it's not fair

Pa has been working for days breaking up the dense prairie sod to get the plot ready for planting. With a sense of fulfillment and excitement, Ma, Mary and Laura plant seeds — some they have carefully saved and others they have carefully saved up for so Pa could go the two days into town and purchase them. By the end of the day, their backs are aching but it is an ache that comes with such a sense of accomplishment. They sleep very well that night.

After nearly a year of doing everything the hard way, and doing without so many things, there is so much hope in those seeds. And then, the following day, Pa learns that they never should have settled in that area. That they will have to leave. Within 24 hours, they have packed up what they can and are driving away. The plow, bought so triumphantly just a few weeks earlier, sticks up from the prairie as they ride away. There is no room for it on the wagon.

“The snug log house looked just as it always had,” Laura writes. “It did not seem to know they were going away.”

*******************

Our family has been making our way ever so slowly through Laura Ingall Wilder's Little House series. Our younger daughter has just turned four so we read in short spurts that match her attention span. My mother read them to my siblings and me when we were young and I read them again for myself later on. As we come to the end of the third book, Little House on the Prairie, and they are planting their garden, I am feeling their euphoria with them. “What a beautiful way to end this book,” I’m thinking, “after all they have been through in their new home.”

And so it takes me completely off-guard when they are suddenly saying goodbye to everything. Over the years since I last read the books, I have utterly forgotten this part of the story. A knot forms in my throat and tears come to my eyes but I try to keep reading with a shaky voice. My girls are looking at me, somewhat concerned. Finally I cannot go on and have to hand the book over to my husband so he can finish for us.

There is one thought on repeat in my head. “It’s not fair!”

With a four- and five-year-old in the house, fairness — and the lack thereof — comes up a lot.

My five-year-old might head into the house in a good mood, energized by the gymnastics lesson she just finished. And then as we open the front door, we find the four-year-old watching the end of Wibbly. There is a momentary silence and then, “That’s not fair! She got to watch a show and I didn’t!”

Or perhaps as the girls are getting ready for bed, I’m pulling out clothes for school the next day. It’s that in-between weather when it feels good to have bare arms or legs, but it’s a little chilly for both.

I set out a t-shirt, leggings and skirt for one, and a long-sleeved shirt and skirt for the other. Again, a pause as they assess the selections. And then, “That’s not fair! She gets to have bare legs and I don’t!”

Depending on my mood, I ignore these statements, point out why in fact it is fair and that fair and identical are not synonyms, or — my favorite — explain that things are not always fair but sometimes they are “not fair” in their favor and I don’t hear them complaining about it then.

And yet. Despite what I might say to my girls, my inner five-year-old is often crying, “That’s not fair!”

It isn’t fair that multiple sweet boys and girls among my daughters’ friends and peers have lost fathers or mothers  — not fair that their spouses must then juggle their grief and their children’s grief while also taking on single parenthood. Not fair that my parents, who adored each other from childhood and married young, did not get to make it to their fiftieth and sixtieth anniversaries and beyond, as we all believed they would, before my father died.

It’s not fair that some people who are good at their jobs get downsized while others who are mediocre or even bad at their jobs get to keep them. Or that people who already have good jobs get promoted to even better jobs while other equally talented people face rejection after rejection during their job hunt.

It’s not fair that some couples lose their dearly loved and desperately wanted children to accident or illness even as other children are neglected, abused or abandoned.

It’s not fair that with all the food available in our world there are still people going hungry. Not fair that some people get to take long hot showers that use up untold gallons of perfect drinking water while others walk miles every day for even questionable water.

I could go on and on. There are so many things I encounter that make me want to scream, “That’s not fair!”

*******************

Ella’s childhood is idyllic. Her parents adore her and each other. They are happy and kind and beautiful. They are literally living in a fairytale. But then her mother becomes ill and dies and eventually her father decides to marry again. Then he also dies. And it turns out that the new wife is not a nice person and this wicked stepmother turns the lovely sweet Ella into Cinderella—an overworked, unloved girl sleeping in the ashes of last night’s cooking fire.

And perhaps the extreme heights of happiness experienced by Ella’s family before tragedy hit make Cinderella’s situation feel particularly unfair.

But there is another story too. Before the wicked stepmother was a wicked stepmother, it so happens that she was a happy young woman married to the love of her life, mother to two young girls whom she also adored. And then tragedy struck and she was left a widow and a single mother. And this too was not fair.

*******************

We recently took our girls to see the new live action version of Disney’s Cinderella. When I first heard about the movie, I didn’t know what to expect. I thought it could be an irreverent retelling with something to prove or a bland, saccharine bit of fluff and I wasn’t sure which would make me cringe more. It was neither. And it was very good.

As we were driving home, one of our girls asked, “Why was the stepmother so mean?” We talked about how she had not always been mean, but had allowed the sadnesses and unfairnesses in her life to eventually shape her into the wicked stepmother.

And then we talked about how Cinderella’s life had also been full of sadnesses and unfairnesses and yet she continued to choose kindness. About how all of us will continually face things in our life that feel so completely unfair — that are so completely unfair — and while we can’t control them, we can control our response to them. (And you thought Disney movies were all fluff and rainbows and butterflies!)

And as I talked to my girls, I realized I was really talking to myself too. Reminding myself that choosing kindness or courage or joy does not mean pretending there is no sadness or unfairness or unkindness. That so much of life is not “either-or” but is “both-and.” That sometimes we are allowed to scream, “That’s not fair!”

But then it is up to us to decide if we’re going to let the unfairness eat away at us until we become a Wicked Stepmother caricature of ourselves. Or will we choose kindness like Cinderella did, even before she knew she would in fact get to live happily ever after? Or courage like Ma and Pa did, climbing into their wagon and saying, “Well, that didn’t work out, but let’s try again somewhere else”? Or perhaps, sometimes, to not just rail against the unfairness, but to see if we can do anything to change it.

*******************

Maybe, just maybe, the next time my girls cry, “That’s not fair!” I will choose a different response.