Hibernation has ended

I've been married for 2 months and 10 days and I highly recommend it. Maybe because we are perfect we have the perfect relationship. More likely because I married a great guy who makes a wonderful husband.

Another recent discovery: I've never liked Chicken Parmesan. It's so heavy that after eating four bites or so, I would want to avoid the dish for the rest of the meal. On Friday one of my friends (Megan) served us some homemade Chicken Parmesan, and I converted. It was perfect and yummy and not too heavy. If I were the poetic type I would compose an ode to that dinner.

When I was a kid, I would listen to audio recordings of books over and over again. My favorites were Peter Pan (not the Disney version, the J.M.Barry version), The Secret Garden, and also a recording or E.B.White reading Charlotte's Web. I listened to these so repetitively that Miriam would often get frustrated with me and insist that we listen to Adventures in Odyssey or something. You can ask her.

As I was listening to the radio in my car the other day I heard an interview with an author who wrote a book about E.B. White and Charlotte's Web. If you've studied any E.B. White essays you may know that there was a pig that died on White's farm in Maine, and although White had been raising him for food, he felt very bad when his pig died.

What I did not know was this: there was a spider who lived in White's barn , and this spider did lay an egg sac. Shortly after White saw the egg sac, he had to go to New York for a while. So he put the egg sac in a small box and took it with him. He left it on his dresser in New York for a while and then one day saw a bunch of little spiders crawling out of the box. They started flying around the room, which he found fascinating. He probably would have left them there, but his cleaning lady objected and he had to get rid of the baby spiders. These incidents apparently served as the inspiration for Charlotte's Web.

Just this morning I invoked the wrath of Sam on a largish spider in our apartment, so I'm sure I would have sympathized with the cleaning lady more than White if I had been there. But somehow the fact the White would try to keep pet spiders is just endearing. That is just how he was. When he was recording the scene were Charlotte dies he had to do 17 takes because he kept breaking down. Maybe he associated his feelings of grief and loss with the deaths of animals or even insects. Children tend to to this too - I remember Rosie, when five, being very upset over the death of a caterpillar. Maybe that's what makes Charlotte's Web such a great kids book. Or maybe it's the wonderful plot or the animal's animality or E.B.White's gorgeous writing style. For whatever reason, it's still on of my favorite books.