February 9, 2024

My Enchanting. She doesn’t get called that often enough. But My Enchanting Emily is 16 today.

Emily doesn’t like to be found, but if you know where to look, she is hiding in the background. For a long time she would sit in the hallway while everyone else was in the living room. She still does sometimes. And her Emily Enclave (no longer the Grace Cave or Lauren Lair) is her favorite place to be. She avoids being in pics, so most snaps of Emily nowadays have to be sneaked and snuck when she isn’t looking. Or she tucks herself behind someone else to avoid filling up the camera frame. I don’t have as many pics of Emily as I wish, but she fills my memories and she’s the headlining star of my heart.

Emily has had a rough couple of years. Probably since fourth grade, I don’t know, I’d have to really think, she has struggled with herself. The way that shows up to everyone around her is that she seems standoff-ish, aloof, detached. WOW, detached just autocorrected as derailed. Yeah…maybe sometimes Emily has derailed, and that’s not at all what we ever expected from her.

She wasn’t always so reserved and reticent. Remember? Remember when she used to be right out front? She was the center of attention with her silly antics and screwball sayings. There is a reason I’ve always called her Oh Emily. She cleaned the cat’s ears with the sonicare tooth brush. Oh Emily! She got lost looking for the backyard. Oh Emily! She wrote love letters to Brad the Elf on the Shelf all year long and was devastated when he didn’t write back. Oh Emily. She found a frog at school and hid it in her book bag to bring it home. Oh Emily! “Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Lesterday, Wednesday, Fursday, Dummorrow, Monday, Decemba-time, Novembuary, My Burpday! Yeah!” Oh Emily! She cut up my tablecloth to make a troll and goblin trap. Oh Emily! Sometimes in elementary school she preferred to sleep in her laundry basket. Oh Emily! She believed in leprechauns and the Pfaff-squatch but thought ponies were make believe. Oh Emily!

She was frightened on the first day of kindergarten, but fearless zipping along on her bicycle. Emily flirted with neighbor boys. She hid behind trees to spy on them, or watched them through a window if they were outside playing without her. She was sometimes the loudest one in the restaurant. She “forgot” to tell me she brought her hamsters with us shoe shopping once until we pulled up at the Target parking lot, so we had to just sneak them in the store under a jacket because we couldn’t leave them in the hot car.

Probably most of my non-work related driving is the weekly trips down the road to CVS to refresh Emilys makeup stash. She’s a full face of makeup with expert brows and lips lined. She was a surprise 16 years and 9 months ago, and still never fails to surprise me now. She’s the baby of the family who has grown up too quickly. She was the last but not the least (none of them are the least).

Emily is solo but wants connection. She sits silently then leans over, turns down the music and unravels all her innermost thoughts with “I have a question…” She turns up the hot jam in Tha Bandwagon but she doesn’t sing. She’s Fleetwood but maybe leans more toward the Christine side and less Stevie, and I’m good with that.

Emily is a lot of things that are hard to face and hard to reconcile in my heart, but if she can be these things, then I can love them. She’s blunt enough to tell you to your face to go f>£k yourself, but shy enough to stay hidden behind a Covid mask. She is seizures and psych ward. She steals…money, clothes, possessions, my heart. She thinks we don’t know things, but we know more than she realizes. She has fewer secrets than she thinks she has. Paul and I know truth about Emily that she wishes we didn’t know, but we know them because as good as her sneaks are, we are better.

Emily has definitely gotten some things past us, and her fallible parents have missed some important clues. But Grace and Lauren don’t miss anything, and they’ve been quick to call us out when we’ve needed help. And Eli and Gavin, Emily’s brothers, have teased her and joked with her and made her old smile come back sometimes. How we’ve missed that smile. Auntie Em is not the aunt rolling around on the floor playing games and singing silly songs with Harry. She is the outstretched arms, quiet smile, soft lap, grilled cheese comfort food that Harry needs.

The theater of her life has been tragedy and comedy, but lately not in equal parts. Sometimes the tragedy plays in reruns in my head, and I’d love to see a playbill for a future slapstick vaudeville show starring Oh Emily!! Coming soon to a theater near me!

Emily is eczema and hives, stubborn and gullible, silly and snarky, sticks and stones, snuggles and tears, ladybugs and lizards and lilies and lies and butterflies. Emily is my Mother’s Day Gardenia that has struggled to survive in the Garden of Dappled Light.

She is manipulation and a Momma’s girl, Thursday Smoothies dates and Tuesday suicide note, runaway and reunion, black hoodie and sunset silhouettes, fake eye lashes and honest conversations. Emily is decades crammed into 16 years.

Emily is all of this, and Emily is all of us. Aren’t we all contradictions and inconsistent? Don’t we like to hide but secretly want someone to see us for who we truly are? Oh Emily, My Enchanting, you’ve shown us who you are and we are still learning you everyday. We celebrate 16 years of you, so thankful for 16 and expecting much more. Happy happy happy 16th birthday. We love you.