A ROOM OF OUR OWN
Follettte, Isabel B. La
A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette HAVING started Sherry off to Sunday School, I settled down to read the morning paper, only to have her come bursting in the door with the wail, "I can't...
...Dicky has lost his, too, and isn't going...
...Later in the morning Sherry, with a friend in tow, came home beaming and laden with even more papers and pictures which she happily demonstrated to me...
...and I assented that she was indeed young but not too young to get the sense of it and to appreciate the point of not running away from hurdles...
...Most reluctantly she started down the street, leaving the family in a state of exhaustion...
...She replied in the negative, so I tried to elucidate...
...IT is this type of thinking which evades the fact that American representatives have thus far been unable to cope with the Stalins and the Churchills that are at their elbows but think that by some miracle they can create some machinery "with force" that will enable themselves or their counterparts to deal with the Stalins and Churchills and their successors in the days ahead...
...It would be righteous retribution of course if they had to pay the bills for their well-intentioned but ill-advised intellectual sprees...
...No, and neither was Jimmy—he lost his pictures, too, and neither of their mothers made them go...
...As Sherry skipped out the door, Judy remarked, "I don't know how much she got out of that talk...
...of "Wait till I tell my big brother on you and he'll come and lick you...
...I know it was hard to go and admit your carelessness, but when you once got it over with, didn't you feel a million times better to be straight with your conscience...
...The earlier we learn this, the easier for us in the long run, I know Dicky's and Jimmy's mothers, and they are very nice people, but they believe in doing the easiest thing and it is much pleasanter to lie a-bed on a Sunday morning than to get up and get breakfast, do a child's hair, and see that she is off to Sunday school— especially when she has been careless and gotten things balled-up as you did this morning...
...Is it worth while...
...It is so easy to blame others or shunt aside the responsibility for one's own faults and failings, and it is such a barren attitude...
...The "yellow book" and all but 2 of the pictures finally came to light and I urged Sherry out the front door with the words, "Just tell your teacher frankly that you are very sorry but you lost the pictures and can you get some to take their place...
...I asked...
...Well, to return to my original point of departure, you can see why 1 have burned into me the conviction that every one of us can make a contribution to the avoidance of future war and the maintainanee of peace by building up in ourselves and encouraging in those about us the habit of facing facts, unpleasant though they may be, realistically...
...Of course that involved both Judy and myself joining in the search, all of us with increasing irritation and Sherry in tears by this time...
...a if EETING one's responsibilities is also a habit...
...Supposing you had stayed away today, you'd still have to face the music the next time you went...
...And she dashed out to ride her bicycle...
...Was Dicky there...
...One cannot begin too young, I reiterated, in establishing the habit of meeting obligations we have assumed and what's more, accepting them cheerfully...
...But," I continued, "even if I get cross and seem to you like a cruel, hard-hearted wretch, I consider it a part of my job as a mother to prepare you as best T can to meet your life...
...that I thought one should train himself so that he could rely on habit to take care of such, perhaps not vital but certainly aesthetic, details, so that one's mind and spirit can be freed to act creatively...
...That doesn't cut any ice with me," I replied firmly...
...Oh, no...
...Was the teacher cross with you...
...To my query she replied, "1 haven't got my yellow book...
...You children are always telling me, for instance, that your table manners may be bad at home but that you can eat nicely when you want to...
...But the world is full of people who give lip service to or embark on projects but leave the actual responsibility for others to carry out...
...Later on at dinner I asked, "Sherry, do you know why I insisted that you go to Sunday School this morning...
...And anyway...
...There is so little one can do about others, but so much we can do about ourselves...
...Harnessed to the facts and laws of nature, our ideals stand the best chance of achieving our goal...
...Because they are unequal to meeting these realistic individuals like Stalin and Churchill on a knock-down-drag-out-serap around the conference table, they resort to thinking in terms...
...One of the first things we all have to learn is not to run away from unpleasant situations when they lie in our path...
...You belong to a Sunday School class...
...I wondered, but could see no alternative but to meet the issue as it arose ."But I must be sure that she got the point," I added to myself...
...1VJL The one thing I have continually emphasized with Bob and Judy (and am thankful to feel that I have been quite successful there) is the habit of always trying to be honest with one's self...
...Character, like manners, have to be a habit...
...A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette HAVING started Sherry off to Sunday School, I settled down to read the morning paper, only to have her come bursting in the door with the wail, "I can't go...
...You weren't prepared this morning so you wanted to escape meeting the consequences...
...The tragedy is that this habit of mind leads their holders to embark on ill-advised and ill-considered schemes for which they themselves do not have to stand the consequences...
...All during the "steps-short-of-war" days I simply couldn't believe that the advocates of this policy could fail to see its ultimate end, but I have to face the uncomfortable fact that this type of mind stops short before facing the end of a policy and, as in the present phase of the war, moves on to problems of the peace while the cream «of American youth is "mopping up" in Germany and on Okinawa...
...Get busy and find the book and the pictures right away...
...If only we could get that point home as a fundamental in the great field of "education...
...Pointing out that that was easily remedied, I elicited the fact that not only couldn't she locate the book but that she had lost "two of the pic-shures that I was supposed to have pasted in...
...To your teacher you were just one pupil who didn't get her lesson, but to yourself it was important to meet the situation instead of trying to duck it...
...This constant emphasis on "force" is a dead giveaway...
...I couldn't get to first base with Bob III until I pointed out that it must be a frightful bore for himself and his companions to have to keep his mind on his manners instead of having a good time...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 17
