The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1941-03-07
BY KATHLEEN NORRIS
tBen syndicate-wNU Service.

BY KATHLEEN NORRIS
THERE comes a bad time
in the life of almost every
\ woman. 1t comes when
the children grow up, graduate
from college, depart to lives of
their own. And when at the
same time, youth and beauty
say an eternal good-by to her
mirror.
Oh, she's not old! She's forty,
or forty-two, or perhaps only
thirty-five or eight. But life sud-
denly goes fiat for her. She
moves through the familiar do
mestic round duly. The daugh-
ter is away at school; Bill goes
off to the office; Jean faces a
long stupid day.
Of course she may go out to the
kitchen and talk meals with Carrie.
Cold beef and the broccoli and the
last cellar; that will be plenty of
lunch. The Millers are coming to
dinner, so they must have something
nice. Carrie makes suggestions,
and Jean approves. She looks in the
hall closet; yes, there are cards and
Scores She telephones Ethel; is
Ethel going to the club? She looks
at the list of movies in the papers
and the radio programs; nothing
thrilling.
"Papa lived to be seventy" thinks
Jean. Sam going to have thirty
years more of this?"
Middle Age Has Its Joys Too
Now, middle-age has job, just
as youth has. Good times and get
ting married and first homes and
first babies are all very well, but
they only belong to certain years of
life. You can't carry the thrills and
glamours of early wifehood, early
motherhood, into the forties. and you
only make yourself ridiculous if you
try. But the forties have their own
satisfactions and joys If you will
take the trouble to find them, and
one of the most inspiring of them
all is plan.
A plan for old age. And by old
age / mean the late Fifties, the
Sixties and the Seventies, which
don't seem like old age at all when
you get to them. They seem just
lile-well, living, like any other
time of life. Comfort and friends
and mental security and even beau
ty mean as much to you as they ever
did-perhaps more. To be able to
do as you like at sixty is just as
pleasant as it is at twenty. To have
a small farm, a dog or two, a
cat or two, flowers to train, friends
to come in to barbecue luncheons on
Sunday is to still be expressing your
own personality, just as you did as
a young wife. To travel when you
feel a great need to see the Cana
dian lakes or Mexico City, to send
friends preserves made Of your own
fruit, to putter about in the strip OF
your own woods, to dress your white
hair as becomingly as your darker
hair ever was dressed and to wear
the comfortable brocades and vel
vets becoming your age-all this is
very keen delight.
Plan Together.
And all this is especially delight
full if you take the old partner of
your younger joys and sorrows along
with you. If you want to put thrill
into a marriage, that has gone q
little stale and monotonous, try dis
cussing your plan with the man of
the house tonight. Ask him where
and how he would like to live when
you both get really old; farm, sea-
side, mountains? How about chick
ems or squads or raising fine kittens
or puppies? How about having
your own vegetables, corn and let
tuce and tomatoes? Thousands and
thousands of families have had their
own vegetable patch, their own ber-
ries and fruit, and enjoyed the lux
uries of the table for almost no out
lay at all. How about cruising
around in the car, now that the
weather is getting warm, and just
seeing what sort Of q little place we