Instead of following Oprah or Sheryl Sandberg, I have-for better and worse-heeded the stoic wisdom of Wilder, who writes in Little Town on the Prairie that “grown-up people must never let feelings be shown by voice or manner.” In other words: I’m passive-aggressive, I secretly pursue my own agenda, and-the greatest of self-care sins-I hide my feelings. For one thing, I’m convinced that Little House has prevented me from becoming an emotionally on-trend woman who “leans in” and “lives her personal truth.” This may be why I sometimes feel a little bit “out of time,” if not out of place, in 2016. Little House helped me to hold myself back from the 1980s of my childhood, and allowed at least a small part of me to grow up in the 1880s-or at least the 1880s as remembered in the 1930s. I’m not sure where, exactly, a book ends and a reader begins, but I know that as a kid I did my best to make that dividing line very fuzzy. I put on a bonnet to play Little House and wore a nightcap to bed so I could sleep Little House. I read the novels almost continuously from ages 6 to 10.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |