I've talked a lot about how much Emma liked holidays - any holiday. But if there was one holiday that Emma had mixed feelings about, it would have been the 4th of July. And there is one word that sums up the reason for Emma's ambivalence - fireworks.
From the time Emma was a baby until she was 11, 4th of July was spent at Gram & Gramps' house - so far, so good. There were always lots of cousins around. Gram and Gramps had a great big pool and even when Emma was tiny, she loved being in that water. She could outlast just about any cousin. Fortunately, there were enough cousins, aunts and uncles, that she could always persuade someone to go swimming with her.
When the water got boring, there were lots of games to fill the day. We had family softball games and wiffle ball games. We had badminton and volleyball and croquet matches from time to time, and at some point bocce and washers got thrown into the mix. Still all good with the Emster.
You couldn't argue with the food. Sometimes we had the standard hot dogs and hamburgers, but those were usually supplemented with brats, or grilled chicken or some other great picnic food. Those would be supplemented by potato salad, coleslaw, banana salad, corn - ofetn more food than the table could hold. Dessert was no different. There would be ice cream and cake and pie and, of course, Emma's favorite, s'mores. Up through the picnic dinner, Emma was still a-okay with the 4th of July.
But sometime after dinner was cleaned up, dusk would begin to fall and it would be time to start thinking about the dreaded fireworks.
For the first few years of Emma's life, the family fireworks display required a venue shift. Sometime after dinner we would all head down to my brother Bob's house which was just a short distance down the road from my parents. Bob and one or two assistants would usually get a head start and would get the fireworks set up by the time we arrived. The family-made would show as soon as everyone had arrived and it was fully dark.
The first year we went, when Emma was just 1, we quickly learned that fireworks weren't for her. Emma and I spent most of our time in my brother's family room looking at books and doing whatever we could to drown out the sound of the fireworks. I think we tried again the next year, thinking maybe she would have outgrown her fear, but no dice. After that, for several years we would just head home in the early evening and avoid the fireworks altogether.
Knowing what we came to know about our Emma, it wasn't all that surprising that she hated fireworks. She wasn't a fan of any loud noises. In fact, she spent her kindergarten year putting her fingers in her ears when the school bus rounded the corner toward the bus stop because she thought it was so loud. She also didn't like things that were unpredictable. So how could she possibly have liked our home-grown fireworks displays? They were the embodiment of the words loud and unpredictable.My brothers specialized in the squealers and the boomers and every firework that made an obnoxious noise. And while, there was always a game plan for how the fireworks went off, the show rarely went off according to plan. There was always one firework that shot off in the wrong direction, sometimes toward the spectators, or one that only exploded as someone walked toward it to re-light it. Thinking back on these shows, Emma had quite good sense. They really were kind of scary.
At some point when Emma was early elementary age, the family fireworks displays were shifted to Gram and Gramps' house and Emma found a tolerable way to participate. She and I would discreetly find our way into the family room of the house just as the show was about to begin. From the family room, you could look out the window, over the heads of the spectators gathered on the patio, and see the show from a safe and relatively quiet distance. This was fireworks Emma-style.
When Emma was 11 our family started spending our summers at camp and our 4th of July was spent there. There were pioneer meets, and the Paul Revere riders would charge through camp in the early morning hours to warn that the British were coming. There was good food, good company, friendly competition and - no fireworks!
Emma's last 4th of July was spent in Mann, West Virginia. Peter, Emma and I had traveled down there with a large group of adults and teens from our community with Appalachian Service Project. On the 4th of July we took a brief break from the week of hard work on local houses and trailers to celebrate a national holiday. And I believe Emma 2.0, now a mature 16, fully enjoyed sitting on the street with her friends watching the town fireworks display. I was a comfortable distance away, but as far as I know, she didn't even have her fingers in ears.
Yesterday was Sarah's birthday and it made me think about a present that Emma made for Sarah for her third birthday. Emma had just turned seven. She cooked the birthday present plan up with Pat, our neighbor, expert craftswoman, and honorary grandmother.
I'm guessing that it was Emma who thought of the idea of making a quilt for Sarah's baby dolls. She would have known that Sarah would love that. When Emma played, she liked to be the chef, waitress, actress or dancer. Her make-believe games always involved exotic costumes and/or realistic props. We had a well-equipped play kitchen and that was supplemented with a dining table, cash register, and even order pad so that Emma could transform her home kitchen to a restaurant kitchen. A shopping cart and scanning register transformed the basement into a supermarket in no time. And Emma never had a problem pushing that stuff to the side and transforming the basement again, this time into a dance studio or stage. That was how Emma liked to play pretend.
But Sarah, as Emma knew well, liked to be the mommy or the teacher. Her games involved baby dolls, diapers, baby bottles, strollers, and cribs. Sometimes the scene would be school and there would be multiple baby dolls and a book or felt board. Sarah even had a little wicker cradle in her bedroom so that her baby doll could sleep right near her mommy. That was why Emma would have known that Sarah would love to have a special quilt for her baby.
I imagine she had to sell Pat on the doll quilt. Pat was a good sport, but she was also practical. She must have wondered whether it was really possible for a seven year old to participate in crafting a quilt, especially a seven year old with notably pudgy little fingers. But Emma would have been confident and Pat would not have wanted to dissuade her.
The front of the quilt that they made together is a classic patchwork. Pat let Emma pick out the fabric from which they carefully measured and cut squares. Then Pat sewed the squares together on her sewing machine, sometimes letting Emma guide the fabric or press on the foot pedal. "Gently, Emma. Gently," Pat would have to remind her, when she would press the pedal too enthusiastically.
The back of the quilt is a solid fabric and is stitched to the patchwork front with many, many imperfect stitches that are all Emma's. She stopped by Pat's house daily in the 2 weeks leading up to Sarah's birthday to work on all those stitches that lovingly hold the two sides of the quilt together. It is really amazing to think of Emma's puffy little seven year old hands, patiently stitching all around the outside of that quilt; or of Pat, patiently watching, encouraging her, and keeping her on task when she got absorbed in telling a great story. I'm sure there were many great stories that went into the making of that quilt; stories that Pat told Emma, and stories that Emma told Pat. They are an important part of the patchwork product. You can almost trace the stories in the stitches as they make their way around the quilt. "Ah, see here they were sitting quietly, the stitches are small and precise. But here is where they were enjoying a tall tale that was much more interesting and important than the stitches they were adding to the quilt."
But the most precious part of the quilt is a square found on the back, carefully hand-stitched onto the quilt by Emma and bearing a birthday inscription in her very own seven year old handwriting. It reads, "To My Sweet Sister. May she always be kind and generous. Made by Emma von Euler. July 10, 1999."
Those words are completely Emma's. I can practically hear her speak them. Even then, Pat would have realized how important it was to the finished product to include that one special square. But she could never have known what a treasure that quilt would become, capturing and preserving two of our great loves.
Emma's friend J lives a couple blocks up the road from us. I'm not sure when they became friends, but we first became aware of J.'s presence in Emma's life when Peter was driving Emma to high school in the morning during her freshman year. J. would be standing on the corner of his street as Emma and Peter drove by and he would raise his hand to his hat and salute them as they drove by. "Who's that?" Peter asked the first time they received the salute. "Oh, that's my friend J," Emma answered. "He's in band with me." One time Peter pulled over to offer him a ride, but he politely declined, choosing to continue to salute people he knew while waiting for the school bus to arrive.
Later, Emma also began to ride the bus in the morning and we gather that they became frequent seatmates. J was a year older than Emma and when he got his license, he would drive Emma to school whenever he could snag the family car for the day and regularly drove her to their evening jazz band rehearsals. Every so often, however, Emma would head off to the bus in the morning and 20 minutes later the doorbell would ring. J would be standing at our door, often loaded down with a large quantity of bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches he'd picked up to sell at school and a sob story about how the deli didn't have his order ready on time. The punchline was always the same, "You think you could give me a ride?" he'd say. "Sure," I'd answer. "I'll grab my keys. Meet me at the car." During the short ride to school he would thoroughly entertain me with tales of his exploits and interests. I usually missed about half of his references, but his gusto kept me interested and amused. I was almost sorry when we arrived at the door of the school and he had to hop out.
The thing about losing a child is that it changes every aspect of your life. So much of your time is devoted to doing things with that child and for that child. When they disappear from your life, they leave not just a big hole in your heart, but a hole in your day. Your daily routines and rhythms change: the way you set the table; how much dinner you cook; what you cook; what you do in the morning, the evening and all the hours in between. Everything changes. And at some point you realize it's never going back to normal. Grief counselors urge you to embrace the "new normal." It's sound, but frankly, unwelcome advice because I liked the old normal. I wasn't in the market for a new normal.
That's why when something happens that makes me feel like I've retained some small piece of that old normal, I genuinely feel like celebrating.
A couple of weeks ago, I was hanging around the house in the afternoon with Sarah when the phone rang. It was J who had recently returned home from college. "Hey," he said. "Could you do me a small favor?" "Sure," I said. "What do you need?" "Could you give me a ride home?" I picked him up about a block from our house. He was loaded down with some groceries he had purchased at a nearby store without thinking about how heavy they would get during the walk home. On the short ride to his house he regaled me with stories about the WWF and the WWE. I'm woefully uninformed on these matters, but that didn't discourage him. He was happy to carry the conversation and I was happy to listen. More than happy, actually, because it was a little piece of that old normal and I had captured it. Ahhh, the divine sense of sameness.
I've talked a lot about how much Emma liked holidays - any holiday. But if there was one holiday that Emma had mixed feelings about, it would have been the 4th of July. And there is one word that sums up the reason for Emma's ambivalence - fireworks.
