A lovely night to pass away in your sleep.

They laid on the blow-up mattress in their living room, worn out from the day of unpacking.  The heat was relentless, and soon they would find relief in their entwined sleep.  He sat up.  "Do you smell that?"  She couldn't smell anything.  "I think that's gas."  No, no, it wasn't.  Well, it might have been, but she was too tired to care.  The city had various odors and none of them had done more harm than made her gag. "We should call the gas company," he persisted. Exhausted, she was desperate for an excuse to hush his anxiety.  She sniffed around the apartment, and lifted the window screen to stick her nose out the window.  It was coming from outside.  "Okay," he said, "so shouldn't we call?"  "Someone else will do it," she said,  "Lets go to bed."  Resigned, he laid down beside her and snuggled his nose into the back of her neck.  The room was dark and she soon found herself restless.  He had passed his anxiety on to her so that they both lay on the cool mattress, exhausted and brooding.  Eventually all four eyes closed, lucidly dreaming of dying in their sleep and content with their last moment together in that bed.

leaving the kids (a nanny's nightmare)

(summer 2010)


I have a week left with the kids. Then I'll prepare to move to NYC and I won't be their nanny anymore. I've been with them two and a half years.

I had a nightmare two nights ago.  I was pregnant.  I knew it, but my anxiety about the birth grew with my belly, and soon I was feeling heels and head push on the walls of my uterus.  Sorrow, mourning, confusion washed over the dream, and time moved quickly.  Soon I was in a large, cold, marble-floored hospital, which felt much more like a museum than it should have.  Gold rails, gold elevators, like the ones at the museum where I take the kids. I had decided to give the child up for adoption, certain that it was just too soon in my life to raise one on my own. Somehow my sister was giving birth to the baby that had grown in my uterus and I wasn't there to meet it for the first moment of its life.  Frantically, searching through the hospital halls for an answer to where my baby might be, I ran into Ryan, my partner.  He knows where the child is. He is calm and confident about our decision.  My view jumps to the child, then back to me, desperately searching for the baby before it is handed over to its new family.  And I awaken.

leaving the kids (a nanny's grief)

I wasn't sure if I should write it or paint it.  The kids have poster paints in the closet, and the black is just the right color for what I need to say. My mind is wandering along with my eyes through the dark spaces of the living room.  I have a light on, and turned off my internet browser to set the mood.  Elvis sings "Love Me Tender" on my iPhone.  Nope, the depression couldn't be any more textbook than it is right now; all the elements for an excellent breakdown.  Or breakthrough.  As long as I write it, it'll be a breakthrough. I'll have something in text to feel nostalgic about when I've left them and this emotional depth is long gone. Sleeping on the couch tonight because I'm lonely, or anticipating loneliness.  Preparing for it all.

I played Ms. Pac Man for 30 minutes right before I got here and my thumb aches from it, exacerbating the emotional pain from this horrific predicament. Tonight, K said, "I wish your new house was in Philadelphia".  Tears streamed down his face, and mine. What do I say to that?  How can I speak at that moment, and how can I expect to have a happy night in a quiet house after that conversation? Isn't it unhealthy to be this affected?  Does everyone else feel this deeply when they leave? To feel it settle into your skin, your eyes, it creates purpose for your body, your soul, reminding you how beautiful your simultaneous existence is, all through this fantastically depressive state of leaving these kids.  Music necessary.  Sad music.

One more week; seven days, their mother said, "Seven more days of Emily once [her partner] comes."  K understood, and tonight he showed me just how he understood.  Tears.  He looks like his mom when he cries.  He wasn't being melodramatic.  He was sad.  We stared at eachothers eyes, his head in my lap.  No words.  I asked him if he could find the words to tell me why he was so sad.  He shook his head.  I told him I couldn't find them either.  Sadness, sorrow, mourning, grief: there are no words for what this is, this departure, this farewell.  They're not my kids, but they're somewhere between a sibling and a son.  Their bodies and souls are connected to mine.  I can read them.  Eyes, mouth, bodies, voices, cries.  Cries.  The little one won't cry when I leave.  He doesn't know. I know. I know, and he won't.  How sad.  Two years old.  He doesn't have a clue how close he feels to me, I feel to him.  So close.  Closer than anyone.  I kiss his tears, his snotty mouth, drooling lips.  Lovely.  Really.  If I could do that every day, I would.  All of that closeness is the most lovely feeling.


I started with the kids when the little one was just a few months old. He was attached to his mother most of the time, and watched the older one, who was 2 at the time, with a neighbor of his from the same block. We would spend a few days together during the week and pick up his friend from daycare in the afternoon. I'd push the half-empty double stroller the half-hour walk to fetch his playmate. We'd talk about city things as we saw them pass by, and he pressed the handicap buttons as we squeezed through the doors into the building.  The stroller would sit outside while we walked, hand in hand, into his playmate's classroom. The teachers would say hellos and goodbyes, and both would climb into the stroller for the long walk home. Every day, K would reach back behind his head and stick his tiny hand through the opening in the stroller. We'd hold hands the entire walk home; a silent affirmation that I was, indeed, his.

Girls pee out of their butts. (part three)

The first conversation on this subject, described in part one, came to me in the middle of earning my Women's Studies degree. Now, I'm a year out of school. I'm nannying for 1.5 year olds and writing on the side, and I came home for a week to see my family. I spent most of the day, today, with my 4 year old nephew. He's well-spoken and curious, but also a bit modest at times. Though today he came into the bathroom with me at the restaurant where we were eating lunch. When I sat down to go to the bathroom, he unabashedly searched for the source of my pee. I asked him if that's what he was looking for, and he smiled, "Yes. Do you pee out of your butt?"  I explained that just like he has a penis, I have a vagina, and that it would be funny if we peed out of our butts. And we laughed. (Though my mom did point out later that we actually pee from our urethra. But I knew that's not what he was getting at.)

He didn't say another word until we were in the car later and he decided to tell me, as a joke, that girls pee out of their penises. Now, were he my kid, it would have been a bigger opportunity to explicitly discuss the fact that some girls do in fact have penises and some boys have vaginas. Though I am his aunt. I can't go full feminist on the kid then leave him hanging when I head back home to NYC. I only see him a few times a year. But I can at least plant a few seeds so that when he's 14 and curious, he knows who to talk to.
I said,

"You know, some girls do have penises and some boys have vaginas."
"Why?"
"Just because they do. Everyone's different."
"Oh."

And he simply continued with the former conversation;

 "Well boys pee out of..what's that word again?"
"Vaginas"
"Boys pee out of vaginas!"
*snicker*

This continued for awhile, and I felt accomplished.  I taught him a useful word today, though it wasn't much of an anti-transphobia teaching moment.

Do girls pee out of their butts? (part two)

I've had this conversation with two three/four year old boys-- one, a child whom I nannied since he was 2, and the other with my nephew. I'm sure the question is asked of many caretakers, by children figuring out what to call theirs and others' body parts. It's a process for each family, largely depending on how comfortable the parental figures are with discussing unexposed body parts. The exposed ones, however, are an integral part of 'the baby show' (things parents make their children perform to demonstrate their growth).  It's true - parents are obsessed with watching their children point to their own body parts:

"Where are (baby)'s eyes?"
[baby points to eyes]
*eruption of awe/pride/enthusiasm/encouragement/applause*

Certainly, as a nanny and as a sister, I have little access to how this manifests itself in more intimate situations when parental figures discuss the unexposed body parts. Some children have more exposure to their parents' bodies than others. Some parents feel comfortable walking around their home naked. Others' children have never seen them in their underwear. And though a parent's modesty is not always indicative of their child's ability to name body parts , I think it's safe to assume that the child will have a better reference if she's seen her family naked before. But it's around 3 or 4 when these questions come out of their mouths. Sure, for some kids it's earlier, or if you're a very open parent, the child me already be well-equipped with body part language.  When I have a kid, I'm going to tell him what a vagina is and her what a penis is. And I'll tell him that I have one or that her father has one. And they'll see it, and when they point to it and name it, we'll cheer just like parents do when kids point to their noses. Because knowledge is good and all types of bodies are natural and normal.

Girls pee out of their butts. (part one)

(written 6/2009)

I’m a babysitter.  I watch a 1 year old and his 3 year old brother when he’s not at daycare.  I’m constantly watching their training in gender and sexuality.  Neither has yet noticed (or verbalized in the 3 year old’s case) much about race or class.  Luckily their parents are sociologists, so maybe they’re better off than other kids on the block.  But the 1 year old is always playing with his penis when his diaper’s off and the 3 year old is constantly in dialogue about who’s a girl and who’s a boy because the kids in his class are 4 and have already been taught that it matters.

About a month ago, he told me that his friend at school was a girl.  I asked him how he knew and all he could tell me that she was yellow and he was green on their name board at daycare, so that means she’s a girl and he’s a boy.  His little brother, age 1, has a playmate come over a few mornings a week.  I watch both of them, together.  When I change her diaper, he stares at her vulva.  He doesn’t ask questions in his language of sounds; he just stares as closely as she lets him, and silently.

The other day, the 3 year old told me that I am a girl while he was in the bathroom watching me sit on the toilet.  I asked him how he knew:  "Boys stand up and girls sit."  Me:  "To pee?"  Him: "Yep."
I then asked him if people who sit down to pee have penises.  He said that boys have penises and girls have butts.  Sure, his perspective is that female bodies he's experienced do not have penises like he does, so it's a logical step to assume that they just pee out of their butts. So I explained to him that if you don't have a penis, you have a vulva (I wasn’t sure whether to say vulva or vagina, so I went for vulva).  He smiled and said, ohhhhhh.  I asked him to repeat it. He did.

And now as I’m writing this, I come to the conclusion again that the connections classmates and tv shows and, often, families make between sex and gender create the complication for children.  Children learn at age one that they have a penis or vulva and like to play with it while they’re naked.  They learn with their eyes before language even comes to them; before they can ask questions about what they see.  Then by age 3, when their words have developed, they learn that girls are yellow and boys are green (or pink and blue) and that boys have penises and girls ‘don’t’ and that girls play with dolls and boy’s ‘don’t', etc..  I am constantly seeing (with every single child I babysit) this forced binary. Already at age 3 this child is wrongly being taught to bridge the disconnect between the body and gender.  He knows it doesn’t necessarily make sense.  But he’s listening very carefully to people around him to hear what’s 'right' about the world.  As long as they tell him the that the body and gender are related,  I will always be the girl babysitter with no penis.

(And I’m tired of hearing the ‘kids-who'll-stand-up-to-pee’ on the block tell him that his Hello Kitty stuffed animal is for girls.)

Life Crises

I haven't written for awhile because I was busy going through life crises (many of them). They come almost monthly now and are either induced by money (lack thereof) or aspiration or both. I've become increasingly tired of being unable to save money because of my thousands of dollars of loan debt from undergrad. I make enough to pay my bills, buy my groceries, and go out for drinks, but I just don't save anything. But I'm not willing to spend the rest of my twenties in NYC trapped in my apartment on the weekends drinking watered down whiskey. I'm trying to enjoy my time here before the 9-5 plague gets to me and fucks over my sleep schedule. So it's a catch-22. Either I stop enjoying myself now and start saving a mere $100 per month or spend that on making the rest of my twenties a good freaking time before I'm consumed by a job that gives me weekends off, 10 vacation days per year, and makes me wake up at 6am (impulsively on the weekends). So please, call me young and naive. I'm not willing to accept it.

Simultaneous Toddler Naps in a 2 bedroom apt.

So some days remind me how good I am at this job and that it is, indeed, a job that requires skills. This is how it all happened: A (19 mo. old) was scheduled to come over to D's (17 mo. old) house at 12:30 to take a nap in his parent's bedroom (in the pack-and-play). While D started to wind down around 12:15, I set nap-mosphere in the parents' bedroom for A and scooped up D, changed his diaper while his eyes were rolling back, popped in his pacifier and set him in his crib at just the right time that he fell right asleep. Ten minutes later, A comes in the door with her mom who passes her off to me, we read Go, Dog, Go! in the bed and sing a few songs before I convince her the pack-and-play is a nice place to sleep (she's a screamer) if you've got your very exciting music box playing "Edelwiess" in the background. With no complaints, she's out cold in 3 minutes.

a moment (love)

They knew one another quite well, now.  It had been years since they first met. Their bodies didn't jump at an unannounced touch.  Sitting beside one another, silent, in the small room, fore-arm to fore-arm, they read their respective books.  Sometimes, one might look up to reflect, and the other might take notice, and one set of eyes would move quickly to meet the others for a wordless glance. 

Mommy and me.

As a nanny, I am a part of the sometimes difficult but most often beautiful intimate life of a family. There are no adequate words for my role, only stigmatized words-- nanny, babysitter-- that have their own contexts attached. I don't mind these words because I tend to pick the sort of families who disregard their stigmas, or are actively aware of them. While power dynamics are unavoidable, I've learned enough about them by now to navigate comfortably and chose families who are aware of how unique my position is in their personal lives.

The intimate experiences I have in these families' personal lives are not only driven by relationship with the child, but also with the mother (and inevitably the father). With most families, the mother is the primary caretaker; my boss of sorts. My relationship with her is one of mentorship that I haven't found anywhere else in my life. Sure, for many nannies, the mother-nanny relationship can be volatile and difficult. Mine just haven't been - partly because of the families I find, partly because of my work ethic.

From the first time I work in their homes, I come into the house as a virtual tool for the mother/father (the primary caretaker).  I listen to what they want, follow their guidelines, and act as one piece of their support system. For a couple of them, leaving for work has been a site of mommy guilt that I try my best to mediate. These are not my children, nor do I want children anytime soon. But it is my job to make sure these mothers and fathers feel as comfortable and content as they could possibly be to leave their child with another person. I am the surrogate family while they're away and, in the process, I become an odd piece of their family unit. We still haven't figured out what to call my place in the family. It's more than a sitter, more than a nanny, but not real family -- a strange in between.

My relationship with the mother, though, has given me an understanding of motherhood that I couldn't have gotten elsewhere. I work so closely with her that I can anticipate her parenting-style and transfer it to my work while watching her child. This closeness comes from the respect I feel for her and the constant respect and gratitude that she expresses to me for caring for her children and for my hard work. This mutual respect translates itself in other parts of life - I am overwhelmingly happy for her family when something goes right and equally devastated when I experience them in sadness and grief. It's not only the child that makes my job complex and beautiful, it's the opportunity to view individual motherhood this intimately.

so you're asking for advice (do you really want the truth?)

So I've mostly worked for very kind, loving families who consider me more than a 'nanny' and who consider me a part of their extended families. At times, though, as often happens with siblings, parents, and close friends, there comes a moment when they ask your opinion. And you really have to contemplate whether or not to tell them the truth. It's always happened and I tend to avoid telling the truth in most instances so as not to overstep any boundaries or to awaken any underlying power dynamics that I work to overcome.

energia.

I couldn't sleep well last night and woke up with ample energy. Never usually works that way, but I've been keeping active lately and I think I just got past the sore-muscle phase of exercising and started storing extra energy, or something to that effect.

With D today, went to the library where they had a small but lively children's section. Nannies galore, all older women of color.  Two women were speaking in Spanish with an accent I could understand and D took an interest in the children they were watching.  We chatted a bit in English because I am becoming increasingly afraid to converse in Spanish (perhaps afraid that I don't know how poor my Spanish has gotten.)  I should have spoken at least a bit - kind of an asshole move, hm?

There aren't as many young nannies in this part of Manhattan, which is shocking considering I live on Columbia campus. I've only met one woman around my age who is in the same sort of Academic Limbo as I am experiencing.  Philadelphia was much more full of student nannies. I'm not sure if it's because conscientious people who use nannies/sitters/caregivers feel more comfortable having to exploit young college students for cheap childcare than older woman immigrants. I do. Or maybe immigrant labor is going out of style.

aerobics in your livingroom.

Good day. Happy work and cold walks in the sun. The kid I watch is freaking cute and showed it especially today. During nap I took it to the extreme with Tony Horton for a good 45 minutes. Then I showered--all at work, that is. I wonder how many times I've secretly showered in families' homes? I dry my hair super quick to make sure I don't look suspicious, or in case they come home mid-day to get something from their apartment. I know if I asked them they wouldn't mind me using their shower. But I like the excitement. And I don't really want them picturing me working out in their living room.

24

My 24th birthday brought on an unexpected anxiety. Mainly that I'm not in my early twenties anymore and I haven't accomplished what I had envisioned I would accomplish by this time in my life.  I never had a real vision, but I knew I wanted to be one who did big things young. And by young, I mean early twenties.  This dream is quickly slipping away while I try to save myself from complacency.  I know, I'm still young, and I have many more years to accomplish the big goals in my life.  But, to be honest, I hate that excuse -- my anxiety has much less to do with age and much more to do with my experiences. Having experienced what I have in my life, I would like to think that I have something to show for it besides writing and ideas. But really, that's all I've got.

First playground day of the season.

Today was the first day of work this year that was nice enough to spend more than a half hour at the playground.  I was with D, a chubby 15 month old who I watch two full days a week. He's good company and fun to play with but I didn't have the same energy today. I've been in an unmotivated rut lately and have hit a mental/emotional dead-end with every project I've been working on recently.

I met a companion in the park today-- a woman around my age who is in the same position. She graduated in 2009 (I graduated in 2010 with my degree in Women's Studies while working as a Nanny in Philadelphia) and has been nannying with the same family ever since. We shared a moment of, "I don't know what I'm doing with my life," which felt good to experience some sort of comradery. But I finished off my day with zero energy and by 5:30 I was on my couch in my pajamas. Tomorrow's my birthday, and I feel pretty shitty about my life.

I really wanted to have done something enormous by age 24. Does that sound foolish?