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Good Times With Family? Priceless

Commentary: I got suckered in by the advertising and clicked through: exactly how much was a night’s stay at a Disney location? First, which one is closer. Unlike many, I’m not big on my knowledge of The Mouse. I confuse the world with the land.

California’s Disneyland seemed much more likely a go for a New Mexican Griswald-esque drive. So, tell me, Mouse, what’s the going rate for a family of four; sure, include the premium rooms, I’m feeling fancy.

Well, the list of rooms that I got back for a randomly selected date in March started at around 500 bucks. Holy caboodle. That’s some expensive mouse magic. But, is it magic that only Disney can make? Then my inner fist-shaking appeared: Why do we let corporations dictate our magic making?

Maybe there’s ease in charging the magic to a credit card and hoping for the best. Maybe it’s housed in a fear of our own power to make magic. Maybe it’s the fear that accidental traditions become a magic we can’t define, and can’t control, before the hindsight hits.

Every weekend my family gets menudo. When I talk about this, I get side-eye from plenty of people and they’re right. Yes, at first sniff, it smells like a barn. First taste, yep, tastes like a barn, too. It’s the tripe — the stomach of a cow — something that’s not terribly prominent in American cuisine. But, it’s fantastic as a hangover cure and after you’ve adjusted your palate, you might convert to be the person who says on a sober Saturday morning, it is time for menudo.

My husband and I did this steadily on the weekends, even after we had kids. Our daughter first recoiled, then tentatively dunked the bread in the soup, then ate the hominy and now enjoys her “meaties.” Smaller brother has followed in the same footsteps. Now, you’ll find me throughout Las Cruces pretty much any bleary-eyed Saturday morning with two kids in tow to buy menudo and bolillos.

One morning I remarked to my husband, “She might end up going to college in a very  … plain … area that does not cater to the menudo-eating crowd.” He continued my thought, “And they likely won’t have decent breakfast. She’ll miss us … and this.”

It was one of our first ruminations on the habits that started becoming traditions without too much thought. That, even though my kids may not eat much at the table, they scamper around and ask to go out for menudo immediately after I open my eyes on a Saturday.

Back to the mouse, and the debate to let magic be something we charge to a card, there may be some truth to that. Over the summer, we decided on the enrichment of our kiddos through nature. We decided on Carlsbad Caverns — majestic, enthralling, close and relatively cheap. 

Unfortunately, with the oil nearby, the price for a hotel room was slightly ridiculous. Who cares, was our rallying cry — the majestic caverns. Charge it!

My daughter, returning to school, was asked to draw a scene from the summer break. Would it the bats coming out of the cave? The craggy formations in the caverns? Holding hands as we walked the hour and half path down the natural entrance?

It was the hotel, correct in its bland beige hue, with the pool and hot tub drawn together. When I asked, “But the CAVES?!”, she reported back, “But the pool was the best time, the time when we played all together.”

Cassie McClure is a writer, thinker, and fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contact at cassie@mcclurepublications.com