My Mexican Mary Poppins

Two posts in a row! And during a week H is traveling for work, nonetheless. Can you believe this? I can, and do you know why? Because of my new babysitter, S. That’s right, dear readers, after all my bitching and moaning, hemming and hawing, and finally escaping the world’s smallest house, I have hired a sitter. And it is a miracle.

This is a miracle that almost didn’t happen. S is the sister of a nanny here in New Town and was looking to fill some extra days since her employment with another family was dwindling as the kids aged. I was reluctant at first, when my neighbor told me of her availability, still feeling nervous about the new financial situation we were in since the move, and then the summer ended and H got back to work – with a vengeance. Most days he is gone before the kids get up and home moments before they go to bed. And the travel. Sweet Jesus, I think I’ve seen him for about four hours this week. He got off a red-eye from California yesterday morning and got on a shuttle to DC today at nine. Basically, Monday through Friday, I have become a single parent.

Now one would think, with the kids going back to school, I’d have loads of time to get the laundry, cooking and cleaning done and still find time to write. One would be wrong when one factors in the unexpected bullshit that fills up my life like preparing my presentation for the Daisies parent meeting, trying to find a Jerry costume (of Tom & Jerry fame) for #2*, changing out everyone’s fall and summer clothes (which is my job in hell, by the way), and trying to set up a family-room-closet-toy-storage system that does not result in Little Man being buried by an avalanche of Thomas trains and Geotrax every time he opens the door. Obviously, this left very little time for writing or, you know, sanity. So after much discussion and pouring over the finances to convince me I was not putting our family in the poor house or, at the very least denying my children ridiculously overpriced swimming lessons, I asked S to come for an interview.

Other than her pathetic attempts to hide her mortal fear of Reilly**, S was perfect. Shockingly young, about my age, I think I was more expecting an hispanic Mrs. Doubtfire, she came right in and got on the floor to play with Little Man while we chatted. She would not only keep my children alive when I needed to leave the house, but when not occupied with the kids, like during LM’s nap, she would do housework like vacuum, empty the dishwasher, or fold and put away the laundry. She had me at “light housework” and we made arrangements for her to come once a week for six hours. But first she had to check with her mother.

KABOOM! That’s the sound of my nuclear warhead of white guilt exploding, covering me in a radioactive layer of self-doubt. Turns out S has a two year old daughter who stays with her mother while S watches upper-middle class white women’s children so they can get Botox injections or meet their personal shoppers – or at least that’s what , I’m sure, S must think of me, wrenching her away from her own child to sing endless rounds of The Wheels on the Bus in heavily accented English to mine. Also not mitigating these feelings? Reading The Help, a novel that takes place in 1960’s South, and focuses on the black women who raised generations of white babies while suffering the indignities of segregation.

S left ready to come to work the next Thursday, but I still wasn’t sure I could do this. My interview with her sowed the seeds of insecurity. Did I really need the help? Couldn’t I do this on my own? Sure, I haven’t been to dentist or gynecologist in two years, but all three kids will be in school all morning next year, surely my impending route canal, lady-bit problems and writing career, could wait. I mean this poor woman would probably kill to be home with her kid and here I was bribing her to take mine off my hands.

Thankfully, I had my amazing stepmother to talk to. Born in Brazil, she regaled me with stories, as she had done in the past, of her days as a young mother back in her home country with a housekeeper and babysitter. These services are standard there, with almost every mother, not just the upwardly mobile, employing one or both on a regular basis. I remember the look of sheer terror on her face as she left at the end of her two week stay after Little Man’s birth, incredulous as to how I would manage to cook, clean ad do laundry for five people while caring for three children under six. In her experience, it was not humanly possible. And hearing that made me feel much better. As for my guilt about keeping S from her child, my stepmom reminded me the very decent salary I was paying her (I opted to go right to the pay S was earning with her other family after two years rather than start low and give raises along the way to assuage said white guilt), was way more than she would make at any other job she would be able to get with her language skills and questionable immigration status***, and would, therefore, benefit said child.

After our conversation, I also came to the realization that I do not have to hang on the cross to be a good mother. In fact, all I was doing, trying to do it all, was preventing myself from being the mother I want to be. If I could by a few precious hours to write and have someone help shoulder some of the some domestic burden, I was a fool not to. As I found during my short stint working at Planned Parenthood before I became pregnant with LM, having something productive of my own, made me a better mother. Nobody’s checking for stigmata at bedtime and handing out awards.

Women today are in a precarious situation. Most of us do not live close enough to our families, our mothers specifically, to have the regular, day in, day out, help, once just a shout up the apartment building stairs away****, that made a trip to the grocery store a pleasant jaunt where one could price compare and haggle amicably with the butcher, rather than the modern sanity-endangering gauntlet of today, pushing three kids in the cart to prevent them from knocking over displays, leaving just enough room for the food you barely check the price on as you toss it in the cart, jealously eyeing the women, unaccompanied by minors, who actually have time to stand in line at the deli counter. We need help, yet feel the sting of guilt thinking of our mothers or grandmothers doing it on their own. In reality, they were not alone, when the kids could just run down the block to grandma's for an hour. So I asked myself, what exactly the difference is between having a family member watch my children gratis and paying someone to do the exact same thing? Not a damn thing but some Benjamins.

So while I will continue to suffer from white guilt, mother guilt and financial guilt (So many flavors! Try them all!), I will remind myself that the small weekly price I pay for my sanity, my sense of self and, for the love of all that is holy, the satisfaction of someone else matching and putting away a week’s worth of three different sized little-kid socks, is worth every damn penny. And if all of this sounds like justification, so be it. I'm really too damn tired to care.

*Which she has seen exactly ONCE, but now my life revolves around finding a brown, NOT GRAY, mouse costume.

**Why is it the less someone wants his affection, the more obsessed Reilly becomes with them? If he had not cut out the jackassery and ruined this for me I would seriously have considered putting him out on the street wearing a "Free Dog" sandwich board.

***There goes my political career I suppose!

****Yet again, I betray my Bronx roots. Do you have the stereotypical Bronx Irish image in your head of my grandmother shouting out the window with a kerchief on her head, “Just let me hang out the wash and take the potatoes off the stove!”?