The Very Last Time

Today was the very last time that I will ever quit a nanny job.  Never again will I agonize over an email asking my bosses if we can sit down and talk the following Friday.  Never again will I spend most of a night having nightmares about getting screamed at by the parents of the children that I love.  And never again will I sit, with my heart sinking to my toes, my voice shaking over tears as I tell yet another family that it's time for me to move on.  I'm tired of this life.  I'm tired of falling in love with these tiny people over and over again, and always leaving them behind.  I'm tired of loving everyone else's kids except my own.  I swear, the day that someone hands me my own baby that I never have to hand back - I don't think I'll actually believe it's real.  Until, of course, said baby is two-and-a-half, and throwing a tantrum in the grocery store and I look around wondering if anyone would like to maybe collect on this demon child that they mistakenly think is mine.  Anyone?  Bueller?

I haven't written much about the girls here.  I had a lot of conflicting feelings about this job, right from the beginning.  This January, when I started working with them, was so tumultuous and difficult that I felt like I could barely put one foot in front of the other.  I was completely up in the air about Yale, and needed to land a job (and quickly), regardless of whether or not I might be leaving for school in the fall.  When I did get in to Yale, and furthermore, decided to go, things got even more complicated.  All along, I had gone into this job knowing that it would be my last nanny job.  How long it was going to last, though, was anyone's guess.  All I knew when I started was that I was broke, desperate, depressed, and scared.  I needed to work.  I needed to be making money in order to survive, and perhaps more importantly, I needed a reason to get out of bed each day when it felt like there was no point in trying.

These three girls, especially the twins, gave me that reason.  For all the nothing that I said about them here, my heart has been filling with somethings for the last six months.  Dangerous though I knew it was, I fell in love, and hard.  Their faces turn towards mine like flowers to the sun when I walk into a room.  Dove learned how to lift her arms to be picked up last week, without my even teaching her.  Bun will squirm with excitement as I reach into her crib for her, as if I just can't pick her up fast enough.

My bosses were more understanding than I could have possibly anticipated.  Having finally reined in my tears enough to choke out that I would be leaving at the end of the month, I only erupted into fresh sobs when C. looked kindly at me and said, with the utmost sincerity, "Enjoy these last three weeks.  Those babies are going to miss you something fierce when you're gone."

I couldn't be more excited for Yale, for New Haven, for the house that I'm moving into, for the new beginnings that lie ahead.  But, oh my heart.  Please let this be the very last time that it breaks for the babies I love, cherish, and ultimately have to leave.