A way with words.

I'm re-reading Dandelion Wine before going to sleep at night, and when I said in the last post that books stir me, this is what I'm talking about.  The book is about a 12-year old boy named Douglas Spaulding set during the summer of 1928.  On a hike with his father and brother he comes to the realization that he is alive...

"And at last, slowly, afraid he would find nothing, Douglas opened one eye.

And everything, absolutely everything, was there.

The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him.

And he knew what it was that had leaped upon him to stay and would not run away now.

I'm alive, he thought...

The grass whispered under his body. He put his arm down, feeling the sheath of fuzz on it, and, far away, below, his toes creaking in his shoes. The wind sighed over his shelled ears. The world slipped bright over the glassy round of his eyeballs like images sparked in a crystal sphere. Flowers were suns and fiery spots of sky strewn through the woodland. Birds flickered like skipped stones across the vast inverted pond of heaven. His breath raked over his teeth, going in ice, coming out fire. Insects shocked the air with electric clearness. Ten thousand individual hairs grew a millionth of an inch on his head. He heard the twin hearts beating in each ear, the third heart beating in his throat, the two hearts throbbing in his wrists, the real heart pounding in his chest. The million pores of his body opened.

I'm really alive! he thought. I never knew it before, or if I did I don't remember!...

"Tom!" Then quieter. "Tom...does everyone in the world...know he's alive?"...

"I hope they do," whispered Douglas. "Oh I sure hope they know."

Oh, how I love these words.  

P.S. Sarah S., I will return this copy to you at Christmas!