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Meeting Maria Von Trapp and Laura Ingalls Wilder in a Timeless Train Journey — Sharmin Siddiky

My husband wanted me to apply to Radcliff college soon after we were married. The application required me to write a short essay on the following topic:

Imagine, Laura Ingalls Wilder met Maria Von Trapp in the train and they became very good friends. What can you say about their shared tastes, sensibilities, historic and cultural roots and anything that can bind their relationship? Do you come from a family that shares the values of Maria Von Trapp and Laura Ingalls Wilder? If both were your aunts, what will you learn from them? Do you believe Radcliffe women today cherish those traits? What would be your cultural and social identity today if you were a Radcliff graduate who was influenced by their lives?

I found that topic to be a truly rich and evocative prompt — one that calls for a thoughtful blend of imagination, historical empathy, and personal reflection, rooted in the emotional and cultural worlds of Maria von Trapp and Laura Ingalls Wilder.

It was on a long, cross-country train ride—one of those rare spaces between duty and destination—that Maria von Trapp and Laura Ingalls Wilder met. Two women, from two different worlds, bound by values more enduring than geography or century. Maria, the spirited postulant-turned-matriarch of the singing von Trapps, carried in her voice the soul of the Austrian Alps—faith, resilience, and music that could uplift the human spirit even as it defied tyranny. Laura, the daughter of the American frontier, bore the stories of homesteads carved from hardship, a life of dirt roads, fresh bread, and fierce independence. And yet, as the train rattled on, they found themselves not divided by their histories but connected by them. Both women believed deeply in the strength of the family bond—not as something passive or inherited, but as something to be built, defended, and cherished. They held music and storytelling as sacred traditions, both to comfort and to educate. They knew that children must be raised with both discipline and wonder, that nature is a classroom and a cathedral, and that even in the hardest times, the soul needs beauty. If they were my aunts, I’d learn to live with intention. Laura would teach me to value frugality not as deprivation but as a path to freedom. She’d remind me that progress comes slowly—one page, one seed, one brick at a time. From Maria, I’d learn the alchemy of joy: how to turn fear into song, how to lead a family not with control but with music, courage, and love. I’d learn from both that faith—whether in God, in good, or in the promise of morning—is not a doctrine, but a daily choice. I do come from a family where such values were not only taught but lived. Like the von Trapps, we sang—at weddings, at bedsides, and in kitchens. Like the Ingalls, we treasured books, saved string, and read by lamplight during power outages, not because we had to, but because we liked the quiet intimacy it brought. As a Radcliffe graduate shaped by their lives, I wouldn’t measure my identity in terms of career titles or degrees earned, but in the kind of legacy I carry. I would be a woman who believes in substance over spectacle, in the power of nurturing over the pursuit of dominance, in building things that last. I'd value tradition, not as a constraint, but as a living dialogue between past and present. I’d also carry their courage—Laura’s pioneering grit and Maria’s defiant hope—and use it to light the paths of others. Do Radcliffe women today still cherish these traits? I believe many do—quietly, resiliently, sometimes in the face of a world that undervalues gentleness and over-rewards speed. But the seeds are there—in community projects, in classrooms, in the quiet strength of mentorship, in the music passed from one generation to the next. And if I were on that train, sitting across from Maria and Laura, I wouldn’t speak at first. I’d listen. I’d watch the way they wove their lives from scarcity into abundance. And in their words, I’d hear not just history, but a kind of inheritance. The kind that no diploma, however prestigious, could ever truly confer.

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