I went to Sesame Place yesterday with my adult kid and their kid, my grandson. It was the second time the three of us have gone, because we went last summer, too.

It was ferociously sunny yesterday, and in the upper nineties. Many of the strolling performers, nevertheless, were in full-body fur suits and in character, dancing animatedly to prerecorded music or posing for photos with thrilled toddlers. Other performers were on stilts, or juggling. You could also get your picture taken with people like Cookie Monster. A number of teenagers were doing just that.

Having learned from last year, I did not join my kid and the grandchild in any whirly rides, because these days they make me sick to my stomach. Instead, I lounged against a rail, or on a bench in the shade, and took photographs of my adult child and their son while they laughed and spun around. After a number of rides, my adult child was a little sick to their stomach.

My grandson insisted I join him on Elmo’s Blast Off, which involves a controlled drop that feels like very bad turbulence on an airplane. He went on his own into the Snuffy Slides and the Monster Clubhouse, because he is Very Big and can go by himself.

Then the grandchild had to ride Oscar’s Wacky Taxi, which is a roller coaster. We all had to ride, he said. We took it three times. It was the main thing my grandson remembered from the previous year when he was only four, when he was not quite so Big. 

The 16-year-old boy running the Wacky Taxi was round, with a wide, giddy smile, and he was keeping himself entertained with the patter of getting his passengers ready to go and sending them on their way. The other young people tending the passengers were silent, serious, and businesslike. So were most of the other 16-year olds who did all the jobs at the park.

I used to love roller coasters. I sort of still do, especially short and friendly wooden coasters like the Wacky Taxi. But the first two rides on this one, I could feel my expression turn grim and fixed. On the third ride, when I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to die after all, I was able to scream happily, just like the Very Big grandchild next to me.

After that, we did a couple of water rides.

By that point, the grandchild was pale and exhausted, so we went to the gift shop and got some indifferent pizza in a restaurant run by fed-up 16-year-olds who did not inform us that you had to use the QR code on your soda cup to dispense soda. We witnessed the end of the daily parade, and then we escaped the park. 

The grandchild fell asleep in his child seat with his head hung all the way over the way he did when he was an infant, and I was afraid we had killed him. At least he died happy.

I took his parent, my kid, to Sesame Place when they were little, once. They remember me taking them three times, but I can see why they think that. Sesame Place is a hell of an experience for a small person.

After I got home, I sat and looked at baby pictures of my grandson. He was born five weeks early, and lived in the NICU for quite a while. Since then, we have lived through the official pandemic, my husband died of cancer, I quit my retirement job, and I cleaned out my house. Five years is a very long time.

Meanwhile, I remembered going to Lenape Park with my cousins, when I was a Big Kid myself.  Lenape Park was not far from my grandmother’s place. A tiny little threadbare amusement park even back then, it had bumper cars, popcorn, a rattly wooden rollercoaster, and a merry-go-round with carved wooden animals. The park closed in 1985, some years after it sold off the carved carousel horses. This does not seem possible, because Lenape Park should still exist.

I seem to remember going there often as a child. Probably not.

Meanwhile, my grandson will remember that when he was little, he went to Sesame Place. Many times.