Emily

Do you sometimes wonder what mysterious cosmic synchronicity places you in exactly the right position to record indelibly those delicious 3-D images which put your life in I-Max?

I happened to be in Emily’s front yard one day when she vaulted over the railing with unabashed grace. She landed running, some four feet below, and then bounded away like a gazelle to find her friends.

I caught her at the stove early one morning, where she was stirring me up a skillet of surprise scrambled eggs. Sometimes we emerged from our rooms in the morning at the same dark hour, still half asleep and far from presentable. We hopped in the car anyway, a quick trip to the Donut Palace for fried cakes and milk.

Emily likes the kitchen and is totally at home there. I watched her sure hands mix up a lemon-poppy seed cake that she said was mostly for me. It was so good she made another one for her mother.

Her eyes lit up when I gave her a 99-cent can of tiny shrimp from the Family Dollar. Hot dogs and marshmallows over a backyard fire produced the same result and her animated shadows on the house siding created a late night show.

Emily dances as if she were born to it, making up new moves or splicing familiar ones together like a magician. One evening she recruited another playful sprite to help entertain, her portable tape player on the dining room table for accompaniment. Start. Stop. Do over. Revise. Go back. Start again. That’s it.

She asked me to take a neighborhood walk with her and then we sat down together with a crossword puzzle. She was my eyes when the print was too small, and we were both so psyched after finishing a hard one that we graduated to cryptograms.

She still fits in my lap.