The Bird Lady

Lois Ehlert was one of Emma’s early favorite authors and illustrators. She does beautifully simple and colorful drawings of nature and has an engaging way of weaving stories about nature. Emma loved these books for their pictures and stories, but also for the opportunity they gave her to study and memorize something from nature.

Her first favorite by Lois Ehlert was Feathers for Lunch. The book tells the story of a cat who stalks all the various kinds of birds that inhabit his family’s backyard. There are pictures of robins, chickadees, blue jays, cardinals, wrens, goldfinches and more. When she was not much more than a year old, Emma committed all these birds to memory and could identify them not just in the book, but also in our yard. The one little quirk was that, for a time, she would refer to a robin as Christopher Robin. As I’ve noted before, Emma was also a fan of A.A. Milne.

Emma’s Auntie Meg recently told me that she was thrilled when she discovered that Emma could identify species of birds. Meg was a little bit of an Audubon nerd, I mean buff, an Audubon buff, and she said was dismayed that people in my family would refer to birds as “the little gray one”, or “the pretty blue one”. Emma gave her hope that the next generation of my family had a brighter ornithological future.

I’m not sure when it happened, but I would like to point out that many people in my family are now quite adept at identifying different species of birds. My mom has a bird feeder outside her window in the nursing home and as we sit and watch the birds together, I have not once heard someone refer to a cardinal as “the pretty red bird”. I guess Meg and Emma inspired us.

In the Heights

The latest musical that Emma was working on memorizing was In the Heights. We went to see it just a year ago and Emma wanted the CD of that soundtrack all for herself. She played it constantly in her room and could flawlessly perform the opening song/rap. Now if you haven't heard the opening song, you might wonder why it is so memorable that Emma could perform this piece, but this isn't just any opening song. First of all, it's a long piece. Second, it shifts back and forth between rap and song and the pace and the rhythm shift constantly, too. Third, the piece introduces the musical's 10 or so main characters and, just like with Rock Island from The Music Man, Emma had memorized all the parts and would switch back and forth between characters when she would perform it for us. 


So click here and imagine Emma's one woman show. Just a warning: there's some bad language.

Music Man

I just learned that the high school where Emma would be a senior this year is doing The Music Man for its spring musical. Emma would definitely approve. The Music Man was one of Emma’s early favorites. We went to see it on Broadway and saw Emma’s cousin perform as Marian the Librarian in her high school’s production. We bought the soundtrack for The Music Man when we saw it on Broadway and for the next year or more it was steady fare in the car as we drove to and from school and to various activities. At some point, Emma hijacked the CD for closer study. She learned every word to every song, including the parts of all three salesmen in Rock Island. We got such a kick out of hearing her perform that song (chant?) for us. She never missed a beat.

Emma would not have been up on stage for the high school’s production of this favorite, however. She would have been back in the pit, where she had performed for the last two years. She played four instruments in the high school’s pit: flute, piccolo, clarinet and sax. I liked to get a seat right up front and close to the pit so I could watch her switch back and forth between instruments during a song. It amazed me that she could do that. It amazed me that she wanted to do that! But she truly loved it.

Last year when we went to watch Emma perform in the Western Regional Musical Festival, I bought Emma a t-shirt from a vendor at the festival. It said, “The Pit is It!" Emma loved that shirt and wore it all the time. She had really come to identify herself as a musician and her dream job would have been playing in a Broadway pit. She definitely had the talent to do it.

At times like this it’s hard not to dwell on the lost dreams and gifts. She should be there in that high school pit, playing those songs she loved. But I said when I started this blog that I would focus on what she did, not on what she could no longer do. What she did was bring music to life for me and many, many others. In fact, I know that Emma will be there in spirit when her high school performs The Music Man, because she was an inspiration to so many of her schoolmates and they will carry her in their hearts as they bring it to life.

Click here to see a video performance of Rock Island from The Music Man and then try to picture Emma doing all three parts. 

Never Mind

Here's my February 9, 1994 journal entry:


Emma wanted to go outside and play in the snow this morning. When I told her she'd need to get her snowsuit and boots on she said, "skip it!."

Pinky Cookies

My mother's journal entry for February 3rd, 1994 needs a little introduction.

My mother is cookie baker extraordinnaire. One of Emma's early favorites was a cookie we refer to in our family as an Italian cookie. I think that this cookie would traditionally be flavored with anise, but my mom's is not. It's a very plain flavored dough and after it's baked it's topped with a thin coating of colored and flavored icing. My mother made orange and yellow icings flavored with orange and lemon respectively, and she made pink and blue icings that were vanilla flavored. Emma favored the pink iced cookies and so she began referring to these cookies as pinky cookies. Here's the entry:

Emma is very into Gram's pinky cookies and asks for them all day. Today, when I told her she could not have another pinky she replied, "How about a blue?" Very clever!