Little Women at 44...and 5:00 in the Morning

The sweet girl came down with the terrible flu bug in the middle of the night. This is the same one I've been slowly recovering from since Sunday, and I was so sorry she got hit with it too -- knowing that when it hits, it hits like a freight train. Which it did, leaving me to hold her hair, rub her back, speak murmuring words of encouragement, and generally just be present to her in the wee small hours as she got sick again and again.

Somewhere in there, as she battled ongoing waves of nausea (and isn't that the worst feeling?) she asked if I could read to her. I read Light at Tern Rock, one of our favorite Christmas reads, from start to finish, with only a few breaks for sick-tending. If one must be sick in the middle of the night, I have to say it's one of the most soothing, calming reads possible...and I tried to provide via my voice every ounce of quietness the text and the situation both seemed to call for.

Tern Rock isn't a very long story though, and by about 5 in the morning, with the waves still coming, the sweet girl asked me if we could keep going with Little Women. It's our current evening read-aloud, and we were only a few chapters in. I gladly picked up with "Being Neighborly" -- the lovely scene where mischievous Jo tosses a handful of soft snow up at Laurie and he smiles down at her and you just know that they are going to be friends for life.

I've written here and elsewhere quite a bit about my love for Little Women, and about how Alcott's classic tale of four sisters nourished my growing up years in so many ways. As I often say, I didn't just read the book when I was a child, I inhabited it. The shabby brown house with Marmee's smiling face at the window feels almost as much my childhood home as the wonderful home I actually grew up in. But unlike my actual home, where my parents still thankfully live, I don't visit it much. I read the book so many times in my childhood and young adulthood that it became a part of my inner landscape...so much so that I haven't really returned to it very often in the past quarter century, except to occasionally read a favorite scene.

Several things dawned on me as I read it aloud in the wee small hours, watching my ten year old daughter's eyelids drift open and closed. They probably won't sound as significant as they felt to me when I realized them with the dawn's light breaking through our lace curtain and the Christmas tree lights shining softly next to the bright red geranium on the windowsill. But here they are, in no real order...

* I have never read this book aloud. A scene or two over the years, yes. In fact, I have the first few paragraphs of the book memorized and will sometimes say them aloud just for the comfort of hearing the words. But I have never read the book aloud start to finish. It amazes me how much I still know its rhythms and phrasing; it also amazes me how I know the girls' voices. I'm not doing a lot with the voices, but I do hear myself altering certain rhythms and intonations as I move from girl to girl, and it's odd because it's not something I am conscious of doing until I do it.

*I have never read this book through glasses.

*Reading this book with my reading glasses on, and while nursing a sick daughter, suddenly made me realize...

*I am Marmee. Of course I am still Jo. There is a part of me that will always be Jo. But really now, as I read it this time? I am Marmee...the mama cub, the protector, the teacher, the homeschooler (oh yes, she is), the one who tries to lead and guide and light the way, the one who admits her own faults to help her girls mend their's.


*I still have a lot to learn from Marmee. Has it ever occurred to you just how human and faulty the March girls are? There's not a "typical" one in the lot of them. Shy Beth's fears are standing out to me in a big way this time. Not that my sweet girl is shy (far from it) but oh, she battles many fears of a different sort, and in a big way.  What came home as I read through Marmee's calm, gentle patience, her ability to let go and let her girls be who they are (quirks and all) while she gently tries to help shape their characters in small but real ways...was my own lack of patience sometimes with my daughter's anxieties, my own stress about wanting her to overcome them, my worry that her quirks and our creative but challenging family and ministry life can lead to things that are sometimes just hard in her little life. But you know what? God can use all that in her. Marmee knew that about her girls too, even when they lived through real hardship and poverty. She was a wise woman.

*And finally...maybe there were reasons I inhabited this particular book as a child, beyond the mysterious reasons of heart-connecting with a beloved story and author from the past as we all do sometimes. Maybe God gave me this book when I was nine because he knew what my life was going to look like when I was 44. And reading it by Christmas tree light at 5:00...or well, finally 6:30...in the morning, a precious ten year old girl finally, peacefully asleep at last. 

25 Things You Can Do to Celebrate Louisa May Alcott

Note: most of these ideas were inspired by Little Women, but a few were also inspired by Little Men.

Climb a tree.

Eat a really good apple while reading a book.

Hug your sister(s).

Write a sensational story.

Make a delicious breakfast and then give it to someone else.

Put on a play, complete with outlandish costumes and overly-dramatic dialogue.

Create a family newspaper.

Play “kitchen” with a young child.

Listen to some beautiful violin music.

Create the letters of the alphabet by twisting your arms and legs into letter shapes.

Have a sewing party.

Create a group story with each person taking turns picking up where the last one left off.

Paint or sculpt.

Create a family “post office” for the day and leave little notes and gifts for each other inside it.

Drop your glove and hope the guy you like notices.

Go skating (but watch for thin ice).

Forgive someone who needs forgiving (don’t let the sun go down on your anger).

Pretend to be your own housekeeper if a stranger comes to the door.

Make a new dress for the doll of a little girl you love.

Be kind to your aunt, even if she’s getting old and crotchety.

Create a draft of your will and think about what you’d leave to those you love.

Buy a good pair of boots and have fun stomping around in them.

Curl your sister’s hair with a curling iron (but be careful!)

Get a haircut and donate the locks to an organization like Locks of Love.

And of course...

Read the opening scene of Little Women aloud...or pick another favorite scene from LW or another of her many wonderful books. (What is your favorite Alcott scene?) Or read a good biography of Alcott ~ I liked this one. Or read a book about the Civil War.

Loving Lincoln

The sweet girl and I have been wending our way through a study of the Civil War. I'm thankful that we had a chance to attend a Civil War day back in July at the historic site near us. That gave her a great preliminary "taste" of the period, especially experiencing the costumes, tents, soldier's kits, period music, etc.

But as usual, it's been books that have carried us through. We've been particularly taken with books about Abraham Lincoln. Even though we've technically finished the unit (we've moved forward into other areas in Story of the World) we keep reading more. And I find myself wanting to read a good adult biography of Lincoln now too. Any suggestions welcome!

Loving to read about Lincoln reminds me, of course, of one of my favorite fictional characters, Emily Webster. Emily of Deep Valley is set in 1912. Emily too loves to read about Lincoln, especially with her grandfather who fought in the Civil War. Maud Hart Lovelace never seems to tire of telling the tale of the brave Minnesota regiment at Gettysburg. Emily and her grandfather end up reading, at the recommendation of her former high school teacher Miss Fowler, "Herndon's Lincoln." If you google that, you'll discover it's an actual biography of Lincoln written in 1888. It's still available today and still garners glowing reviews from most readers. It's also, however, huge. So I've never been sure if it's where I want to start -- although I often find big ol' biographical tomes to be just the right kind of reading for winter. Hmm...a sentiment I probably originally learned from Emily Webster, but have discovered the truth of myself over the years. (Dorothy Kearns Goodwin kept me going one winter with her biography of Roosevelt.)

My list of favorite children's books about Lincoln continues to grow. This week I've added Lincoln Tells a Joke to that list -- Kathleen Krull, Paul Brewer, and illustrator Stacy Innerst's marvelous picture book biography that focuses on Lincoln's humor and down-to-earth manner. It's such a delightful fact that such a deeply profound man, living through such a sobering and heavy time, managed to stay afloat because of laughter.

My very favorite Lincoln book for children may well be Lincoln and His Boys by Rosemary Wells. I first read it when it came out in 2009 (and reviewed it here) but this week the sweet girl and I read it together. I cannot get through the final chapter without tears, whether reading silently or aloud. It manages to capture that lighthearted side of Lincoln while also perfectly capturing the heavy emotional weight he carried due to both personal and national tragedies. P.J. Lynch's illustrations in this book are just stunning.

This will likely be our year to do Little Women as a family read-aloud. The book of my childhood. I get shivers of anticipation just thinking about reading it with my husband and daughter. So our Civil War theme will stretch later into the fall and winter. We will probably not start it until around our Thanksgiving trip (if we're able to make that trip this year) as we'll have lots of time in the car that no longer has a functioning CD player. In other words, Mom gets to be the audio book! But I'm glad of it in this case. I love reading aloud, and Jo March's voice...well, it's practically part of my own.

Wrapping Up Alcott Month

I never got back to posting my last "literary day of days" reflection about Louisa May Alcott, but I decided to go on and post a "wrap-up" post for my month of celebrating Alcott.

I won't call the month a failure, though I wasn't able to do nearly as much as I'd hoped in terms of posting, reading or discussing. Given the somewhat hectic pace of life right now, that's probably not too surprising. I think if I decide to do this again sometime (either with Alcott or another author) I will plan the month well in advance and make sure I get some guest posters involved!

Still, I had a lot of fun revisiting my love for Little Women and exploring Alcott's continuing legacy. Here are some highlights of this month of shared celebration:

~Having Susan Bailey stop by in the comments to introduce herself and her terrific blog Louisa May Alcott is My Passion. This is a great site full of resources, book reviews, and discussion of all things Alcott. I've enjoyed visiting it several times this month and know I will go back.

~Pondering my writer-friend (and fellow homeschooling mom) Michele's comment that Marmee was "strong and modern and full of zeal for her daughters. She was the first homeschooler I ever met." I hadn't stopped to consider how much Marmee (and Little Women in general) may have influenced my own early thinking about education and homeschooling.

~I also loved the fun insight of my friend Erin, a huge Anne of Green Gables fan, when she said that seeing Jo end up with someone other than Laurie was "kind of like seeing what Anne might have turned out like if she'd continued to say no to Gilbert. Or maybe Montgomery was a Little Women fan who was always frustrated that Jo and Laurie didn't end up together..." Maybe! I found myself pondering how Alcott has influenced my notions of romance, particularly what qualifies as good dramatic tension and satisfying conclusion in fictional romance.

~I also enjoyed some Little Women posts that Karen Edmisten generously shared with me from her archives, including this beautiful one about reading LW with her daughters and how Jo's experiences in New York led them into fruitful thought and discussion about the power of pictures and ideas and how they can shape us. Karen also picked up on Marmee's kinship to homeschooling . I would slap myself in the head for missing this again, except for the fact that (despite having read LW umpteen times in my youth) I've not read the book fully since becoming a mother. Must remedy that soon. Maybe with a family read-aloud next year?

~I spent a while scrolling the recent acquisitions of our county library catalog and noting the plethora of Alcott related books. It's not just biographies...it's also graphic novels and mid-grade novels. Love of Little Women has permeated both Heather Vogel Frederick's Mother-Daughter Book Club series and Megan McDonald's Sister Club series (links to my reviews of both LW inspired books). The Sisters Club book had a delightful updated version of the Jo-burning-Meg's-hair scene variety; I almost laughed out loud. I'm happy to see that Alcott's influence is alive and well among the younger crowd.

Thanks to everyone who shared in this celebration of Alcott and Little Women!

Little Women: Grief, Death, Life

As the fourth and youngest child, I was born into a pretty lively household. That fact, combined with the fact that I learned to read independently quite early, means I have very few memories of being read to except for the long, wonderful Bible reading times at the kitchen table with my mother.

By the time I was nine, my grandmother had joined our family, which changed the dynamic even further as she needed pretty constant care. I realize, as I look back, how enormous were the demands on my parents' time, and I marvel at the time they managed to spend doing special things with and for me and my siblings. They certainly encouraged my love of reading, partly just by making sure we had plenty of good books around, and partly by regular library trips. Watching my grandmother devour books also helped cement my passion for reading.

But it was very rare for any adult to guide my reading in any way. I discovered good books by looking for them on my own. I discovered books I wasn't quite ready for the same way.

The only exception to this that I clearly remember is Little Women. Sometime when I was around the age of five, my mother spent some time reading it aloud -- mostly to my older sister, but of course I was there too, hanging on every word. We must've gotten pretty far, far enough in to get near the place where Beth first comes down with scarlet fever, because I remember my mother closing the book and putting it back on the shelf. Maybe she finished reading it with my sister when I was already in bed. But she made a decision, which I somehow vaguely recall, that we were stopping because she didn't think I was quite ready for it yet.

I was little enough that I didn't understand, nor do I remember questioning my mom's wisdom. But when I was old enough to pick the book back up for myself, round about the time my grandmother moved in with us, it didn't take me too long to discover why my mother had quietly decided to put the book away.

Little Women is sad. Not all of it, of course, not by a long shot. So much of it is lively, fun, filled with joy. Jo climbing trees and running races with Laurie, throwing a snowball up at his window, eating apples and clomping around in boots. Amy sleeping with a clothespin on her nose so she could look more aristocratic. Jo's cooking (enough said!) and Aunt March "settling the question" for Meg and John. Jo burning Meg's hair. The whole family sitting around and sewing their way through continents or telling wild gothic-influenced stories. Beth cheerfully playing her music -- when you think back, doesn't it seem like her piano playing is a soundtrack for the whole first half of the story?

But oh, the sadness of a beloved sister falling ill, never recovering, and finally dying at such a young age. I myself am one of three sisters, and I was moved to the core when I first read those pages, and read them again and again over the next few years. Even now, I can't really read Jo and Beth's conversation at the seashore or hear Alcott describe Beth's last hours without weeping:

Jo had never left for her an hour since Beth had said "I feel stronger when you are here." She slept on a couch in the room, waking often to renew the fire, to feed, lift, or wait upon the patient creature who seldom asked for anything, and "tried not to be a trouble." All day she haunted the room, jealous of any other nurse, and prouder of being chosen then than of any honor her life ever brought her. Precious and helpful hours for Jo, for now her heart received the teaching that it needed: lessons in patience were so sweetly taught her that she could not fail to learn them; charity for all, the lovely spirit that can forgive and truly forget unkindness, the loyalty to duty that makes the hardest easy, and the sincere faith that fears nothing, but trusts undoubtingly.

By writing so movingly and honestly about the death of someone beloved, Louisa May Alcott gave me one of my first, and deepest, literary tastes of grief. For many years, I remembered these scenes in Beth's sickroom and thought about what I'd learned about death -- but when I read them now, so many years later, I realize that much of their staying power comes through what they say about life. We see the beauty of a life well lived, a life lived for others. And we see that it's in moments of hardship and heartbreak that our hearts often receive the teaching they need most, that even or especially through love and grief, we're being shaped and formed by loving hands.

Little Women: The Copy I Read to Tatters

In my minds-eye, I can still see the brown wooden shelf. It was on the left-hand side of the living room window (as I stood by the stereo cabinet and as I faced the Sheehy's house next door) and it felt like a veritable treasure trove of book goodness. Standing side by side, like noble soldiers, were about a dozen books with brightly colored spines. A small green glass vase stood somewhere nearby, and a ceramic girl with a cherubic face also stood guard.

Sometime in the 1960s, probably when my oldest sister and brother were in grade school, my parents purchased a set of literary classics produced especially for children. These were the Grosset and Dunlap Companion Library classics, the "two-in-one" volumes that fascinated me. Hold The Adventures of Tom Sawyer on your lap and enjoy reading, and when you're done, simply flip the book over and discover Huckleberry Finn. Not all of the paired books were by the same author, but some were, and I loved the "twin" book concept. You can see a picture of some of the books I mean on this vintage book site (where yes, some gently used copies are for sale).

I don't remember how old I was when I first picked up one of the companion books from the shelf, but I do know I loved them. This set was my introduction to Black Beauty, The Five Little Peppers, Arabian Nights, and many other excellent books. Most importantly, it was my introduction to Little Women and to Little Men, the "two-in-one" Alcotts in the set.

I don't know what happened to the rest of those books (do my parents still have them?) but I do know they completely understood that I took my copy of Little Women/Little Men with me when I grew up and left home. Of course, by that time, it no longer had its colorful spine -- I had worn it off from my repeated readings. My original copy of LW looked like a wounded soldier who had done faithful service in the line of duty, perhaps not unlike some of Alcott's charges in the Washington hospital where she served as a nurse during the Civil War.

And here it is, in all its tattered glory:


You're not imagining the dirt. It's really engrained in the cover. How could it not be? I dragged this copy of Little Women up so many trees (my favorite place to read). I was a good tree-climber, but my dad was so worried that I might fall while toting books with me (and climbing one-armed) that he made a string-pulley. I could tie my books to the pulley while safely on the ground, climb with both hands free, and haul the books up after me. I'm afraid, however, that I used to lower the books again very fast and dump them unceremoniously on the ground at the base of the tree. So the dirt worked into the cover is good Virginia soil!

And what about that cover? Like many Little Women fans, I often played "guess the sister" since there was nothing that definitively stated which girl was which. I had a very definite idea about who was who on my edition's cover. Amy, of course, is easy to spot -- she's the only one with blond hair -- but the other three are brunettes. But I thought the tall one in the yellow dress had to be matronly Meg, the smiling one in purple was Beth, and the one with her back to the audience and her elbows jutting out at sharp angles had to be Jo. I mean really, who else could it be?

Examining my tattered copy again this week, I was intrigued to note just how yellowed the pages are becoming and how brittle the binding is. I clearly had favorite places I returned to again and again. For instance, I loved that first chapter dearly, so one of the first big binding breaks comes between chapters one and two:



But the death of beloved sister Beth, and Jo's subsequent journey through grief, always moved me so deeply. I wasn't surprised to see a big binding break here either:





We are physical, encultured people. The books we love, and read again and again, live forever in our minds and hearts, but there is something deeply beloved in the actual look and feel of the book itself. This is where we first entered these worlds and met these characters. Books are doorways, but sometimes what evokes the memory of the first magical passageway into a beloved fictional world is seeing and holding again the actual book itself: enjoying the threshold, the doorjamb, the shiny brass knob (tarnished over time), and even the fingerprints we've left all over it.

As I contemplated my first real post in celebration of Louisa May Alcott and Little Women, I realized the best way I could convey my deep love and appreciation for this story was to show you my first copy.