Dear Hope: Every time some one in the Household comments on how good the column is I wonder what they would say if they knew what it was like back in the days when you not only edited, but wrote for the rest of us. Maybe I enjoyed it so much because our children were small when yours were little, too--and your comments and suggestions fitted in with my problems and meant a lot.
Once you said you tried to do "one permanent thing each day," if it was only to drive a nail, low down, where the children could reach and hang up their coats. I've thought of that so many times, and have taken time to do some small constructive thing.
Another time you spoke of how hard it was to do the regular weekend work when the children came home from school in town on Friday night -- and had all their various interests to see to. And how it might pay just to rearrange the week's work so when they were home their needs came first.
It does work better, and I've thought of you often as I dusted and put the house in order and did some special baking before I went to town for the girls.
Do you still have fresh apple sauce for threshers? -- though I suppose nowadays it's only a combine -- and the excitement of the harvest has dimmed for you as for us -- though I honestly like this way best.
Well, anyway, I'm glad I was young when you were. It was a pleasant, helpful association. Good as the Household is now, it's different -- or I am.
I've always wondered - did your family make you stop writing about them? I can see how they could object to living in a gold fish bowl, but I'm glad I had a peek before you drew the curtain.
Do you know anyone now who makes blankets, using old wool scraps and wool clothes that have passed the make over stage? If so, could I have the address? -- Esther Kay, Nebraska.
Hope's Comment
Your letter was really a masterpiece of friendship. It brought tears to my eyes to remember those "dear dead days beyond recall". Those were sweet hours! We really wouldn't have time stand still, or go backward, but a letter like yours brings back for a little while the poignant preciousness of them.
I fill up the time nowadays, as no doubt you do, and all the other mothers who were young along with us, with one thing and another, but oh, how brimming over with busyness we used to be when the children were small! I get a taste of it occasionally now (do you?) when the grandchildren are left in my care, but it isn't the same. Now, we always know the exertion is just temporary--in a few hours, or at most a few days, we know the responsibility will be off of us and back on the mother. But then we were the all-in-all of our little flocks. We knew there was no relief, no second and third shift of workers to take over. The babies were our job 24 hours a day.
Do you remember how desperate we used to feel sometimes, wondering if life would race entirely past us before they grew up? How lucky we were to have such full lives. Even through all the depression and everything, those were happy years, and what tension there was was real and natural and normal. I wouldn't have missed it for worlds.
Thanks for bringing it all back. Today I'm alone in the house and you have given me a tender hour of retrospect that might have been missed if your letter hadn't touched it off.
And now for your question. Under separate cover a list of wool firms is being mailed you -- but whether they are all still in business since the war hasn't been checked. Perhaps the readers will have some newer information to share. -- Hope.