WHEN THE CHILDREN COME.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2221, 26 October 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

WHEN THE CHILDREN COME.

(By William George Jordan in “Tlio Delineator.”)

Do you remember tlio spirited discussion between two Irish laborers on tho subject of mortar, one asserting that tiie mortar held tlio bricks together, tho 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. AA’hen the anticipated joy of uarentiiood lias become a reality and i+ 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 tho flight of time, it is a homo benediction, an ideal rising superior even to tho thought- of problems. -But- 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, or change, the enforced readjustment of the mutual dependence of husband and wife ou each other that must be most carefully recognised. The old freedom and finality of -tlieir whims and fancies is gone, because every decision may now ho overruled by tlie baby’s veto. Iho pleasure of a little railway journey together, a night at tlio theatre, a proposed social call, the lookcd-for-happiness of a read and a talk under the glow of the library lamp, tlie loving counsel and confidence after dinner, may all be sacrificed in a moment by the opposing cry of protest from the autocrat of tlie nursery, tlie officious third member of the house, whose voice casts the final rote.

Tho 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. H e may not be able to put it into words, even if lie would, for tho heart is pained beyond tho power of clumsy words to express. He may laugh at his foolish rebellion, but the laugh is not very merry, nor does its note ring true. He feels t3ie loneliness of unshared pleasures, the isolation of unspoken confidences; he grows hungry for the old allness of importance; ho misses the little tendernesses, the graceful attentions, the smiles of sweetness , tho little nothings that make up the all of loving. And in his failure to get he may forget to give. Ho may thoughtlessly accept an invitation for some evening entertainment, and later find that his baby forbids his wife to accompany him, and the husband may loyally forego the pleasuro rather than go alone. But subsequent invitations may weaken his resistance, and finally he may surrender, perhaps saying ho can do no real good by staying at home. Then Ire may remember that he has xiot been to his club or the theatre for a long time, and -this opens to him a change of scene, despites his wife’s inability to go with him. He may, in his heart and speech, honestly revolt at wliat seems to liim tho enslavement of the mother to her child, and feel helpless in facing a condition ho cannot change. It is not that his paternal love is lessening, hut ho is still seeking to hold to an elusive memory of an old sweet companionship that somehow seems slipping away.

Tile -mother, absorbed and concentrated in the loving care of her child, which lias become so nearly all her world, may lot motherhood eclipo the tenderness of wifehood.

She may miss the old conferences and confidences, and feel, in a vague way, that it is all his fault, thoroughly unconscious that, on ra-tented recent occasions, when he bail told her little cares and worries as of old tried to win her enthuoiasm to some new plan of bis, or some new dream .of ambition, she bad only half heard, her interest- was slight, her sympathy unexpressed, her thoughts wandering as she waited for a pause and side-tracked his confidence with the latest instance of the marvellous intellectuality of the baby. iShemay not realise tli it the child that began as a real reason for dropping familiar customs and sweet habits has now become 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 sting of a. memory. But now the child may become a refuge to tbo mother. Concentrating upon it all her love, she bears stolidly a coldness that otherwise she would seek to remove, while the husband, p! lying his poor counter-role, draws more closely around him the robes of his martyrdom and injured innocence. And they both think things about each other and they won’t talk.

When the children come these problems ha Vo to bo met and worked out by both; neither can do -all. Tho husband must make “'allowances, manifest new tenderness, watchfulness, consideration, thoughtfulness, forbearance aiul self-denial, lie mutt take broader views and throw away Ulus miseroseopo with which lie ,s studying the wounds of neglect mfticited ou liis vanity. If he wishes the home lifo to move along as it lid of old, despite the temporary shadow tlio light of the new joy may cast., he should do more than lus share toward keeping up all the traditions of the old sentiments. To tlio wife may collie tlio need ol care to prevent the child, even t* poratrily, eclipsing the husband. As her mind grows under the inspiring dreams of the child’s future, and m fancy a twenty years’ panorama of its growth and progress unrolls before her, slio must watch that she does not lose that close telepathic kinship of mind and heart with n r husband so much more easily lost than regained. .It merely requires a wise sense of values; and the coming of tho children will mean only now ioy and truer companionship to both. They will waken to tlie completeness and consecration of the larger life with the children, the new, broad vision ot united usefulness, and they will in this spirit be dearer and nearer to each other because the children are dearer to them.