I usually cannot find whimsy in insects. However, every time I walk into the bathroom, I'm reminded of our friendly family spider that lives in the corner near our bathroom. It's strange because both my husband and myself have an extreme aversion to anything that crawls. He tends to always find and kill his arch nemesis (the 100 legged creepy crawlers), and I generally am frightened of tiny ants. But for whatever reason, we have both found this spider and cannot find the heart to kill it. 

This unspoken silence lasted until this week when both my husband an myself looked at eachother and questioned eachother about the spider. He replied, "I just cannot kill it." And I replied, "He isn't bothering anyone." I don't know what it is about the spirit of this spider. But his apparent outpouring of love has stopped us from doing the very thing we would both normally do-stomp it, tissue paper it and flush it down the toilet. 

I have since named the spider Charlotte. I'm convinced this spider is a she, and it does really quite remind me of the magical story of Charlotte's Web which just never gets old no matter how many times it is read. Because the spirit of whimsy is the essence of a book where a spider befriends a young piglet and woven magic appears within the web. It's also a reminder that love is sacrifice. And so sometimes when I'm brushing my teeth, I look down at little Charlotte hanging or twirling or sometimes sleeping from her web, and I'm reminded of the sacrifices of love we should each be making every day we rise our head from our pillow and begin again. 

Thanks to Charlotte, for however long she chooses to stay in our bathroom, her love is abundant and magnificent.