Laura Ingalls Wilder

I love Laura Ingalls Wilder.  When you read her series of books, you can’t help but think how you feel like your part of her family growing up in and experiencing the pioneer days,  All the inventions, the building of new towns, even the violence, all seem so real.  She remembers everything.  When you read  her words, they are so descriptive.  You feel the wind and smell those prairie flowers and  see that endless prairie sky.

I read this series not as a child, but later on, when the tv series came out.  I guess I was more of a late teen.  I was curious about  her stories, so I bought the set and read every one.  I was totally lost in them, and  as I read , felt I was the camera person watching and filming her family experiences on the sidelines. I even bought her autobiography, and can’t even fathom the fact she was the last one in her immediate family to pass away .  She had to see each one of them die before her.  How sad that must have been to someone who had such fond and vivid memories.  I pray this doesn’t happen to me.

Because of Laura Ingalls Wilder, we now know of her family.  The names, their characters , their friends and even their homes and places they lived.  They will always be alive now because of her, and that’s  her legacy.

Their is one part  in her series that always stuck with me (besides the very sad part where Jack the dog,dies), and that’s where Laura asks about “Auld Lang Syne” after Pa plays it on the fiddle:

“When the fiddle had stopped playing, Laura called out softly, “What are the days of auld lang syne, Pa?”

“They are the days of a long time ago, Laura.” Pa said. “Go to sleep, now.”

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods…

She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now.  They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now.  It can never be a long time ago.”

“Now is now.  It can never be a long time ago.”  That quote haunts me and I can’t seem to forget it.  It seems so sad to me because I feel, or have felt, the same way.  Happy times I remember experiencing from my past that I never wanted to end, that’s when I have thought this. But these times do become “days of long ago”,  and that’s the sad part.  My parents have passed away, my children have grown up and I still think it could never be a long time ago.  It does often make me sad.

I guess the lesson here is to be happy in and live the most of each day your given,

Laura Ingalls Wilder

 ”NOW”.  Then we won’t really regret the “long time ago” part.  It will always be “now”.

Thank you Laura for teaching us so much!  Cheryl

p.s.  I will definitely illustrate a picture of this quote, you can bet on it.

[Via http://cherylmcnulty.wordpress.com]