I sat on a plaid flannel picnic blanket in the park, my legs long in front of me, watching the sunlight dance through newly budding trees. There was still a bite in the air, and we were the only picnickers on the grass that afternoon, but I felt I could sit there for hours, resting my cheek on the little blonde head leaning against my chest, smelling her baby shampoo.
Emma (names have been changed – Ed.), then five, wanted to dress like me on that day off from school, so after breakfast I helped her shimmy out of her Little Mermaid flannel nightgown and into a striped long sleeved shirt that matched my top, baby skinny jeans that mimicked the cut of mine, and saddle shoes, which she called “tip-a-tap shoes,” to mirror my brown-and-white oxfords. Now in the park, she sat in my lap, her denim-clad legs atop mine, and for a few moments, at least, all was still.But then Emma clambered to her feet. She ran over to a tree in the distance, spun around, and came running at me at full five-year-old speed, throwing herself on top of me, planting kisses all over my face. “I LOVE YOU!” she yelled, her big blue eyes with their long little girl eyelashes smooshing up against my thick-framed glasses. I sat us both upright and kissed her cheek. “I love you too, bunny,” I said, and she was off again, running to the tree, running back, crashing into me, kissing me, telling me she loved me. She did this at least a dozen times, as if making a game of emotions. I wasn’t playing, but when I said “I love you too,” I was taken aback by how much it rang true, how much I had come to love Emma, how I felt that I needed nothing else to be happy.
Eventually, the April chill got to us both and I packed up the picnic blanket and the lunch debris and the toys, and Emma took my hand, and we walked to the luxury high-rise building where she lived. It was the sort of building I couldn’t imagine myself ever living in, but it became my second home the year after I graduated from college. I was 22 and working part-time at a literary non-profit, and in order to make rent, I had decided to take up the kind of work that provided me with pocket money when I was in high school: babysitting. I thought that yuppy parents would find me to be an ideal candidate—I had just graduated from an Ivy League school, I had ambitions beyond childcare, I was middle-class—in short, I could pass as their kids’ parent. So, a few weeks after graduating, I signed up for Care.com, an online dating-like website where parents look for childcare, and played up my penchants for arts and crafts and reading aloud.
Soon I received a message from Emma’s mom. She and her husband needed an after-school sitter. When I arrived at their apartment one summer afternoon for an interview, Emma was hiding behind a light blue armchair in the living room, her tiny pink-polished toes peeking out from underneath. Emma wasn’t used to sitters and she wasn’t sure what to make of me. But over pizza, while her parents quizzed me about my graduate school goals and whether or not I was certified to perform CPR, Emma smiled at me from across the table. After making it halfway through her half-slice of pizza, she scrambled off her chair and ran into her room, coming back with a Peter Rabbit-emblazoned photo album. She plopped down on the cream carpet, patted the space next to her, and started narrating her baby pictures to me. That move won me the job—showing off her baby book was Emma’s stamp of approval. Starting in September, I was to pick her up every day at 3:00 PM and stay until one parent got home from work.
With Emma, I toed the line between best friend and disciplinarian. I had predicted this when I took the job: as a 22-year-old, I was closer to her age than her late-thirties parents were, which I had a more recent memory of what it was to be a five-year-old girl, of the trials and tribulations of being forced to eat something you thought was gross, of being made to go home and do homework just when the schoolyard game of tag was getting good, of having to get your knotty hair brushed and pulled into pigtails. But, as a young adult, I could also appreciate Emma’s parents’ point-of-view: she needed to eat vegetables, learn the alphabet, and not look like a ragamuffin.
What I didn’t expect was that I would come to feel a motherly love towards Emma so intense that I began to hear my biological clock ticking a decade early. Caring for her made me feel whole in a way that scared me—I was too young to feel that all I needed to be happy was a child. Looking back, I realize that I felt whole when I was with Emma because I straddled a bizarre line: I saw myself as a child in Emma, and my mother in me. My exhaustion after my afternoons with Emma wasn’t just the result of the physical and mental work of taking care of a little girl. It was also from the emotional work of simultaneously reliving my childhood and seeing into my parenting future, of feeling as if I was carrying my mother with me when I was with Emma.
“Why does everyone think you’re my mom?” Emma asked me on one fall walk home, her fingers laced through mine.
“Well, bunny, it’s because I pick you up from school every day, and a lot of moms pick their kids up from school,” I said.
“But you’re not a mom, you’re a babysitter,” Emma shot back, ever literal.
“Exactly. And there are a lot of babysitters who pick up kids in your class too, right? But you look a lot like me,” I said.
Emma’s baby-fine shoulder-length blonde hair curled at the ends, just like mine had when I was a little girl. She could be very shy, pressing her face into my thigh when an adult she didn’t know well tried to talk to her, or when a new kid on the playground wanted her to join in a game of hide-and-go-seek; when I was little, my mom had to prod me to even say hello to my aunts and uncles at family get-togethers. Emma was also an emotional little girl, always quick to cry if she fell on the playground or if I told her she had to do something she didn’t want to do, like eat sliced cucumbers and carrots with her hummus instead of pretzels; when I was Emma’s age, my father once tried to reason me out of such silly tears by telling me that I would use up all my tears over nothing and not have any left to cry when I needed them, which of course made me cry harder.
But there were times when I was forced to fully see Emma as her own little person. Our differences started dawning on me one evening right before Thanksgiving. I was putting my shoes on at the dining room table, getting ready to leave, Emma’s dad asked her to put away the toys in her room. Once we were alone, he said to me, “You’ve probably figured this out already, but things between Emma’s mom and me aren’t going well.” I hadn’t noticed—I hadn’t seen them together since they interviewed me in June—but I tried to give him an understanding look instead of a blank stare. “We’re getting separated.” I had one shoe laced and felt cemented to my chair. I managed to say, “Of course I’ll do whatever I can to keep things normal for Emma.”
“We’re trying to do what’s best for her,” he said.
When I got home that night, I fell back on my futon and wept. I spent an entire session of therapy hashing out the separation, and why I was so upset about it. I knew I wasn’t just crying for Emma and the dissolution of the world she knew—I was also crying for myself. “Are you angry at Emma’s parents?” my therapist asked me. I nodded. My family fell apart when I was young because of two cases of metastasizing cancer and the deaths of my parents. Part of me felt that keeping a marriage together, unlike death, was in human control, and I wanted Emma’s parents to try harder, to keep it together so that she could keep having the happy childhood that I remembered having, so that I could keep reliving vicariously through her.
At first, Emma took the news with her usual self-assured air. One day as we were scribbling together on a Hello Kitty coloring book, Emma broke the news to me: “Daddy sleeps somewhere else now. Wednesdays are Daddy days.”
Then one afternoon in early December, Emma stopped in her tracks steps from the schoolyard. “I’m too tired to walk,” she said, reaching her arms up to me. I was used to her shtick by this point—she always wanted to be carried home—and normally I would have played my part in the shtick, trying to reason with her about being a big girl, being too big to be carried. But Emma and I both knew that I always gave in, so I scooped her up without protest. I had made a science of it: I’d swing my purse to my left shoulder and pull her onto my right hip. It was as though the knowledge of how to carry a child was in my bones and muscles and had been waiting to be awakened, as though I had my mom’s arms.
With Emma riding on my hip, her parka-hooded head on my shoulder, I trudged forward. But when I tried to set her down at the entrance to the building, she started crying. I felt her nails digging into my neck through her mittens, and her tears formed little beads on my wool coat. “I. MISS. DADDY.,” she heaved out in between sobs. “I know, bunny, I know you do,” I murmured in her ear. “It’s OK to miss Daddy. But you’ll see him tomorrow, remember?”
Emma wailed. Her cries were primal, like those of a newborn. I held her closer and kissed away the tears on her cheeks. I didn’t know what to do—I could call her dad, have him talk to her, reassure her, but that wouldn’t change the fact that he wasn’t coming home that night. Emma didn’t loosen her grip on me until I set her down on her bed. Still sobbing, she let me take off her coat, her scarf, her mittens, her boots. She sobbed into her pink gingham pillow. I rubbed her back and let her cry it out, knowing that she wouldn’t run out of tears, and that though I didn’t understand what it was like to have a parent simultaneously torn from my life and still there, I could give her extra love.
That tantrum was the first of many. Emma was just barely old enough to understand what she had lost, and she was riding waves of anger and sorrow on size K12 feet. When I was hired as her babysitter, I had implicitly signed on to help shield Emma from any waves that broke on her shore. I would be just as present for tear-stained walks home from school as I was for the endless afternoons of Barbies, and the sun-dappled picnics.
That summer, Emma’s mom invited me out for a goodbye dinner—I was leaving for graduate school. We sat in the garden of a farm-to-table restaurant, the one with the pretty strings of lights that Emma always pointed out on our walks home. Emma’s mom and dad sat across from one another, putting on a good face for her and for me. Emma handed me a gift bag and climbed into my lap. I pulled out a sterling silver heart necklace. “I picked it out! Look what’s written on it,” Emma said. “I can read it! It says I-LOVE-YOU.” I kissed her cheek. “I love you too.”
Tags: babysitting, children, family, identity, kristen martin
Well that was kind of a slow-burn devastating. But also heart-warming! Thank you for sharing it with us.
Beautiful. Brings back a lot of my own memories of babysitting and the places the kids take up deep in your heart.
WOOSH went the tears out of my eyes! My last nannying charge E was kind of my roommate. E’s mom decided to rent out her playroom as she was finalizing her divorce. Part of the deal with me moving in was that I took E to school in the morning – 1st grade. I had been a nanny before but the relationship between E and I was very very similar to what is described here down the the ‘carry me I’m missing parental love in my live’ gambit.
One morning at the beginning of the school year I bribed E to hurry up and pick out some freaking socks with Starbucks. We started going every week if there were no morning meltdowns. It treasure those memories of ordering a kids hot chocolate, a grande latte, and a scone to share. I hope she does too, bc she and her mom downsized the summer after 1st grade and I don’t see her much. I have to go text her mom now.
I used to bribe “Emma” with Starbucks too–she would get the chocolate milk juice box and a pink cake pop.
This is beautiful. For a school year after college, I did weekly babysitting for a 5-year-old who was not nearly as sweet as Emma, but I had a lot of the same feelings, especially when she was being good or cute. People often thought that I was her and her brother’s mother because we had similar hair and coloring, which alternately upset and delighted me.
“It was as though the knowledge of how to carry a child was in my bones and muscles and had been waiting to be awakened, as though I had my mom’s arms.” — it’s kind of freaked me out how natural it is for me to scoop a toddler onto my hip or over my shoulder with one arm and carry them around while I take care of other tasks.
Same here: I remember the first time someone handed teenaged me a squalling baby and I instinctively started swaying gently back and forth, foot to foot, in the comfortable rhythm that soothed us both. Where did that come from? And why did it work?
I was maybe 22 when I started caring for a friend’s child every weekday morning, and for a stretch there while she was on bed-rest, I cared for her and him for 8-12 hours every weekday. When I started, he was still too small to pronounced “Emily,” and he quickly started calling me “Em-Mommy,” which felt just about right at the time.
Oh no, I’m sobbing at my desk and I have a meeting in 10 minutes!
This was beautiful, thank you for writing it.
This was so raw and real. Thanks for writing it.
I never had sitters, nor did I do much of it as a young woman. But this tore at my heart in a way I didn’t expect. Well done.
My brother and I had a wonderful nanny called Kate when we were little. Our Mum’s amazing but she was a second mum to us in lots of ways, from playing with us in the swimming pool to explaining to us why what was on the news was a big deal when she picked us up from school on September 11th 2001. Three cheers for the great nannies everywhere.
This is so beautiful. I lovelovelovelove it.
Wonderful essay. Thank you so much for sharing a piece of your heart with us.
This was really beautiful. Thank you for sharing. I know exactly what you mean by your biological clock kicking into high gear. Caring for children as a babysitter or counselor or whatever else is wonderful because, in those moments, you are fully WITH them – you can’t worry about anything else that you would normally being worrying about, because your whole being is wrapped up in making sure this precious thing entrusted to you is safe and happy.
I wonder how that feeling changes when the child involved is your own? Can any moms weigh in?
Mm, I can say as a mom who’s at home with the baby, those moments come and go. Sometimes you’re totally wrapped up in them, and sometimes they’re just kind of there while you’re trying to still do stuff in your life. It’s not a feeling that can really be sustained all the time.
… she typed into her phone, one eye on the baby going through her nightstand drawers.
… she replied while shoving takeout into her face and half-eyeing the newborn in the swing next to her.
The difference for me was the smell. I know people talk about the way newborn babies smell, etc and to be frank, I’ve never thought they smell so amazing, but the smell of my own children isn’t something I notice until I pick up or cuddle someone else’s, and the just do not smell quite right.
I’ve always thought of babysitting as a sort of paid training course for the kids I plan to have eventually: here’s how to handle various types of temper tantrums, picky eating, bedtimes, potty training. I got super attached to the toddler I babysat for during college, 20+ hours a week, and I haven’t done any babysitting since I moved back home. I still miss that kid sometimes, but I have this massive list of all the stuff I learned from him and his mom. My favorite was the hilarious lie about how diapers wouldn’t be manufactured after Christmas. I got back from winter break and the kid was almost completely potty trained. It was AMAZING.
Parental lies like that are some of my favorite things in this world. I’m not sure why, but they consistently delight me.
My dad lied to us about stuff like that all the time, and it’s hilarious to remember. My brother recently overheard this exchange at the mall:
INT. MALL – FATHER WITH 2 YOUNG DAUGHTERS. A CROWD HAS GATHERED AT THE FAR END OF THE WALKWAY.
Daughters: Dad, what’s going on? Can we see? Why are all the people there?
Dad: Sorry, girls, can’t go down there – there’s a fire.
Daughters: But there’s no smoke! And it’s full of people!
Dad: Nope, there’s a fire and they’re all dead. They’re ghosts, the mall is full of ghosts.
Daughters: Last week the park was full of ghosts.
Dad, clearly enjoying himself: Yep, the park has ghosts, too, can’t ever go back to the park.
I can only imagine that One Direction (or whoever the hot new boy band is now, I am an Old) was at the end of the walkway, and Dad was Not Having Any Of It. Love it.
… she typed into her phone, one eye on the baby going through her nightstand drawers.
This was heartrendingly lovely. I’m aching for Emma, and for you too. Thank you for writing it.
This was heartrendingly lovely. I'm aching for Emma, and for you too. Thank you for writing it.
This gave me The Feels so, so hard. Thank you so much for sharing.
I was a Daisy girl scout leader for a little while back in high school, and the other day I was cleaning out my old room at my parents’ house and found a drawing that one of the girls had made me. They’re easily teenagers by now, but I sometimes wonder if they remember me at all. It sounds to me like Emma will never forget you.
This gave me The Feels so, so hard. Thank you so much for sharing.
I was a Daisy girl scout leader for a little while back in high school, and the other day I was cleaning out my old room at my parents' house and found a drawing that one of the girls had made me. They're easily teenagers by now, but I sometimes wonder if they remember me at all. It sounds to me like Emma will never forget you.
So beautiful, and so evocative of my own memories of nannying while in college. As I am expecting my own first child, I have been thinking back to that time a lot – the feeling of being whole in that other home that was not mine, the absolute love that was reciprocated between those children and me. And the layers of sadness, too, from my own experiences of loss related to that working relationship. Thank you – this is a great thing to have swimming around in my head and heart for the rest of the afternoon!
This is incredibly beautiful and gave me the tightness across my chest. Thank you so much for sharing it!
This is incredibly beautiful and gave me the tightness across my chest. Thank you so much for sharing it!
Ah, I just finished babysitting for two adorable little girls yesterday. I didn’t think I liked kids too much, but the first time I picked the baby up from her nap and she rested her head on my shoulder I think my heart skipped a beat. So basically, this was wonderful and the timing is perfect and ahhh, my heart.
I looked after my little guy full-time from the time he was four months til he was 16 months. I vividly remember when he started going to daycare. The first time his mom took him, and she was like “OH MY GOD IT WAS DEVASTATING”. I dropped him off the next day, and thought it would be no big deal, because I used to witness how quickly the tears would stop after mom and dad left in the morning.
I cried all the way home after dropping him off. He clung to me with his fat little arms around my neck saying “NO ROBOTS NO PLEASE NO” and weeping. The daycare workers were like “the sooner you leave the sooner this will end” (which is gospel and I knew it) and I was like “YOU WANT ME TO ABANDON A TINY HUMAN PERSON WHO DEPENDS ON ME FORGET IT”.
Nannying. It made me super great at eating dinner, drinking white wine, and carrying on an adult conversation while simultaneously feeding and entertaining a baby, which is exactly my plan for tonight. Hooray for friends with kids!
Oh, man. When I dropped off my oldest to daycare on the first day I WEPT. And he did not seem to care (because he was five months old and had not developed attachment issues yet). And I got to school and told one of my colleagues and he said, ‘oh yeah. Me too. The first days are just awful.’ And patted me on the shoulder and it helped to know that I wasn’t the only one.
Now I drop my two youngest at daycare once a week and they both cry and grab at me and even though I know they’ll get over it almost straight away* it still gets me right there.
*the 3-year-old does tell me, when I ask what she did at daycare, ‘I cry all day and wait for you to come and pick me up.’ So, you know. That really helps.
Oh god this is brutal.
I nannied two boys to divorced parents. The dad hired me originally, and about two years in, I got a phone call from the mom: “The boys are pitching a fit about every nanny I hire. They want you.” I had them for six years, during which a third boy was born.
It just occurred to me that I could look them up on Facebook? AND THEY ARE THERE and the oldest is in high school and he identifies as a republican
what do I do
can I use vivid memories of wiping his poopy butt to dismiss his clearly incorrect political views? probably yes, right?
right?
Oh dear. You can only try your best, right?
This makes me laugh a little, though, because I asked my dad to write a piece for my blog next week, and I was reading through it going, oh man, my dad is totally a bleeding heart liberal. Huh. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree after all. It cracked me up and I totally wrote him and email and told him exactly that 😀
This was so touching. One thing I remember when babysitting for the first time is picking up the littlest and thinking, ‘oh wow. She’s so soft and squishy!’ For the first time I understood why people would want to cuddle small children.
The difference for me was the smell. I know people talk about the way newborn babies smell, etc and to be frank, I've never thought they smell so amazing, but the smell of my own children isn't something I notice until I pick up or cuddle someone else's, and the just do not smell quite right.
This reminded me to send a text to my adorable nephew, who is just turning 4 today and who is a sweet child I want to steal every time I see him. I already have a kiddo but when it’s yours, the delight is overlaid with a million-ton weight of responsibility. There is no one to hand them off to; it’s all on you. Sometimes that makes it harder to just enjoy. Also not helping: 8 million articles on How You Are Raising Your Child Wrong, and Why He’ll Probably be Unhealthy/Mentally Ill/a Criminal As a Result.
This is really lovely. I have two kids, who are taken care of by a nanny, and I am so thankful for the bond between them. We have to let her go in the fall (school starting for the older, and it’s time for a group situation for the younger), and it is really hard. From the parental side, childcare can be so fraught, and I have been so thankful when it is filled with love (as it so clearly was in this case).
(Obviously, the politics of childcare in the United States make it much more fraught, which is not what this piece is about, but I am well aware of the incredible privilege of being able to afford good childcare. It’s the single largest expense in our budget, but I am never worried about the emotional or physical safety of my children. It makes me sick that there are many families without that assurance or protection. And of course, far too many childcare workers who are not paid a living wage – another sickening fact.)
Really moving. I babysit too, and reading this resonated with me. It’s a familiar dynamic – the parents are your allies, and you are the kid’s advocate. And maybe the family dog’s your mascot. Lovely piece
DUST. LOTS OF DUST IN THE AIR.
Outlier here. I babysat a ton in high school and college, and even a tiny bit in grad school. But I’ve never felt any sort of connection the kids I babysat. They were cute and loving (some of them) and all, but when I walked out the door, I was out the door. I had one family where the mom would coach the little girl to tell me how much she loved me and it was the most uncomfortable thing ever. I did not love her. I have not loved any of the kids I babysat.
To be 100% honest, I’m actually stunned by all of the comments saying they felt the same way as the author. I had no idea I was the odd one out.
I never comment here, because I keep wanting to have the time to really jump into the commentariat, but I guess now’s the time.
I nannied full-time for three years for one family- I was with Kid 1, a boy, from age 2 months to 3.5, and I met his baby sister when she was an hour old and cared for her till she was nearly 2. I don’t have my own kids yet, but I’ve said many times I believe I love my nanny kids as much as I could love any child who isn’t my own.
I also did tons of regular babysitting over the years- some on a regular schedule, some as-needed- and I was fond of many of those kids, and think of them on occasion. But something about the wholeness of my time with my nanny kids left a mark in a way those didn’t. We were each other’s everyday world for those years. I took them to doctor appointments, I cared for them when they were sick, I went to playdates and music class, I did things like discipline and potty-training in the ongoing, strategizing-with-the-parents way that’s not really necessary when you’re just there once in a while. In this particular instance- three years of full-time caregiving- I think it would be hard not to form a real bond.
They’re both in elementary school now. I’m Facebook friends with their parents and see pictures and such. I don’t really know the complicated, older children they’ve become, but I love them in a distant way- I feel like I’ll always be on their team.
I spent five and a half years working in after-school programs, a year as a classroom aide, and I’ve been the regular, four-days-a-week after-school sitter for a pair of sisters for the last two years.
Weirdly, this has cemented my lack of interest in biological children of my own, because there are SO MANY great kids that already exist. Pretty sure I’m signing up to foster parent when I’m 35, though.
When the family I currently sit for hired me, their mom had late-stage cancer, and she died about two months later. I sometimes feel weird about how often I get mistaken for their mom (they’re tweens, so I’m only 14 years older than the oldest one!) but I don’t want to make a big deal out of it or make it weird for them, you know? I don’t think I’m really a mom figure to them, anyway– I suspect that the closest analogue is the interesting but sometimes embarrassing aunt who wants to lend you books and talk to you about feminism.
The other nice thing about working in childcare is that I get to do all the activities that, as an adult, I am not supposed to want to do anymore, like plan elaborately themed birthday parties and make Halloween costumes and have long, involved conversations about cartoon characters.
Actually, a few weeks ago I got to run a week-long Harry Potter-themed day camp where the kids made head-to-toe wizarding costumes and played Quidditch every day. Not gonna lie, y’all, it was PRETTY GREAT.
I spent five and a half years working in after-school programs, a year as a classroom aide, and I've been the regular, four-days-a-week after-school sitter for a pair of sisters for the last two years.
Weirdly, this has cemented my lack of interest in biological children of my own, because there are SO MANY great kids that already exist. Pretty sure I'm signing up to foster parent when I'm 35, though.
When the family I currently sit for hired me, their mom had late-stage cancer, and she died about two months later. I sometimes feel weird about how often I get mistaken for their mom (they're tweens, so I'm only 14 years older than the oldest one!) but I don't want to make a big deal out of it or make it weird for them, you know? I don't think I'm really a mom figure to them, anyway– I suspect that the closest analogue is the interesting but sometimes embarrassing aunt who wants to lend you books and talk to you about feminism.
The other nice thing about working in childcare is that I get to do all the activities that, as an adult, I am not supposed to want to do anymore, like plan elaborately themed birthday parties and make Halloween costumes and have long, involved conversations about cartoon characters.
Actually, a few weeks ago I got to run a week-long Harry Potter-themed day camp where the kids made head-to-toe wizarding costumes and played Quidditch every day. Not gonna lie, y'all, it was PRETTY GREAT.