Little Camper on the Prairie

Our family, all 10 of us, walking the same streets writer Laura Ingalls Wilder did when she was a girl in Walnut Grove, Minnesota...I’d pictured this scene in my head for months, and now 50 days into our summer road trip, we were doing just that.

We went inside an early settlers’ house and saw the long dresses and high-button shoes girls wore back then. What a contrast to my 10-year-old daughter Liza, who was decked out in the red shorts and dirty purple tank top she’d insisted on that morning.

“Laura was about your age when she lived here,” I said. “Can you imagine wearing a dress like that in this weather?”

Liza jerked away from me. “This is so boring,” she said. “This whole trip is boring. Isn’t there anything fun to do?”

That wasn’t how I’d pictured the scene playing out. I had imagined our family feeling a sense of closeness and togetherness, like the Ingalls family in our favorite TV show, Little House on the Prairie.

No, more than imagined. I’d prayed every night since we set out from our house in Iowa on this quest to see the Ingalls family’s homesteads that I would finally connect with Liza.

My husband, Bill, and I had adopted her out of foster care, like all our kids except our oldest. But unlike our other children, Liza still held back from me, as if she didn’t trust my love or that she was really part of our family.

If we do something she’s passionate about, I thought, maybe that will make the difference. And Liza loved everything about Laura Ingalls.

They were a lot alike—headstrong, smart (sometimes too smart for her own good), constantly get­ting into trouble, yet somehow irresis­tible.

I looked for books and DVDs to stimulate Liza’s quick mind. I brushed her thick, wavy hair every night before bed, hoping that little ritual would grow into a deeper bond. I wanted so badly to give Liza a hug and get just the slightest squeeze back, to feel like mother and daughter. But it seemed like the harder I worked to reach her, the more she pulled away.

From the settlers’ home we headed for a one-room red schoolhouse, like the one Laura taught in when she was 15. Liza dragged her feet, kicking up huge clouds of dust.

“Liza, please walk correctly,” I said.

“Why? I like walking like this.”

I took her aside and let the others go ahead with Bill. “You’re the main reason we came here,” I hissed. “You love watching Little House. You’re always pretending you’re Laura. This is where she really lived. Don’t you think that’s interesting?”

She shrugged. “Whatever. It’s just a bunch of old stuff.”