Almanzo and Jamie

Ahhh..Jamie Fraser...

Not since Almanzo Wilder have I had such a mad crush on a character from a book.

I was 11 years old, and I had just finished These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the last big book in the Little House series, and I had fallen head over heels for Almanzo Wilder.  He was gallant and strong.  He came without being asked to pick Laura up from her hated time at the Brewster homestead where she boarded while teaching school on the prairie.  He braved the blizzards so she didn't have to spend miserable weekends away from home.  He dug his horse out of snow drifts and made sure Laura had heated bricks to keep her feet warm along the way.

The first time he showed up, she didn't know why he had come to get her.  She was just thankful for the chance to go home.  Then after a couple of trips in his sleigh, she began to look forward to seeing him, not just her family.  He was so non-challant about it around her that her students figured out he was courting her before she did.  I was disappointed with her when the weather was too bad for him to come get her.  I was excited when she heard the sleigh bells jingling in the distance.  And then when he came to call one Sunday afternoon to take her for a spin around town in the sleigh...I swooned as much as any 11 year old could.

What I liked so much about Almanzo was that he treated Laura like his equal.  I fancied that had I been born in 1867 like Laura, I would have been her, and I would have wanted a boyfriend who allowed me to be smart and assertive and brave in my own right.  I especially loved when they were discussing their wedding.

Laura says, "Almanzo, I must ask you something.  Do you want me to promise to obey you?" 

Soberly he answered, "Of course not.  I know it is in the wedding ceremony, but it is only something that women say.  I never knew one that did it, nor any decent man that wanted her to."

I remember thinking, "That is my kind of husband!"

The night I finished These Happy Golden Years, I cried myself to sleep.  My mom came in my room to kiss me good night and found me sobbing into my pillow.  I wouldn't tell her what was wrong at first because I knew it was silly to cry over a man dead many years by then, who would have been old even if he had been alive when I was born.  But I couldn't help it.  My mom sat on the side of my bed trying to figure out what was going on, if someone was hurting my feelings at school, if my sisters had been mean...Finally, I couldn't hold it in any longer.  I blurted out, "Almanzo's dead!"

I can imagine my mom flipping through the card catalogue in her head, "Almanzo...Almanzo...Who the hell is Almanzo?" as I'm crying into her shoulder.

"What do you mean?" she asked cautiously.

"Almanzo!" I sobbed, "from Little House on the Prairie.  He's dead, and I'll never get to meet him!" and I started wailing even harder.

My poor mother.  I'm sure she had no clue what was going on.  Puberty?  Probably.  Drama? Most definitely.  But to her credit, she didn't say anything to make me embarrassed or try to help me realize the silliness of my tears.  Crying over a character in a book who had already been dead for 30 years by this time?  She didn't say anything.  She just let me cry until I was exhausted, hiccuping, and broken-hearted.

And until this summer when I discovered Jamie Fraser, I have never fallen for a character in the way I fell for Almanzo.  Oh, I've liked many of the leading men I've read about.  I've found them charming and attractive and considered what the real man would be like.  I may have even swooned a bit at some of their lines or a romantic scene or two.  But none have have "melted my brain," as one commentator said, like Jamie.

He is gallant and strong.  He lets Claire be smart and assertive and brave.  He is there for her when she needs him but he lets her be her own woman.  He does what needs to be done, even when it is hard or painful or dangerous, and he puts her and others' well-being ahead of his own.  He is protective but not in a smothering way, and never shames Claire when she does something foolish.  He is funny and sweet and gentle, despite the roughness of the times.  He is kind and selfless and aims to please.  And on top of it all, he's gorgeous and has a crooked smile and mischievous eyes.  He's perfect!  What's not to love?

When I read the books in the Outlander series, I feel once again like that 11 year old girl, who thinks life will be just as she imagined.  That marriage is easy.  That men are perfect.  That she can have it all.  I am not jaded by the reality that life is hard.  Marriage is work.  Men are fallible.

I'm not delusional.  I know the men in these books are not really like this.  They too would have their issues in day to day life.  The benefit of having them in books is that their irritating faults get left out, and all we know is what makes them so good.  It's too bad that we can't do that in reality.  I'd love to leave out all of the things that irritate me about Kirk, all of the little things that after 23 years of living with him drive me absolutely crazy.  I'd love to condense all of his goodness into a 800 page novel and read that. It would be awesome!

I've put the Outlander books up for now.  There are 8 in the series, but I've only read the first 3.  Part of me wants to continue, but part of me wants to save the stories for another time.  When I finished the Little House books, there was no more Almanzo, and I also grieved over that.  If I don't finish reading the Outlander books, Jamie is still alive and young and perfect, and I am still 11, and life is full of infinite possibilities.