Being Emelle (edit title/settings)

Saddled with parents from the grunge era with a rocky relationship, a cumbersome name, and a granola upbringing, being Emelle is no hat trick.

Being Emelle beings with a scene between Emelle and his often errant father. While Ted is endeavoring to return to family fold, Emelle is endeavoring to determine whether his father is extraordinary like himself and his mother, or ordinary like his name. Paula, Emelle’s mother, is simply trying to keep life on track while running the family business around an inquisitive five year old.

Paula develops a condition that requires surgery, and Ted comes to take care of his son, giving them the opportunity to interact without her as a buffer. This ultimately does not go so well for either Emelle or Ted. Emelle, a bright child, discovers precisely the right buttons to push and drives his father away from him to avoid their uncomfortable relationship. Later, as Emelle is being home schooled, he begins to learn his father’s trade (a modern day black smith) which was meant to bring them a bit closer. But, Emelle creates a comic-book hero called Dangerous Dick in his imagination and tells his father the stories to pass the time in the smithy. Instead of being amused, Emelle's father condemns these flights of fancy and drives the rift between them that much deeper.

Emelle seeks out companionship with a girl his age in his Spokane neighborhood just before he starts middle school. Annalynn is both very much like him, and very much not like him. She loves horror films, knitting and the occasional outrageous adventure, whereas Emelle has nightmares, sews a bit and prefers to draw his outrageous adventures in the form of Dangerous Dick. Nevertheless, as outcasts at their school they find themselves fast friends.

Meanwhile, Emelle’s parents struggle with Ted’s past ghosts and Ted gamely tries counseling as a way to connect with his son. However, he is incapable of keeping up with the tremendous and constant changes that puberty and middle school have brought about in his son. Struggling with his concept of what men should be, how they should interact with their sons and his own perceived inadequacies, Ted bungles his way through with several large mishaps along the way. In perhaps the first turning point, he rips up Emelle’s early efforts at artistic nudes, which not only drives his son away completely, but incites Paula’s rage.

At the same time, Emelle and Annalynn have made inroads on developing their relationship into a more adult partnership in fits and starts. They have both greatly awkward moments, and moments of great understanding. It is obvious to everyone but them that they have developed an unusually mature attraction to each other. When Emelle is seventeen, he nearly accidentally kills himself and is saved by his father. They mutually capitulate and call an end to their distance. Shortly thereafter, Emelle and Annalynn take their relationship to the next level. Finally, the characters get to bloom. Emelle realizes that his parents find each other funny, and he and his father get to enjoy what the other brings to the family and relationship.

In his last year of High-School, Emelle takes advantage of a program that will let him attend college for free, as does Annalynn. While she goes to technical school, Emelle takes art classes at Eastern Washington University, a few miles away from Spokane in Cheney. Shortly before they go their separate ways, Emelle realizes that he would like to marry Annalynn someday. She however, does not find out about his desire until after becoming pregnant during his second year of college.

Throughout Annalynn’s teen years, her mother had developed into an uncaring, shallow woman that holds no great regard for daughter. Annalynn is deeply wounded that the baby drives them even further apart; having expected just the opposite. Annalynn; without her family, and struggling with Emelle’s recent diagnosis of chronic condition crumples under the weight and spends the early part of her pregnancy angry and hurt. She finally allows Emelle to persuade her to marry him in her fifth month.

Shortly after baby Nora is born, Emelle is surprised when one of his professors gives his final watercolor project to a friend in the comic business. A full length version of Dangerous Dick shows up in the local comic book store, prompting Ted and Paula to get an autographed copy while contemplating their so far extraordinary life