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Show i' ' " ' ) ; -1 Katlilccn Norris Says: Marriage Wilhoul Tears ncll Syndicate WNU Fsuturrii. I iff Im' What is important is that whrn the house quiets down and the children are asleep Jack shall come into the kitchen and pick up a dishtowel and begin to wipe dishes, while he snys, " didn't mean to get started that way tonight, Nan. I guess I was just tired." EVER AFTER "And they lived happily ever after" . . . The fairy tales we read as children always ended that ivay. But the divorce di-vorce records don't. From an unhappy marriage to an even unhappier, lonely post-Reno existence go hundreds of women wom-en each year, women who thought that wedded bliss could be bought for the price of a wedding ring. It can t, of course, and neither can a happier hap-pier stale be purchased for a divorce lawyer's fee. If not "ever after," these ivomen could certainly have lived happily hap-pily most of the time if they had followed the advice given by Kathleen Norris this week. By KATHLEEN NORRIS A MOTHERLESS girl of 19 writes me that she is going to wed her soldier in early March, and wants to know what "all the pitfalls of marriage are, and how to avoid them, and how to get along without the coldness, criticism, nagging, boredness that so often impresses outsiders out-siders as being characteristic of married life. "It scares me," writes Marie-Therese, "to see the disillusionment that so many of my older friends have experienced. experi-enced. I don't mean actual ugliness and divorce. But I mean when the man wants to go to parties and the wife hates them, or he is late for meals, or she is a bad cools, or extravagant, ex-travagant, and they keep alluding to each other's faults. 'You'd never get Nancy to do that!' the man says, and the wife says, 'You know that when it's a question between me and his mother, I haven't a chancel' "Jack is an instructor at an air-base," air-base," the letter goes on, "so we may be settled for quite a while. We have already rented a nice little house in a pretty old town; I have two girl friends in the same place. So it ought all to be perfectly ideal, and I want to do my part to keep it so. But having been brought up in the households of married cousins and aunts I know how the glamour can fade, and I dread even momentary momen-tary coldness or misunderstanding." Some Live Happily. Your attitude, Marie-Therese, is a very lovely one, and speaks for a fine and gentle nature, and that nature will tell you more clearly than could any words of mine how you can cherish and cultivate the Jack's weary dissatisfaction with complaints of her own. -If he thinks it's easy, these days, to go shopping about for butter and coffee, with the baby down with a croupy cough and Johnnie's rubbers two sizes too small for his new shoes, she wishes he'd try it!" No place to dry the wash except the basement, such a racket from the school-yard next door that the baby gets waked up from her nap every single day, and the car practically laid up for the duration! All this isn't so important. But what IS important is that when the house quiets down and the children are asleep Jack shall come out into the kitchen and pick up a dishtowel and begin to wipe dishes, while he says: "I didn't mean to get started that way tonight, Nan. I guess I was just tired. I know you're having a pretty hard time." And that. Nancy, instead of relieving reliev-ing herself with a high-voiced angry "Don't you ever think for one in- stant, John Baker, that you can come home and snarl at the children and criticize me and then come out here and have everything all wonderful won-derful again!" shall accept his help, and perhaps remind him that these are strained and anxious times. She shall remark that the great cloud hanging over us all is bad for our nerves, that business men are enduring en-during privations and facing difficulties difficul-ties never known in our happy national nation-al history before and that when she and Jack get through these war years, the sweetness of peace, the pride of watching their boy and girl grow to manhood and womanhood, will be all the greater. Annoyances Will Appear. But make up your mind, Marie-Therese, Marie-Therese, that with all the wonderful, companionable, miraculous elements that make up marriage, the little annoyances and mistakes and disillusions disil-lusions creep in, too, as they do in all human lives. Just as many long-anticipated long-anticipated parties will turn out to be failures. Just as many investments invest-ments in a new dress, in a club, in an entertainment, won't be worth while. He'll bring a friend home unexpectedly unex-pectedly some night, when your dinner din-ner is one chop and one baked potato for him, and milk-toast for yourself because you've been feeling grippy all day. He'll forget to tell you thai Betty is engaged; he'll drive you mad by telling you the way -Joe Dokes' wife manages that big house and those four spotless and impec cable children. On your side you'll fail him, too. He won't like the way you look the night you dine with the Captain; he'l be shocked by domestic expenses, no matter how well you manage; and when there's a baby to" sit in a high-chair high-chair at breakfast he'll ask you in s martyred tone if you know anything else but stories of the baby's smart , ness. peace and love that are part of married mar-ried life. There are wives and husbands hus-bands who live without undignified squabbling and sulking. And even when they do squabble and sulk occasionally, oc-casionally, by some miracle that is marriage it is often not as serious as it sounds. It is nerves, fatigue, misunderstanding; it is outbursts of verbal fireworks that mean very little, and that sometimes clear the air. So that when a husband comes home at night to find out that his suit hasn't come back from the tailor's, that dinner is heated-up stew and mashed turnip, that his coffee ration is one half-cup, and that Nancy has promised to spend Sunday Sun-day with the Millers, he is quite likely like-ly to break into grumbles and criticisms criti-cisms that he doesn't really mean at all. Once the coffee and stew, the good corn bread and the prune whip are inside him, as he settles down at the radio with his newspaper, he feels quite differently. The food may have been humble, but it was warming warm-ing and satisfying, too; rain is predicted pre-dicted for tomorrow, so he wouldn't have worn his pressed suit, anyway; and he likes the Millers invitation well enough, especially as his department de-partment boss, Cutter, is to be there. And THAT is the time for Nancy to accept peace overtures in friendly simplicity, brushing off apologies with an amiable, "I knew you were tired. It's all right." Tired Mother Flares Up. Or perhaps it is Nancy who flares up. Any woman who has sole charge of a household and two or three small children, all through a second, sec-ond, a third, a fourth rainy or snowy day, has a right to run away into the high mountains and never be seen again. She can't do that, but what she CAN do is break loose at the first unpleasant word, and meet |
