Emily-77
If I had to name the way I move through life, I think I would borrow the words of my grandson Lucas.
He looked right at me, completely present, completely alive, and said,
“Gaga, I’m always realizing something.”
And I remember stopping. Really stopping.
Because something in me recognized itself in that.
Yes. That’s it.
That’s how I’ve lived my life. Realizing something, losing it, finding it again, seeing something I thought I already understood in a completely new way.
Even the way this conversation began feels like that.
Trying to get onto my iPad, not receiving emails, putting in passcodes, getting it wrong, trying again. And then finally, oh happy day, there it was.
It makes me laugh now, because that’s life too.
You think you have the right code.
It doesn’t work.
You try again.
You get a little help.
And then suddenly you’re in.
Right where you were meant to be.
There’s a word that keeps coming back to me.
Fishing.
I wrote a song about it. You’ve got to put your line in the water.
It’s something my father used to say.
If you want to be in it, you have to put your line in the water.
And when I think about that, I realize how much of my life has been shaped by both of my parents.
My father was a major inspiration in my life.
At one point, within three years, he lost his daughter, his first child, and his mother.
By the time he met my mother he had already experienced the extremes that a life holds. Then he had us, my brother and me.
He could get down. With all that he had lost I can understand why he was down. He carried things. He carried grief and loss and life. But he still had this spark.
And my mother was the other force. She was the mover.
Zipping around. She was the one who would say, you gotta do it.
“We’re doing this. We’re moving on. Get up.”
And I didn’t like her for it.
I would feel like, would you just let me stew?
Would you just let me feel what I’m feeling? And she wouldn’t.
She’d say no. You’re getting up. We’re moving.
And I would think, she doesn’t get it.
Of course now, in retrospect, I understand.
There’s a moment that I didn’t realize was important until much later.
And it has to do with my mother. She didn’t really want to have another child. She said that one time.
I remember asking her, when my daughter was a baby,
“What was it like when I was one?”
She said, “I don’t really remember you as a baby.” Because she was with my brother.
She had people taking care of me.
There were things on her plate that I didn’t understand.
And, honestly for years, I even hated her for it.
But when I look back now, I see it differently. I have a deeper understanding of her.
Not as an excuse. Just understanding.
I don’t think she could have been there for me more than she was.
She was the zipper. Always moving.
And I probably got some of my zipping from her.
There was a large part of my life where I didn’t feel like she was my mother.
But I found so many wonderful mothers in my life.
And, then I realized something important.
You can look elsewhere to get what you need.
You can receive it in other ways. And that’s okay.
What was really important, when I look back, is this.
You can’t always understand things at the time.
It comes from having your own experiences.
From living long enough to see differently.
From having my own grown-up relationship with my daughter.
I can see now that my mother wasn’t in a place where she could understand the things that hurt or upset me.
I can’t change that. But I can see it. And I can still send love.
For a long time, I attributed so much of who I am to my father.
But now I see something more. So much of my love of life.
My zest. That came from her.
Even the things that felt like invalidation from her. It wasn’t always that. She was a force of energy. It was her energy. To keep things moving.
To not get stuck. She kept things going. And I learned that tool from her.
Sometimes she moved too fast. Sometimes she glanced right over me.
And I felt not seen. But she was just moving.
That feeling of not being seen…
That became part of the spark that fueled many years of self-discovery.
So much of my life came from that.
And now, in what I call my wisdom years, I understand so much more.
About her. About being a mother. About having a daughter.
About how things don’t always need to be fixed.
You can step back. Let things be what they are.
And see what unfolds. And continue to show up for yourself.
For the people that matter.
When I think of my life now, spring is the season that feels the most alive to me.
Because everything that seems like it’s dead comes back.
It wasn’t dead. It was just asleep.
I don’t even know why I’m saying this next part, but it feels true.
It’s like I wasn’t forgotten. My daffodils didn’t forget how important they are to me.
They’re so faithful. They come back.
Every year.Spring feels like faith to me. Restoration.
Things need to die.
They need to rest.
Then they come back as something new again.
It’s so metaphorical. And I trust that spring will return.
I know that. But that doesn’t change the experience of the waiting.
It doesn’t take away the fatigue that can come in that space.
That feeling of being in between. Still it returns. Spring comes back even when it feels like it never will.
I’ve lived that cycle in my creative life more times than I can count.
There are stretches where I feel completely disconnected.
I call it the “I don’t wanna.”
And then something happens.
There’s this voice that comes in and says,
Aren’t you tired of that?
I realize…I am tired of that.
There it is.
I’m realizing something. Just like Lucas said.
The comes the next question.
What do you want?
There’s this little one inside of me that answers.
I want to play. I want to create. And I listen.
To that little one.
To the grown-up part of me that’s ready to move differently.
There are moments that arrive like gifts.
Like when I was sitting with Lucas, building Legos together.
And out of nowhere, he said,
“Gaga, I’m always realizing something.”
A complete sentence. Not followed by anything.
Somehow, that made it more true. As adults, we would never leave it there.
We would feel the need to explain. To finish the thought.
But he didn’t. And, somehow that made it more true. More complete.
That moment stayed with me. I asked him if I could write a song about it.
The song came to me. And it surprised me. Because I thought it would be about him.
But it became about my daughter.
Sparked by something her son said to me while we were just playing together.
One of the lines that came through was,
“I’m always realizing something… something about you.”
That is what the song became. About our relationship.
Not always easy. Not always smooth. But always evolving.
Always realizing something about each other.
I learned something deeper about all of this when she moved to Florida.
I was so in longing. It was exhausting.
I didn’t want to do anything.I was deep in the “I don’t wanna.”
I let myself feel it. Because emotions just have to live out.
I would remind myself,You’re feeling this.
Maybe you don’t like it.
But you just have to be with yourself while you’re feeling it.
Because if we don’t allow the feeling…
We never get to the place of, I’m tired of this place.
That moment of realization.
One day, I just got there. I was tired of longing.
I wanted to get to living again.Not the same life.
But a new way of living. And something opened.
Just like a kid in a candy store.I found new things.
I realized something new. There’s that word again.
I suddenly had so much more time.It opened space.
For me. For beauty. For realizing. For life.
A songwriting group. More art. New experiences.
The beautiful thing is, nothing was truly gone. It had just changed form.
That’s spring again. Every time.
Right now, I can feel it. I’m in that spring mode.
Clearing out. Making space for the new.
Letting go of the old.
Just allowing what wants to come next to have room.
That’s life, isn’t it? If we allow it.
If we stay open.
We are always realizing something.
What am I going to realize today?
I’m always realizing something.
And maybe that’s the point.
Scribe’s Reflection
At the time of our conversation, Emily was still 76 years old. Just a few days later, she turned 77.
Over Memorial Day weekend, I had the pleasure of sharing lunch with Emily in her home. It was a lovely afternoon filled with conversation, laughter, and the unmistakable energy that seems to follow her wherever she goes.
What struck me immediately was the color.
Her home is filled with it.
Art. Textures. Light. Expression.
At one point, I commented on the beautiful outfit she was wearing and told her she always seems to have such wonderful clothes.
Her response was pure Emily.
“It’s my palette.”
And somehow that simple statement felt like a doorway into who she is.
Emily doesn’t just create art.
She lives artistically.
She approaches life itself as a palette of possibilities, experiences, emotions, relationships, seasons, and discoveries.
Throughout our conversation, I kept returning to the words of her grandson Lucas:
“I’m always realizing something.”
It feels fitting that those words became the title and heartbeat of this story because Emily embodies them so completely.
She is curious.
She is reflective.
She is willing to revisit old understandings and discover something new waiting beneath them.
Whether speaking about her parents, her daughter, her grandchildren, creativity, grief, longing, spring, or joy, Emily approaches life with a remarkable willingness to keep realizing.
Not because she has all the answers.
But because she remains open to the next question.
The next insight.
The next season.
The next possibility.
There is an enthusiasm in Emily that is difficult to miss. An enthusiasm for life, for people, for creativity, and for what might still be waiting to be discovered.
Perhaps that is one of the gifts of her wisdom years.
Not certainty.
But openness.
A willingness to keep putting her line in the water.
To keep showing up.
And to keep asking, with curiosity and wonder:
What am I going to realize today?
Jennifer Mark, Scribe
Voices That Matter
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