Yesterday, I sat in my car in the garage and cried. It wasn’t any particularly bad news that got me; it was hearing a lovely NPR piece on Charlotte.

I didn’t feel too badly, as apparently it took EB White 17 tries to record the death scene without crying, and he wrote it.

While listening to the words, I was immediately transported to those passages in the book, and to the lessons that we all learned from Charlotte and Wilbur, about love, loss, growth and change. And who we take with us from our past.

Ironically, Eddie and I were just discussing EB White’s other
books – he read all three while growing up, I just read Charlotte’s Web. I’ve since read the other two, and they are very sweet, and lovely. But, somehow, the magic of EB White’s storytelling is always going to be strongest for me in this book. (Although, both boys have read all three, and we have Eddie’s mom’s copy of Trumpet of the Swan from her childhood, which is a neat treasure.)

There are other scenes that I cry just as easily at – Johnny’s death in The Outsiders comes immediately to mind – but I’m not sure that there are any other scenes that I’d sit in my driveway and sob.

The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unwinds a thread of his devising;
A thin, premeditated rig
To use in rising.

And all the journey down through space,
In cool descent, and loyal-hearted,
He builds a ladder to the place
From which he started.

Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do,
In spider's web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken strand to you
For my returning.

Poem written by EB White just after his marriage. Isn’t that last line amazing?


(photo from the NPR article)