ALSO BY JUDITH VIORST
POEMS
The Village Square
It’s Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty and Other Tragedies of Married Life
People and Other Aggravations
How Did I Get to Be Forty and Other Atrocities
If I Were in Charge of the World and Other Worries
When Did I Stop Being Twenty and Other Injustices
Forever Fifty and Other Negotiations
Sad Underwear and Other Complications
Suddenly Sixty and Other Shocks of Later Life
I’m Too Young to Be Seventy and Other Delusions
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Sunday Morning
I’ll Fix Anthony
Try It Again, Sam
The Tenth Good Thing About Barney
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
My Mama Says There Aren’t Any Zombies, Ghosts, Vampires, Creatures, Demons, Monsters, Fiends, Goblins, or Things
Rosie and Michael
Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday
The Good-bye Book
Earrings!
The Alphabet From Z to A (With Much Confusion on the Way)
Alexander, Who’s Not (Do You Hear Me? I Mean It!) Going to Move
Absolutely Positively Alexander
Super-Completely and Totally the Messiest
Just in Case
OTHER
Yes, Married
A Visit From St. Nicholas (To a Liberated Household)
Love & Guilt & the Meaning of Life, Etc.
Necessary Losses
Murdering Mr. Monti
Imperfect Control
You’re Officially a Grown-Up
Grown-Up Marriage
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Excerpt from “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” written and performed by Three 6 Mafia, available on Sony Records. Copyright © 2005 by Music Resources, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Viorst, Judith.
Alexander and the wonderful, marvelous, excellent, terrific ninety days: an almost completely honest account of what happened to our family when our youngest son, his wife, their baby, their toddler, and their fieve-year-old came to live with us for three months / Judith Viorst.
p. cm.
1. Family—Humor. 2. Family life—Humor. I. Title.
HQ536. V56 2007
306.8709753—dc22 2007016006
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-7137-7
ISBN-10: 1-4165-7137-X
Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com
For Alexander, Marla, Olivia, Isaac, and Toby
Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?
—Sayings of the Jewish Buddhist
CONTENTS
Chapter One: They’re Here!
Chapter Two: Feeding Frenzy
Chapter Three: The Resident Grandchildren
Chapter Four: The Resident Grown-Ups
Chapter Five: Where Have All the Playpens Gone?
Chapter Six: Other Voices, Other Rooms
Chapter Seven: They’ve Left!
CHAPTER ONE
They’re Here!
We are normally a household of two—one husband, one wife—with our children and grandchildren spread near and far in homes of their own. This summer, however, we’re sharing our house for ninety (that’s ninety) days minimum with our youngest son, Alexander, and his wife, Marla, along with their Olivia (five), Isaac (almost two), and Toby (four months). I am trying to think of this time as a magnificent, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity not only for strengthening family ties and intimately getting to know the grandchildren but for furthering my personal growth while also achieving marital enrichment. I’ve already resolved to let go of my perhaps excessive commitment to neatness and schedules, and to live in the moment instead of planning ahead, though I’m well aware that many accommodations and even some major transformations may be required. Am I up to the task? Will this really be good for my family, my marriage, and me? And how do I stop my grandchildren from eating on any piece of furniture covered in velvet? I’m about to find out.
I have to admit that Alexander and I had a testy moment before they moved in, which they’re doing—I ought to point out—because they’re renovating their house, which is, like ours, in Washington, D.C. I had a small suggestion about their renovation plans but I wanted to make my suggestion tactfully. “I know that you and Marla are incredibly competent people,” I began, “and quite clear on what you want to do with your house. So feel free to stop me right now if you think I’m being at all intrusive, because I don’t want to be the slightest bit intrusive, but I’ve got a little suggestion that I honestly believe—” Alexander felt free to stop me right now.
“Mom,” he said, “those preliminaries of yours? They’re SO much more annoying than your advice. So please, just skip them and get to the advice.”
I’ll have some subsequent testy moments to mention. But right now I’d like to describe our living arrangements.
Ours is a big Victorian house, with a wraparound porch and a balcony overhead. There’s a living room, dining room, library, kitchen, and bath on the first floor, and a bedroom, two bathrooms, and two offices (both Milton and I write at home) on the second floor. Our third floor—composed of three bedrooms, one bathroom, one tiny treadmill room, and a central sitting room—is where our three sons grew up and where they sleep when they and their wives and kids come to visit and where the Alexander Five are now living. Over the years we’ve equipped that third floor with a vast array of child-oriented amenities for the benefit of various visiting grandchildren: toys and games and puzzles, drawing paper and crayons, and large and small stuffed animals and balls, as well as diapers and baby wipes, three different types of car seats, a crib, a stroller, a bouncy seat, a booster seat, a rocking duck, and a potty for those with an interest in toilet training.
What aren’t there, what have never been there, and what never will be there are play dough, painting supplies, and containers of glue, on the grounds that no matter how washable such materials claim to be, I don’t intend to check out those claims in my house. There are limits to any woman’s potential for further personal growth and these, I’m prepared to concede, are some of mine.
Now I’ve said that the Alexander Five are living on the third floor, but of course they’re living in our entire house, though I did have a few secret fantasies about putting up a gate—like a baby gate, except to restrain the whole family. But my mother long ago taught me that when you’re going to give you ought to give with both hands and I’m hoping to try, within reason, to follow that rule. So here are the grandchildren, dribbling their drinks in our hallway, playing with mice (the computer kind) in our offices, trying on my jewelry in our bedroom, pushing the TV buttons in our library, and tossing the pillows off our couch in our living room, while their mother and father are trying simultaneously to subdue them and deal with the crises coming over their BlackBerries.
Not that I mean to sound critical of Alexan
der and Marla’s parenting style, which, on a scale from one to ten, is fifteen. They are perfect—well, they are practically perfect—parents, my only reservation being that maybe they do not worry as much as they should. But although our different anxiety levels have made for many an animated discussion, this is, in the larger scheme of things, a quibble. For they meltingly love their kids, delight in their kids, understand their kids, but set limits, teach them manners, discourage whining, lavishing on them kisses and hugs and extravaganzas of praise along with, when needed, a “no” and a “stop that right now.” There are certainly times when, sleep-deprived, stressed, and faced with three children screaming simultaneously, Alexander or Marla will say, “If they weren’t so adorable, I’d kill them.” But remembering, as I well do, my former Desperate Mother days, my “do that one more time and I’ll break your kneecaps,” I remain full of admiration for the way the two of them balance demanding careers and devoted parenting.
This balancing act, in my humble view, seems harder than it needs to be, for Olivia goes to camp and the others to day care, which means that when they’re afflicted with ear infections, rashes, strep, or stomach flu they have to stay home—and there’s no one at home to take care of them. Instead, Alexander or Marla leaves work, or they contact an emergency nanny service, or they turn to their backup nannies, Milton and me.
By the way, in case you were wondering, my renovation suggestion to Alexander was adding a room for a nanny or an au pair. I have many things to say on the subject of why our children don’t listen to us when we’re offering some brilliant piece of advice, but instead of getting into all that I’m going to introduce you to our family:
Milton and I are the patriarch and matriarch of the Viorsts, having succeeded in staying married for forty-six years, during which time we’ve acquired three sons (Anthony, Nicholas, and Alexander); three daughters-in-law (Hyla, Marya, and Marla); and a total of seven grandchildren (Miranda and Brandeis, Nathaniel and Benjamin, and Alexander’s Olivia, Isaac, and Toby). In addition, our family includes our Taiwanese almost-daughter, Jeannette, and her husband, Steve, the son of my oldest friend, and if all goes well the baby—that would make grandchild number eight—they’re eagerly endeavoring to adopt.
We’re a fond-of-each-other family and we all get together in Washington three times a year—Thanksgiving, Passover, and a few days in the summer—with all of the out-of-towners, from New York and Denver, squeezing into our house at the same time. This summer, however, the presence of the Alexander Five reduces our sleeping space dramatically, which means that our other kids and their families, instead of coming to Washington simultaneously, are going to have to each make a separate visit. This change in the family tradition has been generating much e-mail on the subject of which of the kids would be coming here when, with the Denver branch—Tony and his crew—deciding on the wide-open spaces of a national park instead of the crowded quarters of D.C. But I have assured everyone that, unless Alexander’s contractor misses his deadline (and whoever, I ask you, has heard of such a thing?), we’ll return to our joint family visits in November.
Now maybe you think that these joint family visits, three times a year every year, have prepared me for having a family of five in residence. You would be wrong. Did dating prepare me for marriage? Did baby-sitting prepare me for parenthood? Did scrambling an egg prepare me to make a soufflé? So how could a four-day visit, max, after which the whole family departs, prepare me for ninety days, minimum, of this glorious opportunity to enrich my marriage and further my personal growth?
The Alexander Five arrived early in June.
Actually, Alexander moved into our house a few days before the rest of the family because Marla had taken the children to visit her parents and because renovations were dustily under way. He arrived with hangers and suitcases full of summer wardrobes for everyone, including Olivia’s pink-sequined flip-flops and Supergirl shirt. He arrived with cartons of toys and books, and hair and beauty products, and kids’ DVDs. He arrived with a jogger, a baby swing, one wagon, two cars, and four bicycles, all of them his. He even arrived with his own special coffee and pot, which spurred my husband to loudly complain, “What—the coffee I make in this house isn’t good enough?”
He arrived with possessions sufficient to fill every inch of the third floor, plus some nooks and crannies of the rooms below. He arrived with the contents of their freezer and fridge. Some fifteen sweaty trips later he had transferred whatever was needed from their house to ours, and had settled into the bedroom of his boyhood.
And soon after that, I reverted to the mommy of his boyhood, which quickly led to another testy moment.
For Alexander would go off to work and then to a baseball game, a movie, a dinner, not mentioning his plans or when he’d be back. The first night this happened, watching the late evening hours tick-tocking by, I worked myself into a panic attack. The next night this happened, I called him on his cell phone, just to make sure that he was alive and well.
Alexander took the position that he was thirty-nine years old, and didn’t need to routinely check in with his mother. I took the position that when adults were living together in a household—no matter which of them was the parent of whom—they were obliged, out of courtesy, out of simple human decency, to notify each other of their whereabouts. “Otherwise, we’ll never know,” I told him, “when to call the hospitals and the police.”
How can you argue with that? Alexander did.
“This arrangement isn’t going to work,” he informed me, “if I have to hear how you’re worried all the time. I can’t be thinking I need to call my mommy.” My husband, who doesn’t worry because he has put me in charge of worrying, treacherously agreed with Alexander.
Well, maybe this is how women are different from men. For the fact is, we mothers don’t stop being mothers because our children are grown. We remain in a state I have elsewhere called Permanent Parenthood. Our concern and our need to protect our kids become especially strong when, whatever their age, they’re living under our roof, and we surely would worry less if they would be kind enough to inform us where they are going and when they plan to be back (just as long as they’re back when they say they will be). Indeed, when I later conducted a poll of some mothers of middle-aged children, ten out of ten of those women supported my view, but I didn’t need to pursue this point with my own middle-aged baby boy because Marla and the children would soon be arriving. With Marla in the house, I happily reassured myself, this thorny issue would be rendered moot. For although Alexander might feel that he doesn’t have to check in with his mother, I suspect he’ll be checking in plenty with his wife.
And then she arrived, my beautiful golden-haired daughter-in-law, with her adorable, weary, weeping, food-stained brood, surging into the house with what looked to be two dozen more pieces of equipment. I felt delighted to see them and eager to help them settle in, but I also felt, a bit, as if they were General Sherman’s troops marching through my Civil War Atlanta. Listening to my tale of family love and occupation, my friend Hanna later offered a helpful perspective. “Be grateful,” she said as she poured me a generous glass of Chardonnay. “Just be grateful they don’t own a dog.”
This same friend also reminded me that her recent, unhappy kitchen renovation was supposed to take two months and took thirteen, due to the nonappearance for weeks on end of her outrageously feckless contractor. A deeply nonviolent person, she nonetheless had this to say after more than a year of eating out in restaurants: “If Osama bin Laden and my contractor were walking down the street and I had a gun in my purse and that gun had two bullets, I would use up both those bullets on my contractor to make absolutely sure he was dead.”
She said that the point of her story was not to reveal the heart of darkness lurking in all of us or even to show she was weak on the War Against Terrorism, but simply to prepare me for the not-too-remote possibility that we all might still be together come next January.
I decided to put off preparing fo
r that possibility.
I have, however, drawn up a list of some of my wishes and needs—okay, call them house rules—that I hope will be indulged in the weeks ahead, although I have no intention of actually showing this list to Marla or Alexander. Instead I plan, with my trademark nonchalance, to slip these items into our conversations, dropping them in so casually that they’ll never even notice that I have suggested them. My only problem with this plan, as Milton has pointed out, is I’ve never been known for my trademark nonchalance.
Here are some of the items on my list:
Of all of the places that chocolate shouldn’t be eaten, the number-one place is the wine-velvet chair in the library. Please note, this applies to everyone, not just to children.
You shouldn’t set drinking glasses on wood surfaces, like a table or the floor. If you do, you’ll leave permanent circles on those surfaces. For those who believe this is not necessarily true I have one thing to say: Don’t do it anyway.
No child should ever enter my home office unless he or she is accompanied by an adult. The keys of my computer are not meant for banging on. The backs of my manuscript pages are not meant for coloring on. My files are not meant to be shaken out of their beige manila folders in order to turn the folders into tents. I’m pointing the finger at no one. They know who they are.
I need the remote controls to be exactly where I put them. And nowhere else. I don’t want the children to touch them. I don’t want kids or adults to relocate them. I don’t want, when I want them, to have to look for them. I also don’t want to be told that, if they get lost, I can always replace them and—no problem—learn how to use the (to me invariably incomprehensible) replacements, especially when it comes to figuring out how to track down reruns of The Sopranos. And if someone has an opinion on how it’s a waste of my time to watch reruns of The Sopranos, please don’t tell me about it.