a visit at work from my friends, Bitter and Sad.

Typing that out really makes it seem uber weird.

No matter, on with the post. As a full-time nanny, I spend 40-50 hours of my week in someone else’s home, watching someone else’s child, sort of pretending I’m some real part of someone else’s family unit. It would be easy to make the mistake, as an outsider, that I was, in fact, a part of the family.

I spend a great deal of that day at the playground, making sure the little munchkin doesn’t hurt himself. I know what you’re thinking – what a breeze, right? Well, sorry to offend you – but you’re wrong. My job is really rough. And it’s not because I have to deal with diarrhea explosions or temper tantrums or messes or long hours or crying or any number of other factors, though I do have to deal with all of that, too. Rather,  it’s because I have to be some faux-part of a working family unit complete with mother, father, baby, and the plan for more babies in the near future. Everyday, I see mother and father leave, I see child play happily and carelessly, and I see mother and father come home and dote on said child. I see the immense amount of love between parent and child, and I can’t help but realize that the love I feel for this little person is not quite the same, and the love he feels for me is certainly not the same. I am a removable part of this family – if I were to quit or get fired, they would hire another loving nanny and that would be that. No more Kari.

There are a number of reasons why this is a difficult reality for me to face. First of all, I can’t tell you how challenging it is to see the end-of-the-day reunion between father and child and have to remain positive and unaffected as it unfolds. Every. Single. Day. For me, this is hard to face. It reminds me of the fact that I do not get anymore of these reunions with my father. It makes me remember back to when I used to spend weekends at my father’s (he lived with my grandmother, his mother) and he used to deliver pizzas until late at night. When he would arrive home at 3 a.m., tiny me would be sprawled across his bed so that he could not go to sleep without first waking me up so that I might give him a long-awaited hug and kiss. Now, the non-mourning person might have a response such as “you are lucky to have such a beautiful memory with your father!” Of course, this is true, I will never say otherwise. However, people tend to overlook the immense amount of pain and sadness that comes along with any happy father-related memory. With each moment of blissful nostalgia I encounter, there is an equal amount of stomach-in-my-throat sadness. To put it non-poetically: it really fucking sucks. I think of all of these wonderful memories and then am faced with the fact that there will be no more like them, no more happy reunions between my father and I, no more end-of-the-day-glee. Nor will I ever be able to reflect upon them with my dad again, either. I had my chance at childhood, and now it is over, and my father’s death makes this fact really sink in. No more chances. Next!

But, lucky me, I get to watch someone else live out these happy family experiences everyday! Every god damn day. And it fucking hurts. And this is where my friend Bitter comes into play, paining me with its relentless and sour-tasting presence. I leave work bitter. Bitter that I have to watch another family live in their wonderfully optimistic and love-filled lives. Bitter that I have to go home to only my cat, no family or boyfriend (he lives an hour away and who the hell would want to live with my sorry ass right now?). Bitter that my dad is missing and I have to watch someone else’s  joyous reunion with theirs each evening. Bitter that my family never had the togetherness that this one has. And let me tell you something about bitterness: IT BLOWS. It makes you feel like the lowest form of a human, sort of like the Grinch.

I want to be happy for this family, but I am not. I am bitter that I do not have what they have. That I never get to be the kid again who is excited to see their father after he comes home from work. I am upset that my family was never quite this together and functional (but that’s a whole other post… don’t worry, it will happen). I am upset that I come in the morning and leave at night and am never really a part of this family, nor do I feel a part of my own. It is as though my father was a huge connection for me to my family, and without him, I feel like I’m dangling in the distance.

Another reason that being a nanny is incredibly trying becomes apparent when you consider my role as the caretaker. When you lose a parent, you are really losing one of your greatest caretakers. And with this, you begin to yearn more and more to be taken care of, whether by your remaining parent or your boyfriend or your friends. As an adult, this care-taking is not necessarily as available to you as it would be if you were, say, four. However, this fact does not stop the undeniable yearning that you have for it, and the difficulty in processing the fact that it is not there. This is why it becomes increasingly difficult to care-take for others, since you are in such great need yourself. For ten hours a day, five days a week, I need to look after the needs of this little person who has not even the slightest inkling of concern for my own, and more and more I feel drained of my energy to fulfill this role. All I want is for someone to take care of me, and yet my entire job relies on my ability to intensely care for someone else. Ironic? Check. Difficult? Check! Near impossible some days? CHECK!

As for the lost childhood realization (god! I’m such a cliche sometimes! did I really just write that???), don’t get on my case with comments like “Well, it was already gone anyway,” “you’ve been grown for a long time now,” etc. etc. Of course, all of these statements are true. But the fact is, when you lose a parent, the lost childhood factor is so god damn apparent, like fire-in-the-middle-of-the-ocean, black-man-in-the-south, cheesesteak-sitting-on-top-of-a-vegan-salad apparent. Bing! There it was and there it went: your childhood.

And it really does make me sad.