A Rite of Passage Sprinkled with Caramel Popcorn
Theme parks through the eyes of an immigrant kid.
Pungently buttery, the smell of popcorn floated above the parking structures and the tourist-filled trams, even before we made it to the manicured Mickey topiary and the turnstiles. It makes up the bulk of my first Disneyland memory. The rest is a nebulous cloud, mostly confusion.
I get it now. Nothing in Disneyland is intended to befuddle children. Even the cartoonish-ly creepy Haunted Mansion means to delight visitors into giggles the same way plastic ghouls do on Halloween. You’re supposed to embrace the illusion. If you gonna experience the magic, you gotta go with the flow.
I was never the go-with-the-flow kind of kid though. Even as a toddler, I always wanted to know what was going to happen next. I remember my mother’s brows knitting over as I endlessly pestered her (the creative, spur-of-the-moment type) with questions about our small outings: “But, why are we going there?,” “Where are we going?”
The shock of moving to a new country threw my usual inquisitiveness into overdrive until it sputtered to a dumb halt. By the time I went on my very first theme park visit (which happened to be Disneyland), my adolescent brain had been clogged with the stress of unfamiliar things.
Even if I had questions to ask, it’s not like I could articulate them. As I tagged behind my family in a kind of daze, only two echoed in my head: “What are we doing?” and, more naggingly, “Was I supposed to be having fun?”
That really bothered me. The innate sense that I was actually missing the point of something important. Something that my three-year-old American cousin (nine years my junior) seemed to know instinctively.
I hesitated writing about my prevailing ambivalence to theme parks, Disneyland especially. Because so many view Disney with an almost religious fervor, I feel the need to explain to my own lack of enthusiasm.
My mother and I arrived in the U.S. from Latvia when I was 12. We were from a small town, a thousand people or so, with cows in the fields and obligatory daily summer trips to ogorod (a community garden of sorts) where stalwart Soviet grandmothers grew long rows of potatoes.
Before you get the image of Latvians as a dejected, destitute people, digging potatoes and outhouses, rest assured: we had indoor plumbing and supermarkets.
But we didn’t have theme parks. Aside from a few carnival rides at the city zoo (think, last few scenes in Grease, complexity-wise), the concept was non-existent.
Still raw from jet lag, we unpacked and were immediately taken on our first family trip to Disneyland.
I had watched some Disney films on dusty VHS tapes with a deep-voiced, monotone Russian man speaking for every character (imagine Mulan, Winnie the Pooh and Jafar all sounding the same). I liked them, but never understood them at the same visceral level most Americans do. The characters and plots were diluted and clashed with the narratives of Russian and Scandinavian fairy tales I read as a child. They were never omnipresent enough to make me feel that inherent, in some ways expected, attachment.
Past experiences were no match for my comprehension here. I entered a world of enigma. The singing and the music and the parades were a sensory overload I wasn’t ready for. Unlike the crowds of tourists from Asia and Europe, I wasn’t prepared to be seduced by the carefully orchestrated magic.
These reflections hit me later in life. That first visit and the ones following were defined primarily by a vague sense of dread. My uncle, bless him, had a season pass in the mid 2000s, which meant my first summer in the U.S. was punctuated by drives to Orange County. Once through the gates, we would fall into a familiar pattern: my mother and aunt settled in a shady spot with my baby cousin (too young to take in the sights). Meanwhile, my uncle and older cousin went on the rides. I was expected to trail behind the latter.
The sun beat down into what felt like every cell in my body — a sickly organism, not used to wholesome bright skies — while the sound of screaming children swirled around me in a ceaseless gush of perplexing merriment.
Anyone who’s ever been immersed in a new a language knows how confusing daily life becomes. You have no idea what’s going on. Sure, there’s context, but that can only take you so far. My cousin and uncle didn’t speak Russian. I didn’t speak English. I followed them blindly, entrance gate after entrance gate, doorway after doorway. Marveling at the lines, at the people. Are we going off a cliff on this ride? Are there going to be people popping out around the corner on this one? Why is it dark?
I wish someone had sat me down and explained to me that this was all a part of the plan. That the sticky caramel popcorn was supposed to remind me of childhood when I grew up. That the rides were to make me smile and the dressed-up actors there to take a photo with me — something to chuckle fondly over when I’m old, precious memories of a perfect day.
The popcorn, the rides and the memories would make me want to bring my own children and then they will bring their own, weaving a pattern of ritual and cultural rite seamlessly into our lives. Showing up for Christmas as plush toys or during birthday parties in the form of a princess cake.
Decades later, theme parks still mystify me. I get nauseous on the Calico Mine Ride at Knott’s Berry Farm, and simply watching the rollercoasters at Magic Mountain makes me dizzy. Alas, I will never love caramel popcorn. I’ve made my peace with most rides at Disneyland though — these days, I can handle It’s a Small World like a champ.
My reticence is a source of amusement for my U.S.-born loved ones. “It’s all just fun,” they say. “I know,” I reply, edging my way carefully around a cartoon character selling caramel popcorn.
