| OCR Text |
Show Kathleen Norris Says: lF omm's Unseen Power Brightens Lives (Bell Syndicate WNU Service.) ( 1 yaffil A good mother has the secret of making herself invisible. But the husband who pays little attention to her presence, the son who occasionally hits her temple I with a hurd-checked kiss how often do they think of what she is instead of I what she does? By KATHLEEN NORRIS WHEN you were a small child and read fairytales, fairy-tales, wasn't the most fascinating situation of all the one in which the prince or princess could become invisible invis-ible at will? To be able to take part, to listen, to see everything every-thing that was going on, and yet to be unseen oneself, how intoxicating that prospect was! There were years in my young life when I felt that if a wrinkled, crooked old fairy suddenly did present herself to me, to offer me just one fulfilled ful-filled wish, that wish inevitably inevita-bly must be for the power to make myself invisible. Years afterward I learned that it is always possible to enjoy that particular par-ticular fairy gift, but to find the fairy one must walk through lonely and sorrowful ways, and pay the fairy's price of humiliations and sorrows and tears. Humiliations and sorrows and tears, these are such wholesome medicines for us all, such strengthening strength-ening teachers, such "means of grace," I wonder why we all dread and avoid them so strenuously. The only worthwhile women in the world are the women who have had long acquaintance with them. But that is an aside. To get back to the fairy gift of invisibility, any woman can have it, if she loves those around her so much that their safety and comfort are her delight, and she is willing to be, In influence, the unseen power in the background of their lives that makes everything smooth and bright. Her Magic Unseen. Good mothers have the secret of making themselves invisible. Some times for years at a time the gentle, kindly, capable, ingenious, tireless, loving woman who is at the head of a family keeps herself and her magic completely unseen. Perhaps there is not too much money in the family, perhaps there are girls and boys of different tastes and ages, a chronically weary and nervous man, an older person, Grandma or Grandpa or Aunt Sally, a temperamental assistant in the kitchen, or no helper at all. All these natures and elements are welded together by Mother, but nobody knows it because Mother is Invisible. What the family sees and feels and enjoys are the smoothly smooth-ly made beds upon which slips and sheets change themselves by unseen un-seen means; the prettily set table with the marigolds or daisies in the glass bowl, the hot soup ready-cream ready-cream of pea soup for everyone except Jane, who gets her clear soup every night. Newspapers are on hand when they are new, and disappear when they are old; telephone messages are delivered; Tom and Mimsy are helped with homework, sent off to the movies on Saturday with the requisite dimes for sodas. Jane of course may have the living room for her gang Sunday riht; Annie may have a day off to go see her sister's baby; Dad's mother must have a fresh pot of tea taken 'way upstairs to her room. Of course she's there all the time, right before their eyes, and of course anyone who looked right at her would see her, comfortably stout In her fifties, getting gray, liking sur-reptitously sur-reptitously to finish the crossword puzzles when the children abandon them half-done, insisting on rubbers, HER OWN CHOICE How often do you think about the comfort of that "invisible" "in-visible" someone who always manages to have dinner ready on time; to remember that you don't eat this and cant wear that; to sharpen your pencils, find your rubbers and enter-tain enter-tain your unexpected guests? She may be "invisible," going about her work with no thought of reivard for her generosity, gen-erosity, patience and love. It is her own choice to remain in the background. Rut it should be your choice to remember the wife or mother who makes your home a pleasant place. opposed to the banging of doors, and peerless in the arrangement of a tray for the sick, the adjustment of a hot water bottle, the pressing of a shirtwaist Chooses to Be 'Invisible.' But how much do they really see her, this husband who pays so little attention to her actual presence, but swears and shouts and feels martyred mar-tyred if she happens to be absent for an undue hour or two? These sons and daughters who occasionally occasion-ally hit her temple with a hard-cheeked hard-cheeked kiss or feed her very soul with a shouted, "Thanks, Mom, you're a peach!" This grumpy old man or fussy old woman who blinks at her with dissatisfied daily questions, ques-tions, "Mollie, you aren't giving that girl another balf-day off, are you? This an't the same tea, is it? What-ever's What-ever's become of that little piller I had for my back? What possessed those children to carry on that way last night?" How often do they look at Mollie, and think of what she is instead of what she does? Not often. No, she's invisible. And the wonderful part of it is that she has deliberately chosen to be invisible, to sink her life in theirs, to taste for herself the happiness of service, a happiness deeper than any they will ever know. When women write me despairing letters about their tangled affairs; the parents who "misunderstood" them all through girlhood, the first marriage to a man who was "totally incapable of appreciating a good wife," the second venture with another an-other man who "does not understand under-stand my little boy and repeatedly favors his own child," I wonder whether they know how close this magic and mystic power of making oneself invisible is. The power to make all these lives happier, on their terms, nnt on hers, and to find herself a fulfillment and an interior peace of which she hasn't even dreamed. The Cause of It All. Half the nervous ills of womanhood, woman-hood, perhaps more than half, come from the miserable inability under which we all suffer to get away from self. Nervous breakdowns and morbidity and even more serious troubles stem from just this on thing. Brooding over mistakes and wrongs, resenting injustices and slights, sometimes a woman who feels that she has just generally made a mess of everything actually slips over the fine bordcrlino between be-tween normality and Insanity, and can't get back. But the invisible woman is in no such danger. There is always someone some-one she can serve, someone whose life she can make easier, someone for whom she can plan. |
