Like Rose

August 6, 2008

I’m so absorbed in Ghost in the Little House, a biography of Rose Wilder Lane compiled by William Holtz. I take it to work and read it over my lunch hour. I can hardly put it down when my lunch hour is up. It’s the kind of book I can get lost in. And hers was a life that has inspired me to pursue something I love.

The more I read, the more I realize that Rose and I are not so different. She was very intelligent and not too popular in school. She was only too aware of her “have not” (I hesitate to say poor – her family, like mine, had what they needed but didn’t have a lot of luxuries) status in the world. She was very perceptive and aware, even as a young schoolgirl. She was deep of thought and wanted so much more than a life on a farm as a wife and mother. How does the author put it? “Hers was the isolation of a precocious child in a commonplace world…”

That statement struck a deep chord in me. That was me. That was me all throughout school and even into my adult years. I was like Rose -- always different, even from my own siblings. As early as first grade I remember being singled out for higher and more challenging work. I hated being left out, being different. My mother says I always had “plans”; indeed, I was never satisfied with the status quo.

Like Rose, I was aware of my (lack of) social status, even in elementary school. My family always had what we needed, physically, but I was very aware that “the other kids” always had better stuff. Better toys, better houses, better clothes, and as I got into my teens, even better boyfriends.

Like Rose, I excelled in my school studies, and craved more. By the time I was 9 I was challenging myself in my spare time. I worked at 6th grade math problems in 4th grade, simply because I enjoyed it. It was fun, to me.

I studied the ancient Egyptian and Greek alphabets. We had a set of 1972 World Book Encylopedias at home in our livingroom bookcase, and the first page of each alphabetical volume described the history of its respective letter. From Phonecian to Egyptian to Greek to Roman, I learned to write each letter as the ancients did.

I kept detailed records of the coins in my piggy bank by age 10, and knew at least by age 12 that I was going to make a life for myself, most likely in the business world. Not sure doing what, exactly –I just knew that I was labeled as one of the “smart kids,” and that I would go to college one day. Some people grow up with the family attitude that the question is not ARE you going to college, but WHERE are you going to college. But you have to remember that I, like Rose, grew up in a very rural, blue-collar community. So I was one of the few with that mind-set.

Like Rose, I was continually looking forward and was never content to settle. Besides college-prep classes, I enjoyed my business-related classes: typing, adding machine, shorthand (which is all but nonexistent today). There would be no working in a carpet mill for me.

After travelling the world, Rose longed for home and at age 38 began to appreciate the rural life she had once strived to break free from. Like Rose, I was about 40 when I began longing to get back to my roots, my home and its comforts.

Maybe like Rose, I could have been a journalist. Perhaps if I’d gotten a job as a typist, a file-girl, or even a mailroom clerk with the local newspaper office when I was 18 and looking for a way out of fast food, my life would have turned out much differently. I probably would have never pursued a career in finance. Instead I would have learned the journalism industry from the bottom up, as I did accounting.

But it’s never too late. Rose’s life may have ended when mine was barely beginning, but I feel as if I grew up with her and knew her personally. Even though becoming a writer wasn’t her “dream,” she excelled at it and her work became known worldwide. And though she’ll never know it, she has inspired me to strive for the same.