charlotte's_web raze "winter will pass, the days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond. the song sparrow will return and sing, the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again. all these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, wilbur — this lovely world, these precious days..." — e.b. white 240826 ... ovenbird I don't trust anyone who didn't sob at the end of Charlotte's_Web 250328 ... ovenbird My daughter and I are reading Charlotte's Web together. I contend that this is one of the best books ever written and being able to watch my daughter experience it for the first time had me near tears less than 30 pages in. There has perhaps never been a story that more clearly conveys the transformative power of frienship and love. I'm fighting tears as Charlotte speaks to Wilbur for the first time: "Do you want a friend, Wilbur?" [the voice] said. "I'll be a friend to you. I've watched you all day and I like you." What greater joy is there than having someone SEE you and like you and offer friendship so freely? I want us all to be Wilbur, finding frienship in the most unexpected places. 250512 ... ovenbird UGH! Why are TWO "friendships" missing a "D"? I swear they were there before I posted this. And now they are gone. Curious. 250512 ... ovenbird My daughter is thoroughly invested in this story now. She came to me last night before bed, threw herself into my arms, and said, “I don’t want Wilbur to DIE!” I could see the desperation churning in her, a deep sense of injustice tormenting her compassionate heart. She was clutching a stuffed pig that she pulled out of her extensive collection of stuffed animals. She is living right into this story and I am both delighted and aching, because I know what it is to be a creature who feels so deeply that every day has a thorn at the center. I don’t want to give away the ending. I don’t want to rob her of the full force of everything that is coming, and the opportunity to feel that for the first time. So I say, “just wait. Just wait for the end.” And we both sit for a moment in the unpredictability of this world, with a million possible endings unravelling. 250513 ... ovenbird My daughter gasped in horror as Avery attempts to capture Charlotte. I stop reading for a moment. "I thought you didn't like spiders," I say, trying to hide my smile. "I don't... But ..." And this is the moment I know I've won. She'll never look at a spider the same way again. She will forever hold this image of a spider's inherent goodness. And this, my friends, is why stories are magic. 250516 ... ovenbird I try to film my daughter reading Charlotte's Web without her noticing. She notices. She notices everything. She gives my a funny look, annoyed that I'm making a video. "Why are you doing that?" She asks, with the peeved sideways glance she's been perfecting since infancy. "Because this is my favourite book and you read it so beautifully and I want to remember," I say. She doesn't soften. She just says, "Why don't you use your MEMORY?" If only I could, I think. If only my memory was a taxidermist, leaving everything so lifelike all the memories would seem ready to escape their pedestals. If only I could reach out a hand to touch the hide of every beautiful moment, feel the texture, the vestigial liveliness. But my memory doesn't seem to work the way it used to and I must depend on archival tools--words, videos, pictures. My daughter doesn't understand this yet. But she will. One day I'll show her the video of herself reading Charlotte's Web and she'll understand. 250520 ... ovenbird My daughter and I read the final chapters of Charlotte’s Web last night. The foreshadowing had me in tears well before the end. My daughter was eating a snack of apples and pretzels while I tried to get words out around sobs. At one point she looked up and said, “Mom! Why are you crying? It’s just a story. It’s not real.” To which I replied, “The best books make you feel something real. They are real while you are inside the words that make them. Charlotte is real in my mind and so my grief is real too.” I’m not sure she understood. She was happy that Wilbur lived but Charlotte’s death didn’t move her in the way I expected it to. Perhaps it requires a deeper knowledge of death for the feeling to seep in. She has not yet made death’s acquaintance in a close-up way, so has no frame of reference. My own frame of reference is broader and this story seems to get me in new ways every time I read it. E.B. White does a brilliant job of giving death its natural turn. Beauty and loss are part of the landscape that he paints. Some of the last words in the book are these: “It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.” 250530 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I've loved these updates, ovenbird. It's like reading the book all over again. And it's lovely that you're both doing this and writing about this. ... But what sticks in my memory is the movie. I remember being incensed when I read a review of it in the Movie Hound that rated this childhood favourite 2 dog bones (the best movies were 4 dog bones). But before that, probably before I even read the book, I was confused and intrigued by a tiny detail in the ending scene. It's just this: balloons rise in the air, two bump into each other, and they both pop. My kid self pondered this deeply, asked, "Why did they pop? Balloons don't pop when they bump into each other." And a little later, blinded by science, "Ohhh, is it because the atmosphere gets thinner as you get higher up, so that balloons are under more pressure and pop more easily?" My adult self: Nah, you're overthinking things. I bet animators just did it because it looked cool. ... The book is probably better, but I loved Charlotte's voice actor. She sounded so soothing, and then when she sang a song as she was dying... I can see this leading to a misty-eyed Kirsten at any age, but I think movies make me cry more easily now than when I was little. That's though my kid self was more prone to crying in general - bursting into tears at real_life frustrations, anxieties, etc. I still cry too easily, but not at the drop of a hat. At the break of a plate, maybe. 250530 what's it to you? who go blather from