"Then They Made a Celebration."

The sweet girl and I have been reading Little House on the Prairie during our daily read-aloud times. Actually, we started the book in the car during our Christmas travels (poor Daddy often hears books started, then doesn't get to finish them with us once vacation is over!).

Today we actually went outside to read. We're having bizarrely spring like weather (well, everything but the smell is right!). It's WARM -- high sixties, and sunny. We went to the little bench next to the sycamore trees and enjoyed two more chapters. I figured we might as well enjoy it while we can, as I'm sure this odd weather won't last. It gives me mixed feelings...on the one hand, I'm unutterably grateful for warmth and sun in what can be one of the hardest times of the year for me to get through here because of cold and dark. On another level, part of my mind (the part that recently watched National Geographic's Arctic Tale perhaps?) is wondering how much of this strangely warm weather is due to climate changes.

At any rate, we're enjoying Little House. I've read the books so many times that I sometimes forget what comes where (they begin to blend together in my memory) so when a favorite moment sneaks up on me, it's a real pleasure. One those moments came today as we read chapter 15, "Fever n Ague," the chapter where the entire Ingalls family comes down with malaria, though they don't realize that's what it is.

One of my favorite lines comes in the scene following their recovery...they're all still thin and tired, but well at last. Pa has used some of his recuperation time to make Ma a beautiful rocking chair from willow saplings ("it's an ill wind that doesn't blow some good" he says cheerfully, an expression that was fun to unpack)! When the chair is done, Laura writes of her family, "Then they made a celebration."

Such a wonderful phrase, and such a great description of the tiny things they do to make this particular moment festive: Ma smooths back her hair and puts on her gold pin, the girls get out the Indian bead necklace they made for Baby Carrie and put it round her neck, and they and Pa get pillows and quilt from the bed to make the rocking chair as comfortable as possible for Ma. Ma and Carrie rock in the new chair, Pa brings out his fiddle and plays (always a treat, but especially so now since he hasn't been well enough to play since the mosquitoes started biting at the beginning of the chapter) and Mary and Laura, totally contented, sit and listen.

That's it...the whole "celebration." Next time I'm fussed about trying to make elaborate preparations for a family celebration, I think I should probably remember this. Sometimes it's the small, quiet, deliberate things we do, with a heart of gratitude and thankfulness, that make the best celebrations.

It's also wonderful for what the text doesn't say. Youngest listeners might not catch the nuance, but we oldsters reading these beautiful books for the umpteenth time don't miss moments like this. Those tears glistening in Ma's eyes aren't just because she's touched by the beautiful rocking chair Pa has made. The tears are there because she knows just how ill she and the rest of her family were, and she's thankful (as only perhaps a Ma or Pa can be) that they are all together, whole and healthy.

Perhaps there's always a reason, even in the hardest of times, to make a celebration!