Upstairs the Peasants Are Revolting

This book is a collection of columns and includes stories of Emily's baptism, daffodils and apples, our months in Kenya, and Steven's adoption.

My daughter Emily carefully set the bottle of ink on the table in our
room at Motel 6. Next, she opened a narrow box and removed an elegant
writing instrument, too classy to be called a mere pen - a spiraling
length of heavy green glass that narrowed to a clear, grooved tip.
Slowly, she dipped it into the ink and began to write on a yellow legal
pad.
Sprawled on the bed, I watched her briefly and then returned to reading
my book.
Some time later, Emily pressed her new blotter on the words, then slowly
folded the paper, walked toward me, and bowed. "A letteh for yew,
Madahm," she announced, in a contrived British/French accent.
I opened it and read.
"Once upon a time, there was a girl named Emily. Emily had a big family.
Sometimes Emily felt that her parents didn't love her. One day Emily came
out of school and a robber grabbed her. She kicked and screamed. The
kidnapper was her mom! Emily's mom dragged Emily clear across the
country. And I don't know what happened next, cause I'm Emily and I am
still being held hostage!
Emily Smucker
P.S. I don't feel unloved anymore."
The "letter" was quintessential Emily, an imaginative mix of fantasy and
reality, of elegant handwriting and splotches of ink, of clarity and
confusion.
We have a custom in our family of taking each child away by themselves -
I take them when they're 12, Paul when they're 13. But I had never taken
Emily on what the children call a Twelve Trip, since she had serious
health issues when she was 12, and at 13 we were preoccupied with going
to Africa for the winter.
When she reached 14, the time was right. What should I do with her? A few
years ago, I took her older sister Amy to Portland on the train and went
shopping. Emily doesn't like it when I compare her to her calm and
responsible sister, and yet she constantly compares my treatment of the
two of them and resents it if I don't treat them equally.
I would take Emily shopping as well, I decided, at Woodburn's outlet mall
and in the historic town of Silverton. I did the train thing with Amy, so
I would do something different with Emily. Something dramatic for the
drama queen. I would kidnap her.
Paul made motel reservations and agreed to take care of things at home. I
made arrangements with Emily's teacher.
I wore sunglasses and a long trench coat with upturned collar when I
arrived at school on a Friday afternoon to whisk her away. I didn't play
the part nearly as well as Emily would have. In fact, I looked like a
40-something mom making a fool out of herself. Emily would have snapped
into the role perfectly, skulking along with sinister mystery in every
step.
She is a born actress - always playing a part - who can whirl a piece of
fabric around her shoulders and suddenly become Queen of the Smuckers,
tall and haughty. "Bow before me" she commands, so regal that we feel a
strange compulsion to do just that. The next day, she impulsively turns a
piece of masking tape into a moustache and suddenly she is a science
teacher, pompously lecturing in the middle of an otherwise normal
afternoon.
Who is Emily, really, I often wonder. What is a role she plays and what
is reality? Is she a cute little girl or an elegant young woman? Is she
simply playing at being a "typical" teenager, moods shifting with the
winds, angry and unreasonable one day and thoughtful and understanding
the next? Is she actually the wise and witty young woman who has a
special sensitivity for older people and small children?
For some time now, our relationship has been the same sort of mixture as
the letter she wrote - impulsive affection and arguments,
miscommunication and moments when our eyes meet with an electric current
and we instantly understand each other.
The purpose of our trip was not only to affirm and honor Emily, but to
get to know her better. We have been through times when our communication
looked like a geometry diagram of two separate lines in two different
planes, neither parallel nor intersecting, with no shared points.
But slowly, we are finding things we have in common. I am a bookworm; she
was the child who struggled to read. And then one day she discovered the
delicious thrill of words, reading Robin Hood and quoting aloud, " `Hark!
Yonder cometh a gaily feathered bird,' quoth Jolly Robin." She looked at
me and grinned, and I grinned back, both of us getting the same buzz from
the old-fashioned words.
We both love classic elegance, and fell in love with the glass pens at
our first stop that Friday, an antique shop. She couldn't believe I would
buy one for her, as much as they cost. "This is your day," I said,
deliberately setting aside my tightwad tendencies.
"The owners told me that if someone is deserving, I can add a blotter
besides," the clerk told us. Emily chose a blotter with pictures of
antique ink bottles and Italian text.
Shopping at Gap was rapture for Emily and torture for me, digging through
a wasteland of flimsy scraps of fabric that in my opinion hardly
qualified as clothes. But I kept my opinions to myself and amazingly, we
found an outfit that fit my strict parameters, and I bought Emily a
shirt, skirt and shoes.
We spent the night in Salem, and on Saturday we wandered around
Silverton, admiring the murals and historic brick buildings. We walked
around one block twice before we found the tea shop we were looking for,
entered it, and found ourselves in the most charming atmosphere we could
have imagined. The waitresses wore little black hats and long, full
skirts, and the tea was served in miniature pots bundled in quilted
cozies. The desserts were pure elegance, lemon tart for Emily and a
Belgian chocolate torte for me, complete with a fresh nasturtium on the
plate.
One thing we completely understand about each other is our sheer joy in
places like this. We savored the flavors and atmosphere for an hour, and
then it was time to go home.
"Do you really feel like we don't love you?" I asked, her "letter"
gnawing at my mind.
Emily laughed and hugged me. "No, I was just being silly. I know you love
me."
She was soon asleep, a tall and lovely young woman curled up on the seat
like a small child, no roles, no pretense, just Emily, herself. I drove
home in the pouring rain, thinking of how much I love her and how blessed
I am to be her mom.