NFTN #3

I have photos of the children. I showed them to Lisa at the time they were developed. She smiled when she saw them. Some were color, some in black and white. Lauren is sitting on a changing table, in her swimsuit, with a flowered headband on. She has a big smile. It captures her personality exactly...very sweet, mellow, wide-eyed. In another photo, Phillip is leaning over her stroller making a funny face that makes her laugh. She was almost never without her binky, but Phillip would pull it out, get a grin, and then pop it back in. Photos of Phillip examining the flowers in the garden (he always said, then, that he wanted to be a gardner when he grew up). Christie in charge in the kitchen, steering the spoon for the cookie batter with the other kids sitting around, on the counter, waiting for her to give it up. These are at the house. Or, as Lisa instructed Christie to say, "the cottage". There are also some from the Shore--Some of me holding Lauren on my lap. Christie sucking her thumb and twirling her hair in front of the television. All the kids and a friend, jumping happily on my bed with my parenting magazines strewn about.

I remember the first time I gave the kids a bath, after settling in at the house. Phillip and Christie gave me the run-down on their former nannies. I had thought I heard from the housekeeper that one had been Swedish so when they kids were talking about "Lucita" and how terrible she was, I said, "Lucita...was she Swedish?" and Phillip stopped playing with the bubbles to look directly into my eyes and say in a firm voice, "NO. She was meanish!" After that, he and Christie referred to her as: Lucita-The-Mean-One.

I found out later, through another nanny, after I'd left the employ of the Thebault's, that the kids had had 7 nannies in the year before me. They couldn't keep anyone around and I knew why, partly, firsthand. It wasn't the fault of the children, though they too were out of control. I felt very sad for the kids because they'd had little stability, and the only time they saw their father was at bedtime for a story (and for Phillip, on the weekend for soccer), and their mother took off after cooking them breakfast.

I cared about the kids but couldn't handle the way the parents treated me (it was their whole philosophy about how to manage the "servants", and the fact that I worked 7-7 M-F and then almost every single weeknight, with one weekend night, as well, which was outside the contract and I was not compensated--I started keeping track in a journal and when I approached the parents, Brian told me, "If you want to punch in-and-out, I can give you a job in my factory.")

The one success before (or maybe right after? it's fuzzy) this rapid succession of nannies, was an au pair from Germany that Lisa couldn't persuade to return. What happened after I left, I don't know, but I heard through the grapevine that they didn't have another nanny after me...that Lisa took care of them. I had hoped this would happen and was very happy for the kids. Right before I decided to leave, I burst into tears one day, telling Lisa how I had been on a walk with Phillip and he had asked me, sadly, why his father didn't like him. He was serious. I had told him his father loved him and he said he never got to see him. I talked to Phillip about camping and he was excited to try it--when I said he might with his family, he then dropped his head and said no, his Dad was too busy. Phillip seemed depressed most of the time and it bothered me. I told Lisa their kids needed them to be around more.

When I heard they didn't get a nanny after me, I hoped for the best.

It was one long summer, however. There was some fun, too, which I will get into. But the one thing I took from that experience, that has affected my entire outlook on life, is that money doesn't buy everything. When I was asked what kind of family I wanted to work for the second time around, I said, "One that treats me with respect." I didn't care if that next family lived in a shack.

I realize I skip around in narrative and don't follow a linear train of thought, but this is how I've always been. I had a respected supervisor tell me once that my writing was reminiscent of Isabel Allende and other Latin American writers. I wove dream-sequences and magic into scenes. But while I still skip around, telling stories in pieces, the stories are all true.