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Waylon
with his father Jason
S.C. State
Fair Carousel
taken by his mother Meredith |
|
We
are past the season of fairs and fall
festivals, of Halloween and All Saints’ Day. We look forward to
Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, and celebrating the beginning
of a new year.
Because I began with this blog in
October and share a post, this must be my holiday message as well as my
last post for the year. Consequently, I’ll harken back to some of the special
times now passed in order to look forward with joy for those yet to come. As Charles
Dickens wrote in A Christmas Carol,
“There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or
nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.” Similarly, let
me paraphrase, although the time for fairs is gone this year, something truly
wonderful may come from the memories they have generated.
In
fact, two well-known icons
associated with fairs are celebrating their sixtieth anniversaries this
year.
The first is Big Tex, the huge waving mascot of the Texas State Fair in
Dallas, which unfortunately caught fire and must now be rebuilt.
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| Source: www.tmz.com |
The second is the original publication
of the beloved children’s classic Charlotte’s
Web by E.B. White, the story of Wilbur the pig whose life was saved by a
creative spider that spun glowing reviews about him in the strands of her web.
White used his own childhood memories from growing up on a farm in upstate New
York to develop the characters heralded as successors to Alice’s rabbit hole
and Dorothy’s Oz. Like Lewis Carroll and Frank Baum, E.B. White found his story
in his own backyard. Rare insight into the reclusive White’s life may be gained
from a new biography written by Michael Sims. In the forward to The Story of Charlotte’s Web, Sims
describes visiting the farm where White lived as a boy and seeing the barn
where spider webs still cling to the rafters.
In an
interview on CBS Sunday Morning, Sims
told about White’s great difficulty to make an audio recording of Charlotte’s
final scene. Even though White protested that Charlotte was “only a spider,”
his stumbling over the passage about her death showed that she had become more
to her author, just as she had to readers.
Sims
characterized the book as being about death. Certainly, I
agree that death plays a large part of the story, but I consider Charlotte's
Web a book about how to live your life well. After all, who wouldn't want
to be remembered as "a good writer and a good friend"?
Maybe my
perception of the book comes in part from the person who gave it to me. This
wonderful lady was a widow with a disabled adult son. She had befriended my
parents before they married, encouraged them, helped them to find jobs, and
remained close to them through correspondence when they moved away from the
city where she lived. After I was born, she sent me a hard-covered, well-loved
book each year for Christmas. How I looked forward to receiving those presents
in the mail! I did not have a chance to meet this woman personally until I was
a teenager, but I cherished her kindness extended toward a child she did not
know except through letters.
In
remembrance of her, for Christmas each year, I give the children in my life hard-cover books that are their own to keep and love. Her gifts meant that much to
me.
A splendid
memory remains with you throughout life, even after you move beyond it to other
adventures. Papa Hemingway is credited with saying, "If you are lucky
enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest
of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."
Throughout
the year, not just at holidays, may you and yours find books to be a source of
strength, support, knowledge, encouragement, and recognition. May they be your
moveable feast. And, like Scrooge, may you live in the past, present, and
future through books, the memories they bring you, and the memories they help
you pass on to others.
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