What is it about the lives of people—specifically between the years 1800 and 1900—and more specifically the lives of women in that time period that captures my heart? A quick glance at the book shelf in my living room shows that my favorite books have heroines (fictional and real) who lived during that time. I have the entire “Little House on the Prairie” book series, the entire “Anne of Green Gables” series, and “Little Women”. Perhaps it’s because the main characters in the books speak of the thoughts near and dear to their hearts. And even though I’m living a hundred or more years later I find that the thoughts near and dear to my heart are not so very different from theirs. But they had those deep thoughts and emotions while doing hard, manual labor on a daily basis in order to have food, shelter, clothing, and occasional recreation. They washed their clothes in rivers and streams or maybe a washing basin and hung their clothes to dry on clotheslines or laid them on the sweet prairie grass. They made all their meals from scratch on wood burning stoves or over fires. They did the dishes by hand with home-made lye soap. They sewed and mended clothes, knitted socks, tatted lace. Nothing was wasted, especially not time. But the sweetest parts of these stories are the loving family relationships they speak of and the thoughts and musings of the heroines. That’s why I love these stories and read them over and over again. These stories are all about things that I esteem to be of great worth.

I am in the midst of deciding which of my things are of greatest worth and therefore worth keeping. We recently moved. It was a downsizing type of move and I find myself with more things to put in my apartment than there is space for. It’s a struggle that the authors of my favorite books (Laura Ingalls Wilder, L. M. Montgomery, and Louisa May Alcott) along with their heroines (Laura, Anne, and Jo) would find highly amusing. To have so many clothes from which to choose they no longer fit into a single closet? Ha! So many pots and pans they can’t all go inside the kitchen cupboards? Absurd! To put it in modern terms they would all tell me: “These are first world problems.” And indeed they are.

Perhaps my favorite part of the downsizing has been the opportunity to go through the boxes of family history items and stories, plus my own journals and personal history items (namely photos). These things, like sweet cream, keep rising to the top of my list of things that are of greatest worth to me.

I came across a couple of treasures in my boxes. One item was a book written by my aunt, Shelly Ritthaler. It is actually a compilation of short columns that she wrote for a newspaper. The title of the column, and consequently the title of the book, is “The Ginger Jar.” Another book I read was written by my uncle, John Cassinat. It is a collection of the blog posts he wrote for the Sacramento Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He is the president of that stake, and in 2012 they had a stake-wide challenge to read the Book of Mormon that year. He wrote a weekly blog post of witty commentary on the assigned chapters for the week helping the saints in the area to liken the Book of Mormon to our day. After being struck by the literary talents of these two family members it inspired me to try my hand at writing as well. I will enjoy this project and it will help me keep a record of the things of greatest worth to me. I plan to feature stories from my family history or personal history.

Thus begins my search for the things of greatest worth in my life and my endeavor to write about them—like Laura Ingalls Wilder, L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, Aunt Shelly, and Uncle John have done so eloquently and movingly before me.