The day book. [volume], April 27, 1915, LAST EDITION, Image 19

About The day book. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1911-1917

Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL

                
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to break. But after a few weeks I felt
quite differently.
He had sought me out and lie
learned for the first time that I had
six children living, and eight grand
children, and that I had been living
with my daughter Molly since my
husband died.
"Tom," I said to him, "I don't mind
telling you that I never loved my hus
band half so much as you."
"Lizzie," he answered, "you haven't
anything on me there."
So we chatted together quite gayly,
and nowadays Tom comes oyer pret
ty nearly every afternoon. If he sees
that I 'am asleep he goes away very
softly, so as not to disturb me. And
sometimes I only pretend to be asleep
so that I can sit still and think and
live in my memories.
"Grandmother's flirtation," the
grandchildren call our talks. It never
enters their heads that, for all my. six
children and 78 years T am juBt as
much Interested In Tom as though he
were again the dark-haired "boy
whose photograph, very faint and
faded, stands on my "bureau.
At first, as I said, my heart was
nearly broken. But then I used to sit
out-here in the sari and think things
over. And gradually I seemed to
work things out in my mind, and at
first I was reconciled, and then happy,
and now I am Just like a girl in mind
again.
You see, as I was saying, folks are
coming back to belief, though it is not
the old certainty. Now I never re
gretted marrying Jim, and I'hope and
am sure that I shall meet him again,
and that whatever there was of com
mon interest and affection between
us-will be renewed. But that doesn't
shut me out from Tom. v
Now suppose I had married Tom.
Would the old romance, which exists
still, In spite of my 78 years, con
tinue? Or would it have been frit
tered away with the cares of life, the
bearing and rearing of my children,
the friction of things and the strug
gles? I hink it would have been.
1 That seems the strange thing about
life the moment you begin to realize
nappiness you lose it It all consists
In the looking backward or looking
forward.
Now; what an adventure life ought
to be, and was, and is becoming again
with the old faith coming back to lis.
Because I am quite sure that it is this
youth in our hearts, which never dies,,
no matter how old we are, that Is to
be realized in the life to come. I am
quite sure that then, at last, we shall
find the happiness which we all try
so hard to catch and somehow miss. ,
Well, then, does anyone mean to
tell me that my heart won't be big
enough to hold both my husband and
Tom in an existence where there i&
no marrying or giving in marriage ?.
It seems to me that there one will
have all the romance of girlhood and
all the joys of being a mother and a
grandmother, too.
I have put this idea into words
rather crudely, not being a writer;
but, anyhow, that was my conclusion,
and I told Tom about it. You can't
Imagine how pleased it made me to
know that he understood.
"That is just how I have been feel
ing, my dear," he told me. "You see,
when I heard you were married life
seemed impossible for me. But by
and by I began to find out that it has
got to be lived, and I tried to live it;
My wife and I "were very happy to
gether. And I thought often that if
it had been you our children would
have been different souls."
"Yes," I told him. "I should be
dreadfully unhappy without Polly and
Dora and Mark and Philip and the
wb boys in Los Angeles."
"Butl now we have each other as
well as our own," he answered.
I closed by eyes because I wanted
,to think. I was casting over in my
mind the different; women I knew, and
it seemed to me that whether they
had married the right man or -the
wrong man "It seemed pretty well to
even itself out And I thought of.
those -who had never married "at all,
,?
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