Laura Ingalls Wilder

 I went to bed last night watching a PBS documentary about Laura Ingalls Wilder who wrote the Little House on the Prairie books. We were given a set of those books by Aunt Sally, I believe… they were blurs paperbacks with illustrated covers. I read each of those books to Lauren putting her to bed at night. I remembered how much I enjoyed the books myself years later and I bought a new set to grieve to Lauren for her son, Nolan. My most enduring memory or image of the books was when the family was struck down by an illness. An illness during which they all fell asleep for days. When they woke up Laura’s sister was still recovering slowly and lasting from her illness she lost her ability to see. When or as her sister, Anne, regained her strength, Laura was charged with the responsibility of being her keeper. Her guide, her eyes. Laura adopted her responsibilities with dedication and love. She took pleasure and pride in describing everything to Anne in great color and detail. I often thought about that and wondered if this lent itself to what would become her gift of writing. The documentary acknowledged that and speculated that Lura may have never become a writer were it not for this experience. In addition to this the documentary explores the relationship between Laura and her own daughter Rose. Rose was a born writer. They said she was driven to writing with such physical intensity that she would cause herself pain in her hands and arms until she had to be stopped by her parents before hurting herself even at age five. Rose grew to become a very successful writer and she kibitz and coached her mother Laura to write and then edited and argued to improve the structure of her stories. Her contributions were many but she, in fact they, kept her involvement secret. It was Rose who instructed her mother to keep the stories in the first person of Laura. To keep the experiences being revealed as they were happening and keep the reader in the moment. It was also Rose who brought the books to her publishers and and eventually brought them to the public. But it was also Rose who did not want to tell the story of her sister Mary who suffered blindness as a child and it was Laura who prevailed in that discussion realizing the poignant and dramatic impact that reality brought to the story. It was this balance, this collaboration even if accidental, that underscored the deeper message of truth beneath the fiction. Rose believed both the truth and the mythology of self reliance and endurance above all odds as demonstrated by her Pa and Ma in the face of the hardscrabble wilderness. She resented Roosevelts New Deal as undermining individual strength and catering to weakness. She became a hero of the Libertarian movement. Notwithstanding the moral character of her parents, their grit and perseverance, there was also utter failure and the acceptance of government help at a critical time. 

I plan to reread the books on Kindle. I want to immerse myself in the romance of the times. I accept and embrace the truth as Laura saw it and above all I will admire and respect her ability to capture it in writing. We, in America, are digging our way out of a pandemic. One million people have died. Millions more recovered from the illness including my own daughter, her husband and her two boys. I full heartedly grasped onto to the recommended health precautions; wash hands, wear a mask and ultimately get vaccinated. There has been a whole movement of anti maskers and antivaccers who are vehement in their resistance. I have found this behavior baffling and deeply disturbing. But I thank God we’ve been given the options of  modern medicine. I am horrified first by Trump and the insurrection and now by Putin and his murderous invasion  of Ukraine. I’m not quite sure how my review of LUra Ingalls migrated to these topics but I know I love my family and I love America. I know part of our history is real and some embellished by the mythology of what we want to be real. I hope that we survive these times and that we, in the words of President Biden, Build Back Better and save the soul of America.