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.

And they have all that flat pizza, too– it’s not fair!

Question of the day:

Do East Coasters appreciate their Mallomar availablity? Do they express genuine gratitude for the months that they can stroll into a market and pick up a box as easily as a carton of eggs??

Grrr.

Little Miss Muffet and her cracker spiders

I took treats to Jack’s class today. I missed the sign-up for the Halloween Party treats when we were sick last week so I asked the good Mrs. R if we could bring something today. His class has a snack every afternoon so she’s always grateful when we offer to pitch in.

I made the same spider crackers as last year with a few changes– Ritz cracker bodies sandwiched together with peanut butter (last year I had to use squirty cheese because his preschool had a peanut ban…), 8 matchstick pretzel legs, and raisinet eyes affxed with a little frosting. (The raisinet eyes might be about the most daring thing I’ve done in quite a while. Jack’s school– the whole district actually– has a “healthy foods” initiative that bans any sweets, cookies, cakes, and the like from the school. The good Mrs. R and I agreed that chocolate is a major food group. And, for crying out loud– it was chocolate covering a raisin. Still. I feel rebellious. Like I drove a Harley to school.) I brought apple sauce, too– it was on sale at the market.

The snack was a hit with Jack’s little schoolmates. Except for the kid who told me three times, “I can’t eat applesauce!” (Okay. junior. Got it. Had it the first time.) So Jack was pleased with me for the most part.

My visit coincided with the end of the Math Lesson today. I helped Jack’s table and the table near by with their 5s, 6s, and 7s. Fives are tough when you’re in kindergarten. There’s a lot to remember. Jack’s class has a little mantra of “Down! Big belly! Put a hat on top!” It’s stuck in my head now. And 6s, it turns out, are tricky if you don’t want them to look like a row of small bs. Sevens are a huge relief after all the concentration to get the 5s and 6s to behave– 7s are just “a straight line then s-l-i-d-e.”

It’s funny to see them all so furrowed up over the formation of their numbers. And how most of them were relieved when they got to the coloring part of the paper. I like how encouraging the good Mrs. R and her aide are in getting them to the ends of their papers.

We got to see the little preschool kids in their costumes, too. They don’t have school on Fridays so they had their Halloween party today and then paraded through the rest of the school in and out of the “big kids” classrooms and down the halls where there parents were snapping pictures and oohing/aahing. I felt old to have a Kindergarten kid with that group of parents.

There were some great costumes– a tiny Optimus Prime (he would be, to the real Optimus Prime about the size of a Happy Meal toy), and a fierce and scowling and incredibly politically incorrect Indian Chief (he carried a little tomahawk and grunted at us. I loved him). There were several little witches in multihued witch hats and witch dresses (a pink witch!?) and the cutest little Tinkerbell who dramatically flourished her little sparkly wand at each of us.

I’m looking forward to the party in Jack’s class tomorrow.

Noodle soup

The Husband is sick. Poor thing is miserable. Stuffy and fevery and achey. Nothing sounds good. Yesterday he picked at some Stouffer’s Mac & Cheese and a Jell-O cup.

So today I’ve rolled up my sleeves to get him to eat. A Slurpee. Fresh-squeezed orange juice. And noodle soup. I don’t like seeing him not hungry. And lethargic.

Let’s hope the soup helps.

Progress Report

Jack brought home his first semi-official Kindergarten progress report on Friday. His teacher, the very good Mrs. R is sending home weekly reports.

It’s a simple report– five statements of classroom behavior/expectations with three possible evaluation choices: needs improvement, satisfactory, and fantastic.  Jack brought home two satisfactories and three fantastics! Hooray! We’re very proud.

And grateful. Every day we are reassured that we chose the right school for him. And more and more we are assured that our prayers (that Jack would be matched with the right teacher) were answered.

We celebrated this first week’s report with dinner out at the new Japanese place. Jack even ate cucumber rolls (inserting some of the carrot garnish in his) and tempura shrimp in addition to his usual edaname.

We’d grade the day fantastic.

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.

Bring me my slippers!

It’s cold and blustery out tonight. We still haven’t turned on the furnace yet– both of us suspect that this cold snap will ease into an Indian Summer and we’re hoping to save a little money. Luckily there is no shortage of blankets and throws and sweaters in reach.

And it’s a good night to polish off the chocolate zucchini bread I made yesterday. Maybe with some hot tea. And to make up the caramel cake for Keegan’s 15th birthday tomorrow night.

Right now, though, I’m enjoying the nice heat from the laptop.

And the little black pup on my feet.

What’s up Dock?

This is the dock. But it's misleading because this is only half of the dock. Still, you'll get the idea.

We spent the weekend Up North for a last hurrah! at the cottage. In a few weeks Robby’s folks will close it up and declare the 2009 season over… Poor un-winterized little cottage must be shut up for the winter months.

This weekend we enjoyed the cool nights with fires in the fireplace and Lady’s delicious spaghetti sauce. The weekend was gorgeous– lovely September blue skies instead of the rain that the weathermen had warned.

The weather was a slight balm to the wretched task of pulling out the dock for the year. We have a great dock– it’s wooden and long. It ends in a nice platform. The neighbors have a fancy aluminum dock that is so long we once staged a “Dock Walk” that mimicked the Mackinac Bridge Walk. We had t-shirts printed up and we pretended to take a rest at the halfway point. When we reached their platform we celebrated while they sat, bewildered, in their boat. Their dock has lights strung along the length so that, at night, it gleams like the cliched necklace of jewels on the water.

Our dock is more simple. More homey. It is sturdy and straight and practical. The wood planks sometimes bow and bounce unexpectedly. The sections are, for the most part, worn smooth with an odd splinter here and there to keep the danger alive.

This weekend we pulled the dock out. We envy the floating docks we’ve seen in the south where the water does not freeze. Our little lake will be frozen by Thanksgiving and any docks left lazily in will become spinters pushed up against one of the shore banks.

Robby did the bulk of the heavy lifting. The rest of us– Lady, Padre, and me– pitched in to pull out the sections and lug them up the ever-shorter remaining dock to the shore where they are neatly stacked for the winter. The sections requred two of us at a time. One person can handle the standards. The trick is in the timing and trying not to end up crossing on the dock when someone is hauling in a piece.  Trying to keep Jack off the dock was also a challenge. He’d tied two of his little plastic boats together with a long string and was floating them in the inch deep water left near shore. The lake is so low at this late date that Robby had to walk the standards out to deep enough water to rinse off the muck and mussels from the flat bases. (Meanwhile I calculated whether we could get the neighbors to cheat their fancy aluminum dock towards our cottage splitting the difference between their lot and our’s on the neighbor in-between so that we could avoid this unpleasantness next year.)

It didn’t take us long but we were all sore and achey afterward. None of us are used to heavy lifting and so our shoulders especially took a hit. Lady made us her ridiculously good BLTs and spaghetti to assuage our moaning.

The lake can freeze now. We’re done with it.

Lunch Lady

Jack’s freaked out by the hot lunch at school.

He doesn’t eat the hot lunch– I pack him a lunch every day– but, nonetheless, it scares the heebies right out of him. I’ve tried to explain to him that there are some days he might want to get the hot lunch– the menu sometimes features pizza and grilled cheese sandwiches and cheeseburgers. But Jack is steadfast in his rather unreasonable fears.

He’s also convinced that there must be something wrong with the milk there.
Me: Jack– you know there’s cold, cold milk in the hot lunch line. If you want you can buy a milk at school…
Jack: No, Mommy! There’s only brown milk and red milk and blue milk. There isn’t white milk. I like white milk.
Me: Jack I’m positive that you can get regular white milk at school.
Jack: No, Mommy. (And he says this with his eyes closed and a sad, sad look on his face while shaking his head slowly.)

Today I got permission from the principal and the secretary to come and eat lunch with Jack. Jack was very excited. He thought this was a great idea. He couldn’t wait for school to start today so that it would “hurry up and be lunch time.” All morning he rushed me, “Mommy! Is it time to go to school yet?”  Consequently, we arrived at school about 20 minutes early to be early. We ran up the road to the gas station and picked up treats to kill some time. Jack trotted right into school announcing to everyone we passed, “My Mommy packed me a lunch but she’s going to come and eat a hot lunch with me.”

I came back at his lunch time. Jack’s school does recess first– so the secretary invited me to go out and see Jack. I watched him for a while behind the door– I don’t get to see him that way very often. He looked like every other little boy on the playground– running and somewhat dissheveled and calling out to his friends. It’s good to see him like this. To know that he’s having a good time at school. That he’s making friends. That he’s not like the little boy in his class that has a perpetually tear-stained face from being separated from his mother. Jack spotted me and waved me over. There are about a dozen balls being kicked and thrown about by the boys (the girls seemed to be content with the sidewalk chalk and swings. Things haven’t changed). I greeted his little friends and made small talk with the kids in his class that I’ve met. When it was time to line up for lunch Jack and I got into the line towards the back. He held my hand and commentated the walk into the lunchroom.

At his table we sat across from each other. A little Indian girl sat next to me. She’s chatty. We met on Monday when I took treats into Jack’s class for his birthday. Her mother comes to school in beautiful saris. The little girl has a disappointingly American name. She showed me her pink Hello Kitty lunch box and her disappointingly American lunch– a prepackaged peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The kid next to Jack had a sandwich, a container of tuna salad, crackers, fruit, and cookies. Jack had a piece of pizza, strawberries, milk (in his thermos), some Apple Jacks, and a cookie (at least I’m honest).

I got into the line with the kids for the hot lunch. There’s a Purell station, too. The children liked that everything was new to me. They were full of information on what would happen next. I was the last one in line so by the time I got my lunch– grilled cheese, tomato soup, carrot and celery sticks, fruit salad, and milk– there was only about 10 minutes left to eat.

Jack looked suspiciously at my lunch.
Jack: Mommy! What is that? Is that bread?
Me: Jack– it’s a grilled cheese. Look. See?
Jack: Is that celery? and carrots?
Me: Yes. And this is fruit. And this is soup. And this is (chomp, chew) an amazing sandwich. Do you want a bite?
Jack shook his head: Will you open my cookies?
Me: No. Eat your pizza.
The kid on Jack’s right, left, and to my right and Indian Michelle parroted, “Jack! You can’t eat cookies first!”
(This was explaining the leftovers in his lunch some days…)

The lunch lady came out to ask, “How’s your lunch, Mom?” I thanked her– for the lunch and for taking such nice care of the children. She’s a nice lunch lady with a teeny, tiny kitchen. It’s just crazy, crazy small. And she seems like a very squishy, kind woman. A perfect lunch lady for small children. I told her my Mom was a lunch lady when I was small. She liked that. “I volunteered one day, back in when I was in junior high, to work in the cafeteria– who knew this is what I would be doing now!?”

Lunchtime flew by. I almost couldn’t finish my soup. It was a great lunch and, by the end of it, I’d almost convinced Jack that the blue milk was really just plain, regular milk. (The brown milk turned out to be chocolate and the red milk was strawberry flavored.) Jack gave me a big kiss before he left to get in line and his little buddy Alarik gave me a hug. I got a lot of high-fives, too.

I know that Jack won’t always think it’s neat for me to come to school and eat or work… so I’m soaking this up now while I can.

And I’m definitely going back on grilled cheese day.

Party of One

It’s so weird to have Jack gone during the day. I miss having him near by. He misses me, too, but he’s settling into school.

Every afternoon I ask him, “What was your favorite thing about school today?” and it’s usually a variance on what he played on the playground or a story that the good Mrs. R. read. And then I ask him, “What was your least favorite thing today?” and his answer is always, “Missing you.”

That will change. One of these days it will be a different response– his least favorite thing will be the thing in his lunch he didn’t care for or some activity that wasn’t to his liking.

I’m being redefined. And trying to find my own routine. It’s slowly dawning on me that I can tackle bigger projects– the ones I’ve put off for the last 5 years. I can sew again. I can paint the family tree on the upstairs wall. I can rearrange the spare room. Clean the attic. Organize the basement.

I can read. During the day.

I can cook– not just throw-together-meals– but real meals. Ones that involve a cookbook and multi-steps.

The last real refining came when Jack was born. I had to wrap my brain around being his mother and what that meant. The last five years– over 1800–days have been spent with Jack as my primary focus.  I’m really grateful for that I was able to have those days with “Just Jack!” as my To Do List. I’m sorry that we’re already passed that stage–but I’m grateful that I didn’t miss any of it. Now– for seven hours a day– his needs aren’t solely in my hands– and I’m not sure what to do with my hands.

I’ll find my groove again. Just haven’t yet.

Meanwhile… I had to take my little truck, Alex, in today (Jack named him that after we saw Madagascar 2.) The belts are squeaking and when I turn the steering wheel there is squealish rasping. That can’t be good. I dropped off the truck at the shop– the owner is a friend of our’s and he does good work. He’ll take good care of Alex. And then I trekked downtown on foot. I looked like a baglady– new sling-tote bulging with bags of popcorn from this morning’s PTO sale, a seperate tote with library books. I returned Jack’s books (and he’ll be angry about that. He doesn’t completely understand the concept of the library. He’d check out the same four books over and over if I didn’t force him otherwise), put MadMen: Season 1 on hold, chatted with the library girl who turned me on to a great sweater pattern, and then picked up lunch at the little shop down the street (a 1/2 veggie wrap if you’re curious. And it was amazing).

I couldn’t have done the above easily with JackRabbit in tow. So, to look on the positive side of things, I guess there’s something to be said for the public school system.