My Face-to-Face Chat With Judith Viorst

I was in the kitchen – emptying the dishwasher when I heard Judith Viorst being interviewed on an afternoon radio talk show. I couldn’t help myself. I picked up the phone, called in and secured an interview.

I couldn’t help it. Judith Viorst is one of my all-time favorite people.

“Who is she?” you ask.

Just a middle class, college educated, gently interfering Jewish mother who wrote a long-running monthly column in “Redbook Magazine” and in between published a steady stream of children’s books and poems.

Judith Viorst’s first novel – Murdering Mr. Monti – is a witty tale of mayhem, love and violence. Exploring in her typically humorous vein, the lengths a mother will go to protect her children from harm, she also touches upon how much trouble we can get into by interfering in other people’s lives. (No kidding – it’s really funny!)

For the interview, I wasn’t about to take any chances with my cheap, battered, kid-friendly Sony cassette recorder. I called up an audio-visual aid rental service and put in an order for a professional quality mixer, recorder and clip-on microphones.

That night I said a prayer: to be transformed into a savvy, mechanical wizard who wouldn’t embarrass herself in front of a world-published novelist and poet, as she set up, attached, hooked up and fiddled with professional recording equipment with which to conduct the interview.

I needn’t have worried. Judith Viorst knew less about recorders than I did. And she even relied on me to clip on her mike in just the right spot to best pick up her vivacious, expressive voice.

At age seven, while I was learning to print, dot my “i’s” and write on the line, Judith Viorst was writing serious Odes (to her dead parents who were very much alive) and sending them off to women’s magazines in hopes of publication.

They never got published, but her parents thought for sure they were raising a seriously disturbed child with a very morbid streak.

Her industrious, focused manner continued throughout her growing up years. And after college, she modeled, typed, took shorthand, wrote scientific books and edited others.

And then she married and shortly thereafter had three sons, Anthony, Nicholas and Alexander. And that is when she developed a sense of humor. Humor gets her through.

So, in between car pools, rushes to hospital emergency rooms, basketball games and school plays, she wrote. And wrote. And wrote.

On the back of envelopes

On the back of checks

In the margins of grocery lists

And the tops of greeting cards

With a pencil stub, a leaky pen, an almost dried-up magic marker.

She developed the knack of writing anywhere, anytime, around and through any interruption.

Aside from her books being published in every language known to man, she gives REAL dinner parties. Not the kind of last minute jobbies where you offhandedly invite a few couples over and then sheepishly order-in pizza.

And, oh yes, when she speaks of having had Ben as a house guest, she doesn’t mean her son’s pal Ben who used to pick his nose, but Ben Spock, Judith’s old friend who wrote the bible on child care.

But in spite of her fame, her success, her famous friends and her often quoted poems, Judith Viorst is a regular person.

She still worries when her kids don’t have snow tires and announces when Nicholas visits for the week-end that there’s a sale on snow tires and any child of hers buying snow tires this week-end will get them as a present from his parents.

She deals with burst water pipes, friends that don’t take her well meaning advice and neighbors who beg for innovative names for their soon-to-be-born children.

And she has decided that the best way to encourage adult children to visit often is to make the experience as pleasant, easy and comfortable as possible.

Sigh.

You can find more from Iris on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, on Huffington Post and her website, IrisRuthPastor.com.