Page 544 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
provided that I got the right response at Peter Luger’s, it was Adios 45 West 60th Street! and Hola 7 Longview Place!)
Kathy was, you will recall, the mother of two young boys at the time—Daniel, age twelve (just), and David, age eight, going on nine— and as far as she was concerned, there were no circumstances under which I would be parked at 7 Longview without the requisite commit- ment from me. As the father of Danny (at the time, age eighteen, going on nineteen), Peter (age fifteen), and Rachel (age eleven, going on twelve)—three children who had gone through their own breakup trauma—I fully understood.
Our plan was not, however, just for—and I know that I shouldn’t say “just for” in this context without good purpose—marriage. We intended to find a home in Scarsdale for the four of us, so that I could be close to Peter and Rachel (Danny was already in college), and Daniel and David would continue to be assured of an excellent education. Thus, we were already house hunting when I alighted in Great Neck. The plan, which, unlike most, worked out well, was to get married and then find a suitable house that we could buy after Kathy’s boys finished the current school year in Great Neck in June but before the start of the next school year in September in Scarsdale. In fact, we wanted to close the Scarsdale purchase as soon as possible after their current school year ended, so that they might make new acquaintances during the summer.
In any event, that meant that I would live with Kathy and her boys on Long Island for a period of ten months, assuming that I could move in as soon as we were engaged. And I did.
You would think that this would make for a major period of adjust- ment, but, in fact, that was not the case. I can recall no trauma arising from this change in our lives on my part, on Kathy’s part, or, most impor- tant, on the part of her children. (Maybe that was not entirely the case when it came to Danny Y., who would deny that the new union was dif- ficult for him but would admit that on three consecutive occasions when he attempted to drive to visit us, he got hopelessly lost on the south side of the Whitestone Bridge.) In fact, there are only a few things that I remember about this period, and none of them was traumatic—or really
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