The Sheila Variations

Happy birthday, Laura Ingalls Wilder

It's the birthday of a beloved and important American author - Laura Ingalls Wilder. She was born on February 7, 1867.

Not sure how to even talk about her, because her books are so much a part of my childhood that they don't even feel like books to me. I was 7, 8, 9 - and I just LIVED those books. I LIVED them. And the fact that at the same time that I was LIVING these books - a wonderful television series based on these books came on?? Despite its bizarre and explosive ending, the series really captured some of the simplicity and beauty in those books. Laura, Mary, Nellie Olson - all of these people were just woven into my childhood. We used them as reference points as kids. Whispering to each other about a classmate: "She's such a Nellie Olson". etc.

Here's a wonderful image of the kind of pioneer cabin that the Ingalls family probably lived in:

Not only do her books work as great stories in and of themselves, but they portray the pioneer experience in such an immediate and first-hand way that it came to life for future generations. I mean, there I was, frolicking in the dirt of my backyard in Rhode Island, but because I had read those books I knew about the great plains, and covered wagons, and how medicine was ... er ... different back then ... and what it was like to have NO money so that one Christmas they each got a cookie, and a shiny penny and a peppermint candy for presents. And the girls were THRILLED about their presents. Laura Ingalls Wilder described that one blizzardy Christmas so well, and the beauty of those simple hand-made gifts - that I, as a child, really learned something about the world. I remember reading that, and thinking - (God, I must have been 8 years old): "They only got a candy-cane and a cookie? And a PENNY??? But ... how could they have been happy with that????" But the WAY she wrote it made it clear that the entire thing was magical and exciting ... as the snow pounded against the log cabin windows. And so then I realized: "Wait. This is Christmas. This is their Christmas. They were happy. They were happy." And I learned a wee lesson about ... oh ... materialism, and gratitude, and stuff like that. I learned that my world was not the only world. That my time was not the only time.

Their lives were SO different from mine - and yet human beings themselves don't change, and I found so much to relate to in those books. Getting into trouble behind your parents back, learning tough lessons about life, dealing with snotty school girls, the excitement of setting out on a journey with your family ... I just LIVED all of that stuff.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was encouraged by her daughter (who was also a writer) to write down stories of her childhood - because already that entire world had pretty much disappeared. Her first book Little House in the Big Woods was published in 1930. Lindbergh had flown across the ocean. There were railroads criss-crossing the country. Autmobiles. Telephones. Laura Ingalls Wilder straddled an enormous generational divide. Her books are the bridge.

I think my favorite of the books were By the Shores of Silver Lake and also The Long Winter. I believe The Long Winter is her best book.

What are your favorites?

I'll close with an excerpt from Little House in the Big Woods that brings a lump to my throat, and kind of captures the simple home-spun magic in these books:

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, "What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?"

"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now."

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods.

She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

Happy birthday to an American treasure. And thank you for making me see, as a young child, that things like log cabins and Pa and Ma and firelight "could not be forgotten" ... thank you for making that "long time ago" come to life for me, a young girl at the tail-end of the 20th century. What a gift.

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