Whose mojo is drama and whose by-words have always been “what next?”
Her four-year-old-self all sass—stands in the photo in my hall, blonde pig tails flying, socks yanked up to her knees, hands on her hips, elbows out, mid-flirt with her dad. Dave and Marcia’s first born. And first abandoned—or so it must have seemed—when Dave took the reference historian position at the Montana Historical Society. He had been her adoring nanny—and she his baby, his Emo, for those first years in the little Columbia Falls house while Marcia returned to teaching. Distance and divorce threatened all that.
The cheeky little Emily I learned to know in our visitation weekends, Hoback Street holidays, and North Fork summers clung to her dad. Watched over and fought her sister for every privilege in a grown up world. Granted the first big-kids fishing trip down the river, she struggled to accept Amanda’s maiden float. And always always intended to catch the most whitefish. She was a passionate and skilled early reader. Third grade Emily tackled an inch thick romance titled “Sacajawea” and proclaimed herself an Indian princess with skin the color of “core.” She was still learning to sound out the word “copper.” She loved teen girl mezagines, as she called magazines, and pored over what to wear and how to fix her gorgeous hair to be the perfect cheetaleader. We bought her pompoms one Christmas to make that dream a reality.
Director, producer, and actress in a host of North Fork plays for Grammy and Smoky, her excitement for those dinner time productions lit whole days. And eager to make that bond with her dad even stronger and keep me at a distance, Emily orchestrated not one, but two North Fork weddings to her dad—the seventies aqua and orange plastic chairs assembled for her sweep down the grass aisle toward the big cabin’s front porch, complete with a lace curtain dress and a wild weed bouquet.
Emily sat often at Grammy’s knee, loving the stories of her dad’s youth and absorbing her grandmother’s pet peeves about a sprinkling of North Forkers and family members. Listening, too, to Grammy’s closely-guarded recipes and the finer points of entertaining. 4-H soon gave her the opportunity to demonstrate her cooking credentials. As well as her enthusiasm and moxie for photography.
As if the girls had switched bodies by the time they entered high school, Emily ditched the “girly” aspirations that she’d once held. Instead, over the next decade, we watched as she grew into the culture of her dad’s youth: pacifism, feminism, human rights and general hippiness. Always a master of words, she joined high school speech and debate. And could not wait to become a group leader in Grand Street Theater’s summer camp.
Em grew up fast—through some chancy homes while Marcia sought new husbands and into the years when Marcia needed all the physical and emotional care that Emily (and Amanda when she lived there) could provide. In high school, Em spent winters with substitute parents so that her mom could winter in warmer and easier climates. And as Em grew up quickly, she grew, as well, a braided carapace of bravado and torment—protection, definition, and mirror turned out to world.
When we caravanned to the North Fork, Em was often my passenger. And as the county fair loomed, I drove her to photography shoots and helped with storyboards and labeling. When she moved through the University of Oregon, several boyfriends, extended time in the North Fork, and on to her wedding at the cabins, Em accepted me as useful and kindly –though at arms-length from her heart. She was easy to visit with; rebellious only in the early years; and now effusively grateful for my being in her life. She forgave the not one, but two instances on the North Fork River when I buried my barbed Mepp lure in her face—ear and nose.
Once married, Emily wanted so much to be a mother. She braved two home births as she brought Guillermo and Mathilda into the world. Her heart’s been broken and she’s struggled to put her considerable skills to use in profitable work. As I write, she’s spent this year teaching in a nontraditional school——which seems the absolutely perfect home for the exuberant creativity and originality that define her thinking and values. She’s raised her kids, largely alone, in that same frame.
When Emily was writing her college senior paper on the history of women’s healthcare, she emailed her dad the final draft for polishing. And Dave with his great patience and skill waded through pages about menses and midwifery with every bit as much care as he brought to jerks in Montana history. There is no pleasing your dad or knowing his love when he is gone. When he can no longer tell you so himself. I would have Emily remember, among many other moments of celebration and graduation, that gift of taking her work seriously as he applied his caring and his competence to the purpose of her words, to the milestones and missions of her life. ©
