.”
Which is daughter-speak for: “Dad, please don’t freak out, but also… this could go sideways.”
I’m driving home from Disneyland and my just-married kid is texting me from a random tarmac in Toronto on the way to her dream honeymoon. Life doesn’t even try to stick to one genre anymore. It’s all drama, all comedy, all documentary, all at once.
That little “we’ll see how it plays out” line ended up being the tagline for the first 24 hours of their whole trip. The weather in Montreal had already pushed them around, now Toronto was in the mix, and the Rome flight was suddenly a giant question mark instead of a sure thing. The plan had been simple on paper: fly out, land in Rome, live their best “we’re young and in love and Disney adults” life for a few days across Italy, and then board a Disney Cruise ship in Italy, and head to Greece, Barcelona, and eventually end in Disneyland Paris.
Instead, their honeymoon started with “surprise, you live in airports now.” They ended up missing their Rome flight and around midnight were diverted to a flight the next day into Washington DC, then onto Rome. But with thousands of people experiencing the same weather delay, there were no hotels and they ended their first night of their honeymoon in the wrong city and an airport like that Tom Hanks character from The Terminal. Maybe Andrew was going to have to become a General Contractor and renovate their bathroom?
From my end, the split-screen only got sharper. I walked Traci into Mission HQ, got her settled, and as soon as I stepped through the door my phone rang. It was Abby, and the calm text from the airplane turned into the real version: a little shaky, a few tears, all that held‑together daughter energy finally spilling out. It was 2 a.m. in a foreign city, they hadn’t really eaten all day, they’d been bounced around by weather and airports, and she just needed to get it out to someone who felt like home.
I told her what dads have been saying forever: one day you’re going to sit back and laugh about this. Not in a “this isn’t hard” way, but in a “this is going to turn into one of the stories you tell for the rest of your life” way. I told her I was here, and that if Air Canada couldn’t get them sorted, I’d go full travel agent from my laptop in Orange County and help them find a way to Rome. Thankfully, they came through, and the next day Abby sent me the sweetest picture of the two of them finally on a plane again, exhausted but smiling, on their way to make the Rome / Greece / Barcelona / Disneyland Paris memories they’d been dreaming about.
The following day was Sunday, and Father’s Day. Father’s Day this year didn’t come with a big master plan. No epic road trip, no all‑day theme park agenda. It was just Kelli coming over, and the three of us pointing the car toward Long Beach to grab lunch, and seeing what my energy and Traci’s body would actually allow post Disney Day.
We ended up at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. right on the water, because if you’re going to do a “dad day,” you might as well lean fully into the tourist soundtrack. Kelli sat across from us, catching us up on wedding planning and life stuff, and Traci was more present than she’s been in a long time—tracking the conversation, tossing in comments, genuinely laughing. It felt…normal. Not hospital-normal, not “good for where we are” normal. Just actual “a daughter taking her parents out to lunch” normal.
When we walked back outside, the Aquarium of the Pacific was basically staring us down from across the way. I hadn’t booked tickets, hadn’t pre‑planned accessibility or timing or anything. But we were already there, Traci still had gas in the tank, and it felt like one of those small, quiet invitations you either say yes to or think about later and regret. So we said yes.
The aquarium ended up being the real Father’s Day gift. Traci lit up at the sea lions, got super into the octopus, and fell in love with the otters in about three seconds. Kelli and I just kept looking at each other like, “Are you seeing this? She’s still going.” My favorite part was the lorikeets—standing there with nectar in my hand, getting swarmed by these ridiculous birds, and then handing the rest of my cup to a little kid nearby so they could have their own “whoa” moment. That tiny handoff, that random kid’s grin, is one of those frames that stuck in my head after the day was over.
All through the afternoon, my phone kept buzzing with texts from the rest of the kids. Little check‑ins, pictures, “happy Father’s Day” messages popping up between the sea lion show and the jellyfish tanks. It wasn’t everybody in one place, but it felt like my whole crew was stitched into the day anyway, thread by thread.
That night, after we got Traci home and settled back onto our blue couch at Mission HQ, I called my dad. We’ve never been big long‑speech guys; he’s always shown love more through showing up and working hard than through big monologues. So we talked about the day, and the aquarium, and a little bit about how things are going with Traci and Colette and their two journeys, and beneath all of it was this quiet, generational thing: him having raised me, me trying to be that same steady presence for my own kids in a life that looks nothing like what either of us pictured.
It wasn’t a perfect, movie‑poster Father’s Day. It was better in a way—messy, improvised, full of borrowed energy and tiny wins. A plate of shrimp, an unplanned aquarium, some lorikeets, a buzz of kid texts, and a simple call to the man who taught me that sometimes love is just showing up and staying.
A couple days after Father’s Day, Traci had the swallow study. By this point we’d done enough of these “big reveal” appointments that I went in with my usual split-screen brain: one part hoping for good news, one part already braced for the floor to drop out. Traci wheeled in, they did the fluoroscopy, and I was in the room watching on the monitor as the liquid went exactly where it wasn’t supposed to go—up instead of down, toward her lungs instead of her stomach, and an epiglottis that just…didn’t. The doctor didn’t sugarcoat it. The muscles are shot. The mechanics are broken. It’s not likely to get any better. And then the tough news to hear out loud, “She should never put anything in her mouth again.” Which means: G-tube for life.
Traci took it in with this calm, almost practical acceptance that still stuns me. No meltdown, no bargaining, just a clear-eyed, “it’s not worth trying food at this point.” I, on the other hand, was doing the math in the back of my head: no more shared meals. No more “let’s grab dinner” date nights. No more splitting a pizza or her stealing a bit of my dole whip or “here, taste this.” That entire category of intimacy—of being a couple who goes out to eat together—just quietly moved from “unlikely” to “gone.”
We walked out of Kaiser into the parking structure, sat in the car for a bit, and did what we’ve been doing this whole borrowed-time era: looked at each other and kind of shrugged our way into, “it just is.” The news was awful, but the day wasn’t over. I still had work to get done and we headed home so I could dive in and out in the hours.
As the evening began to fall, we evaluated what we wanted to do, and Traci’s shirt she got on our last Disney trip didn’t fit right and she wanted to exchange it. We checked and our passes were active. Traci still had some charge left in the battery. So we drove to Disneyland.
It felt weirdly defiant to scan into the park with that fresh in our heads. Here we were, officially told “no more eating,” stepping into the world’s most photogenic food court. But Disneyland for us has never just been about the food. It’s the trains. The monorail. The people-watching. The feeling of still being locals, of still belonging to something outside of hospital rooms and infusion centers.
We ended up on a mission: there was a specific shirt Traci had seen and wanted, and suddenly that became the quest for the day. We checked one store. No luck. Second store. Wrong size. Third store—finally, there it was, exactly what she wanted, in the size she needed. You’d think we’d found buried treasure. Her smile in that moment was bigger than any dessert cart could’ve given her. She audibly shouted “hooray” with hands in the air and everything. She can’t taste the food anymore, but she can still wear the magic.
After we finally tracked down the shirt, Traci looked at me and asked if there was anything I wanted to ride. I picked the Disneyland Railroad. We rolled from the Emporium on Main Street over to the New Orleans Square station where there’s an accessible entry, and hopped on there. We rode it around the Rivers of America, through Toontown and it’s a small world, and got off at the Tomorrowland station. By then Traci was finally starting to wear down, so I said, “let’s take the monorail back to Downtown Disney and then head home.”
So that’s how the day ended: a swallow study that took food off the table forever, a random side quest to find a shirt, a loop around the park on the train, and a monorail ride out of Tomorrowland toward the parking structure and real life. The news didn’t get softer on the drive home. But sitting there next to Traci, Disneyland still in the rearview, it felt like we’d managed to sneak some color into a day that could’ve been all gray—a little Grand Circle tour, a little elevated view of the park, and one more reminder that even in this version of our life, we can still choose tiny missions of joy.
If you zoom out on this past week, it looks a little ridiculous on paper. Father’s Day at the aquarium. A swallow study that quietly shut the door on eating forever. A random afternoon at Disneyland where the big wins were “found the shirt,” “made the train,” and “caught the monorail before Traci’s battery hit red.” It’s not a tidy movie arc. Nobody gets magically healed. There’s no big speech where everything suddenly makes sense.
But there is something I keep coming back to in all of this: the power of small, stubborn choices. Kelli choosing to turn Father’s Day into Long Beach and lorikeets instead of just, “sorry things are hard, love you.” Traci choosing to hear the swallow study results and say, basically, “okay, then we live this way,” instead of chasing impossible maybes. Me choosing, over and over, to burn whatever energy I have left on missions of joy—Bubba Gump, sea lions, trains, monorails, shirts—instead of letting the hospital days be the whole story.
The moral, if there is one, isn’t “everything happens for a reason.” I don’t buy that, and frankly, cancer is terrible. The moral is simpler and way less inspirational-poster than that: life doesn’t stop being life just because things get awful. There are still aquariums and otters and lorikeets that land on your arm. There are still train rides and monorails and dumb dad jokes in parking garages after bad news. There are still tiny wins hiding in days you’d rather not remember.
I don’t know how long this borrowed-time season with Traci lasts. I don’t know what the next scan says, or how many more “new normal” speeches we’ve got coming. What I do know is that, as long as we can, we’re going to keep stacking these little missions of joy on top of the hard stuff. Go see the sea lions. Feed the birds. Take the train. Find the right shirt. Ride the monorail home.
And if you’re reading this in your own hard season, maybe that’s the only invitation I have: don’t wait for the big fix before you let yourself have the small good things. Take the lap around the park, whatever that looks like in your world, even if you have to roll straight there from the hospital.
Paul Ellis 
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