"Now Is Now"

As I previously posted, our bedtime story veered off the Wizard of Oz path for a while to revisit Laura Ingalls Wilder and share my connection to that life from my childhood with my daughter.

Since I was a small girl I was inspired by the stories that Ms. Wilder set down to pen for us so many years after the fact. I am happy to learn that my now 7 year old daughter and I both love these stories. Here in East Central Indiana in 2014 life is so very different than what Ms. Wilder experienced.

But yet again, is it?

For many of us rural dwellers life has many of the same rhythms it always has, being guided along by the seasonal nature of rural life. Even those of us who live in small towns that dot the Indiana State roads and highways are still aware of the seasonal changes in activities around us. Who has not had to wait for 15 minutes as a mile long train unloads or loads its freight of grain into or out of a silo standing as the castle turrets guarding a life that is all but vanished? How many farming implements back up traffic on heavily travelled rural state roads at certain times of year?

Most of us are well acquainted with the story of the Ingalls and Wilder families due to the popularity of the television series that aired in the 1970’s. I have been surprised at what new things I have learned rereading these stories throughout my life.

Little House in the Big Woods starts out in the autumn of 1871 and a grown up Laura retells her life in that continual ebb and flow that goes along with living a life dictated by the seasons. She leaves us off by the completion of a whole year in the life of the little girl in the little house in the big woods.

My own parents raised my siblings and me on a sixty five acre farm in south western Fayette County, Indiana during the 1960's and 1970’s. As my parents were raised in large part by grandparents born roughly in the 1880's, I had the unique experience of living a life where I could recognize Laura’s in my own.

My childhood home along Garrison Creek in southwestern Fayette County, Indiana.

I recognized Laura watching her Ma, Grandma and Aunts execute the hundreds of tasks around their homestead by just watching Mom, Grannie Katie, Aunt Estie, Cousin Bertie and countless others taking care of our own homesteads in the 20th century.

I recognized Laura being in awe of the courage and strength of her Pa, Grandpa, and Uncles by watching Dad, Grandpa Mack, Uncle Jim, Cousin Frank and Cousin Bert in all their old ways and morals in providing for their families.

Our huge barns were built in the mid 1800’s, there was a smoke house, several smaller century old chicken coops, corn cribs and other general purpose buildings built by well skilled German immigrant hands. My Quaker great grandfather’s tools were in the workshop of the barn and being used in the fields and pastures all around our place.  As a matter of fact, my older brothers enjoy attending antique tractor shows and being able to impress the older farmers with inside knowledge on just how to use, operate, and repair those old restored implements on display.

I am pleased to be learning from Ms. Wilder even yet. This time around reading the Little House in the Big Woods to my young daughter at bed times I discovered my now favorite part of the book that I had neglected until now.

The last scene in the book is one like any other a hundred times before. Laura lay awake in the trundle bed at night while Ma is knitting by firelight and Pa is playing his fiddle and singing softly the words to Auld Lang Syne:

“ 'What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?'

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

…she looks at her parents and the fire and listens to the approaching winter wind in the night and thinks to herself, 

'This is now.…all these things could not be forgotten ... because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.' ”