Our 31st Anniversary--and Realities of Marriage

 Today is Jonathan's and my 31st anniversary. Since Jonathan doesn't get to have free days just for an anniversary, we celebrated over the weekend when we had to go to Sioux Falls for medical appointments and a trip to the airport with a native young man heading to Bible College.

I asked if on Saturday we could visit De Smet, SD, where Laura Ingalls Wilder's pa's old homestead was. That was a real treat to visit that area and museum--including replicas of the dugout where Laura's family lived, shanties similar to theirs, and the last house Laura's pa built in town, the real thing still standing. 

Here is that house that Pa built, one section at a time over a period of years, still standing 150 years later. I found the visit fascinating and fun, but also overwhelming.

After visiting the homestead area, we took the tour in town, visiting the original surveyor's house that Laura wrote about in On the Shores of Silver Lake. That was the nicest house Laura ever lived in herself with her family. Above is the pantry somewhat like Laura described it in her book, and just as I have imagined it. 

And here is the main room in the surveyor's house, which is original, although the house has been moved from its original location. I loved this house, bright and clean, spacious (with the old fashioned meaning to that term) and cozy, just as Laura described it. This is what I wish all of life and marriage were like--clear and sparkling, neat and perfect.

But overwhelm hit me as we visited the dugout--the very real kind of place that Laura's family had to live in for a while on the banks of Plum Creek. How could a family of four possibly have fit in here much less LIVED in here?

This represented the tough parts and times of marriage--the way Laura's ma could hardly bear to put up with living under the ground like that, like a badger, to say nothing of the darkness, the dirt, the poverty. 

Laura wrote that her Pa wanted to provide better for the family, but they ended up like this for a short time. 

The walls were of sod, and the ceiling had white muslin stretched across to keep the earth from falling through. No wonder the ox that ran across the top of the dugout in Laura's book had its leg fall through!

Part of the beauty of Laura's stories were how her ma, despite her obvious overwhelm, disappointment, and hardship, consistently chose to make the best of things. She insisted on some things from time to time, especially when the children were old enough to go to school, for example, she insisted on the family living near a school. But she remained loyal to her husband and made every shanty, including the hovels, a home in the most real sense of the word. Simple items made every shanty a home.

And then there was the replica of the Brewster School, (above) where Laura taught through the winter at the mere age of fifteen. Where she had to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Brewster, and where Mrs. Brewster did nothing except prepare potatoes and bread for two meals a day. She did not sweep the snow off the floor, clean up the ashes, or even brush her hair. All she did was complain to Mr. Brewster about living there on the prairie and threaten him. And then there was the awful night when she grabbed a butcher knife and was threatening Mr. Brewster with it, and he had to try to talk her out of it while poor Laura watched in horror. How Laura wanted to get back home where her ma never provoked, fussed at, or threatened her pa! Never.

Where her ma kept the home neat and clean as possible, where her pa worked every day and was respected in town, and where her sisters behaved themselves (thanks to Pa's firm but loving hand in her early years).

This shanty was a little better than the dugout, with a pot belly stove and a small loft. I stood there wondering how I could survive in this small house. I shake my head. 

We wish marriage was just a merry ride in a replica of a covered wagon--not a real one, of course, all crowded and heavy and moving along a few miles a day for weeks at a time while we must sleep under the wagon or under the stars, rain or shine. 

We even visited the graves of the Ingalls family, all of them except Laura (who is buried in Mansfield, Missouri with Almanzo and daughter Rose), at the cemetery outside town. I wanted to see those, and Jonathan was so kind to go with me. 

As I got out of the car, I was afraid I'd cry at Pa's grave, but somehow I managed not to. 

I suppose Laura may have made her pa look better than he was, but maybe not. He was who he was, and he wasn't perfect. He wasn't even a Christian and he even swore every once in a while--when things were really, really bad. But 150 years later, a nearly 60-year-old lady who has read Laura's books over and over through the years, stood by the graves and remembered a man and a woman, a family of pioneers, a ma and a pa, who stood by each other through thick and thin (mostly thin). 

A ma who made all of Pa's houses, whether shanty, dugout, or real board houses, into a home;

a pa who would bring out a violin after a hard day of work, and fiddled his heart out

while his little girls danced and sang. 

Jonathan and I--we moved along after visiting De Smet. Our marriage isn't perfect. We have our faults and failures. Probably we won't have a set of books memorializing us like Laura's pa and ma, but we came back home to our house and chiggers, our mission and ministry and days of sweaty work--

and for better or for worse,

for richer or for poorer, 

in sickness and in health,

until death do us part,

once again on our 31st anniversary,

we cherish each other as again, we say "I do."