Little Apartment in the City
Recently Brigid and I have started to read Little House in the Big Woods together. Myles read it himself a few years ago, and he occasionally sits with us when I am reading his favorite parts. He particularly likes scenes that involve descriptions of food. He salivates all through the first chapter as they are smoking and salting meat.
Of all the Little House books, I particularly like how in this one Wilder captured what it was like to be a five-year-old-girl who felt so content and secure in what many would consider a precarious existence. Her description of their attic, full of dried and smoked meats and vegetables put up for the winter, a seeming abundance to little Laura, and a fun play room to boot, really stuck with me. She really couldn't imagine it getting any better than that. At this point in her life, though, Laura didn't know any other existence. Until the chapter about going to the town of Pepin, she had never seen two houses close together, or a town, or the kids of things people could buy in stores.
I've wondered off and on over the last few years how my own kids would view their unusual (among our American family and friends, at least) lifestyle. We spend enough time back in the US that by now surely even Brigid knows what we're missing. No house or yard, for starters. Even with all the opportunity for envy, Brigid has surprised me by some of her greatest longings.
She wishes we were back in the old apartment.
Of course, she doesn't remember the problems with the landlord, the coal dust that streaked in through the cracks around the windows and plagued me all winter long, the failing electrical system, the absence of a playground (or any green space), the bitter cold of the unheated nights outside of the municipal heating season, or any of a number of the things I hated about it.
But every so often, she tells me she misses living there. Like when I am cleaning, she remembers I used to give her a rag and a bucket and allowed her to help out with scrubbing the floor. She considers this one of the highlights of living in that dirty place. Now our apartment has wood laminate floors, and I'm afraid her splashing and sloshing might cause damage. I let her try her hand at the mop sometimes, but to her it isn't the same. It isn't the two of us, together, on the floor getting the job done.
What she misses most of all, she says, is when we all slept in one big bed together in our last apartment. She remembers it being cozy and loving, much like Laura Ingalls Wilder described her life in what I would have thought to be terrifying isolation in the woods. What Brigid doesn't realize is that we had to sleep together in the colder months when our space heater couldn't keep up the freezing nights in late October, or especially when our space heater and the city heat was no match for exceptionally cold January nights. Brigid does like having her own bedroom and her own bed, but at night she often says she really liked when we stayed together.
We've been in this apartment for a year now, and still Brigid thinks back on how great it used to be for her. I try to point out some of the improvements that she can understand over where we spent the three years before that, like that we now have an area where they can play outside that isn't part of a parking lot or the dead end of an alley. I think she does realize that we are in a better situation now, but that doesn't stop her from thinking that everything used to be just as wonderful.
Of all the Little House books, I particularly like how in this one Wilder captured what it was like to be a five-year-old-girl who felt so content and secure in what many would consider a precarious existence. Her description of their attic, full of dried and smoked meats and vegetables put up for the winter, a seeming abundance to little Laura, and a fun play room to boot, really stuck with me. She really couldn't imagine it getting any better than that. At this point in her life, though, Laura didn't know any other existence. Until the chapter about going to the town of Pepin, she had never seen two houses close together, or a town, or the kids of things people could buy in stores.
I've wondered off and on over the last few years how my own kids would view their unusual (among our American family and friends, at least) lifestyle. We spend enough time back in the US that by now surely even Brigid knows what we're missing. No house or yard, for starters. Even with all the opportunity for envy, Brigid has surprised me by some of her greatest longings.
She wishes we were back in the old apartment.
Of course, she doesn't remember the problems with the landlord, the coal dust that streaked in through the cracks around the windows and plagued me all winter long, the failing electrical system, the absence of a playground (or any green space), the bitter cold of the unheated nights outside of the municipal heating season, or any of a number of the things I hated about it.
But every so often, she tells me she misses living there. Like when I am cleaning, she remembers I used to give her a rag and a bucket and allowed her to help out with scrubbing the floor. She considers this one of the highlights of living in that dirty place. Now our apartment has wood laminate floors, and I'm afraid her splashing and sloshing might cause damage. I let her try her hand at the mop sometimes, but to her it isn't the same. It isn't the two of us, together, on the floor getting the job done.
What she misses most of all, she says, is when we all slept in one big bed together in our last apartment. She remembers it being cozy and loving, much like Laura Ingalls Wilder described her life in what I would have thought to be terrifying isolation in the woods. What Brigid doesn't realize is that we had to sleep together in the colder months when our space heater couldn't keep up the freezing nights in late October, or especially when our space heater and the city heat was no match for exceptionally cold January nights. Brigid does like having her own bedroom and her own bed, but at night she often says she really liked when we stayed together.
We've been in this apartment for a year now, and still Brigid thinks back on how great it used to be for her. I try to point out some of the improvements that she can understand over where we spent the three years before that, like that we now have an area where they can play outside that isn't part of a parking lot or the dead end of an alley. I think she does realize that we are in a better situation now, but that doesn't stop her from thinking that everything used to be just as wonderful.
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