The Annual Reading of The Long Winter

I just finished my annual reading of The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I think it’s probably my favorite book. Not just in the Little House series– but of all the books I’ve ever read. It’s the one I’ve re-read the most often.

Not to spoil it if you haven’t read it– it’s not a very cheerful story. Laura and her Ma and Pa and sisters (blind, good Mary; thin, fragile Carrie; and small Grace) endure a long, hard winter of seven months of blizzards. Their little town of DeSmet in the Dakota territory is only a year old and the townspeople run out of supplies when the trains stop running due to the weather. Laura’s family goes from eating simple but hearty meals of beans and salt pork and bread to eating just potatoes and bread to eating a coarse bread made from Almanzo Wilder’s seed wheat ground in the coffee mill. They run out of things to burn and end up making sticks out of twisted hunks of hay to keep from freezing. It gets bad. They are starving and cold. They’re cut off from the rest of the town– each family unable to make much contact with the others so that they might as well not be in town at all– the blizzards are that bad.

It’s the darkest of the books (until Laura gets married and they have a series of misfortunes). Laura describes the monotony of surviving the winter as an unending cycle of grinding wheat, twisting hay, eating the coarse bread (without butter or preserves or gravy– just coarse, brown bread), sleeping– all in a semi-darkness brought on by the blizzards and lack of kerosene.

At the lowest point Pa can’t play the fiddle– his hands are too chapped from the cold. They exhaust the only other entertainment– reciting from memory the things they can remember like poems from their schoolbooks or verses from Sunday School. Laura feels “dull” and “tired.”

And then– in the last few chapters it all comes out well. Almanzo Wilder and Cap Garland make a desperate run for some rumored wheat, find it, bring it back, and save the town from starving. The Christmas barrel that was sent out from the Minnesota church on the last train arrives with the turkey still frozen and they Ingalls have a Christmas feast in May to celebrate the return of Spring and their survival.

Mixed in are a few observations about human nature. The storekeeper that tries to make an unfair profit from the wheat brought in to save the town. The inexperienced Easterner that ruins a (literal) shot at some meat when the men see a rare herd of antelope. The patient Ma who snaps.

I’m not sure why I love it so. But I do. And I’ve reread it every year since I first read it when I was about 9. I usually read it in the summer. Her descriptions of the howling winds and thick snows of the blizzards chase off the humid Michigan summer heat. This year I read it late. I had it with me at church this week. We had a conference after church and I used the half-hour between to read a bit. I was interrupted by several people asking what I was reading. Our pastor’s eyes lit up when I showed him the cover. He knows it well, too.

Several years ago I was doing a research project for work. I spent a day at the Detroit Public Library’s special collections pulling images for an exhibit. The staff there was pretty patient– they filled my many requests with trips to the archives. I finished earlier than I’d expected to and I sought out the librarian that had been the nicest and asked politely if it was true that the original manuscript for The Long Winter was in their collection. She sighed and laid aside her work and led me to a locked case where she handed me a pair of white cotton gloves. We sat together at a long table where she carefully pulled a Red Chief notebook from an archival box and opened it to reveal Laura’s long-hand writing. Page after page in long hand was the story I’ve loved complete with corrections and crossed out phrases. I soaked it in. Took in the way she shaped her letters and the height of her letters. And then I thanked the librarian for letting me see it. She was startled. Didn’t I want to see the rest? She was willing to sit and turn it page by page while I read it. The entire thing. I was just as startled. “Oh no. I’ve read it before. I just wanted to see it in her handwriting.” I don’t remember a single image we pulled that day for the project at work– and I was there pulling images for at least 6 hours. But I remember the way my throat filled up with my 9 year old heart when I saw that first page of Laura’s familiar words.

If you haven’t read the Little House books you shouldn’t necessarily start with The Long Winter but keep reading till you get to it. Little House in the Big Woods will seem simple and childlike. Little House on the Prairie might be too earnest. Farmer Boy (my second favorite) will make you obsess over donuts and ham and baked beans. By the Banks of Plum Creek is where the payoff starts in your investment with the Ingalls Family. By the Shores of Silver Lake is the hardest one for me to slog through. Partially because in the first 50 pages or so Jack the dog will die and Mary will be blind. And then there are all the passages about building the railroad (Robby loved this book because of that). My beloved The Long Winter makes its appearance here. And then it’s a happy coasting through Little Town on the Prairie and These Happy Golden Years before Laura’s writing tone changes with her memories of The First Four Years of her marriage to Almanzo Wilder.

Let me know what you think.

Faith and Habit

Yesterday my Friend Wallis (this Blog’s Godfather) was ordained as a pastor in his church. Robby and I went to the ordination service after I’d gone out to hear Wally preach at an earlier service. Sandwiched in between was Sunday School with the teenagers of my church.

Somehow I’m teaching sunday school again. My co-teacher is the father of my oldest friend. We’re winging it a little bit– we couldn’t find a curriculumn that seemed to fit our group well that we could afford or access easily… so we’re looking at the mechanics of the church for several weeks. These are mostly kids that have grown up in the church. Their parents have seen to it that each Sunday they are in church and choir and youth group, etc. Most of them have been baptized and confirmed. We thought maybe examining some of the elements of Christian practice would be beneficial and interesting– the things they’ve learned along the way and now have become habit (albeit good) or rote and are at risk of losing meaning in the familiarity.

We started with the Apostles’ Creed. Looked at the 12 statements of faith in there and tried to get some discussions going about it. I’m having a ball with this– I didn’t grow up knowing the Apostles’ Creed and didn’t learn it until college. These kids have known it from their littlest days. We’re slowly trying to challenge them to really look at their faith and see what it is that’s there– what they believe vs. what they accept.

Wally’s ordination was largely focused, too, on belief. The process at his church involved a council and full day examination of his life and faith. Wally wrote (and subsequently published) a series of essays called The Ordination Papers. Robby and I read them on a long car trip. They prompted good discussions. Wally’s theology is closer to what I grew up surrounded by and what Robby has come nearer to as he gets older.

But what a contrast between the sunday school with complacent teenagers munching frosted cookies and shrugging at the statement for the forgiveness of sins and Wally, kneeling, while the (male) leadership of his church laid hands on him as he earned the role of pastor. My teenagers haven’t really tested their faith yet. Having been there– one of the good kids who had good Christian parents and a good church and a good adults– I know I can only try to give them the tools that they will need when they are tested down the road.

Blue.

It’s cold and rainy here this morning. It makes me miss Jack. On mornings like this we’d stay in our jammies and do puzzles or look at his “learning books” trying to make sense of the dinosaur names.

It might have to be a good apple crisp night.

At least there is a good lunch to look forward to– I’m meeting a partner-in-crime to go over the lesson for this week’s Sunday School.

From the mighty OK

Robby was tending the crops of his facebook farm. It’s a silly little diversion… we both have little farms. Jack loves them. He likes to help us “plant” crops and “harvest” them, etc.

So tonight Robby was getting some help from Farmer Jack. One of the on-screen prompts gave an option of  “OK” which our Nearly Reading Jack read as “Oak.”

A few years ago I remarked occasionally on the little explosions in his vocabulary– how, suddenly, he would add dozens of words or phrases to his repetoire. Now it’s sight words. He’s delighted in “Exit” signs and ramps. He takes glee in the word “Jackson” because it has his name in it, too. He studies road signs: “stop” and “Do Not Enter” and “No Turn on Red”…

And, like his earlier additions to his spoken vocabulary, I sit with my breath caught near the lump in my throat that is my heart– awed and excited.

Tonight, at church, my 12-year-old friend Anthony was thisclose to finishing Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons and I delighted that my Jack might also tote a book around some day eager to tell others what his story is about.

Bad news.

Here’s a full sentence: We were pregnant but now we’re not.

There were better ways to end that sentence. Unfortunately, for us, it was in a miscarriage. Another miscarriage. My mother-in-law was very eloquent in her reaction of ”Well that sucks.” (Which, if you know Lady, is saying an awful lot. Robby thinks it’s the first time she’s ever uttered that. I know better but I know what he means.)

We hadn’t announced that we were expecting because we both felt very strongly (feel very strongly) that it wouldn’t do for Jack to hear about an impending sibling from anyone but us. Our plan had been to get to the first trimester mark (and some false sense of safety because we know there aren’t any guarantees) and then let Jack in on the fun– then let him announce it in his own way to our family and friends.

It was a good plan. For 10 weeks we’ve kept to it… And then plans changed. And now we’re trying to keep Jack from our grief. It’s not fair to burden Jack with our sadness when he didn’t get to enjoy the happiness.

So, if you’re reading this, and you know our Jack, we’re asking you to respect that, too. Watch what you say in front of him.

Which brings about the logics of why I’m typing this at all then– why not keep it to ourselves? Because we both believe pretty fervently that things happen for a reason. Even when we aren’t sure of what that reason is. Especially when we aren’t sure. And maybe the reason is for someone else’s comfort? or someone else’s education? or for some big lesson we haven’t learned yet.

I do know this– miscarriages are crappy secrets.

Once you’ve had a miscarriage you realize that nearly everyone around you has had one, too. It’s a twisted logic. Just when you’re feeling completely alone and abandoned by your own body and thinking that hope is the cruelest minx– you are surrounded by people saying, “I know. It’s happened to me.” The miscarriers close ranks around you in a strangely humbling and kindly way. And you don’t get let in this Thing In Common until then. There are mothers, aunts, cousins, sisters, girlfriends, coworkers that keep silent until it’s happened to you, too.

What’s with all the mystery? We didn’t drink or smoke or experiment with heroin– we were good and took our vitamins and walks and carefully chose our produce and monitored our every move and bite and thought. So why all the secrecy and pseudo shame?

We loved, we hoped, we lost. So why don’t we acknowledge?

At the hospital the other night two interesting things happened. The first was that nearly every single person we encountered– from the triage nurse to the CNAs and the anestheologists had a cross somewhere on them in the form of a necklace or tattoo. In hindsight I realized in some weird way I’d been passed from one set of Christian hands to another. I’m sure the ACLU would freak out about that– but oh. my. Even in hindsight I’m grateful.

The second was that nearly every woman I encountered along the way from ER to transport to observation and surgery had also had a miscarriage. When they’d ask what I was in for they’d make that gutteral sound of shared grief and pause to pat my arm or tuck a blanket in more closely.

I guess if you’d don’t believe in God than this is all just coincidence– but for us it was a gentle reminder of the bigger picture.

Here’s more: We’d told exactly three people. Our friend Katie who cares deeply about our physical health (and our spiritual and emotional health, too). She keeps me plied in vitamins and information. And our friends Susan and Chris.

When I got the call that I should go to the ER– can you guess who was there for dinner? Not in their five-hours-away house– but our living room? Susan went with me to the ER and managed to smooth my ponytail even while she juggled a very wiggly 6 month Adrian. Robby had Chris to ply him with distractions and (not entirely) surprisingly gentle man sympathy. (And a little Scotch.)  Jack had his AunT to watch over him in the night and the amazing Maddie to feed him, dress him, and play with him all day. (And today– when I wanted to sleep– there was “Keegy!” who came and chased Jack around the backyard so I could crawl off to bed.)

Years from now we’ll fill Jack in on these days– how everyone took it in turns to keep him from feeling our sadness. And tell him how he’s checked our grief somewhat with his very existence. In the meantime we’ll hope that for better endings to full sentences.

Christy the Sparrow

A friend of mine, Christy, has been a really good example lately.

I think there is a reason for all the people in our lives. I think there are things that we learn from each other. Tiny worms that work their way into our brains or hearts and set up camp. We take it for granted from the people closest to us– or can’t see the forest for the trees.

My pal Christy’s husband is an engineer at GM. They’re good people. They live carefully. Raise their children responsibly. Their kids are the kind of kids you want to know. They’re funny and kind and creative. Christy has homeschooled them– a fact that shocks her only slightly less than the rest of us.

I see Christy maybe three times each year– at parties or gatherings at our mutual Friends Wally & Katie’s… and we have barely enough time then to catch up on the pleasantries. In the meantimes we read each other’s blogs and occasionally comment on them or our facebook pages. (Ah! Modern friendship.)

Today GM declared bankruptcy. The news stories aren’t specific enough to include the GM family I care most about– Christy, her husband, and their brood– but if they did interview her the reporter would have to note that while she is angry and anxious she is also assured. Assured that her faith is not built on stock or the financial stablility of an automotive giant. Her faith is in God. Her faith is in an unwavering belief that their lives are in His hands and that His eye is on the sparrow and the engineers and the mothers and the children.

I can’t say I’m as steadfast as she– but her example has been a strong one. So even while we hold our breath to see what the trickle down effects of GM’s bankruptcy is on Robby’s office, we’ll say a prayer of thanksgiving (and good things) for Christy.

Swarming words

I get emails from some of you that ask, “Why no blogging lately?” 

My hands get tied up. Sometimes there is too much going on to nail down any of the thoughts– and really, the best thoughts are the ones I can’t put in print. It’s frustrating. And it’s what kept me from journalism school. Afraid of hurting this person or that with words. (Particularly when it’s so easy to do.)

I can hear the words buzzing sometimes. If I sit still too long they are there, humming as they gather themselves and hover just out of my reach. If I pick one out then there is a flood of others that follow. I have to shake my head clear of them all and reach for something to distract– Word Challenge on Facebook, a book (The Madonnas of Leningrad), or a silly thing on television (hello new season of Deadliest Catch! Ahoy Cap’ts Sig, Phil, et al.)

I clean out closets, sort the plastic containers in the kitchen, search for new recipes. And all the while the words are still sounding their buzzing in my ears.

Which sounds crazy, I know. Virginia-with-her-pockets-full-of-rocks crazy. Or Sylvia-with-her-head-in-the-oven crazy. (Did Virginia think she could escape the words as though they were bees? Slip under the cold water and be free of them? Did Sylvia try to scorch them? or, like Lorelai said on Gilmore Girls, was she just cold?)

At church I’m partnered with one of the kids in the confirmation class. I lucked out and got a great kid. She and I are supposed to read the Gospel of Luke. Reading it straight through is not exactly a comfort. We’re about a third of the way in and in the middle of all the “leave your stuff/family/life as you know it and follow me…” directives. And Jesus, in Luke, only seems to speak in Parables… which, forgive me for saying, must have been incredibly annoying to the disciples.
“Hey, Jesus– we’re running into town to pick up pita sandwiches– what sounds good to you?”
“My brothers, if a man at a wedding feast is sowing seeds in a field…”
“Uh, yeah. So… did you want turkey or cheese?”

Still. It keeps the buzzing at bay. Makes me a little calmer for an hour or two while I marvel at the ability of my confirmation kid to pull out the meaning dead on nearly every time.

I make pots of good tea– or splurge for large Iced Chai at the little coffee place downtown. I savor the chocolate covered almonds we bought last week. I take great delight in Jack’s silly songs that he makes up on the way to school. Snuggle the small baby of our dear friends. Slip into a good book or imagine myself in London with the latest issue of Hello magazine. Stretch out the last of my Christmas Lush box. Take long walks with my pal around our lovely, finally greening park. Curl up with Robby at the end of the day when the baby monitor is only static and the little black dog is softly snoring on Rob’s outstretched legs.

Eventually I’ll wrangle the words back into sentences. Get them to line up into paragraphs even… for now it’s enough to hope that maybe they’ll make something akin to honey if I leave them alone.

Good Friday Passover

Last night we drove past our town’s only Jewish temple. The parking lot was unusually full with cars and people carrying in casserole dishes. We remembered it was the first night of Passover– so figured there must be a big Seder dinner.

Me: Let’s crash the Seder dinner.
Robby: Sure. Yeah. We’ll fit right in with our United Methodist Camp sweatshirts on.
Me (looking down): Oh.

Last week we went to one of the Catholic fish frys. There are about a dozen different ones within a 10 mile radius to choose from… our pals, Chris and Susan, were headed to the fry at St. Mary’s so we met them there. I’ve been to several of the local frys– hit this parish’s version and that’s… I was excited to see the basement of St. Mary’s. It felt illicite. Sneaky Protestants.

Susan, our only true Catholic, ignored our suggestions for dinner conversation. (Topics included “I think it’s just a representation of the body and blood of Christ” and birth control.) Chris and I were sure if we could just throw in a few references to the Pope we’d fit right in and not be detected for our Protestant stance. Bring on the papists! We were speaking their language.

Me: I really admire your framed 11 by 14 inch photograph of the Pope in your dining room. It’s really nice.
Chris: Thank you. We love the Pope.

The fry was a good one– we took over a big, round table with our four adult selves and the littler bodies of our Jack and their baby. The boys were a little disappointed that the beverage selection did not include beer while Susan and I were delighted at the big pieces of three layered cake (pink frosting flowers!). The servers put steamed broccoli on Jack’s plate and I figured, well, more vegetables for me– when the little man surprised us all and ate the spears with relish. Wow. Years from now there will be pilgrimages to St. Mary’s basement made by mothers and fathers of toddlers who observe the Miracle of the Broccoli. (He also enjoyed his fried “chicken”… you know the old saying, Trust the Gorton’s Chicken Man…SHHHHHH.)

I would have made a great Catholic. And a pretty good Jew, too. I’m not a great Methodist– but I’ll work on it. In the meantime maybe I can crash a Rammadan midnight feast or a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Stirring Creatures.

We’re still quite a few hours out till Jack is nestled all snug in his bed with the sugarplum dreaming… (not that he’ll dream about sugarplums. My money would be that any food dreams of his involve Little Ceasar’s pizza pizza or the little heart cookies my mother brings him from France…) We’re in pretty good shape. The last two days have been a frenzied attempt at getting everything done and ready so that tonight and tomorrow we can just relax.

Enjoy our pretty tree.

Light a Christmas Wreath candle.

Eat our weight in frosted cookies.

Everything is wrapped. Delivered even. All that’s left, after Robby runs the vacuum, is to rearrange the little creches so that Jack can find baby Jesus in the morning. Put the presents under the tree. Hang our stockings.

First off tonight is Jack’s Christmas choir in the children’s service at our church. Sunday’s version was a hoot. My little son brought down the house with his perfect, if exaggerated mimicry of his poor choir teacher’s gestures urging the children to sing louder. And the weird little dance he did in the middle of Away in a Manger.

Tonight, with his grandparents and AunT  and great Granny and our friends in the congregation who knows what he’ll do.

After church we’ll eat beef and noodles. I made the noodles this morning as my Granny taught me and used her rolling pin to roll out the stiff dough as thin as possible. (One batch I left thicker for my sister who doesn’t like them thin.)

We’ll light a candle on my Dad’s grave. Put out cookies for Santa, carrots for the reindeer, and sprinkle glittery oats on the snow for Rudolph to better find our house. Read our new Christmas book and put on our new jammies. Tuck Jack into bed. Help Santa with the Christmas.

To us all a good night.

Merry Christmas.

Home is Where the Sand is Brought

I’m back from the Woods. It was a good escape from the reality of losing my hard drive. At camp there is only the reality of, well, camp. And that’s a good thing. Cooking, for example, even the abbreviated camp food version, is a process that requires you to slow down. Showering is a 75 yard walk through the woods to the bathhouse. Fires need to be built. Tents swept out.

All those little tasks add up to fill your camp day. It pushes out all the thoughts of files that have to be recreated, rebuilt, remembered. The photos that don’t exist anymore. The banked episodes of “Deadliest Catch” that I didn’t get to watch.

And then there are all the camp activities that we look forward to– the campfires and singing and comraderie. The hike to the beach. The hobo pies and s’mores. Those things that work their way into the cracks of the walls you build the rest of the year.

While we were at camp our phones had spotty coverage– we’d get text messages hours past when they were sent. Most of the time the little bar was through the little phone icon meaning we had no service at all. When my nieces left in the middle of the week we abandoned our phones entirely. It was nice.

I read a couple of books– my Friend Wallis’ Dad’s book, Deep River was the first on the list. Family seemed simpler when I was younger. The older I get the more I realize how very complicated families are. And how schewed our individual ideas of “normal” are because of our families. Wally is a true patriarch in all the best senses. He, the Christian pilgrim, is relatively uncomplicated. Yet only a generation separates him from the chaos and destruction of an alcholic grandfather. The book I read is an account of his father’s early life and conversion and subsequent ministry. Wally’s born in the last third of the book and it was startling to remember that these weren’t just characters in a story but flesh and blood people that I’ve met and loved. Weird.

A Year Without Made in China was my beach reading. It’s one family’s attempt to give up anything made in China– to extend their consumerism to other countries and other economies. Wal-Mart gets a lot of the brunt of the experiement– but really, my beloved Target isn’t any better. The fact that it is almost impossible to buy shoes manufactured this side of the Great Wall is scary. What kind of world will Jack grow old in? Will there be any industry left in the good old US of A at all?

It was good to read. Even better to have an excuse for not bringing along my laptop and work. Good to shake sand out of my shoes at night. Good to shiver in the 45 degree mornings waiting for the tea kettle to hiss. Good to see my little son take such joy in the singing.

And good to be with the church family for a week. They’re good people. Reality snuck it’s way in to the camp. One of the families at camp– a big, rollicking clan with three generations that are nearly impossible to sort out– had a hole in it. the oldest generation, the mother and father, weren’t at camp as one of the middle generation had just had a baby that wasn’t doing too well. On Tuesday we got the news that the little babe had passed away. His aunts and uncles and cousins stayed at camp and shared their grief and resilience, too. It tempered the rest of the week in that the petty annoyances disappated in the face of their loss. My lost laptop was suddenly less of a tragedy. The headcolds that Jacky and I were hosting were only a nusiance.

A lot of our friends don’t really get why we go to camp with our church. Or why we go to church for that matter. Maybe this year I can learn to articulate why it is worth the sand in the dryer vent and all the bother of organizing equipment and supplies and cooking under a tree.

Did I mention the s’mores?