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Somedays I’m Ma, Somedays I’m Laura
All of a sudden I have an urge to head over to Oleson’s Mercantile to order a bolt of calico, a card of buttons, have the scissors sharpened and get a big spool of cotton thread. As I set another batch of sponge to rise for yet another loaf of homemade bread, I can’t help but think I should be wearing a poke bonnet, a long calico dress and a big, eyelet-trimmed white apron. “For days Mother and the girls made jellies and jams and preserves, and for every meal there was huckleberry pie or blueberry pudding.” Some days I’m Ma Ingalls, other days I’m Laura.
I’m not complaining. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the books of my youth. I read many of her books and often wished I could live on the prairie (whatever the heck that was), or in the Big Woods (wherever the heck that was) but I lived in the outskirts of Toronto. I loved the homeliness of those books. Life seemed so uncomplicated in her stories. I was eight when I read Little House in the Big Woods. The bookmobile librarian said I looked like the kind of girl who would enjoy a historic read. She was right. Every two weeks the bookmobile stopped at Melody Road School’s driveway, right after dinner. My sisters and I would bolt our dinner, promise to clean the kitchen when we got home and fly out the door to make the fiveblock run to the school yard. We wanted to be first in line so we could pick our favourite books. I read as many of the Little House books as I could get from the bookmobile lady. And, when I finished, I re-read those books. I re-read those books so many times, the librarian once said I would turn into Laura. She didn’t hurt my feelings. I was thrilled she would think such a thing was possible. I loved cooking and baking. I loved sewing and embroidery. My parents chose to build our childhood home in a fairly rural area, outside of Toronto. My mom was very adept at preserves, baking, butchering, curing and sewing. It had to be that way. Most of the families in the area lived the same way. There was a lot of skills sharing, bartering and food swapping in the early 1950s.
And, here we are, living in a rural community. Our homes are a bit closer together, but we’re struggling to get the basics some days. We might as well be on a vast prairie, by times. While we can see our neighbours, they may as well be a two-day ride away. It’s as difficult today to get a bag of flour, a jar of yeast and a length of fabric as it was then. We aren’t making calico bonnets and skirts, but many of us are piecing together face masks, caps and hospital gowns. So many of my friends are baking bread, cookies, squares and cakes as if their lives depended upon it. Many of of my friends are new to the baking game. Most of them have never spent so much time “working at home”. Thank goodness for social media platforms, which are flooded with recipes, hints and how to videos. Isolation has made us apocalypse preppers. I am sure the Ingalls family didn’t hoard toilet paper as bumpf didn’t come into everyday use until the 1880s, but I imagine they had an impressive cache of leaves, snippets of calico and Sears and Roebuck catalog pages hanging in the outhouse. I’ll bet dollars to donuts they didn’t waste anything that resembled TP. While I’m alright with a rustic loaf of homemade bread, or a batch of over-baked cookies, I can do without the “butt-colic” TP of the days of yore.
How am I doing? Me, I have strange dreams of being abandoned, or not being able to reach things that used to be within my grasp, or of my late parents telling me I can do this. Some mornings I don’t want to get out of bed. Some evenings I don’t want to go to bed. I worry about my single friends who are socially-distancing, but are really isolated. I worry about the people who say they’re doing alright yet their voice tells another story. I worry about the people who are now distanced from their support systems. I worry about the one person who doesn’t get it and then manages to “give it” to people who were managing their segregation.
Am I going to order a bolt of calico? I don’t think so. Will I plant a great big “victory” garden in my front yard? Perhaps, but not likely. Will I hatch a flock of potential dinners in my backyard? I doubt it. Will I keep baking bread? Perhaps, but it’ll be a treat thing. Will I haul out my collection of Little House books and give them a re-read? You bet. Books give me hope.
Be pioneers, my friends. Be safe and be kind and be smart.
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