stirred up by life on the prairie

We gave Frances Little House in the Big Woods for Christmas. I was almost embarrassingly eager to read it with her and when we finished it, I suggested we get the next book, Little House on the Prairie, from the library. Which we did.

Frances agreed, and she is not a child to agree to something she is not interested in doing. But I am not sure what sort of impact the books are having on her. I know how they are coloring my days; images from this life on the frontier surface up at different moments and I find myself wondering about Laura and Mary and Baby Carrie. And even more than the children, I wonder about Ma and Pa.

This time around I am reading as a parent. How in the world can Ma do all that work with a baby? Is it because Baby Carrie is the quietest, least-needy baby ever to grace the prairie? Do Ma and Pa ever get a moment alone? How do they make decisions, have fights, and have sex living in covered wagons and tiny one-room log cabins with their three children all the time??

On a deeper level, I am considering the impact Ma and Pa had on me as a child. Exceeding capable, good-humored, gentle and brave Pa. Enduring, patient, hard-working and discipline-enforcing Ma. Ma never complains about the places Pa takes them too - she is decidedly deferential when he bemoans the increasing numbers of settlers and picks up his family to start all over again in a more remote land.

I realize Ma and Pa were ideals for me as a child. Theirs was a beautiful marriage! They depended on each other entirely. There was the romance of making a world together, carving a tiny human space in each new piece of wilderness. Pa was a man who could build a log cabin entirely himself, calmly ride through a pack of wolves, and play the fiddle and sing his children to sleep every night. With a man like that by her side, of course Ma would provide no protest more serious than the occasional, light-hearted 'Oh, Charles!', bending back over the washing, content with her lot in life.

I loved these books. I read them all, more than once. When I think of my attraction to farm life, wilderness, my longing for homemade and homegrown, my romantic notions about things like canning and bee-keeping (as only a city girl with little experience of such labors can maintain) I trace the line right back to Laura Ingalls Wilder. Can I possibly trace less-than-helpful, deep-running expectations about gender to her as well?

It troubles me. I still love Pa. Laura is so adoring, it is hard not to join her. Truly, there is little not to love! But the marriage...? Was Ma raging inside? Was she really happy? (For more on this, and even more on Laura's adult life and writing, see this fascinating article from the New Yorker a few months back).

Despite all this, I want Frances to love these books too. When she told me that she and Mackenzie played Little House on the playground at school last week, my heart did a little celebratory song and dance number. When she told me she got to be Laura, I gave her a hug. The Ingalls family has made its way into her imagination! Whoopee!

Do I thrill because this imaginary play connects Frances to my childhood, and to her grandmother's childhood? Yes. The smokehouse, the butter-making, the maple sugar candy! Am I also inviting her into a powerful story that might play a part in connecting her to generations of women who were unable to be - or at least struggled to be - equal partners in their marriages?

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle first brought this up for me. What stories are important to pass on to my children? I grew up in a family and a culture that encouraged me to pursue my passions and ambitions. Now here I am, reading formative books from my own childhood with my daughter, revisiting how I encountered and imagined my way into these books as a child. The experience of reading 'double' - remembering/re-experiencing the childhood reading and reading as an adult - somehow brings me to the disconnect between the sense of boundless professional possibilities I had from an early age, and what I imagined it would mean to be a wife and mother.

Don't get me wrong! I don't think anyone lied to me. I feel grateful to have grown up in the time and place and family I did, far from the frontier, speaking at the dinner table whether or not I was spoken to. I feel grateful for the endless hours I spent reading, something that was not possible - nor would it have been encouraged - for Laura Ingalls. And I feel grateful that as an adult I have been able to experience motherhood both as a working mother and a stay-at-home mother; that I had those choices to make.

But Caroline lurks within. I admire her still, despite knowing what I now know. It is not easy to say what I want, and what I need. It is not easy for me to recognize those wants and needs to begin with. This is not helpful to me, or anyone else! I hope that my daughter grows up with more ease and facility in this department. Perhaps the answer is to read these books together for their simple beauty and startling vision of another way of life. When Frances is older, we can talk more about them. In the meantime, I aspire to be mindful of my own voice, and the need to articulate my feelings. How I live, and how I am in relationship with Mike and my children seems ultimately more significant than how many hours I work outside the home. I always come back to this. The stakes are higher now, and it's a good thing. Being true to myself is not just about me anymore. Being true to myself - difficult though it may be! - is also being true to my children.