Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 11, Number 7, DeMotte, Jasper County, 2 January 1941 — Kathleen Norris Says: A Country Wife and the New Year [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Kathleen Norris Says: A Country Wife and the New Year

(B*H Syndic at*—WNU S*rric*.>

I 'Min mnced the new order; home was going to be a little oasis of petfaction in a world gone mad, and it seemed miraculous to me that the transform*!'+.\ in their own attitudes as well as mine could so quickly be effected. The change was mo*’, noticeable in my husband, he became 1 what he used to be—interested "ager, a changed human being. 1 ' , ,

By KATHLEEN NORRIS

THERE is very little that we women can do fori the great agonized world, this strange shadowed New Yea ! r of 1941. We long to be of use. We long to stop war, to heal wounds, to feed the hungry, to somehow get' over there to Europe and bang a few heads together and persuade all the deluded leaders everywhere to act for lasting peace. We long to write the song, the essay that shall reach all men’s hearts. We long to adopt—not one French or English child, but twenty. We feel we might organize great dormitories, enormous refectories. ‘‘Can’t we do anything!” wail the women, from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, from St. Augustine to Calexico. We ARE doing something, we women. We have put ourselves on record this year, and in all the ydars to come our influence toward peace and away from brainless and purposeless- warfare will make itself increasingly felt. We can go on working along these lines, through clubs and parent-teacher organizations and church societies. And rheanwhile, while our leaders are making America safer on both great ocean boundaries, we can make America safer by sanity at home. Aybid all this war hysteria and the ridiculous defeatest 1 attitude many people have. It is just as important for us to have confidence and faith in our country as it is to have a strong defense. the home is the place to build this confidence. Puts Own Home in Order. A country wife wrote me a letter on this subject, and I quote it almost word for word. “Last New Year,” she writes, “I was so anxious and upset about the European war that I thought I would lose my mind. I’m a small town woman, we have a fruit farm about three miles from a city of 12,000. I’ve never traveled; never been to Chicago or New York; my life has been teaching, nursing a sick mother, a happy marriage, the bearing and rearing of three daughters and a son. The boy, my eldest, is now 18. “Restless and distressed because I couldn’t seem to do anything for the misery of the world, I determined last Christmas to get my own house in order. On New Year’s day I announced the new order; promptness at meals, orderliness in bedrooms, no complaints or quarrels in the general group, and one evening a week for hospitality and home entertainment. I stopped fretting myself, alluded to the wa£ only in the most hopeful terms, and offered weekly prizes to the child who brought home the most encouraging or enlightening bit of information, or found the best historic parallel to our own times. I told the children that our home was going to be a little oasis of perfection in a world gone mad, and it seemed miraculous to me that the transformation in their own attitudes as well as mine could so quickly be effected. Whole Family Reacts to Change. “The change was most noticeable in my husband. He had been getting old too fast, coming in exhausted and silent at night, listening in quiet depression to the youngsters’ half-baked talk of war, communism, revolution. But when we all went hopeful and confident, and he returned to find my Eleven struggling with the national anthem at the piano, my Fifteen eagerly reassuring me as to America’s outlook on the basis of Napoleonic triumphs and my Thirteen ready with a cup of

hot bouillon for Daddy—an hour before dinner, (this was entirely her own idea, and I pass *it on fori the benefit of other tired men,) he bet came what he used to be—interested, eager, well-informed as to history and political movement, —in short, a changed human being. As for our son, when the entire family had threshed out certain burning questions of bunds and isms, he quite suddenly decided to enter politics as his profession, and began to take us all to meetings. His essay on what desirable changes could be made in the American social system without any change in our magnificent Constitution won a SIOO prize. Out of the Red. “I accompanied this reconstruction with several''homely domestic reforms By the slow paying of bills we got out of debt. By the study of government charts and booklets, I learned how to feed my family thriftily and wholesomely. Headaches and billiousness and indigestion are no more necessary than a dirty face and hands; diet and exercise worked a general miracle. “And all this,’’ ends this most inspiring letter, which‘is like a tonic -to me, “arose from your New Year’s editorial, which began and ended with a reminder to us all that any life is lived on wings, if it is lived on prayer. You said not to worry about details, but to do the'thing nearest at hand and trust God for guidance on the next And that is exactly what I did. I couldn’t go overseas and be heroic, so I applied my general plans for welfare to my own home. And now it’s in order, and if a stray English child or an additional war expense of any kind comes my way, I’m ready for it.”

What a younger woman does for an older woman’s heart when she pays so genuine a tribute to a word of advice, nobody but that older woman knows. This letter put wings under my life for many hours after it arrived, and was perhaps a small indication of the great and widening good that one life splendidly lived can be to us all.

A Worthy Program. There are thousands of homes in America that need spiritual and mental and actual renovating in this New Year. They need more consideration from Dad ; more patience with the boys. They need more conscientiousness from Mother, less reckless* spending, more care for the budget. They need politeness from children; thought of what that constant request for dimes and quarters means to Dad. They need cleaner kitchens, hotter, more sensible meals, comfortable chairs, wellplaced lights. c They need more laughter, more friendly talk, more general interest more games. They need less complaining, less self-absorption, less saying of the stupid and unfriendly things that are sure to hurt and to cause trouble. They need a resolute campaign against fear, and a constant steady holding to the truth that anticipated dangers and troubles rarely materialize, and that if annoyances, losses, griefs do come, they bring with them the strength to bear them. If hundreds— thousands—millions ot our homes were so rebuilt during 1941, we should become a nation so strong and so united that more than ever we would be the marvel and the envy of the world.