Life is Hard

I don't think it matters what time period we live in, we are going to be faced with challenges, loss, disappointment, and pain.

But I have to admit, after reading "These is My Words:  The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine 1881-1901" by Nancy Turner, I just haven't experienced the type of hardships endured by women in times past.  I liked this book, it was pretty easy to read, but I do think the storyline is exaggerated and the main character is given some modern (dare I say feminist?) characteristics to give the story more conflict.  I wonder, for example, if a story of the same setting featuring her sister-in-law Savannah as the main character would have been as interesting.  For Savannah was not as strong in character as Sarah who shot bad guys, ran a ranch, and pursued an education.  Savannah married and settled with her husband to raise fruit trees and several children.

The above observation aside, the story was enjoyable and it did contain a couple of ideas about the responsibilities and challenges of motherhood that I enjoyed and illustrated life-long learning which I aspire to.

RESPONSIBILITY OF MOTHERHOOD

• It is a certain kind of terror to know I carry a baby and have the other two to protect.  Even with the soldiers around, I feel so alone.  Children are a burden to a mother, but not the way a heavy box is to a mule.  Our children weigh hard on my heart, and thinking about them growing up honest and healthy, or just living to grow up at all, makes a load in my chest that is bigger than the safe at the bank, and more valuable to me than all the gold inside it (303).

I CHUCKLED BECAUSE THERE ARE JUST DAYS LIKE THAT. . .

• All day long I had been at my wit's end alone with these children. . .I turned to (him) and said 'If you are too tired to haul water, you are too tired to bathe in it, and I am fit to be tied.  Your supper is on the stove and your children are driving me to distraction and April has lost the scissors under the house through a crack in the floor so there will be no haircut tonight.  If that don't please you, then I will put on a uniform and ride out of here tomorrow morning and chase around the countryside and you can wear this apron and tend these crying children and this drafty house from dark to dark and then tell me you think I should haul you a bath' (310).

• I am so thankful for all four of my children but equally thankful there are not eight (323).

LIFELONG PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE

• It seems there is always a road with bends and forks to choose, and taking one path means you can never take another one.  There's no starting over nor undoing the steps I've taken.  It isn't like I'd want to not have my little ones and Jack and that ranch, it is part of life to have to support yourself.  It's just that I want everything, my insides are not just hungry, but greedy.  I want to find out all the things in the world and still have a family and a ranch.  Maybe passing that test (high school equivalency)  was a marker for where I've been, but it feels more like a pointer for something I'll never reach (309).

• He said wisdom is not a path, it is a tree. . .Now I see that he was surely right. . .I have been sad almost a whole year, thinking that taking that test was somehow the end of my learning and that not having that as a possibility in my future left a big empty spot in my life that the children and the ranch didn't fill.  But my life is not like that, it is a tree, and I can stay in one place and spread out in all directions, and I can do more learning shading this brood of mine than if I was all alone (318).

Thanks for another good recommendation, Kristy, which provided this mama an escape during a couple of naptimes last week.