Nathaniel: “Thank you.”
Marya: “And later you can come and discuss it with me.”
A round of cheers and applause was offered by all.
Before the visit was over I imprinted the older grandchildren with glittery, wash-offable tattoos, the sticking on of which has lately become another Viorst family ritual. These silver tattoos, in the shape of diamonds or spirals or hearts or stars, are actually, if you must know, my tattoos, which I sometimes wear on my upper right arm as a way of informing the world that I’M STILL HERE. But my grandchildren, as they’ve grown older, have come to admire them and to covet them, reminding me that it’s not nice not to share. And so on Sunday morning O and Nathaniel arrived in my bedroom, made their selection, lifted an arm in the air, and waited while their grandma peeled off the paper, pressed down the picture, and tattooed them.
When the New Yorkers departed I thought of the folk tale of the peasant who bitterly complained that his hut was too small. He was told to bring in his chickens, his goat, and his pig. He lived with these animals for a while, then put them back outside, and suddenly found that his hut was plenty big. In this same spirit I found, when Marya, Nick, Nathaniel, and Benjamin went home (and we love them, we miss them, we want them back, we do!) that our house, reduced to merely seven inhabitants, had all of a sudden become palatial.
I intend, when O is older and complains about this or that, to discuss the concept of “as compared to what?”
There are many discussions I’m planning to have with Olivia and her brothers and her cousins. There are many messages that I wish to impart. There are also skills and planets and poems I’m intending to introduce them to. And there are, as well, excursions and adventures I’m hoping that we can engage in together, shared pleasures I hope that in later life they’ll recall.
Indeed, I think a great deal—maybe more than I ought to—of how I would like my grandchildren to remember me. But if it’s considered legitimate for presidents to care about their legacies, why can’t a grandma?
I’m working on my legacies right now.
And right now my legacy with cherubic Isaac, our resident almost-two-year-old, is lessons in pillow fights and Follow the Leader, a game that includes the puffing of cheeks as well as the tapping of heads, the rubbing of bellies, the pinching of noses and chins, the waggling of ears, the sticking out of tongues, and the twirling around and around and around till the game finally ends in falling down or giggles. He’s sensational at giggles and he shrieks with delight as he chugs around the house, looking for food, for trouble, and for fun. And a recent report from day care, after a day during which he was feeling none too well, nonetheless said that “Isaac tries hard to be happy.” Still my heart aches a bit for sweet Isaac because Toby’s birth was only seventeen months after his, and because he wants more from his mommy than his mommy, or daddy, or any of us can offer him. Indeed, the other morning, when everybody’s attention seemed to be focused on Toby, Isaac silently watched from the sidelines and then announced, just in case we hadn’t noticed, “Isaac a baby.”
I’d like, as part of my Isaac legacy, to help him have his chance to still be a baby.
Toby, at the moment, is the easiest of the three children, though sleep doesn’t seem to be part of his CV, asking no more of life than to be fed, changed, cuddled, tickled, bounced, and talked to, and inviting us to respond in kind to his exuberant production of chortles and coos. Unaware, as yet, of competitive feelings toward and from his brother and sister, Toby smiles indiscriminately on all, while Isaac lifts up his arms to be held and Olivia complains, “When are these guys gonna learn to do things for themselves?”
Maybe my first legacy for Toby will be teaching him to do a few things for himself.
As for our Olivia, Milton has taught her to kneel, hold her arms out straight, and dive (head not belly first) neatly into a pool, his patient instruction providing her with a well-earned source of pride and a lifelong skill. My legacies for Olivia? I seem to be aspiring to a lot of them, but before she moves out I’d like to teach her ten poems, ten poems I’ll try (as I tried and failed with my children) to persuade her to learn in exchange…for payments in cash. (I know this sounds crass, but I’m trying it anyway.) Since O is a child who has memorized vast portions of The Incredibles, Shrek, and The Lion King, I figure that she can do the same with verse, inspired by her grandmother’s enthusiasm as well as by a dollar for every poem learned.
My fantasy is that someday she’ll be stuck in traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike and instead of cursing her fate she’ll recite a few poems, and maybe she’ll think of her grandma who tucked these words into her soul when she was a child. On the other hand, if she’s stuck in traffic cursing her fate instead of reciting poetry, I’m hoping she doesn’t remember that her grandmother taught her a few of those curse words too. (Not on purpose, of course. Certainly not! “Oh, shit” isn’t part of my intended legacy.)
Now we know what can happen to language when children dutifully learn words by heart without a full grasp of what it is they’re saying. My current favorite malapropism is Nathaniel’s rendition of the Pledge of Allegiance, which he recites with great precision right until he hits “one nation, under guard.” (Though now that I’m thinking about it, maybe it’s not a malapropism at all.)
I’m planning to teach Olivia to understand a poem’s sense as well as its sound, even when the sense is sort of silly, which is why I’m starting with Lear’s delicious ode to intermarriage, “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat.” I’ll have to explain about “five-pound notes” and “shillings” and “mince” and “quince,” as well as “bong-trees.” And we’ll both have to learn the meaning of “runcible spoon.” But I hope that O will be tickled when “Pussy, my love” gets married to “Owl,” that “elegant fowl,” and the two of them dance “hand in hand…by the light of the moon.” And I hope that I can persuade this tenacious, relentless, world-class negotiator that, although—yes, she’s right—this poem has three verses indeed, I intend to pay her ONE dollar to learn it, not three.
O has more time to learn poetry over the weekend, when camp is out and when she, and all the rest of us, are at home, four grown-ups in charge of keeping three children happily occupied for two days and three evenings. The challenge here is to not succumb to entertaining the kids with too many sugary treats and DVDs, and every weekend we flunk this test once again. This is not a failure to play countless games or to color countless pages of coloring books or to spend countless hours at swimming pools and playgrounds or to countlessly read yet another Sendak or Seuss. Nor is this a failure to arrange for compatible play dates and jolly outings. The problem, instead, is that while Alexander will go for a ride on his bike on Saturday morning, tugging Isaac behind in his two-wheeled buggy; and while Marla, off in another direction, will go for a long sweaty run, pushing Toby ahead of her in his red jogger; and while Milton and I will summon all our energy and inventiveness to make certain that O is diverted while they are gone, when everyone’s done with their biking and running and back at the house again, it still is only ten o’clock in the morning.
We of a certain age agree that time goes by faster and faster as we grow older. One of the few exceptions is spending Friday night to Sunday night with the grandchildren.
One Friday in late July, Alexander and Marla packed the children into the car and drove down to Rehoboth Beach for the weekend. Milton and I, with the house to ourselves, seemed hardly to know what to do, but when we had locked all the doors and turned the security system to “on” and got into bed, we figured it out. On Saturday I spent a few hours restoring our kitchen to its former orderliness. On Sunday morning we read the Post and the Times not to “Elmo’s Song,” but to J. S. Bach. Nothing was spilled in the course of our lunch and no sippy cups graced our table. And when I went upstairs to take a shower and shampoo my hair, I was the only person in the bathroom.
Arriving on Sunday night from the beach, Isaac beamed us a thoroughly happy “hi-yo.” Toby
dispensed a gurgle and a coo. Alexander and Marla pronounced the weekend a great success. And Olivia, who, along with the others, headed into the kitchen for a snack, instantly started recounting her adventures in Rehoboth at a pace somewhat faster than the speed of light.
“We saw jellyfishes. Yuck! And we saw dolphins in the ocean. Twelve of them! Awesome! And I rode on rides. And I won a frog. And built sandcastles in the sand. And I held my breath and jumped in big waves with my daddy.”
Sitting at the table of my already ravaged kitchen with Toby, now in my arms, spitting up on my dress, I smiled at my sandy family and said that the weekend sounded like fun and that I was happy they’d had such a wonderful time. And then I added, surprised to find myself swept with an unexpected rush of emotion, “But Papa and I are so glad you’re all back. We missed you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Resident Grown-Ups
“You know that big oak dresser on the third floor,” I say nonchalantly to Alexander, “the one with the heavy top that sometimes unexpectedly comes crashing down…?”
“If this is a conversation,” he says, stopping me in my tracks, “that’s going to end up with how this dresser top can crush children’s little fingers, which to my mind kind of suggests that I’m not smart enough to watch out for my own kids, I don’t want to hear it.”
“I didn’t intend to say any such thing,” I instantly reply to him, in a tone combining huffiness and hurt. “I only wanted to mention that I’d be happy to take the blankets out of that dresser to give your family a bit more room for clothes.”
I was lying, of course. Alexander had nailed it. And looking at me quizzically as I hastily improvised my blanket story, he knew I knew he knew that I had lied. But both of us let it ride—I deciding I wouldn’t insist that he accept my story and he deciding, I guess, that a son shouldn’t call his mother a liar in her own home.
Normally Alexander, when we aren’t sharing a house, is a joy to be with—funny, charming, kindhearted, smart, sensitive to other people’s needs, and not only my youngest son but my very good friend. Most of the time, even living here, he is all of the above except when (in his view) I’m treating him like a child, except when (always with tact, in my view) I’m issuing warnings and making helpful suggestions.
It’s inevitable, I suppose, that living, as Milton and I are now living, in close quarters with our resident grown-up children, there are bound to be opportunities—many opportunities—for intergenerational irritations. Some of them, however, some of us parents might be able to avoid by repeating the following mantra twice a day:
Don’t judge, advise, or criticize.
Respect their boundaries and choices.
Accept who they are.
Well, sometimes we need to repeat it ten times a day. And then we must try to abide by what we say. I’m doing my best.
This doesn’t mean that I always succeed in keeping my mouth shut when I should keep my mouth shut. But I don’t understand those parents who won’t ever try. Who always feel compelled to offer their children their full and brutally frank opinion. Who insist that they have, as obviously I don’t, much too much integrity to lie. Who make it blazingly clear that they don’t approve of the way their children are managing money, or raising their kids, or even cutting their hair. And who haven’t figured out that in order to keep the family intact, they must not mess with the mates their children have chosen. Indeed, when a friend once said to me, “What am I going to do? I really don’t like the woman my son has married,” I—a great believer in family intactness—had only one answer to offer: “Learn to like her.”
I’ve happily had the good fortune to really like, to love, the women my sons have married. And I think that they like, maybe even love, Milton and me. These fond feelings are surely helping us through our summer’s intense togetherness. In fact, with a few exceptions, the four of us seem to be living together with considerable grace and civility.
With a few exceptions.
My husband, for example, profoundly hates to throw out food. Cartons and bunches and baggies of what have clearly gone from perishables to perished languish in our refrigerator for months, growing ever smellier and moldier and limper and more repulsive while the expiration dates recede into the distant—far, far distant—past. (Our wines should be as old as some of our milk.) When Alexander or Marla cries out in horror at the color (black) of the cream cheese or the stench (words fail me) of the half-and-half, Milton mocks them for being overfastidious, pointing out that, coming from a poor family, he has learned to ignore bad smells and to cut off the black parts.
I sympathize with Marla and Alexander’s concerns about poisoning the family, but explain (in private) that Milton absolutely cannot (at his age) be retrained, and that our only defense is to get rid of this sordid stuff when he’s out of the house. And since he sometimes checks the trash to make sure we’re not disposing of (in his view, his view only) viable food, I also advise them to camouflage, with paper towels and napkins, the monstrosities they’ve dumped into the trash.
The three of us are aligned against Milton on this particular issue. On another issue, however, it’s three against me, with Milton and Marla and Alexander complaining constantly that the house is too cold while I am pointing to sweat on my brow and a temperature reading of eighty-seven degrees in an effort to convince them that objectively it’s intolerably hot. Whenever I enter a room I close any open windows and doors and switch on one of our twelve separate a.c. units. Whenever they enter a room they do the reverse. And when I insist that if I don’t cool off the kitchen I’m going to die of heat prostration, they counter with fine, okay, and I should try not to blame myself when my grandchildren’s sniffles turn into full-blown pneumonia. I don’t switch on the a.c. I die of heat prostration.
This pneumonia ploy, by the way, may be the only situation in which Alexander and Marla and Milton outworry, or pretend to outworry, me, for most of the time the three of them are exuding disapproval over my constant and, to them, excessive concerns about everybody’s safety.
I admit that they’ve learned, for the most part, the futility of telling me to stop worrying, But sometimes I think I’m the only one who cares. For they’re often rolling their eyes when I’m rescuing O from what I’m convinced is a near-death experience, or prying from Isaac’s mouth an excessive number of easy-to-choke-on gummy bears. And though Marla is always gracious when I mention a dozen symptoms that she might want to share with Toby’s pediatrician, I don’t think she shares.
I would also like to note that, while I’m doing all the above, I don’t appreciate Milton saying to Marla and Alexander, “She can’t help it.”
As for the safety, health, and well-being of my resident son and daughter-in-law, I do leave a number of my concerns unexpressed, determined to show respect for the fact that in their opinion (and most of the time in mine) they’re capable of taking care of themselves. This means that I won’t urge Marla to go to bed instead of to work when she’s suffering from a major case of flu and won’t tell Alexander that, as the father of three, it’s his duty to give up his perilous passion for twenty-four-hour mountain-bike racing in favor of something slower and saner, like golf.
Although I didn’t talk about my mountain-bike-racing fears to Alexander, I did find occasion to bring them up with Marla, who discouraged any further exploration of the subject by noting that Alexander (a) is a sensible, responsible, excellent biker and (b) loves biking too much to be asked to relinquish it. I’m hoping she will stick by the rule that “whatever’s said in the kitchen stays in the kitchen” and not mention our little chat to Alexander.
Another matter I won’t discuss—nor will Milton discuss—with Alexander is an article we recently read in Time. It reports on the risks, to men, of sexual difficulties and “perineal pain” resulting from the pressure that bike seats put on certain sensitive parts of the body. This problem can be solved by using a nontraditional bike seat that is shrewdly designed to be “genitalia-friendly,
” but I don’t think we’ll be buying him one for his birthday. We’re still giving thought, however, to—some night while he is sleeping—slipping the article under his bedroom door.
If there’s anything else I might say or do, or that Milton might say or do, that might irritate Marla or Alexander or both, maybe they—like us—could try a mantra, something for those fraught moments when they feel we’ve crossed over the line, something to help them tolerate the incursions of the older generation, something to repeat to themselves over and over again, something like this:
They love us.
They’re trying.
They mean well.
Cut them some slack.
Milton and I take credit for being at our most restrained about the religious upbringing of our grandchildren, offering not a single opinion or helpful word of advice and discovering that sometimes—as the old cliché would have it—silence is golden. Let me explain:
Tony’s wife, Hyla, is Jewish, but Alexander and Nick married women who are not. Years ago, back when our sons were teens, Milton and I had informed them on several occasions that, although we weren’t seriously observant, we both would be pleased, would prefer, to have Jewish grandchildren. But when our sons brought Marya and Marla into our life, our gratitude at having such glorious daughters-in-law trumped our concerns about how their kids would be raised.
Both of these couples, however, without displaying the slightest need to consult with us, decided that they would raise their children as Jews.
Alexander and Marla made their decision public at Olivia’s naming ceremony, where, at a party for family and friends, Alexander gave a little speech. He said that before they had married, he and Marla—touring western and eastern Europe—had spent a day at Auschwitz confronting the grim and graphic evidence of the mass extermination of the Jews. Staggering out, they asked each other what they could do, what response they could possibly make, to what they had seen. “And we decided that what we could do,” Alexander explained, “would be for us to raise Jewish children.” He then thanked Marla “for joining me on this journey,” while Milton—standing right behind me—soaked the entire back of my blouse with his tears.