Is winter starting to feel long for you too? It really shouldn’t for me because it came rather late. But now that March is only a couple of days away I am feeling very done with it all. The view from my window hasn’t changed in weeks…and this was on a pretty day:
And the only book I keep thinking about is this :
HOW did they make it through the long, dark, cold, brutal days of Winter? Without electric, gas, DVDs and the Internet??? I love reading but come on!
Have you ever read the “Little House” books as an adult? I read the entire series about four years ago. As a child, they were my favorites. I would dream about having the same adventures Laura and Mary had…playing under their big pine trees and making candy in the snow (Little House in the Big Woods), traveling by buggy out to Indian territory, camping out while Pa played the fiddle (Little House on the Prairie), living in a dugout (On the Banks of Plum Creek), getting fancy name cards (Little Town on the Prairie), and so much more that completely captivated my young, adventurous imagination.
And then I read them as an adult and found a totally different perspective. Holy cow. Travelling by horse and buggy through a WILDERNESS, with three YOUNG children in tow plus all one’s possessions and provisions that are supposed to last who knows how long…I don’t think so. And the camping out bit while Pa played the fiddle? Not fun for Ma who had to cook over a fire and clean it all up and then get the kids to bed while maintaining some level of sanity. Nor did she have Xanax. If I had been Ma and heard a violin playing in the middle of nowhere after a grueling, endless day of life on the road wagon trail, I would have looked for a little padded cell to dive into. Living in a dugout??? No way. What kind of bugs were part of that deal? I know what I see when I dig in the garden and it is enough to know that I don’t want to dig deeper– let alone live in the hole. Plus all the other stuff…building houses and barns, digging wells, fighting off locusts and prairie fires, burning corn husks and gnawing on whatever sustenance was around just to get through seven months of snow because the train (aka LIFE) couldn’t make it out to you. Man! This lifestyle was not for the faint of heart. While Pa was the hero of Laura’s books – her adored father, provider, plucky musician – he totally got on my adult nerves. If I had been married to a man like that, so full of three-quarters wanderlust and one-quarter self, dragging his posse of women all across the Great Plains, I would’ve went on strike and refused to move beyond Plum Creek (once I was out of the dugout of course…Ma did end up with a “beautiful house with real glass window panes and a hinge door”). Insufferable man.
YET, they are happy books with happy stories of simpler times and families working together, playing together– being together– no matter what challenges came their way. Although my (slightly) jaded adult perspective diminished my romanticized childhood memories of these books, I still loved every single word and I know I will love (read) them again one day.
Have you read the Little House series as an adult? Which is/was your favorite book?
~~Heather~~
