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Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Plan Together, Stand Together "I asked hiin to eat what he liked at noon downtown, but to let me see what Ii could do with meatless meat-less suppers for one whole month. Well, we've had shellfish salads and sometimes a chicken salad for supper since, but meat has never been the main dish on our table for three years. We sleep better, bet-ter, our bills are negligible, and we eat better, too. "Then we moved. ' We moved from the city to an abandoned outlying out-lying shabby old place that we bought for $11,000. It had electric light, but antedated plumbing and it hadn't been painted for about 40 years. Labor was high, but Frank's a 'laborer,' and he worked right along with the men. The house is divided into five small apartments now, and if I had 10 I could rent them all tonight. We have a bank balance; the boys flourish in country coun-try air; and best of all, Frank is a younger and more confident man than he was even when I married him. He has moved his business to some little sheds .in our back yard. The boys help week ends." That is Marcia's letter, j and what Marcia did other women can do. So don't be satisfied with silence, evasions, even irritable snubs from the man of the house, win him somehow to a mood when all his anxieties are brought out into in-to the open; and bring out your own assortment. Perhaps something some-thing that you have been doing Shirley's dancing lessons, Bill's school marks have been fretting him out of all proportion. You may be sure that his worry is all for you and the children, as yours is for him. rpHE FAMILY that prays to-gether to-gether stays together" is a saying say-ing as beautiful as it is true. I have another saying to match it: "The family that plans together togeth-er stands together." If you and your husband and children don't plan together yours isn't a real home and it isn't a real marriage. These are days of planning; revolutionary rev-olutionary planning. We all have to get new viewpoints in these days. Never in the entire history of the world have peace-loving countries faced such catastrophic possibilities. possibili-ties. There isn't one of us whose life isn't going to be touched by the onrush of events in the next few years, and the survivors and there'll be millions of quite prosperous pros-perous and secure survivors are the ones who look ahead today. Marcia Connelly is a forward looker. She writes me a most heartening letter from which these are excerpts: "My husband, Frank, began to be tired, overworked and depressed about three years ago. He's always been a hard worker, but since the war he's had all sorts of troubles; strikes in our very small business, difficulties in getting inventory, high prices, high wages. He became be-came very silent anxious about me and the boys, but never ugly or interfering. Lost Her Job "I'd been a dressmaker when I married, and I tried to get in with a big shop, but my styles weren't today's and I lost that job. Then I went into a hotel as noon waitress, wait-ress, but noon wasn't their big hour, and they wanted me at night, which I couldn't do. Both these efforts ef-forts distressed Frank, and he was glad when both failed. "I tried to make him tell me where we stood financially, but he ". . . began to be tired . . quietly refused; my housekeeping money did less and less, and he gave me less and less. But his shamed, sorrowful look when I served Inexpensive meats or no meats at all went to my heart. One night the boys and I had bowls of oatmeal with raisins and a shortcake short-cake which we love, and I put one chop on Frank's plate, with a baked potato. "He cut the chop and the potato in two and divided them between the boys, got up and went out, and I learned afterward that he had no dinner at all, but just walked the streets that night. "Well, then I got mad. I told him that I could manage well, feed the family well, get through whatever was ahead, yes, and enjoy it, too, but that I wasn't going to go on in this unbalanced way. I wanted us all to be in on it, and agree, and face it together. No Steaks "I told him that if he'd eat his dinner every night before he looked at it despairingly, he'd always be well filled. But that if thick hot soup and a tomato salad and apple dumplings didn't look good to him just because there wasn't a three-inch three-inch steak dripping in among them, he'd have to get another cook. |