For months, my youngest stared at the map of Sesame Place on his ipad, manifesting a trip to this muppet mecca.

The map was a complete and ready made vision board. Full vision, no notes.

I couldn’t blame my son — the place looked bright, cheerful and inviting. Who wouldn’t want to blast off on Elmo’s Rockin’ Rockets? Or get stirred up on the Cookie Monster Mixer?

Given that my son’s 100% on his lifetime manifestation career, I knew we had to go. We planned a trip for his 13th birthday with his best friend and his mom. Two days, one night in an imagination-come-to-life place.

Quick. Easy. Fun.

Except the flight to San Diego was not quick. We aborted landing. Twice. The second time, people in first class heard the alarm bells blare as they do in the movies when land is approaching too quickly and the plot-driving crash is about to happen. Our plane pulled up as if Tom Cruise was in the cockpit, at it again, doing his own stunts, ready to test his spirit’s immortality.

As I sweated, clutched my arm rest, gasped Jesus at every dip, and generally worried about the family the two of us would be leaving behind, my youngest gazed out the window.

He considered the clouds.

How beautiful, he told me. Like flying itself, which was also beautiful. And profound, something that makes us feel human, he told me. I agreed, thinking more of the mortal part of being human, but knowing he meant something larger, happier, more dazzling. He always does.

To him, life feels unlimited. He’s not grounded by thoughts of mortality as so many kids his age start to be.

There’s nothing to fear, everything to love. He’s got a very YOLO approach to life — except I’m not sure he knows you only live once.

To that end, hooray for turbulence! Who even needs an amusement park when flying is so bumpy and fun?? The air in all of its frivolous commotion tickling his tummy. Weeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

When we finally landed, it was in Los Angeles, not San Diego. United professionally explained this as we’re at the wrong airport — oopsy! And then offered to give San Diego another go after just a quick refuel and full crew change.

Preferring our luck and longevity on the ground, we deplaned, rented a car and drove to San Diego. Writing this in a simple sentence makes it sound like it was a short, easy endeavor. But someday I’ll die a few days before I was supposed to because of it.

The only bright side of this surprise road trip was that we weren’t missing anything. Apparently Sesame Place closes at the mere suggestion of rain, and this is exactly what the clouds were suggesting.

So we drove for two hours, in no real rush. My son rode along in the back seat, considering the clouds from this vantage. From up and down, both sides now.

I looked at him in the rearview gazing upwards, but knew better than to try to get him going on floes of angel hair or feather canyons. I tried it once on a drive to the mountains and learned he wasn’t one for cloud’s illusions.

“Look at that one, it looks like a bunny running. See the tall ears.”

“Mommy, that is not a bunny. That is a cloud.”

We arrived at the hotel to find it had an excessively heated pool and a restaurant serving chicken tenders, peanut butter sandwiches, milk and, importantly, margaritas. So the evening wasn’t all bad.

After dinner, we said goodnight to our friends at the elevator.

“Sesame tomorrow!” our boys yelled.

“Unless it’s closed again!” we moms joked.

The next morning my son had barely opened his eyes when he asked, “Is today the day all of my dreams come true??”

But the clouds were still up there hinting, still in the way. The joke was on us.

I nervously explained that Cookie Monster couldn’t risk getting his cookies soggy, that Bert was too uppity to get wet, that Oscar loved the rain, of course, and this was exactly why he couldn’t work today, wanting to stay home and be miserable with his grouch family.

I braced for this disappointment to land. But no alarm bells sounded.

“Oh. Okay.” One beat, two beats, and then, “Can we go to Starbucks?”

We did. And then we headed to Sea World, which boasts three Sesame Street rides due to some sort of confusing joint business venture. My friend and I wondered briefly if this place could believably be billed as Sesame Place to our boys. But I knew my son knew that map too well.

As we flew on Elmo’s Flying Fish, a not particularly thrilling ride that allows one’s flying fish to move up or down within an eight foot span while lazily circling Elmo suspended in a bubble, my son’s friend yelled, “TOTALLY WORTH IT!”

We moms laughed heartily at this, knowing the balance sheet would not exactly reflect this assessment, but also knowing balance sheets are never the full story.

Of course, we also saw a bunch of actual live animals at Sea World and, as my son would put it, blah blah blah. He was most taken with the arcade, which was both irritating because it was so teenager-y of him and fully amazing because it was so teenager-y of him.

Meanwhile, I felt stunned by the enormity of the walrus. Had I ever seen one in person before? I wasn’t sure. Probably? But now I was really considering it, really Seeing World.

I tried to engage my son about it. “Look at him. He is huge. Like the size of a small boat or jet ski.”

But my son was nonplussed. I mean: whatever. When you’re not glued to expectations, nothing disappoints you too much, and then again not much really shocks you.

Sure, the walrus is big. The beluga is white and maybe made of marshmallows. The puffins do look like they have mullets.

But all these creatures are just being themselves.

Life, and things, just are as they are.

Why would you be surprised by that?

Or keep trying to make them into something they’re not?

Our friends left that afternoon as we were all supposed to. But because it was my son’s birthday and because we had his impeccable manifestation record to consider, he and I stayed to try for Sesame one more time.

I worried my son would take our friends’ departure hard, his vision of going to Sesame all together gone to seed.

But we dropped our friends off at the airport breezily, as if joining us for only the preamble to the main event had always been the plan.

My son and I returned to the hotel and walked along the boardwalk. He made me walk backwards over the small bridge from the pool to the restaurant. Straightforward is boring.

We sat in a window booth looking at all the boats docked, tucked in for the night. Above the sun was still arm wrestling those Sesame-closing clouds, seeming determined to win in the last gasp of the day.

I knew what we’d probably look like to other diners: sitting there in silence — a newish teenager not interested in his boring old mom. A mom lacking connection, unable to think of anything to say to the baby that’s getting away from her.

But that would’ve been the wrong read of our clouds.

Because there we were sitting in an easy peace, nothing compulsory, everything felt.

There we were building ice cream castles in the sky.

My son took a bite of his sandwich and looked at me, “I love peanut butter, do I, Mommy?”

“You do. You love it.”

I sat knowing his syntax was wrong, but wondering why that was true — why the convention is that when you want a positive answer, you use a negative question tag.

That’s weird, isn’t it?

We should keep things positive, should we?

Finally, after a long day of back and forth, the sun and clouds decided on their own joint business venture and a rainbow formed, arching like a promise over the marina.

Of course, I thought. There is always a rainbow. Light is always refracting and dispersing, dancing in droplets over my son’s head.

Maybe an effect of his unique neurology.

Maybe an illusion.

Maybe a matter of perspective.

On the third day the clouds were gone, the sun was out and voila: Open Sesame!

My son walked ahead of me towards the park entrance, a pilgrimage realized, running up to greet a group of characters.

“Hey guys! It’s ME! I’m HERE!!”

They were statues so predictably they did not answer. Well, at least not in a way that others would hear. My son, though, felt heartily welcomed.

We entered and walked by Mr. Hooper’s store which sold not apples and loafs of bread, but $25 bottles of sunscreen and non-public-television-priced stuffed animals.

The map had made the whole park look so friendly, contained and, frankly, flat. All of those silly squiggles of waterslides emptying joyfully into welcoming pools below.

But now, in dimension, the place felt intimidating. The dry, little kid rides were mixed in with the wet, bigger kid rides — like maybe this place wasn’t just for preschoolers but had been designed by them.

I could only keep my son on dry land for so long. We went into the janky bathroom so he could put on a bathing suit, locking what we didn’t need in a non-elementary electronic locker. The rest of our stuff was tied to my waist or slung on my shoulders, like I was a climbing guide on an extraordinary summit attempt.

But not like a surefooted kind of guide; like a super nervous kind, a kind that’s presuming an avalanche. I started sweating and gasping Jesus under my breath again, caught in a weird kind of ground turbulence, hearing alarm bells.

Most of the water rides involved grabbing an unwieldy raft at the base, and walking up flights and flights of stairs carrying it.

The first few times, I held the raft for my son. I was scared he’d trip over it; scared he was getting a little too cold as temperature shifts are sometimes seizure triggers; scared he was too busy singing his song about just how brave his heart could be to watch where he was stepping.

But at a point, he demanded to carry his own raft, reminding me that he was a big kid, that he could do it all by himself.

Without the raft in my hands, I could better see the full park as we ascended.

The aerial view revealed the true fiction of that map on the internet. From up high, Sesame looked pretty…seedy. The field just behind the perimeter of the park was filled with stray and discarded tubes, presumably deserted by some rag tag crew of carnies.

I looked from this parts graveyard up at all of the leaking waterslide seams. I had to wonder if there were pieces down there meant to be up here, holding together these chutes I was about to send my son down.

On his last ride, my son sat on his raft too soon. The mildly engaged attendant at the top watched him do it and then told him to wait — as if he’d listen. I knew he wouldn’t necessarily, so I grabbed the back of the mat, struggling as the g-force tried to take him, yelling above the rush of water, telling him to straighten out his arms from their butterflied position.

The attendant said he’d be fine. People are always trying to tell me this about this boy, as if they have any authority, as if they know where we’ve been.

I know better. I always do.

I yelled again, picturing rotator cuffs over-rotating. My son listened and tucked his wings to his sides.

The attendant gave the okay for launch.

And then.

I let him go.

He disappeared into the tunnel. I rushed to the other side of the platform to see him shoot out the other side.

Gliding to the end by himself.

So many stories below me.

So many stories behind us.

And all totally worth it.