Ray and I have done it again. We have each listened all the way from Little House in the Big Woods through These Happy Golden Years in the Little House series. I listen while I am putting on makeup or cooking supper or some such, but on Wednesday night, I gave myself a treat. With 19 minutes left in These Happy Golden Years, I sat down in the living room and relished those last 19 minutes.
After their wedding dinner with Ma, Pa, Carrie, and Grace, Almanzo drove Laura to their new house. He put up the horses while she walked through the house, seeing it for the first time since he had shown her the framing. They ate the bread, butter, and wedding cake that Ma had sent in a basket to help with their first supper. They drank fresh milk from the cow Pa had surprised Laura with the day before. They sat on the stoop, enjoying the twilight of their first day together as husband and wife.
The reader spoke the last words, the fiddle played its last flourish, and our clock struck bong, bong, bong . . . . ten times. It was 10 p.m. It felt just right. It felt complete.
During the day on Wednesday, I had been catching snippets of the book throughout the day. On Wednesday afternoon, I told my friend that Ray and I had been listening to the Little House books. Well . . . that’s what I thought I said.
“Where did you get them?” she asked.
“From Nashville Public Library or the Tennessee library system,” I answered.
Then I started talking about Laura and Almanzo.
My friend said, “You said, ‘Little Golden Books.’ I was trying to imagine Ray listening to Little Golden Books,” she said. “I thought they must be short,” she said.
We laughed and laughed and laughed at the thought of Ray and me listening to audio books of the Little Golden Books. When I told our daughter Bethany the whole story later, I “like to have never gotten it out” (do you know that Southern expression?)!
I couldn’t get the words out; I was laughing so hard! I was bent double by the kitchen table!
Then, I got another shared laughing session for the day, this one with Bethany!
I hope you get a good belly laugh today!
A joyful heart is good medicine,
But a broken spirit dries up the bones.
Proverbs 17:22
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