(Today I post the final two episodes of the book I wrote about my daughter Emily called The Little Girl Who Sang Her Song To Anyone Who Came Along. Beginning July first and all throughout the Month of Emily I plan to post the entire book again.)

Episode 31
E.T., The Extra Terrestrial
Back in 1982 I had the opportunity to travel to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada for two week long inspection trips. Emily was at that time two years old and the conservative church we were attending taught against going to the movies. As a boy going to the movies was a big deal for me. Before my Uncle Richard drowned and our family started attending church regularly we probably went to the movies, drive-ins and walk-ins, more than we went to church. It was like a religious experience only far more entertaining than most church services I ever attended. Before I learned to love reading books the stories I saw and heard in movies were my frame of reference and my education probably more than anything I learned at home or in school with the possible exception of television. I was as many youngsters of my generation addicted to TV.
I had read the book E.T. The Extraterrestrial in 1982 and when I saw it was playing in Edmonton I went to see it one evening after work. My manager had gone with me on the trip and so after we went out to dinner I borrowed his rental car and drove across town to where E.T. was playing to see it. It was a fascinating movie and I remember noticing that Elliot used Reese’s Pieces to attract E.T. Instead of M & Ms as in the book. I later read that the M & M Mars Company had refused to allow Stephen Spielberg permission to use M & Ms in the movie so he he asked the makers of Reese’s Pieces and they said “Sure.” What a great business move, I am sure someone got a big bonus for making that decision for Reese’s Pieces sales rocketed after the movie’s release and today companies pay movie makers big bucks for product placement in their movies.
At the movie I had a Canadian version of M & Ms. They were a sweeter milk chocolate and the colors of the candy shells were pastels. Over the years I have come to enjoy all the little differences in people and things, the marvelous variety. Often we become too set in our own ways, opinions, and preferences to truly appreciate all the colors of the rainbow that is life. Emily from day one of her adventure in Time and Space helped open my eyes to all of the wonderful possibilities.
I missed my family too much to really enjoy traveling at that time in my life. But I knew someday when my children were grown and busy with their own lives that the road would call again and I would answer, yes. As a boy Ricky Nelson’s song, Travelin’ Man, captured my imagination:
“I’m a Travelin’ man
Made a lot of stops
All over the world
And in every port
I own the heart
Of at least one lovely girl.”
Well, I have travel quite a bit and lived and loved my share of girls but it was a little girl, not quite three, that made me glad when my trip to the great frozen north was over. I brought gifts for Sandra, the boys, and Emily. Her gift was a stuffed E.T. Doll. In her lost Little book there was a picture of her in a white flannel night shirt with tiny red pock a dots hugging her brown big eyed E.T. Every time I see the movie I think of Em and how she loved that little critter from another world, Canada in her case.

Episode 32

If Everything Were Written Down
There is a line at the end of one of the Gospels in the New Testament that reads if all of the things that Jesus said and did were to be written down that all the books in the world could not contain them. Bible scholars believe that Jesus life was a mere thirty three years. Emily Elaine White’s earthly adventure lasted but one year shy of his yet having just spent a little while trying to share with you a few of my recollections I am convinced that it is equally true of her that if all she said and did were written down it would take a lot of books. I have been for over fifty years at this writing a poet and Emily’s Lost Little Book was a poetry book written to her. I think life itself is a Love Poem written to us. George Beverly Shea, a famous Christian singer who sang at Billy Graham’s crusades recorded a song called The Love of God. The following lines from that song were a poem found scratched on the wall inside an insane asylum:
“Could we with ink the ocean fill
And we’re the skies of parchment made
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And everyman a scribe by trade

To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky.”

I remember thinking perhaps in an insane world where most people feel alone and unloved a sane person who knows better might seem insane. It was, I think, Jesus mission to help us awaken from that nightmare of believing we are alone and unloved. It is the same mission for us all, we are like the sleeper spies in the espionage stories.
Jesus told Simon Peter that he would deny his Lord three times before the cock crowed and Peter did just that but Jesus went on to say after you are converted strengthen your brothers. I think a better understanding of this last might be not after you are converted but after you wake up. This life is a dream in which we the dreamer have forgotten who we truly are, the Author of the Dream as Jesus was his. Our mission is to wake up like Neo in the Matrix and encourage others to wake up. We must be gentle and loving as Jesus was, as Emily was, as each of us in our highest, best, and truest self can only be.
I hope these episodes from the life of a little girl who sang her song to anyone who came along will encourage you awaken just a bit more and make your individual dream the sweet dream it was always intended to be. I close with two words I remember my parents saying to one another and to me and my brother from my earliest recollections till they both concluded their adventures in Space and Time. Those two words are from God’s lips to your heart, “Sweet dreams.”

Though Emily’s adventure in Time and Space may be over ours is not and so I hope her story will help many to live ours to the best of our ability as I believe she did hers.

Not The End

But The Beginning for

The adventure continues…

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White