Life Lessons from Little House on the Prairie

I often find myself longing for the days of “Little House on the Prairie.” I realize that would mean that a common cold could result in a near death experience, but it might just be worth it to hear my children respond to my every request with a polite “Yes, ma’am.” And I think I would be OK with getting up at the crack of dawn to milk the cows and gather eggs rather than having to pack up four kids and drive to the store just for those two must-have items.

I have been trying, for years, to get any of my four children to watch and appreciate this epic saga as I did. So far, just the other night, my oldest daughter came out of her room in tears telling me that she finally watched some “Little House” and “a sweet puppy died and it was really, really sad” and demanded to know WHY I would make her watch something so sad!

While I feel bad that her first viewing experience was a bit heartbreaking, I believe it would serve my children well to discover a time when children had nothing but the clothes on their back and the love of their Ma and Pa, and felt like the luckiest kids in the world. I would love for them to see Laura Ingall’s face light up at the sight of a only single shiny penny in her Christmas stocking.

I want them to see kids who worked hard, really hard, for the greater good of the whole family, and they never complained. I want them to admire kids who never thought of themselves, who asked for nothing, and who felt genuine remorse if they NEEDED a pair of shoes or a new pencil because they knew and appreciated how very hard their Pa worked for his money.

I would love for my children to witness how much these children enjoyed life without television and cell phones and computers and how they could blissfully entertain themselves for hours and make up hundreds of games with a ball or a stick and a buddy or two.

I want them to take note of the fact that their chores thus far consist of feeding their pets, folding laundry and emptying the dishwasher, and if they are not careful, they could be out plowing fields, (or something equally laborious.)

I need them to appreciate the fact that while I am chauffeuring four kids all over town, to various activities, children used to walk three miles just to go fishing with their pal.

I want them to count their blessings that they have never been punished with a belt.

I think that they could learn a lot about how to turn the other cheek to a persistent bully, and how to push her down a hill in a wheelchair when she crosses the line and has it coming.

I want them to see and learn that money does not buy happiness or good manners.

I want them to have faith, even when life is full of struggles and sacrifice.

I want them to believe in “love at first sight” and “’til death do us part,” even when things are not always so “happily ever after.”

I want them to be more thankful for their beautiful life, but to know that life is full of hard knocks: pets die, young girls go blind, little sisters fall down an abandoned well, crops get destroyed, kids get trapped in snow storms while walking three miles home from school. And I want them to remember all of this when they are whining about their “annoying brothers” barging into their room all the time, or because I didn’t get the “sparkly” pencil case for back-to-school, or how I make them take the bus to school instead of driving them.

And perhaps most importantly, I want them to appreciate the values of a society that genuinely cared about its own. I want them to observe and believe in a “love thy neighbor/help thy neighbor/do unto others” kind of world. The kind where people actually live that way, rather than just preaching about it, and demanding that everyone else live that way, and constantly arguing over exactly which way is actually “the Lord’s way.”

We could all learn a lot from the Ingalls family and the residents of Walnut Grove. They were not easy times, but they were simpler, more compassionate times when nothing was taken for granted. In the wise words of Charles “Pa” Ingalls, “How can you ever know true happiness if you never feel real sorrow?”

About the Author

Mothering Without my Mother

A few days ago, I was at the playground with my children, surrounded by three lovely grandmothers who were out with their grandchildren. My 5-year-old was on the swings. I was coaching my 2-year-old up a ladder, when suddenly I saw all of the grandmothers lunge and gasp in one direction: toward the swings. I turned around just in time to see my son stand up, dust himself off, and say “I’m okay, Mom.” And all I could think in that moment was how happy my late mother would be if she could be here to have a mild panic attack watching her daring grandson fling himself off the swings.

Today is the third anniversary of my mother’s death. April 6, at 5:56 a.m. I can’t remember the exact time that each of my children were born, because I was too enamored with my new baby in my arms to hear a stranger tell me what time it was, but I will never forget the moment when one of my mother’s best friends announced her time of death right after we watched her take her last breath.

I gave my mother her very first (and dare I say, favorite) grandchild four years before she died. My daughter, Madeline, changed my mother’s life. She had spent her entire life searching for happiness and struggling to meet unrealistic expectations, some that were self-inflicted, and some that others had scarred her with. She just wanted to be good enough, and never felt like she was. But when she became “Grandma,” she was perfect. In my daughter’s eyes, Grandma could do no wrong. And that was all that mattered to her.

All of the sudden, her once heavy-hearted spirit was light and laughing, and her sad and worried eyes were twinkling and dancing. She had finally found the person who had no expectations of her, the person who would never find fault in her, the person she made blissfully happy without even trying. My mother was the ultimate grandmother. In fact, “grand” was an understatement.

One of the hardest things about watching someone slip away slowly over months and months, is watching so many other things slowly slip away with them. For me, it was “Grandma.” I thought I might be okay without “Mom” (and maybe someday I will), but I was not ready to lose Grandma, and I certainly was not prepared for my daughter to lose her very first best friend. One day, I sat at her bedside in the hospital showing her pictures from our family vacation and she asked me who the pretty little girl was. It was her beloved granddaughter. I was crushed. Grandma was gone. Her brain tumor had erased her grandchildren.

I have four children now, two of whom my mother never met. I told her about No. 3 as she laid on her death bed, right after we were told she wouldn’t make it through the night. I’ll never know if she heard me, but she did make it through that night. And my youngest daughter, little Ginger, is my mother’s namesake. She is so glowingly happy to be alive and here with us that I am convinced she is the keeper of her grandmother’s soul.

There are still the occasional days when I need my mother. But there is not a single day that goes by when I don’t desperately need my children’s grandmother.

A grandmother’s love is magical and enchanting. It is filled with ice cream and candy and laughter and song. Grandma’s house is where our children go to escape from the word “no.” Grandma’s house is where the world revolves around little people. Grandma’s house is where a 2-year-old gets to be in charge.

Grandma was my saving grace. She would eagerly babysit her grandchildren, and pretend that she was doing me a favor, when we both know she considered it a gift. Grandma loved my children as much as I do (maybe more, if that’s even possible.) Grandma was the one to listen to me whine about how my children drove me crazy and laugh in my face because I had it coming. Pay-back is a … grandchild.

It seems to me that while our children take ten years off our lives with worry and aggravation, grandchildren give them back with joy and celebration. I am so very thankful that I was able to make my mother a grandmother before she died. I owed it to her. And while I didn’t think it was possible, I think it helped me redeem myself after my rocky teen years. But now that she’s gone, I can’t help feeling like we have all been cheated.

Living without my mother is hard. Mothering without her is heartwrenching.

I Want a Guy..

Madeline: I want a guy who is tall and really hot and has gorgeous eyes and beautiful hair and who has some money and works hard and provides for our family but also makes time for his family and who supports me and whatever I want to do and who really loves me and is a really good father to our children.

Me: yes. That's exactly what you deserve. And don't give up until you find that.

This little declaration from my newly 13 year old daughter brought me some serious validation and peace of mind.  I don’t know how, at 13 years old, my girl has more wisdom than some of us will die wanting.  But I like to think I had something to do with it.  In fact, I like to think that her father and I, and our sincere but failed efforts to live happily ever after, taught her everything to do and not do.  

She is determined to have a hard working man who makes her feel safe and cared for.  Her father taught her that.  He has an unmatchable work ethic and knows how to earn and take very good care of his family.  His children want for nothing.  I mean, they’re kids, so they always want something.  But they have more than enough.  They’re childhood will never be forgotten.  

But that work ethic cost us at times.  My dad once told me, when I called him in tears because I was so lonely because my boyrfriend was a workaholic, “you can’t fault him for working hard.”  I’m not so sure that’s true.  There is a fine line between admirable and heartbreaking when a person puts work first.  Running a company may sound like a higher priority than pre-k graduations or t-ball games, but it’s not.  Part of that unforgettable childhood my children are having will be those memories of dad not showing up.  

She wants to have a family, because family is everything.  We’ve taught her that.  But she doesn’t want to be single-handedly responsible for parenting.  She will be a great mom who does anything for her kids, but she won’t be a stay at home mom who sacrifices EVERYTHING for the sake of her family.  She has plans.  Big plans.  And she’s gonna have it all.  But she has assured me that she believes that my staying home and raising our kids and putting myself last, always, made me happy, and was exactly what I wanted to be doing.  She knows I consider myself lucky to have had that opportunity.  She admires her dad for making it happen.  But she also sees me now, trying to get back on my feet without the help of a hard working man to provide for me.  She worries, and she is determined to never put herself in that position.  I taught her that.  I taught her to do what makes you happy, but to be self-sufficient, a lesson I learned the hard way.  And it was worth it, to give her the confidence and wisdom to know better. 

Say I Love You

Once when I was at my father’s parents house, I looked at my daughter and was so enamored with her that I grabbed her and smothered her with kisses and said “I love you so much.”  My grandmother told me that she was so happy to hear me say that to my daughter.  “Not all kids get to hear that, you know?”  I didn’t know.  How do parents resist that overwhelming urge smother their babies with love and adoration?  And in that moment, I realized how differently my parents were raised.  My father was raised by an adoring mother who knew the value of her words, and my mother was raised by a well intentioned, stern italian father who spoke more to criticize than to praise or adore.  And it showed.  

My mother struggled with words like “proud” and “love”.  Make no mistake, she mothered with pride and more love than I sometimes deserved, but saying those words out loud was usually more than she could muster.  It was as if no one taught them to her.  But she proved her undying love so certainly that it never even occurred to me to be miss the words.  On the contrary, my father won’t let me off the phone without an “i love you” exchange, and a few moments of gushing praise about how proud he is of the mother I am.  Yet I have only one vivid memory of my mother uttering such words.  It’s vivid because it was so rare, not because she was on her death bed.  

The last coherent thing my mother said to me was “I’m proud of the mother that you are to my grandchildren”.  It wasn’t exactly on her death bed, but she was in bed as she had just lost the use of her legs to a brain tumor and I’m sure she knew that the rest of her body probably wasn’t far behind.  She asked me to sit down and then said those very words, with a strength that, ironically enough, she didn’t have before her illness.   Maybe she knew her brain wasn’t going to let her remember who she loves, or what makes her so happy and proud.  Maybe her fading memory let her forget that she spent her lifetime struggling with the inner strength and self assurance to express her deepest thoughts without fear of shaming.   Whatever the reason, she said those words with a confidence and sincerity that only a terminal brain tumor could finally grow.   And those will forever be some of the most important words I have ever heard.  

It should be so easy to express our joys.  Yet we often spit out the more hurtful and scarring words without any thought or hesitation, and then choke on the words that we’d all love to hear.  Why do we hesitate to say the most beautiful things, the words that pull us closer, right by the heart strings?  If my parents are any indication, it is all about the parenting (isn’t everything?).  We have the power and responsibility to teach our children to love unabashedly.  We have to give them the confidence to express themselves without the irrational fear that love hurts.  We can’t burden them with a weakeness that has them grasping at a strength which can only be found on a deathbed.   You love them.  Tell them.  Tell them often.  Tell them to ensure that they will tell your grandbabies.  

The other day, my  5 year old caught me starting at him and said, “I know, I know, you love me.”  Yes, I say it so much it’s almost annoying, and I mean it, wholeheartedly, every single time.  

Love out loud.  It’s what the world needs now.  

Charge through it.

I’ve hear the tales of mom’s who lose themselves to motherhood.  We sacrifice it all for the greater good of our family because we are mom and if mom doesn’t do it, who will.  No one loves like Mom.  Mom is Mom and there is no one like Mom.   

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed these years of giving my absolute all to my all-too-often-thankless family who far too rarely ask me what I need.  I sadistically enjoy pushing myself and striving to please people who are constantly reminding me what I’m NOT doing for them.  Those genuine smiles and fleating moments of geniuine admiration and graciousness and gratefulness, when they just can’t help but admit that I’m actually the best person in their whole life, have always been enough to shake the lingering feeling that I am a huge dissapointment to them.  But they are children.  My children.  And it is my job to shake that selfishness out of them.  Children are selfish.  Innately selfish.  And it is a huge parental responsibility, for the sake of the greater good of all mankind, to teach them that selfishness is unacceptable.  No, you simply may not walk this earth thinking that you are the most important thing on it.  And while I can’t stress enough how difficult that is to explain to a toddler, or a 15 year old oldest child, or her three younger siblings (because when you have three siblings nothing in life is ever fair, EVER!), I never imagined I would be tolerating it from the man who was supposed to be in these parenting trenches with me. I never imagined that he would let me get so much deeper into those trenches, alone, and up against four kids.  i didn’t stand a chance.  

So I lost a battle.  I sacrificed myself and took one for the team.  I took on a very big little army and I didn’t have the back up that I needed when those trenches got dark and deep.  And I let my guard down, heading into enemy territory (parenthood) with a selfish partner.  I needed someone who was going to follow me into the depths of hell when need be, and who would reach down and grab me and pull me up when it was painfully obvious that I was in over my head.  I needed that.  You can’t just hunker down and make yourself comfortable in the parenting trenches.   Especially when you have four kids.  Just because I manage to keep us all alive and get dinner on the table and rarely ask you to lift a finger doesn’t mean I’m winning the battle.  There is a war going on, and  that is not the level of solidarity and united front that wins wars.  

But that’s what mom does.  I was so blissfully enthralled in this parenting war and so madly in love with my four enemies (precious babies) that I failed to notice that my back up was…back…way, way back.   Definitely out of reach and practically out of sight, unless it was his turn for my affection.  But I charged through.  I always charge through.  Even now, after I have surrendered to one painfully lost battle, after I have armed my kids with some destructive resentment and bitterness to use against me, I continue to charge through.  after my broken heart finally convinced me that I might be stronger on my own rather than weakened by the dissapointment of a life partner who didn’t love me with all his heart and who I couldn’t count on to be by my side if he simply didn’t want to, I let go, and charge through.  

That’s what mom does.  And it was worth it because if there is one thing my kids have learned, it’s that I would take a bullet for them, even from their own smoking guns.  I’m mom, and you will put me through hell while I raise you to not be a selfish prick, and you will hate me and you will blame me and you will unleash all of your frustrations, whether significant or utterly ridiculous, my fault or yours, on me.  It will all fall on me.  Mom.  Because only a mom can forgive you over and over again as you fail and grow and (god willing) learn to get over yourself.  

I feel like a lone soldier these days. Deeper in the trenches than I have ever braved before.  But somehow I feel stronger just knowing that I’m on my own rather than looking behind me and always feeling dissapointed.  

Milestone: Our first broken heart...

“I was always worried about his feelings and ignoring my own. I apologized when it wasn’t my  fault. I allowed myself to tolerate it when he stopped showing me the kind of affection I wanted. I think I lost myself a little.”  

She sure did.  My daughter fell hard in love.  She held out for the real deal and she went all in for the very first time, and it was big.  It changed her.  She wore a giant smile and exuded a radiant happiness.  Love.  She had discovered love. She was in love.   His happiness meant everything to her, and it can be very easy to lose yourself to that.  

It was a great first love, one that appeared worthy of my girl.  He often recognized and gushed over all of the beautiful things about her, inside and out.  They wore matching giant smiles.  It was genuine and unabashed and I admired it.  It reminded me that love is beautiful and happy and well worth the risks, and quite honestly, it healed that last seemingly loveless piece of my broken heart.  It made me wholehearted again.  And then it shattered my baby’s heart.  

I was lucky to be wholehearted again, and to have healed my own shattered heart just in time to have the strength and wisdom to help her put her’s back together.  I will never forget the tears and despair and pain and confusion in her eyes as she sat across from me, blindsided, trying to make sense of it all.  I remember her asking me questions that she knew I couldn’t possibly have the answers to, even after 43 years of dealing with boys and love and heartache.  She was in so much pain that she was pleading with the one person that she often seems to think doesn’t know anything, for any answer that would make it hurt a little less.  How could love feel so good and then so very bad?  And with all of my newly healed heart, I felt my own first devastated broken heart all over again.  And while we both knew I didn’t have any answers for how someone who loved her could rip our heart out,  I had the experience and wisdom and scars to know that we were both going to survive this, and persevere.

My girl is, by nature (and nurture), strong and not easily rattled.  She is calm, cool and collected.   So as I watched her wallow and sink into sadness, rattled as hell, it shook me to my core.  I cried many, many tears at the very thought of my girl’s tears and the shared sympathetic pain that inevitably comes from being forever connected to my babies by the heart strings.  I knew what she was carrying was very heavy and nothing I could do could ease that.   I knew that to her, it felt eternally hopeless and painful and insurmountable.  But I knew better.  I knew that not only would she heal and love again, but she will also have her heart broken again...and again and again. 

In true Madeline form, she’s bounced back nicely, seemingly well aware that it’s his loss.  If we are very lucky, we learn some very important lessons from our first gut wrenching broken heart, and each one that will inevitably follow. Listening to my 15 year old reflect on her first love and loss with wisdom beyond her years and  resilience and sincere honesty and genuine introspection, and when all is said and done, no regrets, gives me great comfort and hope that she will one day, even before her time, be nearly unbreakable.  

I like to think that my children were all Inherently born with all of the lessons that I already learned for them the hard way, but love and loss is one of those things we all have to live and learn.  

Wholehearted

"She never seemed shattered;
To me, she was a breathtaking
mosaic of the battles she had 
won."

My heart is not shattered anymore.  It is no doubt battered and bruised, but I am once again, wholehearted.  I’ve let go of angry and bitter.   I think sadness may always linger.  And that’s ok.  I no longer resent the fact that I gave so much of my time and heart and oozed love for someone who couldn’t do the same.  I’m sad that our family had to pay so dearly for that.  But I found a strength that I desperately needed to walk away from it, by digging deep to get my kids through it.  And I have found a peace of mind and heart in hearing my once broken hearted babies assure me that they understand why I gave up on my relationship and still know, unequivocally, that I will never give up on them.  

I’m not afraid of love.  I remember it so fondly.  It has quite literally barged into my life these last few years, when I most desperately needed to be remind that I was worthy of it, and when I most certainly could not reciprocate with my shattered, war weary heart, as wholeheartedly as I was genuinely built to do.  I’ve learned some crushing lessons the hard way.  One is how selfish it is to offer a genuinely passionate lover with the very best of intentions, who looks at you as though they see their home and future in your eyes, and feels lucky, genuinely lucky to have you, anything less than the very same in return.  And another, is that I can love a man with all my healing heart, and still know when to look him in the eye and say “you’re just not the one”, because I was not built to be that selfish.  We all deserve someone who is convinced we are the one. 

I’ve had some great loves.   Loves that have shaped my vision of love and made me feel worthy of my quest for genuinely happy ever after.  Loves that have taught me that I deserve respect and loyalty and honesty and friendship and love.  Loves that I will love forever, even if they taught me a few of those lessons the hard way.  Loves I have loved enough to let go.  And I’ve been reminded of and become very familiar with the kind of lover i am when i am fearless and wholehearted; selfless, nurturing, supportive, romantic and passionate as hell, and how lucky someone will be to have the whole hearted me again.  

And I have forgiven the man who once had this whole hearted and devoted love in the palm of his hands, nurturing him and his children with all her heart and soul, and shattered it because he couldn’t help but always wonder if he could do better.  I’ve healed enough to know that he probably did love me quite a bit, but wasn’t about to (or able to) make himself vulnerable enough to do so as selflessly and unabashedly as i thrive on.   I’ve grown enough to feel genuinely sad for him (for us) for that, and to know I can’t fix it.  

Love.  I am not short on love.  I have been swimming in love since the day I became a mother and I soak in that blissfulness.  But my healed, whole heart has reminded me that I am a lover; a fiercely passionate lover.   And it’s scars remind me that I’ve earned my high standards and great expectations and that it takes courage to love fearlessly and with an insatiable passion,.   And it’s peaceful resilience has convinced me to be patient and that I can trust it, wholeheartedly, to know when it finds and feels “the one”.