Crying: I can do that

[Diana York Blaine]

Last semester while grading final papers I read one (by a drill sergeant
in the army BTW) which contained a passage from _Little Women_ which he
described as always making him cry.  Never having read _Little Women_
as a child (I made a good boy but was quite a failure at being a little
girl--thought Barbie was a creep, for example), I found myself doubting
sincerely that I was about to be moved in any way.  But voila!--it just
killed me.  One of the sisters is dying and she says to the other
something to the effect of "all we take with us in the end is love--and
that's so comforting."  I just split wide open and bawled.  Later when we
spoke about it he and I agreed that the lonely death of the spider in
_Charlotte's Web_ is something we haven't even been able to think about
again since first reading it as tots.  So brutal!  I haven't even seen
Babe out of fear that it's similarly devastating. I'll also admit choking
up  every time I read Wordsworth's Immortality Ode, but even those people
I'm closest to think this makes me quite the sap. I've stopped
assigning it because I often cry in class while we're reading it. Ditto
Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish," though I was glad to note a number of
weepers last term during this one.  Oh, and the movie "Truly, Madly, 
Deeply"--rent it and bring the hankies!   Diana