A ROOM OF OUR OWN
Follette, Isabel B. La
A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette WITH all the articles, analyses, complicated studies, and warnings we hear about the returning veteran, it occurred to me recently that like so many...
...How are you...
...I remember how the tallness, of your children impressed me...
...As a matter of fact, one of the adjustments the returning veteran has to make is to the home folks' perspective...
...One friend has said more than once that it was hardly worth while going away for a vacation when you know what will be waiting for you when you get home...
...So you are a 'temporary widow,' but I hope it won't be as long as my 'widowhood' which lasted exactly 5 years to the day...
...We feel extraordinarily happy...
...We dash excitedly in the front door, but after the first flush subsides "problems" begin to intrude...
...Mark returned on May 12,1945, after having seen me for the last time on May 12, 1940...
...Our family has been fortunate in that not only Mark returned in good health, but my brother-in-law, who was a political prisoner in Germany for 2 years, returned also, terribly lean but fundamentally healthy...
...We can't possibly "get into the groove," as the children say, all at once, and we are wasting valuable nervous and emotional energy in attempting the impossible...
...There have been a good many dramatic days and moments in our life here these past 5 years...
...My second boy is very clever, but doesn't know as yet what he wants to do in life...
...I'll send you a copy which will be better than writing you a lengthy letter about our experiences...
...I'd be delighted to hear from you...
...Experience and judgment teach us that the best way to weather these minor crises is to keep calm and take things in our stride...
...A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette WITH all the articles, analyses, complicated studies, and warnings we hear about the returning veteran, it occurred to me recently that like so many other things in life we think that, by talking learnedly and making them complicated we can avoid their impact...
...Many men will not get the full significance of this comparison, but any housewife will...
...My boys are now 18, 15, and 10...
...It is a wonderful package and though it must have been long on the road, has arrived in perfect state...
...We must hang on to our perspective at all costs, and not permit the details of life which show their effects in frayed nerves all about us to obscure our real selves...
...But now we are quite well fed and have no more worries or anxieties though our present life is still very different from prewar days...
...Many thanks again for the package...
...The soldier thinks he has been up against something pretty tough, but is amazed to find that it is nothing to the trials and tribulations we think we have been enduring...
...Many, many thanks for remembering us so generously ! "The first bit of news I had about you was quite recently in a letter from Bill and Rosamond, saying that Phil is in China...
...Observing the 2 sides of the picture, I suddenly thought that for the majority of returnees who have not suffered mental or physical breakage, coming back is nothing more nor less than the return from an exceptionally long trip...
...Naturally I have been giving considerable-thought to the matter these past weeks...
...He studied German administrative law while he was a prisoner, so I suppose our government will want him to make use of his knowledge...
...I am writing a book about our life under the Occupation, a very simple and personal diary, which Knopf will publish next Fall...
...I Her husband was a prisoner of war in Germany.] "The war years have been very hard to bear, and even last Winter was very difficult...
...It is difficult for Mark to build up a good law practice again, after 5 years of absence—that would take some time...
...Our oldest son is now studying law, not to become a lawyer but with a view toward the consular career...
...How are your children...
...He has been extraordinarily lucky in coming home unscathed...
...So there is a possibiHty that he may get a government job, either a mission to America (which I'd like very much) or else administration somewhere in Germany (which I'd like much less...
...Would you write me a few words...
...The cocoa is a most welcome gift, but the children were even more delighted with the peanut butter they had never eaten before, and with the soy beans which were even new to me...
...Speaking of "postwar adjustment," is that letter— coming from a woman who lived five years in occupied Belgium, and whose husband was 5 years a prisoner of war—a challenge or isn't it...
...The little one has just been invited for a 3 months' stay in Switzerland and will leave us within a few weeks...
...The problem is there, all right, but I think we must be careful not to turn the molehills into mountains, and must maintain as good a balance as possible...
...The house is uncleaned, newspapers and magazines in piles on every available surface...
...Again and again the physically maimed veterans ask only not to be stared at, to be treated normally, and all returnees are outraged at the idea that their friends and family should think of them as "cases...
...He'll decide within a few months what he wants to do...
...a tableful of accumulated correspondence chides you...
...He'll probably go to England and America for a year—as soon as we can afford it—to perfect his English...
...They are quite healthy but not very tall...
...the yard is a public nuisance...
...and as you wonder where in the world to begin first, each member of the family vies with each other to get your attention on the various triumphs but mostly catastrophes which engulf them...
...From Brussels on June 29, she wrote: "What a joy to get your package...
...He looks and feels fine, is even a bit heavier than before the war...
...an enormous washing lowers you...
...THIS was brought home to me with a wham when I received the following letter from a Latvian friend Phil and I knew in our youth when she was at the University and have seen each time we went to Brussels where she has lived since her marriage to a Belgian...
...Things will arrange themselves," as a friend of my mother's used to say...
...WHO hasn't come eagerly home from a trip looking forward to seeing the family and friends, with all sorts of ideas and resolutions about picking up and enlarging our activities and interests...
...How is Phil...
...We don't know as yet what we'll do in the near future...
Vol. 9 • August 1945 • No. 33
