STRUGGLE IN THE FAMILY
How happy is that balm to wretches, sleep!
BEAUMONT.
If all that we have learned were that some persons “naturally” work
harder than others to achieve anything, we might say that this was
unavoidable; and there would be a degree of truth in it. It is true
that the intelligence of some people is so sluggish that they learn
little from experience. They continue to work towards any end in the
same way that they have always worked, wasting both strength and time.
For them there is nothing but repeated experiences and patient guidance
until they learn to apply their knowledge practically.
But the intelligent man learns that, often where he has worked in
the hardest possible way, he has had the most unsatisfactory return
for his effort. The good housekeeper, for instance, wishes above all
things to make her family comfortable; she has inherited a feeling of
the requirements of healthy living, and decides that she must have a
scrupulously clean house to protect her loved ones from the dangers of
germs and microbes.
So she sweeps, scrubs, cleans from morning until night; carefully
removes every trace of dust, follows her family with dust-pan and
brush, and at least looks reproachfully at the offender who does not
remove every trace of street or garden dirt from his shoes before
entering the house. She cleans so hard that she forgets that the real
object of cleaning is to make her family safe and comfortable. They may
be safe, but they are a long way from being comfortable, and she knows
no more comfort than they; cleanliness has become a fetich with her,
and some day, perhaps, she comes to her senses, finding herself chasing
the motes in a sunbeam, lest by chance they should rest upon her sacred
furniture.
If she then sits down to take stock of things, she finds that husband
and children almost dread to come home. However serene and happy they
may be before reaching the garden gate, or the apartment door, they
then become nervous and distrait. They look themselves over, to be
sure that nothing is amiss, for “mother is so particular.” An anxious
expression settles upon their faces, for, with their best endeavors,
they may have overlooked something that mother’s trained and suspicious
eye may note. The joy of life abates, and a sort of painful hush falls
upon things.
The average child cannot see that this condition grows out of
misdirected love and care; he sees no connection between it and his
well-being, but, if he thinks of it at all, he concludes that “the
house” counts for more with mother than anything else. Husband and
children unconsciously come to regard her as mainly a housekeeper, with
interests bounded by the four walls of the home. The very gifts they
make her are of a useful nature—“something for the house”—as if the
“house” were some special thing in her personal life but meant nothing
to them.
When the hungry heart of this woman pains her, she resents the
condition that she herself has created, but does not see the correct
remedy. Her husband and children have put her out of their inner lives;
they take their pleasures away from home, they find their confidantes
among outside friends. Who should share their thoughts and their
pleasures? she asks. Who has worked day and night for their comfort
and happiness as she has? And the chances are that she considers them
ungrateful and herself a martyr, when all the time she herself builds
the barrier between them and herself by striving to make them happy
in her way. That it is not their way, and so could not be in harmony
with the natural trend of things, does not once occur to her. As the
French say, “Madam costs herself too much.” She has not learned, and
may never learn, that the only way to make others happy is to love them
sincerely and unselfishly enough to allow them to be happy in their
own way.
Sometimes it is the father who destroys the joy of home. A many good
men think that their duty is done when they provide food, clothes,
shelter, and education for their children, and insist upon obedience
from them. They are so busy attending to these things that they have no
time to get acquainted with their children, to know or be known by them.
There is too much truth in the newspaper joke on the suburbanite. A
mother found her little boy crying bitterly on the doorstep quite early
on a Monday morning.
“What is the matter, Freddie?” she asked, anxiously.
“Why,” sobbed the child, “I was just running down the street when the
man who stops here on Sundays spanked me and sent me home.” There are
many children who have no cause to welcome “the man who stops here on
Sundays,” even though he may be counted “a good father.” Very often
he “takes a nap,” and all noise must cease for his benefit; or, he
cannot read his Sunday paper while they are playing about. He speaks
testily to his wife, blaming her that she does not quiet the children.
“They have all the week to play,” he complains, “I should think they
could keep quiet on Sunday. It is the only day I have to rest, and you
ought to see that I am not disturbed.” And the mother, who hasn’t even
Sunday to rest, quiets the children in the only way she knows, and
everybody is wretched.
As fast as the children grow up they leave home gladly for college
or business, and, though they respect and fear “the Head of the
Family,” they have no real love for him; they never consult him on
their intimate, personal worries or problems, and he many times carries
a sore heart behind his seemingly stern manner. He wonders why his
children are so ungrateful, when he has spent his whole life toiling
for them. In his bitter moments he may even call them monsters of
ingratitude; forgetting, as Dickens says, that he is really looking for
“monsters of gratitude.” These parents, like everyone else, have it in
their power to attract to themselves the affection and the surroundings
that they need, and to create a center of repose even in the midst of
strife; rest we may attain even amid turmoil; but true repose means
that quiet shall spread from us to others.