Another Ordinary Miracle

Last week my youngest daughter went to have a sleepover at her grandparents' house so that the rest of the family could go to a "big kid movie." They checked the schedule on their HBO OnDemand and asked her if she'd like to watch Babe, ("It's a movie about a pig," they'd said...), to which she replied, "Oh, yes, I love that movie!"

Interesting, since EL had never seen that movie.

She watched and watched, frequently indicating, "I don't remember this part. This isn't what I remember."

Apparently she had actually been anticipating the live-action Charlotte's Web. Understandable mistake if you're 8 and don't own either movie, I suppose, but it totally ruined for her the fun experience that Babe would have been had she not been expecting something else.

Although I can't go back and change her sullied opinion of the Babe movie, I was able to redeem the experience (and also the dreary, rainy day) by taking her to the free summer showing of Charlotte's Web at the local movie theater today.

Confession: the live-action Charlotte's Web movie makes me cry. The conversation went something like this:

"You're crying over a spider dying?"

"No, of course not. They don't play that story like real animals, honey. She is like a real person in relationship with a bunch of other real people. I cry because it is moving to watch Wilbur lose his dearest friend. She was the first person to befriend him when he was new in the barn, lonely and scared. He was the first person to befriend her and to recognize her as beautiful. She was portrayed as very neat (intelligent and deep and kind and pensive and thoughtful), and she was faithful and kept her promises and loved Wilbur selflessly. Their friendship was special. And so it is sad to me when she is dying, and Wilbur is having to say goodbye."

E. B. White was not quite so sappy, but I think the book has some profound ideas, expressed in some profound lines in the movie...

"I don't know, but it has happened... at a time when we really don't see many miraculous things. Well, maybe we do. Maybe they're all right there around us everyday, and we just don't know where to look..."

"...the web itself is a miracle... no one taught the spider how to make a web. He just knows. Don't you think that is a miracle?"

"...it is called a childhood phase... and, sadly, she will outgrow it..."

And perhaps the most poignant of all, as we approach the end of August: "Over and gone. Over and gone. Summer is dying, dying..."

And so we move, far too quickly, into the next fleeting season of the next fleeting year in this ordinary, miraculous life. I am once again reminded how important it is to make every day count.