“You’re going to LOVE these kids,” Debbie had told me, her voice in all caps as she extolled the sweet virtues of Annie, Ben, and Eva.
This was always a red flag for me. Kids with a departing babysitter who purported to LOVVVVVVVE them.
Personally, I loved $25 an hour, so I said, “They sound like amazing kids! When do you leave for grad school?”
Replacing Debbie as the family’s sitter would be a delicate operation. She had clearly been beloved by the children and, though I was every bit as responsible and qualified, I had no natural sparkle in my eye when baby Annie yelled out her poop-themed songs and when Eva expressed herself by twerking in music video-style dances around the house with her bike shorts rolled up to her crotch. I knew I should love these children, they were indeed “lovable,” in the abstract sense, but the clamor of the three of them, ages 2, 3, and, Eva, 6, was oppressive and, honestly, no three people should every be that young at the same time in the same house. It was grating and I remember being drawn toward Farrell’s, a bar in Windsor Terrace, after work and realizing, as my beer arrived, condensation raining gently onto its coaster, “Oh, this is how people end up drinking.”
Ben, the middle child, was the peacekeeper, but the two girls were consistent hellions and, once sufficiently provoked, he always joined. I was totally outnumbered and there was no such thing as an easy task. Every moment of the afternoon and evening was an insufferable ordeal. Potty time, brushing teeth, even something as seemingly pleasant as stopping in a bakeshop to pick up three little matching seasonal sugar cookies would turn into a nightmare as the children screamed about some unseen inequity. One cookie was bigger than another, or something coveted was out of stock, or some chair or other just wasn’t as pleasing as the other two chairs.
My college friend, Debbie, had only once, in our thorough introductory chat, made the offhand remark that babysitting for these three was “good birth control."
She had undersold this point. I could feel my tubes tying themselves as I made the children their macaroni and they fought over some toy they had easily seven of. My tubes not only tied themselves but burnt the ends and threw away the key.
There were no longer hours than the afternoons that I spent at their manicured home in Carroll Gardens in what felt like a perpetual hostage negotiation.
There was, however, one reliable moment of calm each day. A mirage in the driest desert; it was a strange phenomenon that, upon closer examination, proved itself to be a verified oasis upon the vast, scorched landscape.
It came after the moment when we’d come through the door, home from school, after my horrible ritual scuffle with the apartment door key, which always stuck, and so, Eva would roll her eyes and shout disparaging remarks at me as the other two pushed each other or toddled dangerously toward the top of the staircase. Then, when finally, the door would fall open, succumbing to my effort and fury, the kids would toss off their backpacks and each run in a different direction toward some pressing need, be it an iPad, a sacred hoarded piece of trash they’d been longing to return to in their shared bedroom, or a freshly cleaned couch to jump and spit on.
After this initial flurry of chaos, once shoes and coats were off — I’d pull the carton of organic whole milk from the impressive state-of-the-art refrigerator and place it down on the counter as I opened a cabinet near the breakfast island.
By now the kids would be at their high stools, Annie scrambling up hers like a small, accomplished koala, and Eva sliding easily onto hers from above. Ben sitting rigid between the two girls, always prepared to mediate, should violence break out.
The first day I witnessed this ritual I was immediately struck by the quiet. I grew up mildly lactose intolerant and couldn’t imagine sitting expectantly for a full, unadulterated glass of cow’s milk, an idea that, to this day, disgusts me.
Sensing their suddenly rapt attention and the disquieting silence of the room, I reached my arm upward, in a now somewhat self-conscious fashion, for the three small plastic cups I’d use to serve each child his and her milk.
I pulled down from the cabinet the three plastic cups: one red, one blue, one green. The tension rose as each cup descended. The Brooklyn street outside joined in the hush, now that the school day’s chaotic homeward commute had ended. It seemed I was now performing a magic trick… but as the guileless audience volunteer.
And when the room’s air was thickest, Eva, 6 years old and the eldest, began to chant rhythmically, her eyes straight ahead:
“You get what you get and you don’t get upset.”
My eyes widened.
The other two children now joined her in echo:
“You get what you get and you don’t get upset.”
The nasal, pinched voices, in their three dissonant pitches, mantra’d together, more loudly, more emphatically: “You get what you get and you don’t get upset!”
I had never heard the children recite, much less chant, anything. And they so rarely behaved in even a remotely structured way. But — I knew a good thing when I saw it. Embracing the strange new prison camp energy, I meaningfully placed each cup in front of each child. Each colored cup was received like a sentencing, with a small trembling smile from 2 year old Annie, who must have badly wanted the red cup and had gotten it. With a muted but palpable rage from Ben who, it seems, had not wanted the green cup, and an inscrutable stare from Eva, who was, rather remarkably, modeling exquisite self-regulation. In the off-putting and ongoing silence, I poured the milk into each cup and each kid gulped heartily as I placed the carton back in the fancy fridge.
Once Eva was done, she was already spinning in her chair and preparing to dismount with Ben close behind and Annie screaming that no one would ever wait for her. The cacophony returned in full, stinking bloom, and I was thrown into despair, counting down the hours till a beer, alone, in peace, at Farrell’s.
“You get what you get and you don’t get upset.” I repeated it to the drumbeat of my rising heart rate, stacking the dishwasher, challenging myself to muster the strained equanimity I had witnessed in the children.
You get what you get and you don’t get upset.
Life’s disappointment, confusion, fear, frustration, and a tugging, persistent sadness —all buttoned up in one tidy chant on a frigid January evening.
We were all 4 managing as best we could till happy hour.
Good read, Emma!
This one’s better to read than to perform.