wow, this was nothing like the books, I thought. I kept watching, even though I was feeling tired and sort of feverish. Maybe I had fever ânâ ague, though I wasnât sure what ague was. Was it like feeling achy, only quainter?
Meanwhile TV Laura kept babbling in voice-over about things she wrote down in her remembrance book, or else would write down if she had one, I couldnât tell which; maybe there was a continuity problem in the script, but of course it didnât matter, did it, because this wasnât really Laura, and none of this had ever happened.
But I was still watching, and now TV Laura was trying to help her pa stack bags of grain in the shed of the feed store, and then all these other townspeople came to help them, too, and well, it was sweet. Sappy as it all was, I slouched back in the couch cushions and let it wash over me. I felt like I was eight years old again and trying, the way I know I did at that age, to hold everything in my mind all at onceâeverything I saw and felt and wanted to keep close with me.
Like one day, when I was around that age, I actually took a piece of paper and wrote, If I should ever have a daughter, I will give her the name âLaura Elizabeth,â in memory of my favorite author, Laura Ingalls Wilder. It felt very important to write the words in memory of , aware that remembering was a sort of magical act. I had the sense that I was entrusted, perhaps even single-handedly, to carry the very fact of Lauraâs existence to a future generation. Oh, I know itâs hilarious now, but I put the piece of paper with this solemn inscription into an empty wooden jewelry box that I had and closed it up with its little brass latch. Then I waited for life to flow past and become part of Days Gone By, presumably carrying the wooden box with it on its invisible current until the moment I discovered it again. Which, Iâm sure, had to be no more than a week or two later, when Iâd decided I had better things to put in that box besides sacred intentions.
I hadnât thought about that in years, until this television Laura and her stupid hypothetical remembrance book reminded me. I wondered if maybe lately Iâd been more like my eight-year-old self than I realized; maybe Iâd been trying too hard to believe in everything I loved about the Little House books, trying to fit it all in precious little truth compartments: bites of bread, authentic memories, and so on.
I mean I knew what was real (the year 1867, Wisconsin, two pounds of lard, those gray people staring up from their photographs) and what wasnât (various myths about the American frontier, gigantic trees) and there was a lot of stuff in between that I wasnât quite sure about (moments of deep connection with Indian babies). But maybe those distinctions ultimately didnât matter, as long as I recognized them; maybe I didnât need to sort truth from fiction from exaggeration in order to go further into Laura World.
If I had a remembrance book, Iâd write down the time I let myself be completely deluded about the size of the trees in the Big Woods. And then Iâd go look for them anyway.
3.
Going to Town
YOU DONâT NEED a churn to turn cream into butter. I knew this. My friend Cinnamon, who writes cookbooks (and yes, that is her real name), has told me that an electric mixer can make the inverse emulsification process (aka âbuttery goodnessâ) happen in a matter of minutes. This is also why you commonly hear about people who accidentally turn whipped cream frosting into butter by letting the KitchenAid run too long. And then thereâs always the most basic butter-making method, the choice of classroom demonstrations everywhere, which is to simply shake a jar of cream vigorously until the butterfat separates and the class learns an important lesson about frontier labor and/or dairy science.
For me, though, the appeal of making butter the Little House
Meanwhile TV Laura kept babbling in voice-over about things she wrote down in her remembrance book, or else would write down if she had one, I couldnât tell which; maybe there was a continuity problem in the script, but of course it didnât matter, did it, because this wasnât really Laura, and none of this had ever happened.
But I was still watching, and now TV Laura was trying to help her pa stack bags of grain in the shed of the feed store, and then all these other townspeople came to help them, too, and well, it was sweet. Sappy as it all was, I slouched back in the couch cushions and let it wash over me. I felt like I was eight years old again and trying, the way I know I did at that age, to hold everything in my mind all at onceâeverything I saw and felt and wanted to keep close with me.
Like one day, when I was around that age, I actually took a piece of paper and wrote, If I should ever have a daughter, I will give her the name âLaura Elizabeth,â in memory of my favorite author, Laura Ingalls Wilder. It felt very important to write the words in memory of , aware that remembering was a sort of magical act. I had the sense that I was entrusted, perhaps even single-handedly, to carry the very fact of Lauraâs existence to a future generation. Oh, I know itâs hilarious now, but I put the piece of paper with this solemn inscription into an empty wooden jewelry box that I had and closed it up with its little brass latch. Then I waited for life to flow past and become part of Days Gone By, presumably carrying the wooden box with it on its invisible current until the moment I discovered it again. Which, Iâm sure, had to be no more than a week or two later, when Iâd decided I had better things to put in that box besides sacred intentions.
I hadnât thought about that in years, until this television Laura and her stupid hypothetical remembrance book reminded me. I wondered if maybe lately Iâd been more like my eight-year-old self than I realized; maybe Iâd been trying too hard to believe in everything I loved about the Little House books, trying to fit it all in precious little truth compartments: bites of bread, authentic memories, and so on.
I mean I knew what was real (the year 1867, Wisconsin, two pounds of lard, those gray people staring up from their photographs) and what wasnât (various myths about the American frontier, gigantic trees) and there was a lot of stuff in between that I wasnât quite sure about (moments of deep connection with Indian babies). But maybe those distinctions ultimately didnât matter, as long as I recognized them; maybe I didnât need to sort truth from fiction from exaggeration in order to go further into Laura World.
If I had a remembrance book, Iâd write down the time I let myself be completely deluded about the size of the trees in the Big Woods. And then Iâd go look for them anyway.
3.
Going to Town
YOU DONâT NEED a churn to turn cream into butter. I knew this. My friend Cinnamon, who writes cookbooks (and yes, that is her real name), has told me that an electric mixer can make the inverse emulsification process (aka âbuttery goodnessâ) happen in a matter of minutes. This is also why you commonly hear about people who accidentally turn whipped cream frosting into butter by letting the KitchenAid run too long. And then thereâs always the most basic butter-making method, the choice of classroom demonstrations everywhere, which is to simply shake a jar of cream vigorously until the butterfat separates and the class learns an important lesson about frontier labor and/or dairy science.
For me, though, the appeal of making butter the Little House
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