Blog 3179 – 07.15.2024

One Of The Most Memorable Days In My Life

On this date forty-four years ago my life changed forever. I became a dad for the first time. My daughter was born, Emily Elaine White, my heart, my baby girl.

While visiting with my equally beloved son Jay and my almost one year old granddaughter Emma Grace White, I was reminded watching him with her of how completely that my daughter Emily had captivated my heart as even a baby.

In the book I wrote about her, Emily – The Little Girl Who Sang Her Song To Anyone Who Came Along, I wrote an episode or chapter called, My First Walk With Emily. (It is featured on this blog) In the chapter I describe what it was like to be handed my new born baby girl in the delivery room and asked by a nurse to take her for her first walk just a few yards to the hospital nursery. On that elated stroll with my darling girl in my arms she grabbed my finger and I was hooked.

Jay likes to stream YouTube on his TV. Currently he is checking out riding lawnmowers as he and Lauren his wife are contemplating moving from their lovely two story condo in Up-Town Houston to a split level home with an acre of yard of grass that will require cutting regularly in the Houston suburb of Kingwood. Emma will have lots of room to play and to grow and without that beautiful but scary straight up and down staircase to negotiate.

When Jay turned the TV on to YouTube, I asked him to search Dancing With Spock – True and watch one of two music videos that His sister Emily made with her sax-man Toby Harris, the boyfriend she always dreamed of and finally found just six months before her untimely death in July of 2012 just five days after her thirty second birthday. The two songs by the two member group called Dancing With Spock are original Emily compositions, the first called True and the second called My Boyfriend Drives A Spaceship. Both songs are about Emily finding the love of her life in her Toby.

During our viewing of the two music videos Emma made sounds like she was attempting to sing along with her Auntie Em and Jay said he wanted to name her Emily but that because a soon to be sister-in-law shared the same named that he and Lauren had agreed on calling their new baby girl Emma Grace. I remarked that she could still end up being and Auntie Em too and that I was grateful that thanks to the two music videos she could grow up hearing her own Auntie Em singing her songs to her.

Today, on my baby girl’s birthday I am not nearly so sad as I am glad and grateful that I have gotten to be a dad to two wonderful children and a grandpa to a wonderful granddaughter. Emily never got to have babies of her own but devoted herself to working with the youth group of her church and helped raise her niece Deb’s son Travis.

Emily named her guitar Blondie and her ukulele Goldie. Travis has her guitar, and he is quite an accomplished musician. I have Emily’s ukulele, but have never taught myself to play it. I bought a book with lessons. I now intend to give them both to Emily’s niece Emma on her sixteenth birthday with a sterling silver bracelet that has blocks that spell out Emily, to remember her other Auntie Em by.

I hope Emma Grace lives long and prospers finding her true love and seeing the stars together with maybe a couple of great grand babies in the mix for grandpa Dave.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White