The Pittsburgh Press (July 21, 1943)
I DARE SAY —
Holiday
By Florence Fisher Parry
I used to have a little wire called “Hey-Wire,” which I had to get rid of for a very sad reason. Although he ecstatically welcomed every visitor to the house, when the time came for the guests to depart, he viciously bit their ankles. This was carrying hospitality a little too far and there was nothing to do but consign him to a domicile where visitors were not the order of the day.
Personally, I had great sympathy for Hey-Wire’s unorthodox approach to the social amenities. Conformity, as well as consistency, is the hobgoblin of little minds, and I have always felt a sneaking attraction for those who have the courage of their own eccentricities.
I dare say we all nurse peculiarities. There is no family which does not indulge in its own funny little habits which, to the outsider, appear ridiculous.
Take this morning, for instance: I am what is called “sick in bed.” I am dictating this column through a blanket of cerebral fog.
But is my plight cause for commiseration? Indeed, no! It is, instead, cause for general rejoicing, and always has been. For to my family, my being sick means one happy thing: IT MAKES ME STAY HOME. And so always has been regarded by my progeny at least as a red-letter holiday.
This blithe attitude toward sickness has extended also to them. All their lives they have rejoiced at their every passing brash, for it meant that I would have to stay home from work, and wait on them, and read to them, and be, indeed, a mother.
Sick-a-bed day
Looking back over the years of their children, I am seized by a pang past describing. I dare say this spasm of nostalgic regret is suffered by all busy mothers who have been cheated of a normal home life. But looking back upon the compromise my children have been made to accept, I have come to the conclusion that no mistake a mother can ever make is so grievous as that of foregoing a normal home with her children while they are growing up. No compensation, no reward, can justify the loss.
I look upon the time I had to spend away from my own children with the most bitter resentment; and, if I had my life to live over, I would undertake any compromise that would permit me to be home with them through their growing years.
Frankly I just cannot understand women who, given the alternative, deliberately and selfishly choose a career to the rearing of their own children.
It is all right to say that you can do both. That you can have your cake and eat it. I rise to testify that it cannot be done. One or the other will suffer, and it is usually the children who do.
My advice to all young widows left with small children is to marry again and at once, and provide, if possible, by this recourse, a normal home for their children.
My children can tell me ‘til the cows come home that they had a happy childhood; but I cannot be fooled. I know now there was something wrong somewhere, if only because, when I was sick in bed or they were sick in bed, it was a signal for general rejoicing.
Too late now
There is never a spring comes around that when I see a violet growing. I don’t remember the times that we were going out in the country to pick Johnny-jump-ups, and never did, because I was busy and had to go to town.
I never see a picnic table along the highway that I am not rebuked, remembering the picnics we were to have and didn’t have, because I was too busy.
All around me I see young mothers doing just what I did, young mothers left widows, so easily attracted into the rut of a career, so easily persuaded to get someone to look after the children while they follow their own selfish paths! I never see one that I don’t feel like standing before her, stopping her in her tracks, and warning her against the mistake that I made and have lived to rue.
For nothing vanishes as quickly as childhood. Now it is here, heartbreakingly beautiful and importunate; and then it is gone, and cannot be recovered. Such a few years until they are grown. Fools, we, that we do not grapple them to our hearts and make the most of them, while there is still time!