May 12, 2011

Two long plaits, tied with blue gingham ribbon, secured with black Goody hairties placed me in a world that I adored. You'd never suspect that long skirts were my forte, that in the summers I pretended I was running through tall prarie grass in my side yard. My affair with the life of Laura Inglass Wilder began like a lot of other things, with my mother. There is still a section of my bookshelf dedicated to the Little House on the Praire series. Though the plot of the first few novels are fuzzy, my mother's voice as she lulled me to sleep on schoolnights reading is clear. Laura's adventures in the Midwest were so different from my six-year-old-life, yet it was so easy to just slip into her shoes. As I grew older and more independent, my literacy grew as well. I'd tirelessly read through Laura's childhood, adolescence, and finally teenage years on my own, diving into her story. My imagination grew continuing on, memorizing the books and adding in my own little details. While I played in my yard, and climbed the white fence seperating the front from back yard I imagined that I was scurrying home from my one-room schoolhouse, racing to get home. As I emulated another era, I narrarated my stories to myself, as if someone was going to read my memoirs. If transcripts from those summer days were revealed to me now, I'd probably horrified. As a little kid who did like to read a lot, and was immersed in literature, my monolougues tended to exhibit much more flambayant diction than necessary. My parents encouraged the antics of this wacky little kid, looking on from a distance without interference, letting me stay in this world of fiction. My grandmother was undeniably the largest proponent of my literacy when it came to Laura's books. An english major and fourth-grade teacher who prided herself on her lack of conventionality, she indulged my imaginations on one particular sleep-over night. An old, scrappy video opens with handwritten signs crediting my grandmother as the "Director of Cininmantogaraphy," and quickly pans out to my little sister following my bossy directions. The light in my living room's windows fades over the course of the film, as does my sister's energy. Despite the fading surroundings and attention of my co-star, my confidence in my literacy, my grasp over the stories I had read finally came to fruition. To have my family encourage my developing literacy and all the oddities that came with it was incredibly valuable to my childhood and my person today. The Little House on the Prairie series allowed an awkward little girl to cross the border into a better world with enhanced possibilities, unlocked by a compulsion to take advantage of literacy.