Living and raising children abroad, it’s important to me that my half-American kids get the opportunity to share in some of the hallmark experiences of an all-American childhood. American kids going back 85 years have been enjoying Laura Ingalls Wilder’s captivating tales of pioneer life, so the Little House books were an obvious choice to include in our family’s nightly story time. We plodded our way through them slowly at first, in fits and starts, but now that both kids are a little older, we’ve been breezing right along, and in recent weeks, I’ve begun to notice several parallels to life in the time of Corona (if you’ll indulge me the literary pun). So this week I’ll be offering up some particularly pointed quotes from our beloved flutterbudget. You just might recognize more than you’d expect!
* In preparing this, I quickly realized there were far too many examples to get through in the time I have available to me for writing this week. “Little House Life” will therefore become a series, with today’s diary focusing only on what we’re reading right now: the first half of the sixth book, The Long Winter. (A whole family shut inside for months on end—sound familiar?) So check back again next week for more book-based commiseration!
On time ticking endlessly by:
It seemed forever till ten o’clock.
* * * * *
The sunshine from the western windows had never crawled so slowly.
On gathering supplies and making preparations when we could feel the lockdown coming:
“We better make hay while the sun shines.”
* * * * *
“Why such a hurry to get the pumpkins in?” asked Ma.
“I feel in a hurry. As if there was need to hurry,” Pa tried to explain.
* * * * *
“But what’s the need to hurry so?” Ma asked.
”I feel like hurrying,” Pa said. “I’m like the muskrat, something tells me tp get you and the girls inside thick walls. I’ve been feeling this way for some time . . .”
On creative meal-planning with whatever you happen to have left in your pantry and fridge:
”I didn’t know you could,” Carrie breathed, looking wide-eyed at the pie.
“Well, I don’t know yet,” said Ma. She slipped the pie into the oven and shut the door on it. “But the only way to find out is to try. By dinnertime we’ll know.”
On having the full weight of shortages hit you and on the futility of hindsight when it comes to the purchasing of necessities (I’m looking at you, toilet paper):
If I’d thought of such a storm as this, I’d have filled this shanty with wood yesterday.
On the importance of soaking up all the vitamin D you can, whenever you can:
”Get yourselves full of sunshine while you can,” Ma said. “It will soon be winter and you’ll have to stay indoors.”
On mistrusting the words of either leaders or experts (depending on where you fall on the political spectrum):
“You suppose the old geezer knows what he’s talking about?”
On the mood at every grocery store:
Everyone was sober. Pa paid for his groceries and set out, walking quickly toward home.
* * * * *
“Ellie’s counting on my getting some tea and sugar and flour,” said Mr Boast.
On what to do about the possibility of kids going to school:
She could not think what to do. It was not safe to leave the schoolhouse and it was not safe to stay there.
On school closures:
There would be no more school till the blizzard was over. [. . .] She wondered what [her classmates] Mary and Minnie were doing.
* * * * *
“By the way,” he said, looking up, “school is closed until coal comes.”
“We can study by ourselves,” Laura said stoutly.
On learning from home:
Every night after supper she put her books and her slate on the red-checkered tablecloth in the lamplight, and she studied next day’s lessons with Mary. She read the arithmetic problems aloud, and Mary did them in her head while she worked them on the slate.
* * * * *
She held the flat geography open before her, but she wasn’t studying.
On not despairing at the disappearance of traditional education:
“We will hurry and get the work done, then you can study. There is enough figuring in your arithmetic to keep you busy for a good many days, and you can do as much of it as you want to. Nothing keeps you from learning.“
On confinement brain fog:
She felt numb and stupid.
On psyching yourself up to make do come what may, and on worrying about what may come:
They must go on as long as they could, and then . . .
On incredulity at the whole situation:
“This can’t last seven months. That’s ridiculous.”
On the impossibility of portion control:
”How about some pancakes?”
”This makes twenty-one.”
[. . .]
“So long as we keep on eating, we don’t have to do the dishes.”
On cabin fever:
“I have been in one place so long, I would like to travel a little,” Pa said.
* * * * *
”I want to go somewhere!” Carrie said fretfully. “I’m tired of staying in this old kitchen!”
On the disappearance of public life:
”What good is it to be in town?” Laura asked. “We’re just as much by ourselves as if there wasn’t any town.”
* * * * *
”Here for three whole days we haven’t been able to see a light, nor smoke, nor any sign of a living soul. What’s the good of a town if a fellow can’t get any good of it?”
On disrupted supply chains:
”There’s no more salt pork in town,” Pa said. “Getting all our supplies from the east, we run a little short when the trains don’t get through.”
On shortages:
”There is no more kerosene in town,” Pa said. “And no meat. The stores are sold out of pretty nearly everything.”
On hard financial choices:
”Mary, it may be the town’s running short of supplies. If the lumberyard and the stores are putting up prices too high . . .”
He did not go on, and Mary said, “Ma has my college money put away. You could spend that.”
”If I do have to, Mary, you can depend on me paying it back,” Pa promised.
On the days all blending together:
Laura felt that it was the same day over again. [. . . ] Another day was the same.
On taking more time to get less done, but with more exhaustion:
”Took me the whole half a day to go a couple of miles and get back with one load of hay, and I’m tireder than if I’d done a hard day’s work.”
On imagining an end to all of this:
It was good to see the town alive again and to know that again all the weekdays would be school days.
On silver linings:
She could not imagine that Heaven was better than being where she was, slowly growing warm and comfortable, sipping the hot, sweet, ginger tea, seeing Ma and Grace, and Pa and Carrie, and Mary all enjoying their own cups of it and hearing the storm that could not touch them here.
On everyone being in this together:
They were not walking hand in hand, but they felt as if they were.