Dealing with Family Alcoholism

It's 8:32 pm on a December day and the doorbell is ringing and someone is hammering on the door. I open the door, but discover only darkness and the swishing sound of California rain. Peering about to see if a granddaughter is hiding, I discover instead a package laid next to the step. The UPS truck is already roaring away. I take the compact package from Amazon.com and lay it on the piano. When I do get around to opening the package, I find a Christmas gift for my granddaughter who likes to read, two paperbacks: Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder and A Horse and His Boy by C. S Lewis. On the cover of Little House I notice once again that the brown-haired protagonist Laura cradles her rag doll in her arms. In the background sits her father, Pa; his gentle eyes seem to focus on Laura.The blonde sister Mary is draped on Pa's back affectionately. Ma proudly holds up the baby, Carrie. Their home is a neat little log cabin and all of the children are smiling.

The Little House story is one that I loved as a little girl in Massachusetts, the story of a different little girl named Laura who lived life as a pioneer in the 1800s in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. A little girl who, despite living among screaming panthers and bears had a bearded father who played the fiddle and his fiddle "sang." The family survived under difficult conditions, in fact, survived with a well-stocked cabin and rag dolls and quilts on the beds. Later, facing starvation during a massive blizzard in the Dakota territories, they even ground wheat in a coffee grinder to make flour for bread.