It's been a while since I've told an Emma story. This happened after she finished her "CLO" camp performance (musical theater camp) when she was 7. It was summer, and she promised me (/I promised her) backyard camping for Father's Day. I wrote this then, but never really shared it. I spent the last couple days sketching pictures to go with it so I could post it...in accordance with prophecy (you'll learn all about the prophecy in next week's Childswork post).
Without further adieu...
Camping: Chapter 1
She was seven. She finished her performance to the cheers
and standing ovation of the parent-audience. She had been instructed to wear
her hair in a "neat" pony tail, which her mother had interpreted as
"tight". She'd endured the pulls and pinches and blasts of noxious
hair spray in the name of "theater". She'd done well. They all had,
and she was justifiably proud. No missed lines, she sang to the crowd, and she
hit all her marks. As the lights came up, she scanned the crowd for her
parents, found them immediately and beamed. They beamed back, still clapping,
as her instructor called for their attention and announced a cast "photo
op" for the parents. She lined up with her friends on the steps leading up
to the stage and sat, flashing a sunny smile, excitement in her bright blue
eyes. Pictures were taken, and then they were ushered back stage to collect
their things and meet their parents out front.
She again waited in line; her
instructors let her out the back door so she could collect her street clothes,
in a baggy marked "Emma". They were not where she put them.
"Emma! Over here, honey!"
she heard. She looked up to see her father holding flowers and waving to her,
holding a bag in his other hand.
"I have to get my
clothes!" she called back.
Her father looked at her, eyebrows
raised, and gestured toward the bag with the flowers in his other hand, "What
do you think this is?"
"That doesn't look like the bag
they were in," she said, walking to him, but he showed her the label on
the bag, as well as her clothes inside and with some relief she jumped into his
arms to be squeezed tightly and lifted from the floor as her father praised her
performance.
For Emma though, the performance was
over, in her mind now was "camping" and "s'mores" and she
was impatient to leave the theater and buy marshmallows.
"Daddy," she said,
"can we go to the store now and buy the stuff?"
"FIRST we have to eat dinner,
honey, then if the store's still open, we'll buy stuff for s'mores. If not,
you're going to have to make do with popcorn," he replied, putting her
down and handing her the flowers.
This seemed perfectly acceptable to
Emma, who loved popcorn. Though she'd wanted to try the s'mores, if she had to
'settle' for popcorn, well then she'd make do.
Her mother and her grandparents were
waiting just behind her father, and he held her hand and walked her out to see
them. The next fifteen minutes were an unending stream of repetitious questions
and comments: had she liked her teachers, would she do it again next year, did
she meet any new friends, you looked beautiful onstage, you did great. . . and
on and on. It's not that she wasn't appreciative, or proud; she was, but WHEN
was she going to get to go camping?
She was given her choice of
restaurants for dinner, and she unhesitatingly selected Monte Cello's. She
quickly added, however, that she wasn't all that hungry, and maybe she could
just eat a couple pickles? Because, let's face it, how long could it possibly
take to eat pickles and then get out of there to go camping?
Her mother and father split up as
they left the theater, each having come directly from work, and she decided to
go with her father. They walked through the city, tall buildings all around
them. They walked down the alley to the street, her father motioning her to
hold his hand when they reached the sidewalk. He held tightly to her hand and
directed her past an unsavory looking man in a dirty black suit swaying
unsteadily, glassy eyes looking out at nothing under the brim of a faded bowler
hat. He had a long white beard streaked with gray and he was singing softly to
himself, perhaps accompanying the band that she could hear inside. As they
walked past him, she turned to watch him before her father snapped, "Em,
don't stare, honey, it isn't polite." She quickly looked ahead and again
asked her father if they could stop at a store on the way to eat and pick up
the s'mores ingredients.
"First we eat, THEN we
shop," he answered. She sighed disappointedly but kept up with her
father's brisk gait.
In the elevator at the parking
garage, her father let her push the button to the third floor and she remarked,
"This is a small one."
"Did you see all the people
that just got out of it?" he asked her, "How do you think they all
fit in here."
"I guess they must have
squished," she replied as the elevator chimed and the doors slid slowly
open. Her father held her hand and pulled her back as she made to leave the
elevator. The woman who had rode up with them, walked out, and her father
nodded to her that it was okay to proceed. She immediately saw his car and they
got in. She sighed loudly as she sat in her car seat, the warmth of the car
flooding over her.
"You cold, hon'?" he asked
her.
"A little, but mostly my legs
are just tired."
"I guess they would be; you've
had a very long day."
They drove out of the city, racing
her mother to Monte Cello's. She thought they'd probably beat her, daddy drove
a little faster than mommy did, but her father told her that mommy had a head
start. They arrived just as her grandparents got there, which was a good sign,
since they'd left long before either of her parents.
Victory! They'd beaten her. And now pappy
was getting a table and he hadn't even seen them. "Let's hide from pappy
and surprise him!" she said. Her father smiled at her and they sat down
out of sight while her grandfather was shown to his table and her grandmother
went to the bathroom. They got up and followed silently after.
"OH!" Pappy said as they
appeared at the table, "I didn't see you there!" Emma slid into her
seat and got the crayons and "kid's menu" as her father shook her
grandfather's hand and then slid in next to her. He ordered a Shirley Temple
for her as she colored. Her mother arrived. Dinner would most likely never be
over.
They ordered. She got pickles but
her mother bargained her into eating cheese sticks too "at the very
least" as her grandparents shook their heads, amused at her dinner.
The wait was interminable. They
ordered drinks, the drinks came, they ordered food, the food came, the food was
eaten, wine had to be finished. At each new milestone she interjected a
friendly reminder about finishing up and going shopping and was rebuffed. She
was practically shaking with impatience and knew she was on the ragged edge of
"trouble" and then her father whispered something to her mother. Her
mother replied, "Yes, please take her!" and it was over. The wait was
over.
"Are we going shopping
now?" she asked her father excitedly.
Her father let out a long breath, his
eyes closed. Then one side of his mouth curved into his familiar lopsided grin
and his eyes slowly opened and he breathed, "Yes, honey. NOW we are going
shopping."
She squealed quietly (in her
opinion) and held her father's hand as he led her back out into the parking
lot.
Camping: Chapter 2
They drove perhaps two miles to the
store. It was the little Shop 'N' Save that she didn't like, but as long as
they had stuff to make s'mores she didn't care.
"Hop out, kid," he said,
"we're here." He held her hand in the parking lot and directed her
through the slowly parting doors of the entrance.
Her father guided her first down the
baking aisle, looking for marshmallows. He retraced his footsteps several
times, but, muttering "huh," under his breath, eventually led her,
empty-handed, to the candy aisle. There, he grabbed two of the biggest
Hershey's chocolate bars she'd ever seen and handed them to her to carry.
"Daddy, these say 'milk
chocolate'," she observed.
"Yeah, that's what you make
s'mores with. They're yummier." She nodded happily at this news.
The graham crackers were in the same
aisle, and her father hunkered down to observe the different boxes.
"This one says honey
graham," she read, "I don't think we should get those."
"Yeah," he replied,
"but it has the s'mores recipe on it and this one, " he gestured with
the box at the 'Plain' graham crackers', "doesn't."
"Then we should get the honey
grahams," she opined, and her father nodded.
"I couldn't find the
marshmallows, so we'll have to ask somebody," he said.
"Here they are, daddy,"
she pointed.
"Huh! You're absolutely right,
Emma. Good eye. Grab them, please, and let's go."
She did this, returning the
chocolate bars to her father. They made their way to the check-out line and
paid, the chocolate, marshmallows, and crackers transferred into a blue plastic
shopping bag.
"Daddy, can I hold the
bag?" she asked. His eyebrows raised slightly in surprise, but he
smilingly transferred ownership of the bag to her.
She sat with the bag resting on her
lap as they drove home.
When they got home, she hurried
inside the house, excitedly telling Jen (her idol/dance instructor/occasional
babysitter) that she was camping and making s'mores. Jen, who had been watching
her little sister during her performance was satisfactorily impressed and
excited for her, and gave her a big hug to welcome her home.
"Where should I put the bag,
Daddy?" she asked.
"Put it on the counter for now,
Em, and go upstairs and change into your warm jammies. And put on your
slippers, please."
She must have been a little quicker
than her father expected, because he said, "Em, I thought I told you to. .
."
He glanced up, saw that she was
wearing her pajamas and finished lamely, "put on your jammies. . . which
you have clearly already done. Good girl."
Her mother paid Jen, and she
listened while Jen relayed Lily's evening, occasionally offering her own
insights into Lily's amusing approach to life.
Her father went outside, erected the
tent, put down a blanket, and rolled out the sleeping bags. He finished and
came back inside in time to say goodbye to Jen.
"Now what?" Emma asked.
"Now we collect some wood for
the fire," he replied.
"Can I help?"
"Sure, but you have to wear
your slippers."
She happily agreed and accompanied
her father outside. They'd had a big old elm tree removed and all the limbs and
branches had been left in the wooded hillside behind their house. He selected
three long narrow switches, pulling a knife from his pocket, and cutting a
point at the narrow end.
"What's that for?" she
asked.
"THAT, dear girl, is what
you're going to use to roast your marshmallows."
When he'd finished, he put the
switches down and began selecting twigs and branches to start the fire, putting
them with the marshmallow-roastin' sticks. "Can I carry those to the fire
pit?" she asked.
"Yeah, Em, that's a great
idea," he said, and she began gathering what she could carry as her father
began picking larger and larger pieces of wood.
As she placed the branches in a pile
near the fire pit, her father was walking down the hill to join her.
"Some of this wood is a little
wet," he said, "it may not burn that easily."
"How can wet wood burn?"
she asked him.
"Well, if you make the fire hot
enough, the water will evaporate and the wood will catch, but you need some of
the wood to be dry."
She gave a start as he snapped a
branch across his knee with a loud crack. "You scared me," she said.
"Sorry, kiddo, I have to break
the bigger ones so they're short enough to fit in the fire pit." He began
piling the twigs like a teepee in the middle of the fire pit, stripping bark
from limbs and shredding it underneath and around the twigs, then adding larger
branches the taller the teepee got. When he'd finished he stood upright, put
his hands at the back of his waist, grimaced briefly, stretched his back and
said, "Now we light the fire."
He took a piece of paper, rolled it
into a tube, and lit the end with a match. Then he held the tube like a torch
under the teepee, moving it around to catch more twigs. When the tube started
to burn down, he rolled another, lit it with the first tube, and tossed the
burning paper of the first into the pit. Halfway through the second piece of
paper, the twigs were ablaze, the sticks were lighting, and one or two of the
bigger branches had caught.
"Aright, cutie-pie," he
said, "we're almost ready." He rearranged a few of the branches, blew
into the fire a few times, added a few larger branches, paused, squinted, blew
into the fire a few more times then stood and announced, "We have a
fire."
Camping: Chapter 3
The wood smoked at first but it
wasn't the kind of smoke that stung her eyes. Her father told her it was
because the wood was a little wet. She asked if they could make the s'mores
now, and he told her yes and sent her inside to get her mother.
When she came back outside her
father had arrayed chairs around the firepit and had a marshmallow stick next
to each chair. She was still waiting for her mother to come out, so she sat in
one of the chairs next to her father and pulled her knees up to her chin,
staring into the fire.
"I like watching the
fire," she said dreamily.
Her father smiled and said, "I
do too, honey. I think most people do."
Her mother came outside and took the
empty seat, crossing her legs, as Emma explained, "These are our
marshmallow sticks."
Her father went inside briefly and
came out with the chocolate, broken into squares, and the graham crackers
stacked on a plate. He held the marshmallow bag in his other hand. As he walked
outside, he hooked the door with his foot to swing it closed behind him, then
transferred the bag under his chin so he could reach down and pull the door
completely closed with his hand. He set the plate on the ground and opened the
bag. The marshmallows were sticky and a little moist, but he pulled them apart
and skewered one at the end of her stick, handing it to her before repeating the
process for her mother's stick, then his own.
"Here," he said, "is
how I roast marshmallows." He sat in his chair next to hers and held the
tip of his marshmallow capped stick a few inches from the flames, rotating his
stick slowly as he did so like a rotisserie. "Do NOT worry if your
marshmallow catches fire," he continued, "and do NOT cry. You just
pull it out like this…” He pulled his
marshmallow to his face, "Blow it out. . . " He blew on the unignited marshmallow, "Wait
for it to cool, then eat it. It just makes the outside a little crispier than
you might like, but it is NOT the end of the world."
She nodded her head in understanding
and advanced her marshmallow. "Like this?" she asked.
"Exactly like that," he
agreed.
Her father was done first and
offered to donate his marshmallow to her first s'more. She refused politely,
wanting her first s'more to be made with her own marshmallow. He blew on the
marshmallow a bit, then gingerly plucked the entire marshmallow from the stick
with his teeth (if in fact one CAN gingerly eat a marshmallow in one bite),
plopping the whole thing in his mouth, then sliding the stick back out past
slightly parted teeth.
"That was a good one," he
said.
He placed his hands atop hers and
gently lowered the stick until it was a bit closer to the fire, then re-loaded
his own stick and continued.
Her mother finished next and handed
her stick to her father to make the s'more.
"Let's have a look at that
marshmallow, Em," she said, and Emma showed it to her. "Just a little
more time," she said and Emma put it back near the fire, this time a
little closer.
"I think you're done,
princess," her father said, peering into the fire a minute later.
"Let me see." She handed him her stick and he pronounced the roasting
complete. He took a graham cracker, placed a square of chocolate atop it, and
then lay the stick with the marshmallow on top of that. Then he took another
graham cracker, placed it on top of the marshmallow and, using his left hand to
squeeze the sandwich together, pulled the stick out with his right. The
resulting s'more he placed into her outstretched hands.
She took a bite, marshmallow oozing
out the sides and onto the corners of her mouth. She held the s'more daintily,
and when she had finished chewing asked for a napkin.
"Napkin?" her father
scoffed, "We're camping! There aren't any napkins!" But he went
inside the house and returned with a napkin for each of them.
She liked the s'mores, but she had
never had a big appetite. Two bites later she announced that she'd finished what
she wanted of her s'more. Her father had just finished his own, and, looking up
to see the shaking head of her mother, and the raised hand warding it off,
accepted it for himself with a somewhat sick look on his face. If he was too
full to eat though, he valiantly finished it nonetheless.
Her father built the fire up a
little more then, adding some scrap pieces of pine that he and her grandfather
had used to fix things in the house. The pine caught quickly and blazed yellow
white, sputtering and popping. And Emma held her hand over her forehead where
it was getting too hot, and asked her father to push her chair back from the
firepit, which he did by picking up the chair, with her in it, and sliding it
back a foot from the fire.
"Why does it spit like that?"
she asked.
"Those pieces I just put in are
pine," he said, "and pine has lots of sap in it. The sap pops when
it's in the wood and catches on fire." Another loud pop from the fire
scattered embers and her father stood up and put the screen over the fire pit.
"Okay... no more pine," he said.
The fire slowly began to dwindle. It
was past twilight under a cloudless sky. They watched the fireflies descend
from the hillside, winking on then off, then on again somewhere else, trailing
green light. The stars were swimming slowly into view and the night air was
cooling.
Her mother excused herself and went
to bed, exchanging hugs and kisses. This was Emma's night with her Daddy, a
belated Father's Day present as much for him as for her, and she gave her
mother a kiss goodnight and asked her father if she could get in the tent.
"Sure," her father
replied.
"Can I take the lantern?"
"Absolutely," he said,
switching it on and handing it over to her.
She carried it off across the lawn,
the light bobbing into the darkness of the tent. She unzipped the outer flap,
then the bug screen and went inside zippering it up behind her.
The fire burned itself out. Her
father joined her in the tent, sending her back inside the house to brush her
teeth and go to the bathroom. He walked inside with her to get water for them
both. When she was finished he told her to get one book for her to read, and
one for them both to read. She scampered upstairs to her room while he got his
own book.
Together they went to the tent,
zipping it behind them. They sprawled out on the sleeping bags and Emma said,
"Let's read in our special way." And they turned over on their
stomachs, propping themselves up by the elbows, with their books resting on
their pillows.
"This is the best night
ever," she said, "I will never forget this as long as I live!"
"I'm glad you're having fun,
Em," he replied.
They read together in silence.
"I've read three pages already," she confided.
"Good job, Em," he said,
turning his own page.
"How many have you read?"
He raised his brow at her and said,
"One."
"Do you want to play the Eye
Spy book?"
"Sure, honey. We'll do two
pages then go to bed."
"Okay, daddy."
She picked a page and he picked a
page. They saved hers for last. When they'd finished spotting all the hidden
objects she said her prayers and they turned off the lantern. She told him
again that she'd never forget this night, and he squeezed her tightly and told
her he never would either and that he loved her, and they fell asleep at last,
ending her long day.
