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Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Worry Makes Woman Seem Old NOTHING MAKES a woman look as old as worry. Worry simply destroys youth and beauty. Nothing hampers a man's career as does a worrying wife. Often when she is worrying because Jim doesn't advance faster and make more money, her worry is the thing that is stopping him. Worrying mothers have nervous babies. They know that everything is all wrong, and they can't do anything any-thing about it. So they become tearful, go back to wetting the bed, lose appetite and get attacks of asthma, colds, nausea. A bracing, confident home atmosphere would do for them what no doctor can do. One mother I knew used to take three small children to the circus every year. She worried so much about them that nobody got much fun out of the circus. "It's a curious thing," she said to me, "that my children are always al-ways sick on the way home from to do with it, she might perhaps learn what a neighbor of mine learned painfully some years ago. Chronic Anxiety She was in such a state of chronic anxiety that one day her long-suffering husband said mildly. "Helena, will you use your handkerchief, hand-kerchief, dear?" "What!" said Helena, aghast as we all are when so humiliating a reminder is made. "Oh, no, no," he said laughing. "Your nose is all right, but when 1 say that to you in future it will mean you are making yourself sick over something that doesn't in the least concern you or at least that you cannot change. Or else something some-thing that may never happen. Do you mind?" Of course, she minded terribly, and she looked at her children for support against this preposterous idea. But the 12-year-old boy laughed and- said, "It'll keep you busy, Dad," and the little girl added innocently, "Who'll do it all the times Dad isn't here?" the circus and au mat rugni. It wasn't curious at all to me. Children reflect grown-up moods as sensitive sea plants shrink from hot winds. Mother's worrying dries up their small spirits before they have time to flower. When older children don't eat, do poor school work, imagine grievances griev-ances and slights, look for the worrying worry-ing mother. She is there. Form of Fear Worry is merely a form of fear. Any average woman in a normal American home can find fifty . . worry about situations , , ." reasons for fear in the course of one day, and some of them do. They worry about things they could change with half the energy they waste on worry. They worry about things that don't concern them, and they worry about situations of which they are completely ignorant A woman can start her day worrying worry-ing because that clock is slow, because be-cause she thinks it is going to rain, because George's suit should have been pressed, because she may be going to have a headache, because Kent was so rude to Lily last night, because Di's invitation to that party hasn't come, because she forgot to tell Louella about the extra milk, because Grandma's birthday is tomorrow, to-morrow, and so on and on until she has covered with a thick coating of worry, every possible duty or situation sit-uation that the day is likely to develop. Naturally, after 15 minutes of this, she gets up tired, and her voice is a whine. Millions of American Amer-ican women must be habitual whin-ers, whin-ers, because I notice that in many of the "soap serials" the heroines almost incessantly whine; Sunday, Big Sister, Helen Trent, Stella rarely rare-ly raise their voices above a pained note of complaint and fear, and listeners lis-teners seem to like it that way. If the worrying woman could get it through her head that worry is weakness, and that she chooses it, and that circumstances have little |
