Redeeming Templeton, Remembering Charlotte (and Opal)

It's about time I contributed to this blog, I suppose.

On Wednesday while G was at choir practice, Edith and I sat down to watch Charlotte's Web. I knew she had seen it before with G and so I didn't think there would be any trouble with it. Edith warned me up front that she didn't like the beginning and she didn't like the parts with Templeton the rat. I agreed to fast-forward through those parts.

A couple of times I wasn't fast enough on the FF button and she would remind me "Daddy, I don't like Templeton." But as the movie went on, I wanted to see the plot (it having been more than two decades since my last reading of the book), and so I tried to let as much of the scene play out as I could before censoring the scary parts.

Then it occurred to me. "Edith," I said, "Templeton's just like Oscar, isn't he? They both like dirty trash and they are both really grouchy."

She immediately picked up on the idea and repeated it about ten times. We were able to watch the rest of the movie without interruption. (Er, except for the few times when she went back to her room to invite the spider who currently resides there to come out and watch the movie with us.)

Spoiler alert! What I didn't realize, however, was that Edith hadn't seen the end of the movie before and hence didn't know that Charlotte was going to die. Her eyes were riveted to the television screen. I couldn't tell if her eyes were watering because she was forgetting to blink or because she was overcome with emotion. I'm pretty sure it was the latter, though she was not sobbing.

I talked with her about death and pointed out how excited Wilbur was to be able to tell Charlotte's children about their mother. We talked a little about the memorial service we'd be attending this weekend for Gretchen's grandmother, and how people might be sad, but they would enjoy telling each other stories about Gigi (as we call her). That seemed to go all right.

Minutes later, when I gave her the wrong toothbrush during the bedtime routine, she lost it. Thankfully God works in mysterious ways. When we had rectified the toothbrush problem, we went in to her room and she saw her new "spider friend" up in the corner of the room. "Do you think that's one of Charlotte's children?" I asked. She brightened up. "Yeah!" "Did you give her a name yet?" "She already has a name." "What is it?" "I don't know. It's hard to hear her when the music is loud, so mommy had to turn the music down last night. I could hear her saying something, but I didn't understand." "Well, let's leave the music off tonight, and maybe she will tell you her name tonight, and you can tell her all about Charlotte."

And with that she went over to the crib and we didn't hear a peep from her until the morning.

What a great kid.