...
Show More
I listened to the last few chapters of this book in the car after work today and cried nostalgic tears almost all the way home.
She sat on the doorstep and just inside the door Pa and Ma sat looking out over the prairie while Pa played “Highland Mary.” Then while the sun was going down he played all the old tunes that Laura had known ever since she could remember.
The sun sank from sight, trailing bright banners after it. The colors faded, the land grew shadowy, the first star twinkled. Softly Carrie and Grace came to lean against Ma. The fiddle sang on in the twilight.
It sang the songs that Laura knew in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, and the tunes that Pa had played by the campfires all across the plains of Kansas. It repeated the nightingale’s song in the moonlight on the banks of the Verdigris River, then it remembered the days in the dugout on the banks of Plum Creek, and the winter evenings in the new house that Pa had built there. It sang of the Christmas on Silver Lake, and of springtime after the long, Hard Winter.
As Laura spent her wedding eve at home with her parents and sisters, remembering other nights spent with her family over the years, I couldn't help thinking of the little Laura of the Big Woods and remembering the end of that book. It gets to me, as considering the passage of time always does.
When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, “What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?”
“They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,” Pa said. “Go to sleep, now.”
But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.
She thought to herself, “This is now.”
She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.
This really isn't a very sentimental series - the writing is quite matter-of-fact most of the time. But it was so much a part of my own "long time ago" that revisiting it through the wonderfully produced audiobooks with Cherry Jones' narration and Paul Woodiel's fiddle playing was a lovely and enriching experience. I don't plan to continue on with The First Four Years. I never liked that book much, and feel like These Happy Golden Years was the perfect way to wrap up the Little House series.
She sat on the doorstep and just inside the door Pa and Ma sat looking out over the prairie while Pa played “Highland Mary.” Then while the sun was going down he played all the old tunes that Laura had known ever since she could remember.
The sun sank from sight, trailing bright banners after it. The colors faded, the land grew shadowy, the first star twinkled. Softly Carrie and Grace came to lean against Ma. The fiddle sang on in the twilight.
It sang the songs that Laura knew in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, and the tunes that Pa had played by the campfires all across the plains of Kansas. It repeated the nightingale’s song in the moonlight on the banks of the Verdigris River, then it remembered the days in the dugout on the banks of Plum Creek, and the winter evenings in the new house that Pa had built there. It sang of the Christmas on Silver Lake, and of springtime after the long, Hard Winter.
As Laura spent her wedding eve at home with her parents and sisters, remembering other nights spent with her family over the years, I couldn't help thinking of the little Laura of the Big Woods and remembering the end of that book. It gets to me, as considering the passage of time always does.
When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, “What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?”
“They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,” Pa said. “Go to sleep, now.”
But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.
She thought to herself, “This is now.”
She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.
This really isn't a very sentimental series - the writing is quite matter-of-fact most of the time. But it was so much a part of my own "long time ago" that revisiting it through the wonderfully produced audiobooks with Cherry Jones' narration and Paul Woodiel's fiddle playing was a lovely and enriching experience. I don't plan to continue on with The First Four Years. I never liked that book much, and feel like These Happy Golden Years was the perfect way to wrap up the Little House series.
