Lina: Who do I remind you of, Mom?
Me: Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Lina: Because I'm wild and free?
Me: Yes, Flutterbudget.
For about forever now, I've been reading the Little House series to the kids, first to Henry, then John, and now Lina. Despite the boys ages and their interests in things like maurading bands of cat clans and comic books, they will stick around for their favorite parts: devastating locust plagues, decades-long blizzards, that sort of thing.
Lina listens as intently now as those boys of hers once did, only she seems more invested by the story. Underneath our cozy cuddling, she rolls away from me, looking off into her own private prairie, where I am not in the way.
When she does look at me, it's usually to make sense of how different her life is from theirs: "But why, Mom, why does she have to be a teacher? Why does she have to wear wool when it itches? Why does she have to be so good?" I look down at my little Half Pint, and temper my 10 minute answer to her one second question. She says, "She's always obeying, even when she doesn't want to."
And it's true. In nearly every book, Laura Ingalls Wilder (as a writer) tries to convey that underneath her obedience was a little girl who longed to give that Nellie a comeuppance or two. And it's also true that, despite the good press about her sister, Laura resents her sister, but would never say so out loud. It's hidden, but it's there. If they were alive today, there would be much therapy for them both. "Ma always liked you best."
Lina's wild childness is due, in some part, based upon the order of birth. How could a wee little child not learn to be steel-willed and independent of her brothers, especially these two? She is a constant explorer, with ideas springing from her head all the time, with questions always on her lips. She's the child who writes Zombie Mouse books, tearing at the pages to prove the mouse was "zombiefied." This is the little person who, when she was four, was pegged by our school's principal as being poised, one day, to run the joint. (And she will, you just wait and see.) She brokers no nonsense; she suffers no fools.
"Tell me again about the day I was born," she asks all the time. She loves herself and her wild child self. May it ever be so.
I wish I were like her.
