The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-10-23
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.
Write to Mother.


county. report that they are flooded |
with anxious and pathetic letters from
mothers asking what has become of
their sons and begging them to please
tell my boy to write to me-"
1t is a pitiful little side light on war
and life-isn't it? The young who
forget-the old who remember. The
young who go marching away to new
existence, full of new sights, and
sounds; new experiences, new duties;
new acquaintance; every minute
trimming over with new interests and
thoughts and expectations, so that in
few days, almost, the old life hes
behind them; dim and far away as
dream.
But the old mother sits at home
with nothing new to distract her
thoughts except the new sorrow of be-
ing parted from her boy and her fears
of the dread unknown into which he
is going. She cannot touch that even
with her imagination, and SO she longs
with a poignancy of yearning, of
which the boy cannot even conceive,
for some word from him that will tell
her of his daily life-how his time is
spent, what he has to eat if he re-
members to tuck his blankets in at
night the way she always tucked
them.
So she waits day after day, hoping,
watching, waiting for the letter that
| postman is a tragedy that blurs the
patient old eyes with tears. For this
i is the tragedy OF neutrality-suspicious.
| children can forget their mothers
but mothers never forget their chill
dren.
The officers are doing all they can
| to induce the soldier boys to write
home letters. Perhaps their efforts
are not any too successful, for here
| we strike upon the strange and mex
| W ora or he ma ton
| permanent that makes the average marl
hate ink as the devil is said to hate
holy water.
/ And especially does he hate pen
and ink as it applies to the members
| of his own family. The very thought
| of indicting letter to those of his
own household brings on case of to-
tai pen paralysis, so that it is a COM
mon thing for brothers not even to
! correspond.
| Worse still there are many men who
never even write to their mothers.
They keep up a cold, vague and fIabby
communication with her thru their
| wives, or thru their children. Per-
maps II they consider themselves good
sons. they send the old lady little
| check at Christmas or on her birthday,
| with a few formal lines that they die
tate to their stenographers.
But they never sit down and take
pen in hand and write their mothers
long. intimate personal letters. tell
ing her all the dear details of their
| HVeS that she would like to know or
saying to her the words of love and
appreciation that would be honey on
her hps as she read them. AS for
| writing her such a letter every week
| or two or three times a week why
tney would be appalled, al the very
thought of such a thing.
Ihey nave never written to mother
when they left home when thew were
n he oft
their fortunes they were too much
glamoured with the stir and hustle
and bright lights at first to write to
her- Then during the years, in which
ley We're struggling for a foothold
they were too busy to write to her
And by the time they had won sue
cess so I my new interests engrossed
thelr attention that they had ceased
TO even think about writing to her.
None OF these men are Intentionally
SeIIlSh or deliberately cruel Not one
or them would torture his mother or
darken her life with sorrow and
anxiety by any overt act Of his
Yet that is exactly what his silence
ooes: 1t is stab in the heart as deep
as the black hand of ingratitude and
neglect can thrust. 1t is the<ceaseIess
gnaWlng at her mother love of a
thousand needless anXieties that let
ter would have slain.
me average mothers world is
has
rev interests outside of that narrow
realm, and when they go away from
home they literally take her life along
with them Their sorrows are her
sorrows, their struggles her struggles.
their triumphs her triumphs. The
smallest thing that happens to them
is vital to her. The universe exists
for her as it affects them
To hear that Jim has been made
head clerk in the grocery store is of
more thrilling interest to her than
that new Napoleon has risen on the
field of battle. That John has lost
| his job is greater disaster than the
overthrow of an empire. She is more
! filled with curiosity to know what
| sort of a girl Sammy is engaged to
than she is about the whole future
of the feminist movement and the
news that typhoons and cyclones have
DESTROYED villages, and towns, and
sections of some far away country
does not cause her a hundredth part
} as much regret as hearing that Jim s
D crops have had too much rain.
Wherever her children are, her
mother heart goes out to follow then
in their fortunes, and this is why il
is so cruel a thing for her children
2 in their selfishness and their self
t absorption in their own affairs to deny
/ her the comfort of their letters thai
: would enable her to keep step with
l them, and to feel that she had part
: III their ua4iN uNeS- no matter now
i far removed it was from her
The twilight of mothers life is gen.
orally duh and drab. Perhaps it rlust
be spent in some lonely place where
' nothing ever happens. The only way
= in which any interest, any thrill of ex-
! element, anything new to think about
and talk about can come to ner is
i, thru the letters from her children
that she has sent out into the world
They are in the thick of things where
everything is happening. They are
having strange adventures, meeting
the people of whom one reads in the
Z, papers. seeing queer things; they are
fighting, struggling, achieving, falling
Write mother of these things. Give
her some of the overflow of your
| .a1-carf1lll life Il E-n1lId he q