Baby

I have been thinking a lot about my job. I have now been a nanny for almost two years. During this time, I have sporadically worked for about 12 families in a childcare capacity. Consistently, though, I have been with one family for one year, and another for two years. When I started working for them the two-year family, Su was 2. The first day I met Su, she looked up at me with ginormous, chocolate-coloured eyes, and gave me a picture, "For you." She had a remarkable vocabulary for a child of that age, but still very limited, of course, and she sometimes preferred crawling to walking. Now she tells me stories at bedtime, helps make snacks, and moved into a "big girl bed" a few weeks ago.

When I went to her room and saw the big bed for the first time, a few tears sprung to my eyes. This tiny girl who had so completely captured my heart from the first day I met her (as well as her sister) had grown right before my eyes from a baby into a beautiful little girl who matches her socks to her dresses. Things like this always make me wonder at my place in this world. There are four children out of many that I have babysat long enough that I truly do know and love them, and they love me, as well. They are smart, funny, beautiful children with unique hopes and dreams... hopes and dreams that I will never get to watch them grow into, because I am a nanny, and not a normal part of their lives. I will never meet their first boyfriend/girlfriend (except for Sage, who juggled 3 boyfriends at her 5th birthday party), see them graduate high school, I won't know what colleges they choose, I won't be at their weddings, I will never see their children, because I was just someone who was payed for a period of time to be involved in their lives.

Sometimes I feel like a parent, then I remember that parents get to see the lives of their children until one of them dies. I think my parents loved watching my sister and I grow up. Sometimes I think it makes them sad that we are no longer little girls, just like it makes me a little sad that Su moved into a big girl bed. I think, though, that normally they were happy when we were small, and they are happy to see the people we have grown up (and are still growing up) to be now, and when we are even older and we have children and buy houses and start menopause and get gray hairs, they'll be happy that we are that age. All the sorrow that I have recently recognized in my life - a sort of grief over missing these children who are still part of their life - makes me realize how much I want children of my own, and how much I have become like my parents, in appreciating every part of a child's life, not just the cute ones.

One day, maybe God will give me children, biologically or through adoption. Maybe he will not. In either case, I am sure their will be children who are a constant part of my life - my best friend's little sister, my newly-gained nieces and nephews, my future nieces and nephews and the future children of my close friends, and maybe my own. When these kids are in my life, I hope I remember to appreciate them no matter how old they get. I hope that I celebrate their lives with them, whether I live in the same city or another continent. I hope that they'll know that I care about them, about their lives, when they are 2 or when they are 40. I hope I get to be a part of some child's "growing up" experience, just like the incredible women who watched me grow from a child to an adult have been a part of my growing up experience.