From: Connie Rockman <connie.rock>
Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 13:27:56 -0400

Last night my husband disappeared after dinner for awhile, so I went looking for him . . .

He was standing by our back porch just staring at the siding on the house. As I looked closer I saw a stream of tiny dark dots working their way slowly up to a windowsill and beyond, climbing into the great unknown . . .

Quietly I slipped back into the house and returned with my copy of Charlotte's Web . . . he was still watching, transfixed, as I began to read . . . "Wilbur stepped closer and stared. A tiny spider crawled from the sac. It was no bigger than a grain of sand, no bigger than the head of a pin . . . It looked just like Charlotte . . . "

I read to the end of the chapter, the end of the book, and those oh, so wonderful last lines - "Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both."

We watched the spiders - dozens of them, hundreds even - climbing higher and higher, some reversing and going back down the drag line, others crawling over them - until it was too dark to see . . . This morning most of them are gone, but a few are still there, clinging to their lines.

Do books change our lives? Sometimes, it's just the tiny moments they enhance that can make a huge, huge difference.

Connie
Received on Fri 26 May 2006 12:27:56 PM CDT