We have read James & the Giant Peach together, Markus and I, over breakfast oatmeal and on the back deck for lunch. When he was little, Markus would run laps around the kitchen island while we lost ourselves in silkworms and sharks. I was just his age when I read it, and I remember fixating on the part where poor James drops the bag of magic, how everything else would have been different had he not tripped over the stump. How the story hinged on that one mistake, how unfortunate it was, how he’d lived through so many injustices already, and here, one more.
I had failed to see the adventure in everything after, the wonder of life going on anyway. Of our story surprising us, growing our own small plans into a giant peach or otherwise.
I do not fail to see that anymore.
