Once in high school, I noticed a book that my friend Beth was reading on the bus. The title was A Lantern in her Hand. It looked interesting; I enjoyed pioneer stories, but I was busy with other books and assignments, and somehow never got around to reading it. The title stayed with me, though.
Recently, I noticed it again in the Emmanuel Books catalog. Katie has read just about everything on our shelves that isn't being saved for a book report, and I was in search of something for her. The book arrived, and I put it on my shelf awaiting preview. Last night I was feeling worn out--too tired to grade papers or think out school plans--reading a children's book seemed about as much as I could handle. So I picked up A Lantern in her Hand. And was drawn into a world in which I had not spent much time since my Little House on the Prairie-reading days. The world of the pioneer families who settled the upper mid-west.
Reading as an a dult woman, I picked up a thread in the story that might not have meant much to me if I had read the book in high school: the happiness of the life of a homemaker. This is something unique, something we don't read much about in modern literature: the joy of life in a large and busy household. Abbie Deal's life is difficult from dawn to dark, full of privation and back-breaking work. Yet Abbie does not dwell on the mind-numbing aspects of her life. She rises above this and maintains an active life of the mind. And she is satisfied with...no...fulfilled by her life.
What does this mean for female readers in a culture in which we have been trained to look for fulfillment in paid employment either outside or inside our homes? Whether consciously or not, those of us raised in the 70s and later were taught by the culture (not by my mother, if I had been listening better) that housework is mind-numbing and the effort of making a home worth very little. We have absorbed the lesson that it is earning capacity that matters. Abbie Deal's story teaches a different lesson. And it is one that resonates with me.
Since I came home from the workplace 10 years ago, I have spent not a little time thinking about this. I will continue with that sorting-out process a little now. Some days my tasks at home are mind-numbing. In the early days especially, I got tired of talking only to young children most of the time. But most days, it is a joyful experience to be with these little people with whom God has entrusted me. And He has never left me alone.
In the first seven years, God provided me with an active, spiritually supportive, homeschool co-op that met every week and gave me a chance to be with other mothers and to learn from them what this thing we call homeschool can be. And my work is easy compared to that of a pioneer mother. Goodness, I live not with deprivation, but with excess. We have so many clothes that I do two loads of laundry every day jsut to keep up. I have a graduate level education, which gave me the confidence to teach my own children at home. Many others do not have this, and no one really needs it, but it gave me confidence in the beginning. When I am cooking meals, I use ingredients that came from an abundantly-stocked grocery store (although I still have the gall to complain when they are out of frozen organic blueberries or my favorite brand of plain yogurt). I have an automobile dedicated solely to my own needs, in which I drive our children to multiple physically-challenging and mentally-broadening activities. And all the while I am getting rid of (trying to) the excess stuff we have accumulated over the past 21 or so years of family life. We have too much rather than not enough.
Compared with pioneer times, this is an easy life. It is a blessed life. But it is hard in different ways. The time and effort and energy needed to raise six children, homeschooling five of them simultaneously amid the anxiety and stress of modern life can be overwhelming. So what is it that I find so appealing about Abbie Deal and her life? Why am I intrigued by her? What does she know that I do not? Perhaps the words of author Beth Streeter Aldrich begin to make sense of it.
"A Lantern in Her Hand" was written to please no one but my own consciousness of the character of many of those pioneer mothers. It was written in the so-called "mad twenties" when most of the best-selling books were about sophistication, flaming youth, or far-flung countries. There was some youth in it, but not of the flaming type. There was no sophistication, for Abbie Deal was of the soil. There was not even diversity of scene, for Abbie was only a homemaker.
"Lantern" seemed destined to be lost in the wave of the popular type of the times. That it has made new friends each year since that day might be a bit of a lesson for young writers. Regardless of the popular literary trend of the times, write the thing which lies close to your heart.
Aldrich's heart portrayed Truth through Abbie's story: the story of a woman who was only a homemaker. Truth and beauty and love are all abundant in this mothering life I live. I pray for the grace to recognize them. And that at the end of 80 years, I will be able to say with Abbie, "We had the best times."
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