Emma through the glass

Time sure has a way of passing us by, doesn't it? For example, when Emma was baptized on her 8th birthday, her Uncle Greg said to me, "Just think, only eight more years until she's driving and dating!" Of course he was giving me a hard time, and I immediately told him to shut the heck up. How could it be possible that my little angel of an Emma Lu could ever grow up enough to drive a car. Or worse--to date a boy!


But guess what? It's happened. Emma turned 16 last month, and she got her driver's license and had her first date. How did this happen?




















Here's the poem I wrote for Emma's birthday:


Its neck,
long and slender as her own,
knows the soft white fingers of her hand.
The body's curves
between shoulders and
rounded bottom
mirror the beginnings of
her own blossoming form.
Each coaxes music
from the other.


She draws her bow across strings
of time, each note perfectly attached to the next.
Whole notes first, wobbling and unsure
until they divide--
quarters, marching forward
lagging faintly behind the
tick, tick, tick
of the metronome.
Elbow, wrist, fingers dance slowly
as they learn where to fall,
where to hold.


Steady quarters give birth to eighths, then sixteenths.
Fingers dance--lithe and rigid--
up and down strings
four to a tick,
her stretched fingers bent
on conquering the moment
before it is lost.
They skip in a blur
so much so that none can say where
the previous has come from,
nor where the future will go.


Sixteen years slip from
her bow
and resonate throughout
the curves of bodies.


Until they divide again.



Today Emma is attending an orientation meeting for her new job. She'll be working at Lagoon this summer. A real job for a real 16 year old.


Where did the time go? It's just like "Julie Through the Glass." (Go 4:36 into the video below, and be sure to have a tissue handy!)