There was a hiatus between moving out of that apartment and moving on. I spent a few short weeks living back with my parents and finding out again why I had been so desperate to leave. My mom had a very college-or-else attitude, oh, but I had to foot the bill myself.
Yeah, okay.
So those few weeks back at home brought up all the old issues and feelings of anger and perhaps regret between us and I began to look for something else.
Choosing to be a nanny wasn't something I rushed into. I had been working with kids since I was about ten and had been a nanny once before. I spent much of my time while back at home pouring over websites and resources to figure out just how to get to be a live-in nanny.
Some sites were more helpful than others and I listed a profile of sorts on many, searching the databases for available families. Generally, when I tell this story in person it gets left off that I really did do some research before going ahead. I researched what would be expected of me and what I should be able to expect of the family.
I weighed the pros and cons of each family; proximately to home, family background, their expectations, etc. One Saturday evening I came across a family that seemed perfect. I remember it was October second, that weekend and the six that would follow it are permanently ingrained in my memory.
The family boasted about being a church-going family with four kids, two girls and two boys. Mom was apparently a secretary and dad was enlisted, in the Navy. One of the kids, it said, had some health problems but all of them were great and reasonably well behaved. I shot off an email to the family through the website and later that night the mother called me up.
It seemed like an okay gig, they lived on the east coast in a little suburb where the kids went to local schools. They weren't that far from the base really, so I figured as I had a military I.D., if there were any problems, I could just go on base. No biggie.
The next morning I spoke to the mother again and she agreed to go ahead and get me a plane ticket out to Virginia. I spent the rest of Sunday frantically packing and sorting, deciding what to take and what to pack up and leave behind. Decisions that would later both haunt me and make me thankful.
By eight a.m. Monday morning, October 4, I was at the airport waiting for my first flight. Roughly thirty-six hours from first contact and I was on my way.
Some have said I should have done more research, taken more time, but this wasn't about clear thought or reason, it was about flight.
I had two different layovers and was in five different airports that day. I enjoy airports, there is something inherently unique about the experiences you get and see there. Travelling through international airports are the best, you can learn so much in such a short amount of time.
(A side note to how I view the world around me. I am a people watcher, partially out of necessity and partially because my mother is a historian, more or less.)
By nightfall I had arrived on the east coast, had seen the Atlantic Ocean, from the plane, for the first time in my life. I thought to myself, this is where my new life will begin, a fresh start.
The parents met me at the airport. A young, happy looking couple who sang praises about their children and how excited they were to have me. Apparently they were going to need a nanny because the mother hoped to be a surrogate for an out-of-state couple and would shortly be beginning treatments.
They drove a modest car, well exposed to a brood of four kids, and lived in a rather average sized house on a quiet cul-de-sac. The house was small on the inside, but obviously well loved; four bedroom and two bathrooms filled with noise, activity, and stuff.
The kitchen was small, made even smaller by the oversized refridgerator against one wall. The boys shared one room and the girls, another. I was surprised that while I figured the boys were okay sharing, being about six and seven, that the oldest girl, a young teen, would be okay sharing with a sister a decade younger.
That first week I spent simply learning the family dynamics.
