Aladdin's Lamp

WITH darning done, and much yet in the basket, I stop occasionally to read ‘What Other Women Do.’ Then appears the long procession of mothers who write and act and sing, mothers who conduct big businesses, mothers who manage clubs and engage passionately in welfare activities. Suddenly, my own busy, happy life seems meandering futility. After all, what is it to feed and clothe and teach and eternally bring up two sparkling infants? Not five years ago, I should have despised the round of nurse-maiding and kinder-gartening on which I now spend all my time. My soul momentarily contracts with envy for those others, who, having children, Yet possess eyes undimmed for beauty, and minds that can still follow with pleasure the involutions of modern thought.

It is not so with me. Sometimes, in the rare periods when a vacant hour does not coincide with complete exhaustion, I try to read the books that interested me five years ago. It makes my heart sick. Words follow words upon the printed page, but the thought remains buried too deep for my unaccustomed digging; and when I go to the beach with the babies, the sea, no doubt, sings the old silken tunes; but I cannot hear them, and the quivering blue and silver is just wind and water to me. All that world of careful thought, of color and sound, has gone. I stand an exile, gazing toward a vanished shore.

Then my little son comes over, and tries to see what it is that I watch so intently on the distant horizon. His warm and loving hand pulls at me, until I turn and see my new heaven and earth in his two eyes. Trouble enough and pain, and joys so piercing as to press upon the soul like agony, and all woven upon a warp of laughter.

Does the world hold anything like the promise of these buds? Is there anywhere a task rightfully more absorbing than the guidance of that awakening life? In the wonder of children’s eyes, the commonest things put on the glory of their creation; little ants hurrying so busily over the concrete walks, and delicate moon riding in the translucent autumn haze, alike shine with the beauty of God’s first thought. Is it to my clumsy hands that is entrusted the changing of that wonder into the stare of adult boredom? How pitifully ill-trained I feel!

And the laughter, over nothing, over everything. Just joy in life, just inconsequent happiness. How am I to keep that fountain bubbling, to keep it free from the choking of common foolish cares, and yet not turn my babies upon the world with the talents of the lilies of the field?

No. I do not envy those others. To hold the restless, vulgar adult world, they must pay with an exile more bitter than mine. After all, through the gate of my children’s thoughts, I see Paradise Regained.