the real nanny diaries- they don't call me the help, they call me family

hello friends- all i can say other than the lovely post below is i believe in you giants!!!!

Learning how to love someone as your own and care in ways you didn’t know possible. Changing your schedule just to pick up a forgotten guitar, for there will be no lessons without that guitar and there will be no surprise and hug and run around the school yard, thank you, thank you, I love you Kate, you are the best.

Somewhere along the line I forgot this was my job. I do things because I want to not because their parents pay me. I go to their plays and talk to their teachers about their progress and their friends know my name and to their parents about how to negotiate in the task of raising kids. Raising kids together. We are learning how.

Because with one house with mom and another house with dad and me in between I am learning how still how to be just their advocate and their foundation. It is not a role that is foreign. Because there once was me in the middle of my parents not in the same way. Between houses. But between them. While they were married. While they fought over us. While I bounced from one relatives house to the next. We never got to the back and forth between houses part. No we skipped that.

Learning how to be there and welcome the attitude I might get from the almost tween. No I am not saying goodbye. Or when the 7 year old refuses to eat his food without coaxing. I know, I am learning that this is part of what happens when you move from being the help to being family. You see more and get more both the good, the bad, and the ugly. If they never said an unkind thing to me they would show me they loved me less. Because in being real, you might not be sugary sweet like the food they desire daily.

I know that when I pick them up after a long day of high school of highs and lows of being a teenager, of heartbreaks, and how to get into college, or how to be a NCAA athlete. Do you want this apple Ms. Bueler- one students offers. I don’t take their food- I give them food- because they usually are hungry. Hungary for so much more than I can give. Than I can give with these almonds or strawberries or z bars. I know that when I see these two faces. I warm up with happiness and the day whatever happened drifts away. Away for a bit. I am there with them. There right now. Right then. Just skipping down the street or chasing the next snack or adventure or game to watch. Or how many of their meal worms have made it at school.

I know, I am learning that they know they are loved. Loved in a way that all children should feel. So when Y states don’t worry Kate will protect us. She is strong. And she would never let anyone hurts us. I am learning, still learning, to love someone as my own. And learning her safety she feels with me might be the greatest gift of all.