We are Emily’s parents. For many years, that was all we needed to say when we introduced ourselves, because people always knew who Emily was. Or when people would say, “You must be Emily’s parents,” they would say it with a tone of acceptance that made us feel an instant connection. As we look back, we understand that this was because of Emily’s instinctive knack for getting to know people and showing them her unconditional interest and love.
Many of you may not know this, but when Emily was quite small we were concerned about her language development. She was having trouble with questions. We took her to a speech therapist who spent several months helping her learn how to formulate questions, and we got back this child who asked questions non-stop.
She was an early reader and loved books. The library was one of her favorite places, and she would cruise the shelves checking out anything that caught her eye. Furthermore, one of the ways she would understand new ideas was to imagine herself in that situation, to role play. This combination led to some remarkable conversations. One of the most memorable came about because Emily had been reading about alternative families—kids who were adopted or had half-sisters or step- brothers, kids who were in foster care or part of a blended family. This was pretty interesting stuff, so Emily went off to Soos Creek and told her PE teacher that her parents had died and she was in foster care. That was quite a phone call.
This imaginative role-playing led to a routine in our family. Emily would take a real incident and expand it into a tale about Tom and his co-workers at Boeing or Carol and her first graders, and our standard response would be “Sounds like you have a full, rich fantasy life, Emily” Her reply would always be “It’s true! It’s true!! It’s really true!!!”
Emily started square dancing when she was 9, and she continued dancing with the Mavericks Teen Square Dance Club through high school and beyond. She loved going to Canada every May for competition and meeting dancers from clubs all around the Pacific Northwest. Those were great times with wonderful, fun-loving people.
Emily was very interested in foreign languages. She took some French at BCC. From language tapes, from the internet, and from multilingual friends, she picked up words and phrases in Finnish, Swedish, Spanish, Ukrainian, Russian, German, and Tagalog, to name the ones we can remember.
Emily had interesting ways of looking at things. She had a moderate hearing loss, for which we obtained hearing aids. When they were new and novel, she wore them most of the time, but later it was difficult to motivate her to use them. She was very interested in other people who had hearing loss. She learned sign language and enjoyed attending deaf socials, some for sign language students and others for people with profound hearing problems. Her interesting ways of looking at things are illustrated by the fact she would always wear her hearing aids to the deaf socials, where communication was by sign language, but hardly ever wore them in situations when she needed to hear.
Her teachers in the Kent School District taught her to write, and write she did! She had the five paragraph essay and the persuasive letter down pat. Whether by email or snail mail, she wrote regularly to people she knew or to people who interested her. She got a thank you note from the Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court for helping on his campaign. Her answer is posted on one of the boards, and it is classic Emily.
Emily really enjoyed and used email. She had many different email accounts just because she could. We used cell phones early on to communicate in case of emergencies. As soon as text messaging became available, it replaced most phone calls between us. And the amount of information exchanged increased because it was easy to do. We paid the flat fee for one thousand text messages a month, and Emily’s phone sometimes exceeded that.
Emily was a technology buff. She had multiple cell phones and really enjoyed the type that contains a SIM card, because she could choose which of several would be her active phone at any time. She knew how to use computers and a lot of that knowledge was self taught. She used the internet extensively for research and recreation, often finding obscure facts and subjects that tickled her fancy.
She read the newspaper every day and took her role as a citizen seriously. She read the Voter’s Guide with care and voted in every election. She followed politics and was a woman with strong opinions. Her current favorite judgment, applied frequently was “Well, that’s stupid!” I’m sure she’d be pleased if you chose to use it.
Emily didn’t need props to give her the confidence to meet new people. She offered her humor and her open heart to everyone she met, and they responded to her with joy and affection. She made friends everywhere, and because of her, so did we. We’re Emily’s parents—That’s a good thing to be.
Tom & Carol StonerJune 8th, 2008