OCR Text |
Show Kathleen Norris Says: The Woman Who Won't Forgive j j Bell Syndicate. WNU Feature!. j The goodness just old-fashioned goodness that is patient with a sometimes some-times disappointing husband, with exacting children, is what America so desperately des-perately needs now. By KATHLEEN NORRIS MARGERY CURRY writes me from Plainfield, New Jersey, Jer-sey, that she wishes she could forgive a person who once has injured her. She says she is so made that she cannot, and that her married life is being destroyed in consequence. This is the purest nonsense. To assume that you "cannot "can-not forgive" an injury or injustice in-justice in this life is to proclaim pro-claim yourself a person of limited- intelligence, incapable incap-able of growth. Margery's story is that her husband hus-band was deceiving her about money mon-ey for many years. For 14 years Bob sent $50 a month to an old woman wom-an who worked for his mother as housekeeper, seamstress, nurse. When the old woman died Bob's office of-fice secretary commented to Margery Mar-gery upon Bob's generosity, and Margery hasn't "forgiven" Bob yet. She keeps a "itioi civility going before be-fore the children, but she has moved out of the room she and Bob have shared for 15 years, and as Bob says that unless this sort of foolishness foolish-ness stops he'll get out for good, matters have reached a serious point, and Margery, in floods of tears, has written for my advice. Trust Is Gone. "To think that while I was saving sav-ing and economizing and doing without things," she writes, "Bob all the time was supporting an old woman who had no claim on him at all, and never saying a word to me of that extra $600 a year! He has been a good husband, and we have prospered; I thought myself, a few months ago, the happiest woman in the world. But now I feel that I never can trust Bob again, and what is love without trust? Unfortunately, I'm so made that I can't forgive. I'll bear anything any-thing while people treat me fairly. But once I'm angered good night!" What a strange thing is the smugness smug-ness of these wives who boast of their moral and mental limitations, who gloat over the Jealousy or extravagance ex-travagance or hot temper or the hardness of heart that "can't forgive!" for-give!" This is a form of childishness child-ishness that makes it hard for me to answer Margery Curry patiently. But I can tell you one thing, Margery, Mar-gery, that unless we keep changing, growing, improving, we humans settle into fixed forms, and a part of us dies. When you say that you are "made that way" and that it's a characteristic of your family never nev-er to change or never to learn to forgive, or never to gain control of the hot temper of which you are all so secretly proud, or never to develop character enough to live within your income and pay your bills honestly you are announcing that you are among the folk who are incapable of becoming civilized. Real women do forgive. Real women are ashamed of any such boast as that their tempers are uncontrollable un-controllable or their jealousy too deep-rooted to be cured. Real women wom-en grow up. Civilization In Peril. A good many thinking persons now are anxious about this tired old war-worn world, and with good reason. Unless we women learn to forgive and forgive and forgive, things will grow worse. Unless we learn to deal honestly with our lives, there is no hope for us. Unless Un-less we face our problems each woman her own, and acknowledge them, and study them, and master them, with the good of our men and our children, our community and our God in mind, civilization will suffer a setback from which it won't easily recover. It is no longer a question of an Individual woman saying that she can't do thi3 and can't do that. The demand is for actual heroism the heroism that sweeps aside slights and injustices with the magnifl--cence of a strong character. The courage that endures dull days, monotonous duties, tiring responsibilities responsi-bilities because it is out of that quiet fidelity that a great nation is built. The goodness just sheer old-fashioned goodness that is patient with a sometimes disappointing husband, with exacting children, is what America so desperately needs now. What she needs now, as she needed need-ed servicemen a few years ago, is an army of wives and mothers, each one capable of solving her own problem, and willing and eager to solve it, and by so much lifting the staggering load of the nation's anxieties anxi-eties and burdens. If instead of these courageous women she gets the Margery Curry sort, the whining whin-ing crowd that "can't forgive, can't live honestly, can't stand marital disappointments, can't put up with the every day difficulties and disappointments of life, we are in a bad way, Indeed. "We must learn to jorgiv . , |