Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Back to the Suburban Grind: A Case of the 23's
Back to the Suburban Grind: A Case of the 23's: Our main babysitter is 23 years old. A gorgeous redhead with long legs and a nervous giggle, she's smart and kind and good and funny an...
Monday, September 28, 2015
A Case of the 23's
Our main babysitter is 23 years old. A gorgeous redhead with long legs and a nervous giggle, she's smart and kind and good and funny and so loved by the girls that they throw their arms around her whenever they see her anywhere. Even at St. James Gate where we went for a beer and a bite and they saw her saddled up to the bar on her laptop on a corner stool trying to people watch and hide from the crowds. I love her too. She feels so very familiar to me.
Recently, she has been cancelling our babysitting gigs at the last minute possible with lots of apologies and promises to do better and each time, rather than giving her the business. I gently explain to her how and why this is not acceptable, make other arrangements, and then check in on her a day or two later. I have talked her through break-ups, move outs, job searches, resume building, heartache, hospital stays, sending texts in the night when a thought comes into my mind. I want her to feel loved and cared for. She's 23. It's hard to know.
When I was 23, I found my poor soul at the end of one of the most important relationships of my life. While other bigger adults knew that this was par for the course, my imminent break up was consuming me, actually consuming me and I was achy and scrawny and scratchy and messy. I'd sent my belongings out to Colorado to move with him, where we'd live "as friends and roommates" because the shit was over and I had somehow agreed to that. I'd quit my job, the job procured with the help of one of my favorite people on earth, a college painting and drawing professor who really guided me in a way I'd not been in my life, and told everyone "So long, suckas!" And then backtracked. "What the f*** was I doing?" I had not thought this plan all the way through. I was going to MOVE to Colorado with my once boyfriend/love of my life, now roommate/pal/friend/what and live there? Maybe this really did require some tears and some sense and somebody help me. I was a tortured mess. Walked all over Boston from one end to the next in the heat of the summer, eating only grapes and Cheerios, taking the occasional psychedelic, and drinking wine. I cried from sun up to sundown and in between worked and walked and cried into the telephone, making teary phone calls at 5 am to anyone who would pick up. I missed appointments and sat in corner seats at the bar thinking I was invisible when I was really lovely and basically had no idea what on earth I was doing.
When I was in my thirties and living in New York, trying my hand at acting and doing stuff I always said I would, I fell hard for a boy who was 23. Ah, the 23 year old boy. He was stunning. Brand new and full of ideas and dreams. An old soul, so we had that, but young and 23. Gorgeous in the way that only a new adult can be. I couldn't bear to prevent him from the starts and stops and joys and pains of my twenties, couldn't even ask that he catch up to me, do what I wanted, be where I was, and it ended as I suppose it should have. Even now, I wonder how this boy grew into a man because there was so much there already...at 23.
When my sitter calls or texts each time to say she's sorry but she had to throw up, missed her train, lost her keys, just cannot pull it together, I swear that this is the absolute last straw. I need someone more reliable, someone who can commit, who cares about my schedule and my needs. I DO need that still. And sometimes I ask someone else to come or trade off my kids for someone else's another day. But when someone comes down with a case of the 23's, they need compassion and they need guidance and they need love. I give the business. I do. I say things like, "You don't want to represent yourself out there like that. You don't want to prove to be untrustworthy. Your word is your bond, you have to give it sincerely." I'm right. But I also remember being and feeling so brand new and believing that everything was just as urgent and important and earth-shattering as the first baby steps of a toddler. The world was opening up. I wanted to and believed I could do anything...if I could just get out of my own way.
When the girls get there, to 23, I hope I can breathe that rarefied air with them, recall when someone gave me a break and a nudge, let me go into the world and said they'd catch me, they'd be there, they'd let me figure it out, and give them the space to fuck up so beautifully. It is a fleeting moment, special and lovely, where you can get away with just about anything. Worn like leggings with short shirts, t-shirts with no bra, high heels with everything. It's for the young. And they look so good doing it, even if they drive you crazy and leave you hanging.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Recently, she has been cancelling our babysitting gigs at the last minute possible with lots of apologies and promises to do better and each time, rather than giving her the business. I gently explain to her how and why this is not acceptable, make other arrangements, and then check in on her a day or two later. I have talked her through break-ups, move outs, job searches, resume building, heartache, hospital stays, sending texts in the night when a thought comes into my mind. I want her to feel loved and cared for. She's 23. It's hard to know.
When I was 23, I found my poor soul at the end of one of the most important relationships of my life. While other bigger adults knew that this was par for the course, my imminent break up was consuming me, actually consuming me and I was achy and scrawny and scratchy and messy. I'd sent my belongings out to Colorado to move with him, where we'd live "as friends and roommates" because the shit was over and I had somehow agreed to that. I'd quit my job, the job procured with the help of one of my favorite people on earth, a college painting and drawing professor who really guided me in a way I'd not been in my life, and told everyone "So long, suckas!" And then backtracked. "What the f*** was I doing?" I had not thought this plan all the way through. I was going to MOVE to Colorado with my once boyfriend/love of my life, now roommate/pal/friend/what and live there? Maybe this really did require some tears and some sense and somebody help me. I was a tortured mess. Walked all over Boston from one end to the next in the heat of the summer, eating only grapes and Cheerios, taking the occasional psychedelic, and drinking wine. I cried from sun up to sundown and in between worked and walked and cried into the telephone, making teary phone calls at 5 am to anyone who would pick up. I missed appointments and sat in corner seats at the bar thinking I was invisible when I was really lovely and basically had no idea what on earth I was doing.
When I was in my thirties and living in New York, trying my hand at acting and doing stuff I always said I would, I fell hard for a boy who was 23. Ah, the 23 year old boy. He was stunning. Brand new and full of ideas and dreams. An old soul, so we had that, but young and 23. Gorgeous in the way that only a new adult can be. I couldn't bear to prevent him from the starts and stops and joys and pains of my twenties, couldn't even ask that he catch up to me, do what I wanted, be where I was, and it ended as I suppose it should have. Even now, I wonder how this boy grew into a man because there was so much there already...at 23.
When my sitter calls or texts each time to say she's sorry but she had to throw up, missed her train, lost her keys, just cannot pull it together, I swear that this is the absolute last straw. I need someone more reliable, someone who can commit, who cares about my schedule and my needs. I DO need that still. And sometimes I ask someone else to come or trade off my kids for someone else's another day. But when someone comes down with a case of the 23's, they need compassion and they need guidance and they need love. I give the business. I do. I say things like, "You don't want to represent yourself out there like that. You don't want to prove to be untrustworthy. Your word is your bond, you have to give it sincerely." I'm right. But I also remember being and feeling so brand new and believing that everything was just as urgent and important and earth-shattering as the first baby steps of a toddler. The world was opening up. I wanted to and believed I could do anything...if I could just get out of my own way.
When the girls get there, to 23, I hope I can breathe that rarefied air with them, recall when someone gave me a break and a nudge, let me go into the world and said they'd catch me, they'd be there, they'd let me figure it out, and give them the space to fuck up so beautifully. It is a fleeting moment, special and lovely, where you can get away with just about anything. Worn like leggings with short shirts, t-shirts with no bra, high heels with everything. It's for the young. And they look so good doing it, even if they drive you crazy and leave you hanging.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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