All I Want Is to Be Spared the Trials of ‘All I Want’

On a recent night at the diner, my 7-year-old daughter unwittingly arranged a date for me with a single father. We had been sitting at the counter, avoiding each other’s eyes, but our kids began to talk and clown, and my daughter asked, “Could you give us your phone number so we could have a play date?”

This forced the father and me to introduce ourselves, but what truly cracked the ice was that we had both just been through the anguish--and outrage--of taking our children to see a “family movie.”

I had promised my kids I would take them to a movie if they could agree on a picture. Usually, my son, who’s 9, wants to see blood and gore and my daughter wants to see dancing animals. But they cried out in unison, “All I Want for Christmas.”

The movie had been heavily promoted on kids’ TV shows. I looked in the paper. The ad showed two children stringing up Santa by his feet. The blurb said “The satisfying family picture we’ve all been waiting for!”

I figured it would not be great art, but if it was unwatchable, I could sneak into one of the other screening rooms in the cineplex and come back to pick up the kids and the three friends they’d invited along.

The movie began, and at the first whiff of the plot I realized I had made a dreadful mistake.

It’s about two children whose parents are divorced and whose greatest wish for Christmas is that their mother and father re-marry. They concoct a plan to make this happen and, by tricks and deceit, they succeed.

I glanced at my children, their faces barely visible in the speckled light. I’m stuck, I thought. What have I done? I’ve brought five kids here, four of whom have parents who are divorced.

My daughter, just last week, asked her father and me, when she saw us returning from a parent conference at school, “Are you gonna get married again? You’re not fighting now.”

No, we had said, and then her father took the children to his house, where they spend half the week--an arrangement, they tell me, they are “sick of.”

Now I couldn’t leave the theater. This is such a charged subject that I had to wait and see what the kids were going to be hit with. Holding a giant box of popcorn, I sat between my son and daughter, watching kids on the screen make poignant speeches about how depressing it is at the holidays when you don’t have a family that’s whole. I found myself weeping, compulsively, as one does when peeling onions.

I fantasized about what acts of torture I could inflict on the makers of this film. Especially those executives who decided to advertise it in a way that hides the content. Neither the ads nor the trailer gives a clue about the story; they both make it look like a kids’ caper.

What drives me to fantasies of bombing Paramount is the message this movie gives to kids: It’s in your power. If you wish hard enough and do the right things, you can get your parents to marry again.

Is there anyone out there who is not brain dead who does not realize how painful this message could be to the millions of children who are going through this? The primary things that divorcing parents must convey to their children are: It is not their fault and It is not in their power to reverse the situation.

When the lights came on, I asked the girls if they liked the picture. “It was weird,” they said. The boys said it was “so-so,” although they loved the part where the kids locked their mother’s new boyfriend in an ice cream truck and he nearly froze to death.

Later, when their friends had gone home, I sat the kids down and tried to probe the effect of the film. I told them the movie had upset me. “It’s natural,” I said, “for kids to want their parents to get back together again, but in life, I don’t know of a single case where the children can make this come about.” My daughter nodded, but my son disagreed. “I bet some children can do it.”

That night, as it happened, was my son’s night to go out to dinner with his dad, while my daughter and I went to Johnny Rockets for hamburgers and fries. My daughter started feeding nickels to the counter-top juke box.

At the far end of the counter, I noticed an attractive man with dark, curly hair, who was putting French fries into his toddler’s mouth and matching us, nickel for nickel, at the juke box. After my daughter and I played, “Yakkety Yak,” he played, “Mr. Sandman.” The man and I kept our heads down, focused on our kids, bending over to hear their voices above the music.

Hmmm. Alone with a child on a Monday night at the diner? His wife could be sick or traveling, I supposed.

My daughter began to dance in the aisle, and the toddler joined her. By the time we paid our checks, the kids were holding hands and twirling. My daughter and I started to walk away, but she dragged me to a stop. “Could you ask them for their phone number?”

“You can ask, if you want it.”

“Ask what?” the father said, catching up to us.

“She wants your phone number,” I told him.

He took out a business card and handed it to me.

“Where are you going now?” my daughter said.

“The yogurt store.”

“So are we!” she said.

So the four of us walked to Humphrey Yogart. No sooner had we settled on stools than my daughter asked the man, “Where’s your wife?”

“I don’t have a wife.”

“How’d you get that baby then?”

“It’s a long story,” he said, smiling. “What flavor do you want?”

An hour later (children eat slowly, in this instance a boon), we rode the escalator down to the parking garage.

The father asked, “What kind of day did you have?”

“Turbulent.” I told him about the movie and warned him not to see it.

“Too late,” he said. “We were there today also.”

He winced. “Nothing stabs you in the gut more than knowing you’ve hurt your child. And yet, you’re sure it was what you had to do.”

We consoled ourselves with the understanding that children do go on, we all go on, and this is the grist they will work and re-work, probably much of their lives. If we had not given them this, they would have other grist.

We talked about our custody arrangements. He said his son moves back and forth between him and his ex-wife every other week. “What I still can’t bear is the off weeks--waking up in the morning and not being able to see him.”

We reached the garage and gave our tickets to the cashier. She said his car would be right up, but I owed $4.

I had forgotten to get my ticket validated.

I glanced at the escalator, and down at my daughter. Was it worth it? My daughter moves slowly, and it was late. Could I leave her here with this guy. . . ?

He took the ticket from my hand. “Be right back.” He picked up his son and headed for the escalator. I was floored. He was carrying a 40-pound toddler up and down three escalators to save me the annoyance of paying for something I shouldn’t have to. By the time he returned, I was ready to follow him and his baby into the sunset.

He gave my ticket to the cashier. “Shall we do this again?”

“Sure,” I said.

He strapped his son into the car seat. We made a date to take our kids to a movie the following weekend. Something safe, like “Beauty and the Beast.”