Ma Ingalls Gets My Vote for Mother of the Century

I hope you all survived the summer and that you're rejoicing in the glorious return to school and the promise of cooler temperatures. Personally, I almost wept with joy when I saw the school bus lumbering up the road. Summer gets awfully long around here. It's really hot, the kids are bored, they're whining and fighting- it would be hard on the toughest of mothers. And I am not the toughest of mothers, but I can tell you who is. Caroline Ingalls.

Who is Caroline Ingalls? Duh, Ma Ingalls, mother of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and perhaps the most stoic woman to ever traverse the prairie in a covered wagon. I loved the Little House series when I was a kid (both book and tv, though I preferred the show. Michael Landon was dreamy...) I  reread Little House on the Prairie for the first time in probably 25 years, and I can tell that age and motherhood have changed my perspective on that book. I mean, sure, Laura's great and all, but the standout for me was Ma Ingalls.

Was there anything that woman couldn't do? In a few hundred pages she packed up her entire world, two little girls and a baby, and set off into the wilderness. She put her full faith in her husband, trusting his every decision from the route to take, to the place they settled. He said "this is it" in the middle of nothing but grass and she says, "Okay" and starts unloading the wagon. She keeps the kids clean, the food cooked, the clothes washed and ironed while they're still living out of a freakin' wagon. She helps build the house, fend off prairie fires and Indians, survives a bout of malaria and a near massacre, only to have to pack up and move on a year later because Pa built the ol' homestead three miles over the line in Indian country. Way to go, Pa.

And yet through all this, she never says anything crosser than, "Why won't you girls ever keep your sunbonnets on?" Seriously??? How is that possible? She never says to Charles, "What the hell is wrong with you?? We had a perfectly good house in the Big Woods, but you just had to drag us all out here to possibly be scalped because you could occasionally hear someone's ax?" Wolves surround the house. Indians wander into their house, demand that she cook food, and take their stuff. And not once does she yell at her husband "You idiot! Are you trying to get us killed?" How does she do it?

I like to think that a big part of it is the fact that it's written from a child's memories. That sweet, innocent Laura was so busy frolicking around chasing gophers that she didn't notice the too-bright, sharp edge of sarcasm in her mother's voice as she said, "Why sure, Charles. We'll just pack everything back into the ol' wagon and leave behind everything we almost killed ourselves to build, just because you weren't quite careful enough when it came to property lines. Oh no, I'm not mad. I'm positively thrilled to set out on a new adventure." Because if she was truly as stoic and good-natured as the book portrayed her, she was superhuman. Or drunk. Or had the hook-up to some awesome pioneer pharmaceuticals.

Or maybe she was just a much, MUCH better woman than I am. Because we're packing up our own covered wagon (minivan) and setting off on a 7 hour trip to Disney World in a few months, and I'm dreading that as much as I imagine a pioneer woman would dread a trip across the great plains. And we have air conditioning and a dvd player and a Nintendo DS and an Ipad. We literally have more screens than children, but I'd still almost rather be scalped.

So, Ma Ingalls, my hat is off to you. I'm not a quarter of the woman you were, and I don't really want to be. But I wouldn't mind a bottle or two of whatever magic elixir you were using to get you through the day. I bet that would make those miles to Orlando just fly by!