Evening star., 1942-08-05

parties during their vacations, and
there being two cars in too many
garages, home has come to mean
merely sort of halfway station be-
tween dates to thousands of fam
lilies whose members scarcely know
one another by sight. No sort OF
intimacy exists between them, and
1t Is q literal truth that many a
woman talks more freely to her
manicurist than she does to her
own daughters; and many a man
knows far more about the hopes
and ambitions of his Office boy than
he does about his sons.
Charge this partly to the tempo
OF modern life, which has given us
too many things to do and too little
time In which to do them, and to
the curious barrier which their very
relationship raises between parents
and children and which none of
them knows how to break down.
For fathers and mothers feel that
they must pose as little tin gods
before their children, and children
know that they must pretend to
believe in their infallibility. Hence
1t is the hardest thing in the world
for them to find any common get
together ground on which they can
be intimate friends who can say
what they think to each other.
So when Junior somes home from
college and Mary returns from a
finishing school they and their
parents are as much strangers to
each other as though they had never
met before. And, as of the past,
neither one has seen in the other
anything that made them very keen
about getting to know the other
better.
The children have seen In their
mother only fussy, middle-aged
woman whose clothes were all
wrong, who didn't know how to put
on her complexion and whose nosi-
ness they resented when she asked
them where they were going, who
they were going with and how long
they expected to be out. And father
to them was just another ordinary,
commonplace business man who had
in some way-they couldn't imagine
hoW-managed to get along in the
world, but whose opinions were of
no Importance, and whose chief
function, so far as they were con-
! cerned, was signing checks
And to the parents John and
Mary were a source of mingled pride
and disappointment. They were
proud of their good looks and their
sophisticated airs, but they resented
their patronage and condescension
and inwardly wondered whether it
was worthwhile to spend so much
money on two such snobs.
There the situation has stood ever
since home ceased to be place
where the family gathered about
the evening lamp, and became the
point of dispersal where they took
to the automobile and got as far
away as possible. But now, what
with our tires being taken from us
and our gas rationed and our
stream lined sport cars lacked up
we will have to stay at home be-
cause there will be no way to get
anywhere else.
This will give parents and chill
dren and brothers and sisters the
first opportunity they have had
really to know one another and to
revise their opinions of each other
For mother will find that Mary
under her veneer of worldliness is
just the same sort of girl she was
herself, and that she is just as Silly
in love as she was with Mary's
father when she married him. Mary
will have a new respect for mother
when she finds out that under her
do-funny hats there Is shrewd
executive brain that runs half the
! charities in town.
Father will discover that John
isn't the young fool he thought he
was, and John will sit up and take
notice when he realizes that fathers
wisecracks are better than any he
ever hears over the radio, and that
his old man is a prize story teller
and that he hears more good talk
at his own dinner table than he ever
heard at college banquet.
1t will be queer, won't II, II II
took Herr Hitter to introduce oul
parents and children to each other;