The Perfect Child I was raised in a brick dormitory at Dewing College, formerly the Mary-Ruth Dewing Academy, a finishing school best known for turning out attractive secretaries who married up. In the late 1950s, Dewing began granting baccalaureate degrees to the second-rate students it continued to attract despite its expansion into intellectual terrain beyond typing and shorthand. The social arts metamorphosed into sociology and psychology, nicely fitting the respective fields of job seekers Aviva Ginsburg Hatch, Ph.D., my mother, and David Hatch, Ph.D., my father. Twin appointments had been unavailable at the hundred more prestigious institutions they aspired and applied to. They arrived in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1960, not thrilled with the Dewing wages or benefits, but ever hopeful and prone to negotiation - two bleeding hearts that beat as one, conjoined since their first date in 1955 upon viewing a Movietone newsreel of Rosa Parkss arrest. Were they types, my parents-to-be? From a distance, and even to me for a long time, it appeared to be so. Over coffee in grad school theyd found that each had watched every black-and-white televised moment of the Army-McCarthy hearings, had both written passionately on The Grapes of Wrath in high school; both held Samuel Gompers and Pete Seeger in high esteem; both owned albums by the Weavers. Their wedding invitations, stamped with a union bug, asked that guests make donations in lieu of gifts to the presidential campaign of Adlai Stevenson. It was my father who proposed that their stable marriage and professional sensitivities would lend themselves to the rentfree benefit known as houseparenting. The dean of residential life said she was sorry, but a married couple was out of the question: Parents would not like a man living among their nubile daughters. "What about a man with a baby?" my father replied coyly. It was a premature announcement. My mothers period must have been no more than a week late at the time of that spring interview, but they both felt ethically bound to share the details of her menstrual calendar. He posited further: Werent two responsible, vibrant parents with relevant Ph.D.s better than their no doubt competent but often elderly predecessors, who - with all due respect - werent such a great help with homework and tended to die on the job? David and Aviva inaugurated their long line of labor-management imbroglios by defending my right to live and wail within the 3.5 rooms of their would-be apartment. If given the chance, theyd handle everything; theyd address potential doubts and fears head-on in a letter theyd send to parents and guardians of incoming Mary-Ruths, as we called the students, introducing themselves, offering their phone number, their curricula vitae, their open door, and their projected vision of nuclear familyhood. The nervous dean gave the professors Hatch a one-year trial; after all, an infant in a dorm might disrupt residential life Excerpted from My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
