Just Pretend

I cried this morning during read-a-loud time. It was the penultimate chapter of Charlotte’s Web. Sam handed me a tissue and said, “It’s OK, Mommy. It’s just pretend.”

While I was crying and trying to read the words using the voices for each character that I had settled on (Charlotte– cultured, standard American; Wilbur– little kid voice; Templeton– working class Brit) it really began to bother me that this read-a-loud experience was all upside-down. Shouldn’t it be the child who cries? The parent who comforts? I had been curious as to what Sam’s reaction to the conclusion would be. I didn’t think she’d cry, but I did think that she might be a little upset.

She listened calmly to the end, smiling when Charlotte’s three daughters set up webkeeping in Wilbur’s barn doorway. And then again, when I teared up at the final words, Sam looked at me quizzically. “Why are you sad, Mommy?”

“Because it’s sad when somebody dies. Wilbur misses Charlotte.”

“But he has the daughter spiders now! And one of them even looks like Charlotte!”

“But the daughters are NOT Charlotte.”

“But maybe one of them will be a new Charlotte!”

I sighed. “But that’s just the thing, honey. Each person is unique in this world. No one can ever be Charlotte again, even if they have the same name, even if they look just like her, even if they write just like her.”

At that point my daughter did the 3-year old equivalent of rolling her eyes and changing the subject. She laughed and bounced and said “blah lah dlah lah” in a goofy voice while waving her arms around. I went off to brood and make breakfast.

Later, when I was telling AC about Sam’s reaction to Charlotte’s Web I said that clearly she doesn’t have the psychological development to emotionally plunge into a story the way we do. Either that or she’s exhibiting early sociopathic tendencies (who isn’t moved at the end of Charlotte’s Web?!) But now I realize that while there’s certainly a grain of truth to the first, and that the second is a bushel of hooey (Sam did comfort me while I was crying) there’s another dimension to the “Charlotte’s Web” reaction that I need to consider.

Sam has never lived through death and loss the way that we (her parents) have. She was two when Camus died and while she certainly noticed his absence, and noticed her mother’s tears and grief, she was just an outside observer. Indeed, she has said about Camus almost exactly what she said about Charlotte: “Mommy when I’m 10 we’ll get a new kitty. We’ll get a new Camus!” She seems to believe that everything is interchangeable, duplicable. Certainly the world of objects supports this. Balloon shrivels? We’ll get another one next week at Trader Joe’s. Looking for a book? We can buy one at the bookstore or online or borrow it from the library. Ball rolls under the rose bush and is punctured by a thorn? (She was really upset about that). We’ll patch it up. Or get another one.

Maybe I’m relieved that Sam didn’t cry for Charlotte. The ability to feel that loss lies in the future. Now that I’ve cried my own tears for loss and death and the cycle of life that includes death, I can see that I’m in no hurry for my daughter to get there. Let death and loss be “just pretend.” Her time to weep for the gray spider will come.