Nanny Search

Searching for a new nanny is not easy. After tonight's interview I was so depressed about the state of the candidate's life that I wanted to curl up and cry. I probably would have, too, except Sadie and Simon beat me to it. Those are the privileges of being children: sometimes your cries trump Mommy's.

It seems like we will "know" her when we see her, but I won't lie, with Zenia's last days ticking down, it's a little scary to not know where our childcare help is going to come from. Today, when out on a walk, I saw some nannies out with babies and I thought about trying to poach them from their owners, but that seemed like bad karma for a process that needs all the good karma it can get. Simon and I were having lunch with some other mothers today and I wished my friend Sara good luck and good wishes for finding the perfect nanny. Overhearing my wish for the perfect nanny, my other friend Ann reminded me that there is no perfect nanny, but there may be "good enough" nanny. We laughed because of course I want the nanny to be both a mother and a perky little sister, as well as knowledgable like a pediatrician, gentle like a female shaman, and reliable like the mailman. Does that person exist? Maybe, but she's probably not looking to be a nanny here in West Bucktown, U.S.A.

So, the search continues. I hope the daughter of the woman we saw today who suffers from acute kidney failure gets well. I can say I may be haunted for a long time by the sadness in her mother's eyes. I feel uncomfortable with seeing the pain and the hunger and the want in these women's eyes, especially if my gut feeling is that it's not a good match. I want them all to find the perfect families, which probably don't exist any more than the perfect nanny. But I still want that for them. I want these women to have stable jobs and loving families and hope and children who are not on dialysis. I know for us, it's not a good sign if I already want to save the person who is being hired to help our family. In fact, that's actually a recipie for disaster. Still, so far we have met 3 lovely women who deserve better than they may be getting in the world and I hope their search ends as successfully as I hope ours does.