Little Problems of Married Life: XIII

Little Problems of Married Life BY WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN. XII —When the Children Come. Do you remember the spirited argument between the two Irish laborers on the subject of mortar, one asserting that the mortar held the bricks together, the other contending that it kept them apart? Children play this doubtful mortar role in the home; they may bring husband and wife into closer unity or they may gradually force them apart. With the advent of the children a new element enters the home. It is a new transforming power for better or for worse, but a factor that never leaves conditions unchanged. When the anticipated joy of parenthood has become a reality and it brings to husband and wife only greater peace, truer companionship, only sweeter love and more delicate consideration as the weeks grow into months, strengthening with the flight of time, it is a home benediction, an ideal far above even the thought of problems. Rut this is truly rare, because every privilege in life carries with it a responsibility, every right a duty, every power a danger, every light a shadow, every gain a loss. It is the element <>f change, the enforced readjustment of the mutual dependence of husband and wife on each other that must be recognized. The old freedom and finality of their whims and fancies is gone because every decision may now be overruled by the baby's veto. The pleasure of a little railway journey together, a night at the theater, a proposed social call, the comfort and comradeship of a read and a talk under the library lamp, the loving counsel and confidence after dinner, may all be sacrificed in a moment by the opposing cry of protest from the autocrat of the nursery. The husband may begin to grow restless under the new regime. The novelty of paternity may begin to lose a little of its charm and his heart hunger for the old singleness of companionship, lie may begin to feel he is being gradually pushed aside *Copyright, 1910, by Fleming H. Revel] Company.

LITTLE PROBLEMS OF MARRIED LIFE. 907 and supplanted and a latent rebellious feeling of jealousy stirs him. He cannot quite put it into words, even if he would. The heart is more subtle and sensitive than the head and is often pained beyond the power of clumsy words to express. 1 [e may try to laugh at his foolish rebellion, but the laugh is not very merry, nor does its note ring- true. He feels the loneliness of unshared pleasures, the isolation of unspoken confidence.-. He grows hungry for the old allness of importance; he wants the little tendernesses, the graceful attentions, the smiles of sweetness, the little nothings that make up the all of loving. And in his failure to gel he may foolishly forget to give. He may thoughtlessly accept an invitation for some evening entertainment, and later find that his baby forbids his wife to accompany him. This first time he may loyally forego the pleasure rather than go alone. But subsequent invitations puts his resistance to sleep and finally he surrenders, perhaps saying he can do no real good by staying at home. Then he may remember that he has not been to his club or the theater for a long time, and this opens to him a change of scene. He may in his heart and speech honestly revolt at the enslavement of the mother to her child and feel helpless in facing a condition he cannot change. He may even grow7 irritated at the crying of the child and feel that the mother should somehow manage to keep it quiet, as if the child were a mechanical music-box where you merely had to touch a certain spring to shut off the sound. He may find that his rest at night is disturbed and selfishly go off to another room to sleep, forgetting that the tired mother may then he left with the sole burden of soothing the fretful little one to dreamland. Even if a nurse relieves the mother of much of her responsibility the problem is merely modified, not solved. It is not that his paternal love is lessening, but he is still seeking to hold to an elusive memory of an old, sweet companionship that somehow seems slipping away. The mother, absorbed and concentrated in the loving care of her child, which has become so nearly all her world, may let motherhood eclipse the tenderness of wifehood. She may some day wake to realize with a strange, sudden tightening of her heart that she is missing certain customary graceful attentions and caresses the small coin of love — that the good-bye kiss in the mornino- is forgotten or become perfunctory, and finds many other

908 9 IMPROVEMENT ERA. little beads of attention missing that but a short time ago made bright spots on the golden thread of her daily living. She may miss the old conferences and confidences and feel in a vague way that it is all his fault, thoroughly unconscious that, on repeated recent occasions when he had told her little cares and worries as of old, tried to win her enthusiasm to some new plan of his, or some new dream of ambition, she had only half-heard, her interest was slight, her sympathy unexpressed. Her thought wandered as she waited for a pause and side-tracked his confidence with the latest instance of the marvellous intellectuality of the baby. She may not realize that the child that began as a real reason for dropping familiar customs and sweet habits, is now but an excuse. If their past life together were not always roses and sunshine, they may have made up their little misunderstandings, smoothed over difficulties, and let new love and kindness take out the pain of a memory. But now the child may become a refuge to the mother. Concentrating upon it all her love, she bears stolidly a coldness that otherwise she would seek to remove, sits in the shadow of her dignity when but a word would bring peace and sweetness, while the husband, playing his poor counter-role, draws more closely around him his robes of sackcloth and ashes. And they both think things about each other, not edited for publication, and they just become sulkily reticent and selfish with speech, and they will not talk. When the child begins to escape from babyhood, and the mother begins her siege of morning talks on the necessity of moving away from the city, so they can get good country air for the child, though he may murmur something about there "being cases on record where children were actually brought up in the city and lived through it," he may finally capitulate. But there is a resentment that cannot be stifled that his comfort and ease might have at least standing-room on the floor of discussion ; he hates the suburbs, he does not relish an hour's railroad ride night and morning — but at least, finding opposition wearying, he succumbs, buys a monthly ticket and becomes a commuter. When the children come these problems have' to be met and worked out by both ; neither can do all. The husband must make "allowances," manifest new tenderness, watchfulness, considera-

LITTLE PROBLEMS OF MARRIED LIFE. 909 Hon, thoughtfulness, forbearance and self-denial; he should not take himself and his grievances too seriously. He must take broader views and throw away the microscope with which he is studying the wounds of neglect inflicted on his vanity. If he wishes the home life to move along as it did of old, despite the temporary shadow the light of the new joy may cast, he should do more than his share towards keeping up all the traditions of the old sentiments. He should, so far as he possibly can, relieve the mother of the mere drudgery and added care of her new responsibilities, so that the close lines of the old comradeship may never be broken. A rose, or some trifling gift that means nothing but the thought it messages, may bring instinctively the smile, the glad look, the lovelight in the eyes, which he so misses, and in the rewinning he may find new happiness that will never come to his sulky demanding as a right. To the wife may come the need of care to prevent the child even temporarily eclipsing the husband. As her mind glows under the inspiring dreams of the child's future, and in fancy a twentyyear's panorama of its growth and progress unrolls before her, she must watch that she does not lose that close, telepathic kinship of mind and heart with her husband, so much more easily lost than regained. It merely requires a wise sense of values, seeing life and its relations in true perspective, a little sterling common sense united with love — then the coming of the children will mean only new joy and truer companionship to both. In the true spirit of acceptance of changed conditions they will waken to the completeness and consecration of the larger life with the children, the new inspiration, the new, sweeter dependence on each other, the new, broader vision of united usefulness, and they will be dearer and nearer to each other because the children are dearer to them, and the rooms echoing with the laughter and romping of the little ones will seem to them filled only with music. ("Talking Home Matters Outside." will In- discussed in the next article in this series.)