A Miraculous Journey

Reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane with my 10 year old.

The book is about the adventures of a china rabbit. But it is really about love.

I don’t think I have ever come across such a beautiful written story, which is all the more beautiful and a joy to read aloud.

Oh yes I cried and cried, once safely in my own room. I had trouble a few times carrying on reading, claiming I had some dust in my eye or perhaps I am getting a cold.  But such is the story that we gladly exceed story time by a few chapters.

At one point Edward is rescued and befriend by a tramp and his dog. The tramp whose name is Bull explains that he and his dog are lost. He did not mean lost in a geographic sense. That struck such a chord; I have felt so lost myself throughout my life but perhaps never more so than now.

Wishing you all happy endings….

photo Virgil and I

 Later that night, Jack came and sat next to Bull and asked if he could borrow the rabbit. Bull handed Edward over, and Jack sat with Edward upon his knee. He whispered in Edward’s ear.
“Helen,” Jack said, “and Jack Junior and Taffy — she’s the baby. Those are my kids’ names. They are all in North Carolina. You ever been to North Carolina? It’s a pretty state. That’s where they are. Helen. Jack Junior. Taffy. You remember their names, okay, Malone?”
After this, wherever Bull and Lucy and Edward went, some tramp would take Edward aside and whisper the names of his children in Edward’s ear. Betty. Ted. Nancy. William. Jimmy. Eileen. Skipper. Faith.
Edward knew what it was like to say over and over again the names of those you had left behind. He knew what it was like to miss someone. And so he listened. And in his listening, his heart opened wide and then wider still.
The rabbit stayed lost with Lucy and Bull for a long time. Almost seven years passed, and in that time, Edward became an excellent tramp: happy to be on the road, restless when he was still. The sound of the wheels on the train tracks became a music that soothed him. He could have ridden the rails forever. But one night, in a railroad yard in Memphis, as Bull and Lucy slept in an empty freight car and Edward kept watch, trouble arrived.