Sobbing
**Spoiler Alert: Bridge To Terabithia’s ending is revealed in this post.
The bags were packed and we all piled into the big green van. The big green van was our beloved traveling companion, the one we had come to know and love. My sister and I had made the back of the van our own personal fortress. We knew exactly where the pillows went and how to finagle the seatbelts just so in order to nap. We had the miniature TV set up in front of us in order to watch “Spice World” and the camera up and running in order to video tape each other doing our best British accents post-viewing. However, the best part of these family trips- the ones we still talk about all these years later- were the read alouds that my Mom created for us to take up large chunks of the time, to keep us more than occupied, by transporting us to a place outside that big green van. We read The Watsons Go to Birmingham, Charlotte’s Web, and more babysitter’s club series than my parents care to remember, I’m sure. The read aloud I remember most vividly is the time when my Mom decided to read Bridge to Terabithia. She had read enough about the book to know it was an appropriate story for the age which my sister and I were at the time, and that the story itself was acceptable, but she had not actually previewed the text, and was therefore, not familiar with the story itself. As she read and read, and we became more and more enthralled, she realized that she could not stop- we needed to know what happened next. As her eyes began to scan the page on which Leslie dies she began to bawl. She was absolutely hysterical, inconsolable, and none of us yet knew the reason for it. She was not able to read the words from the page! We waited with baited breath. When she eventually did calm down, she read the rest of the page, but it took quite some time.
That was the moment I knew. I knew that literature was having a profound impact on the woman I loved (and still love) most in this world, the person that I looked up to and tried to emulate, and if it could make her feel that strongly, it could make me feel that strongly too. Quite possibly, these are not the words I would have used as a young child watching my Mom cry so hard that my Dad had to pull over to the side of the road to make sure she was okay and give her time to compose herself. These are the feelings I felt though, and I am glad that all these years later I am getting the chance to articulate them. I was always an avid reader, but from that moment on I became a voracious reader hoping that something would move me in the same way that Bridge to Terabithia had moved my mother. I have not yet been able to find that text. I have become emotionally invested with characters, upset when I’ve had to leave them behind to move onto the next story, and teared up, but I have never been moved to the point of sobbing. I will keep looking though, and maybe, one day, in our own version of the big green van I will engage in a read aloud that will move me to the point of uncontrollable tears and encourage my future children to become the readers my husband and I will want them to be, just like my Mom did for me all those years ago.
Erin Cryder is a freelance writer specializing in all things childhood and education. She is a high school English teacher, Reading Specialist, and Mama to one feisty, adorable toddler. To learn more, contact her at erin.cryder@gmail.com.
