Preview
Copywork
About This Passage
This passage is Opal's final farewell to her absent mother, delivered at the bottle tree that serves as the book's most important image. Notice the three-part structure: the promise to keep thinking of the mother, the qualification that the thinking will be less frequent, and the transformation of the heart from empty to full. This is the most honest goodbye a grieving child can give — not 'I will never forget you' (which would be false) and not 'I will forget you' (which would be heartless) but 'I will still think about you, but less, and my heart is now full.' The small word 'probably' in 'probably not as much' is doing important work; it acknowledges that Opal cannot control how often she will miss her mother, while also signaling her growing capacity to move on. The final sentence — 'and that's what I said that night underneath Gloria Dump's mistake tree' — completes the scene by locating the farewell in a specific place. The tree is named 'Gloria Dump's mistake tree,' which honors Gloria's ownership of the tree while also signaling that Opal has made her own use of it. Copying this passage teaches a writer how to render an honest farewell that honors the love, the healing, and the specific setting where both happen.
I'll still think about you, I promise. But probably not as much as I did this summer. My heart doesn't feel empty anymore. It's full all the way up. And that's what I said that night underneath Gloria...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize the chapter in no more than four sentences. Then identify the developmental milestone Opal completes in her bottle-tree conversation, and defend your reading.
Discussion Questions
- Opal's farewell to her mother includes the phrase 'I'll still think about you, I promise. But probably not as much as I did this summer.' The small word 'probably' is doing crucial work. Is DiCamillo making a claim about the honest form of grief promises — that they should acknowledge uncertainty rather than pretend to certainty, and does this claim fit with contemporary research on realistic versus idealized grief narratives?
- Opal's choice to conduct her farewell at Gloria's bottle tree (rather than at her own place, or at a church, or at home) is a specific theological and literary choice. Is DiCamillo claiming that sacred conversations require specific sacred places — a kind of locative theology — and does this claim relate to Celtic Christian ideas about 'thin places' where the boundary between worlds is more permeable?
+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide
Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
a parting that acknowledges both the persistence of love and the reality of healing, refusing both the false comfort of 'I will never forget' and the heartlessness of 'I will forget'
Item 2
the literary technique of specifying the exact location of a major emotional moment, often investing the location with symbolic weight
Item 3
a concept in Celtic Christian theology describing locations where the boundary between the earthly and the eternal is experienced as more permeable, making sacred encounters more likely
+ 3 more vocabulary words in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
+ 7 more questions in the complete study guide
Get the complete study guide — free
Sign up and get your first book with every chapter included. Copywork, discussion questions, vocabulary, and critical thinking.
Sign up free