I've neglected this blog. Truth be told, I am always a better writer when I have something to procrastinate from. Having started this blog with Theresa and Rosalie, I found that I could sit down, think, "Oh, I should write a little something for the Wise Monkeys," and then proceed, quite happily, to work on something else altogether.
So matters stood until last night as I was almost falling asleep. As I was drifting off, thinking of random, sundry, and unrelated things, I sleepily thought, "I should write an encomium on Laura Ingalls Wilder's
Little House books."
This was not completely out of the blue, the series had come up earlier in the day when I found myself quoting Pa's line about the neighbor's axe ringing in the woods as a symbol of what it means to be an independent American.
Those of you who knew me as a child can vouch for my steadfast love for the series. I spent my childhood roaming the sage-covered hill wearing long skirts and the sweatpants which Mom had convinced me looked like pantaloons. I must say that my Mother had some rhetorical skills to convince me that sweatpants look like pantaloons because they don't - particularly dark purple or navy sweatpants. It was the nineties, however, and perhaps I cared more for warmth than I would have admitted at the time.
In reading the
Little House books, starting around eight and a half, I was excited by the life that Laura presented. Making maple syrup in the big woods, discovering Indian beads on the prairie, living in a dugout, moving to South Dakota and facing the Long Winter, Laura traced her story on paper. She wrote simply, almost as if she were describing the experiences once again to Mary, her blind sister.
As an adult, I can read it without nostalgia or boredom. Yes, it is a simple tale, but it is a true tale, a story that actually happened. When I read about the long winter, I get hungry, I feel cold, I feel that there is a storm outside threatening my family. Sometimes I have to put the book down, look out the window at the sun, find a snack, or turn on the heat, to reassure myself that I am not facing a winter filled with blizzard following blizzard, while the trains cannot make it through to bring food to the starving townspeople.
When Laura became Mary's eyes, she learned to pay attention to little things, to note what color the flowers were, to describe beautiful horses with their manes blowing in the wind, to speak of the sunsets and the birds flying south in the fall. She developed the attention that is necessary to be a good writer. Out of that grew her ability to catch the mood of a moment. In the book,
By the Shores of Silver Lake, Laura describes exploring the surveyors' house where the family is to spend the winter. "The largeness of the house seemed to wait and listen. It seemed to know that Laura was there, but it had not made up its mind about her. It would wait and see."
When I was growing up, Dad would laugh at me sometimes for reading the
Little House books, for which he had a colorful nickname (Dad was always clever with puns and would use them unsparingly), but he would tell me that when I was grown up, I could write a story, as Laura did, telling of my childhood. Deep down in my heart, I always believed that I would, and hopefully one day I will. If I ever do, it will be in large part because Dad told me that I could be such a writer.
I hope that this post will inspire some of you to dust off the series and read them again or read them to your children. They will be worth your while.
