Going from babysitter to hiring babysitters got me to face my past work performance.
By Susan Anspach • Illustration by Matt Mignanelli
I’ve never really babysat for my sister, but I sat next to her son once for an hour while she and her husband played tennis nearby. Very nearby. Within eyesight. That was five years ago, and the baby couldn’t walk or crawl at the time. I remember he was well-behaved, dry-diapered and fed. At the end of the hour, spent poking turf, mostly, and co-snacking on Gerber-puffed dry foods, I was exhausted enough to go back home and sleep the rest of the afternoon.
It’s not reasonable to expect my nephew to remember that day. But if 1-year-olds have the capacity to hold bits of time segments in their heads for a half-day, or an hour, or even five minutes beyond the segment itself, I doubt he’d have remembered it then, either. I don’t think I made much of an impression.
I have babysat other children, and a humdrum impression—more hum than drum, really, background buzz feed that slipped from their minds as I slipped out the door—is the best I could ever have reasonably hoped for. I was not a great babysitter. I never burned the house down or had my boyfriend over to make out, but I might have, if a boyfriend had presented himself at the time. I ate snacks. Ordered pizzas. Picked up after myself, or didn’t. And, for years, kept getting hired.
It was surprising to me then. It is jaw-dropping now. Now, I hire babysitters. A babysitter: I try to keep it to one. So at any given time, I employ one person. Through his job, my husband employs 183. And I care nothing for any of them next to the babysitter.
I am much, much harder on our babysitters than anyone was on me. The first time I hired one I wouldn’t leave home, claiming work in the study when we both knew I had my eye on her like a laser strapped to the forehead of a raptor. She did OK—that is, much better than I would have back when I watched other kids. The baby seemed happy enough at the end of three hours with her. But I saw her give him his bottle an hour before I had asked her to, which I knew would throw off his feeding cycle, and she’d left the half-finished serving of breast milk, now souring, in the sink.
It upset me—me, who 12 years ago would have sat with the baby popping untold quantities of Gushers fruit snacks and occasionally offering him one. Worse, I pretend I’m still this laissez-faire when I’m not. I told the babysitter everything had gone fine and hoped she understood this meant to never expect work from me again.
But very good babysitters are not easy to find. I’m fiercely possessive of even the just OK ones, only giving their names to my closest and most desperate friends, always warning them first if she has a pet allergy, or can’t tell time. That’s how it happens: behind the ball pit at Gymboree. Over lowered car windows in the Montessori parking lot. Parent networks rival the scope and strength of the Internet. At 16, I didn’t know how anyone knew me, not that I gave it much thought at the time. A stranger, always a woman I could lump loosely into the same age bracket as my mother, would telephone for me out of the clear blue on my parents’ landline. She’d tell me her name. Sometimes I’d remember it. We’d chat for a while, mostly about my availability (copious; see lack of boyfriend above) on various weekend nights. There was never any discussion of CPR certification, or first aid, or how she got my phone number. There was certainly never any question of references. What I know now is that I’d already been vetted; i.e., I hadn’t maimed or kidnapped the children of the past client who’d given this one my name.
You might think that, with all that experience, I eventually got better. And maybe I could have, but I didn’t. A chief problem is I’ve never been great with kids, a difficult thing to admit. “Great with kids” is an attribute you list in an online dating profile because no one thinks, “Yuck—great with kids,” even if they don’t want to have any. “Great with kids” implies patience, a sense of humor, a soft side. I like to think I have some of these things, but apparently not, for children, in the right combination or order. I get along well with my own son, but his wobbly, sticky-fingered munchkin peers see right through me and my offers of mashed grapes and Go-Gurt.
I employ similar tactics with dogs, who do seem to like me, though I’m no better at sitting them. I’ve dog-sat two times. The first time, the dog got out of his house, in a neighborhood with fast cars. That was frightening. The second time I thought I’d be smart about it and keep the door locked. I was very vigilant about this, all the time: Keep the door locked. On a morning walk, we were halfway down the block when I remembered the door was, indeed, locked (excellent) with its keys on the wrong side of it. The dog and I waited outside for the locksmith for two hours, poking tar lines and considering some stale crackers I had in my pocket. Come to think of it, it was a lot like that time with my nephew.
As a babysitter, I kept working, kept not getting better. I didn’t have to get better. The work was there anyway. College came with a pay bump I hadn’t asked for. In between, I got hired as a camp counselor by people totally fine with me idly supervising a whole cabin of kids, day and night, for eight (not inexpensive) consecutive weeks.
If all this is starting to sound flagrant and in favor of child neglect, know this: I’ve been served my comeuppance. Knowing what a middling babysitter I was has landed me where I am today, paranoid and damned to perpetual dissatisfaction. After our first girl, we cycled through two more until finally landing on Ana, lovely and professional by all appearances. My son adores Ana, who shares her lunch from home with him and takes him for long walks. He sleeps well for her. Her name was among his first words. Ana tolls doom in my heart.
I can’t tell you why, not reasonably. She speaks three languages. She’s eager to please. I know she would jump to fix any fault I could find with her work, which I objectively can’t. Maybe I think I don’t deserve her. More likely, I’ve seeded my own doubt against The Babysitter, as figure. In my college town, a local paper’s On The Street mini-feature asked townies what they liked best about living close to the university, and the first person answered, “Overqualified babysitters.” I privately noted that I had not babysat for them. Last fall, I saw my nephew, whose parents brought him from Connecticut to Manassas for a visit. He’s 6 now and a very adult 6-year-old. He writes poetry and plays chess. He volunteers to teach his brother to read. We played Battleship, which he won. The chance to babysit him on that visit didn’t arise, but I think if it had, it would have gone well.
Would it go better with Ana? Almost unquestionably. We can’t be sure, though, since she’ll never meet him. On that, you have my (very professional) guarantee.
@CitySprawlNVMag is sitting pretty on Twitter.