Little thoughts from Little House

For all you history buffs out there, today marks 160 years since Almanzo Wilder was born.

Since we just finished reading Farmer Boy we thought this was another day worth commemorating. We never got around to drawing horses to celebrate, but we can do that tomorrow.

As I've mentioned before, it's certainly been enlightening reading the Little House books this winter. We just started On the Banks of Plum Creek and right there in chapter 1 they find out they have to live in a dugout. They live in the dirt! Poor Caroline!

In thinking about it, though, I think we have life way harder nowadays. Here are some examples:

• They never ran out of their favorite crackers.
• They never had to flip the circuit breaker when it tripped thanks to running two appliances at the same time.
• They never went 3 days with a broken water heater during a snowstorm.
• They never had electric baseboard heaters in a state where you pay roughly 22 cents per kWh for electricity.
• They never felt guilty about screen time.
• They never ran to Lowe's in the evening to pick up some mouse traps.
• They never had to stand up to get more tortilla chips when they ran out with salsa still in the bowl.
• Their kids never got grumpy after shots.
• They never had to scrape ice off the windshield.
• They never had to return books to the library that they wanted to renew.
• They never had to troubleshoot internet problems.
• They never had to take their kid's coat off before putting them in the cold car seat.

And so on. Talk about an easy life!

I'm joking of course. I really like having crackers, electricity, hot water, computers, stores, vaccines, cars, libraries, and Internet as part of my life, even when they lead to annoyance or don't work properly.

But I confess I've been a little jealous of the families as we've read the books. The way the books portrays things makes it sound like they always had lots of hard work but not much stress to accompany it. Things were routine for the most part, and they stayed too busy to realize it was boring. (Who knows if this is really how it was. There's a lot that was fictionalized.) For the most part, they seemed incredibly content.

And in contrast, well, you know me. I complain about only having one church-sponsored activity I can take the kids to each week (institute) compared to the six or so I had last year. And meanwhile Caroline Ingalls spent entire winters cooped up in her house! And they couldn't even make it to church on Sundays because of snow and distance. (Incidentally, that was part of why I complained yesterday. I was so sick of my house and so sad church was canceled due to another dumping of snow.)

So I've had some serious reflection about how they survived those long winters without any of the modern conveniences and distractions we enjoy. Right now I don't have much of a better answer than "They just did." Somehow they just gritted their teeth and got through it, and managed to enjoy it while they were in it. They didn't expect to spend their lives entertained, nor did they expect to fill their toddlers' lives with preschools, trips to museums and parks and zoos, or even trips to see family. And somehow they still managed to raise well-adjusted children more often than not.

Except for Almanzo's cousin. He really was a pill.