With a fervor acquired in fourth grade, my wife urged me to read Charlotte’s Web. Annette loved the timeless tale of Fern, the farm girl who sought to save the runt of a pig litter, and Charlotte, the barn spider who engineered the rescue. When our youngest, Ryan, began the children’s classic, I did too.

We talked with Annette about each new turn in the story. Ryan and I became enmeshed in the plot and characters spun by E.B. White. Annette revived her childhood memories.

We shared these fall discussions on our bed, providing a welcome respite during Annette’s fight with appendix cancer. She could not digest foods and received her only nutrients through an IV line connected each night. Weak, pained, and severely underweight, she seldom left the house.

Simple Joys, Silver Linings, Tender Mercies

Our chats became “simple joys” for us – those seemingly ordinary things that bring meaningful happiness. For Annette, they were similar to things she had often observed before cancer (B.C.) –

quiet baths
strawberry-rhubarb pies
changing seasons on the mountains surrounding us

While struggling for life, Annette kept watching for these somewhat common developments that somehow stirred uncommonly good feelings. She compiled a list that included –

pansies in the backyard
kids helping with dinner and dishes
feelings of peace

Seeing them as heaven-sent, she adopted two more terms for them – “silver linings” and “tender mercies.”

Thanksgiving Day Parade

After we finished reading Charlotte’s Web, Thanksgiving came and our entire family watched the Macy’s Parade broadcast, a favorite tradition from Annette’s youth. We were surprised and excited to see a float touting a Charlotte’s Web movie, with Dakota Fanning as Fern and Julia Roberts as voice for computer-animated Charlotte.

Atop the float, Sarah McLachlan sang the movie’s theme song, “Ordinary Miracle.” The lyrics could have been Annette’s:

It’s not that unusual, when everything is beautiful.  It’s just another ordinary miracle today.

The sky knows when it’s time to snow.  Don’t need to teach a seed to grow.  It’s just another ordinary miracle today.

The Movie

We had to see the movie. Later one evening, Annette, Ryan, and I were home alone. Ryan hesitantly asked Annette if she would be up to go that night. She was. We left the house, and Mom was with us.

We watched the warm portrayal from center seats in the theater, glancing at each other during favorite scenes. Annette’s and Ryan’s faces shined with youthful exuberance, and in a few spots, we shared tears.

Over time, Charlotte brings attention to Wilbur the Pig by spinning successive words about him in her web – 

Some pig
Terrific
Radiant
Humble

Fern’s mother asks the local doctor if he understands how there could be writing in a spider’s web. The movie script uses the exact words from E.B. White’s book:

“Oh, no,” said Dr. Dorian. “I don’t understand it. But for that matter I don’t understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle.”

As the final scene closed, McLachlan sang what we felt in sharing Charlotte’s story and its retelling through the parade, movie and music. These simple joys were a web of ordinary miracles for us.

Elements

Four months later, we lost Annette.

Small things continue to evoke memories of her. Recently, I could not find my copy of The Elements of Style, the little handbook on writing grammatically and simply – and meaningfully. Many know it as “Strunk & White,” after its authors.

Professor Will Strunk wrote the guide for his students at Cornell University, including one Elwyn Brooks White in 1919. Four decades later, as a highly-acclaimed essayist for The New Yorker, White rediscovered and updated the stylebook, added an introduction and a chapter on writing clearly, and published it broadly, now having reached more than 10 million.

While on the Web ordering a new copy, I realized that this “White” also authored Charlotte’s Web and that his initials (E.B.W.) make a fitting, telling anagram – WEB.  Tender feelings returned.

Silken Threads

When memories of Annette arise, I continue to feel loss, but something in me still wants to re-stir the links and the feelings to her. Perhaps it’s because she watched for, and still found, meaning and happiness while facing the ultimate challenge.

Proceeding into this emotional territory, I approached my two daughters who majored in English and writing, and asked, “Who wrote Charlotte’s Web, and can you name another of his books?”

With hints, my daughters also connected the silken thread from the little book about good writing – to the beloved book about a spider – and then to Annette.  While tearfully missing her, we somehow felt uplifted in remembering how she found joy in simple things, saw silver linings in dark ominous clouds, and felt blessed with God-given mercies. We relived the ordinary miracles interwoven with our last Thanksgiving with her.

What are “ordinary miracles” for you and your loved ones?

[This post was previously published in a shorter form as a guest column in the Deseret News.]