Desperately Seeking Family
I didn't want rent money; I wanted to belong.
by Annsley Chapman
September 12, 2007
When I tell friends that I've nannied, I usually have to repeat myself two or three times, because they start laughing and (this has really happened) snort beer up their nose. At first, I thought they were amused because they thought nannying wasn't a real job, so I would explain: "Kids just aren't full of shit the way adults are," or "I get $30 an hour tax-free." But then I figured out that what my friends found so amusing was that I nannied.
I can't blame them. Anyone who has spent five minutes with me can see that I'm not the motherly type. I routinely walk out of my apartment with toothpaste on my chin and sleeves, and I'm the only person over twelve who thinks yelling "Not it!" irreversibly absolves me from all duties I find distasteful. I spent my tax return turning my loft into a fort and am still saving up for a ball pit. Nurturer I am not.
But it doesn't take a degree in psychology to see how I ended up taking care of other people's kids.I lived for the fifteen minutes before the parents left, when they wrote out emergency numbers. My father disappeared when I was an infant, leaving my mother and me in the hands of a vast Southern family who self-consciously scrambled to fill his void. Countless adults adoringly petted me while lamenting my fatherlessness. My earliest memories are backlit by both an absence and glut of love.
Then, when I was nine, my mother married a military man who made her happy, had another baby, and moved the entire family five hundred miles away. In this freshly nuclear-ized family, I starved for my old life. Suddenly, I was the shy standout among three extroverts, the sulky bookworm jealous of her photogenic sister. We all hoped the disconnection was an adolescent phase, but my college departure didn't help. I spent most of my vacations with friends. When asked about the rift, I claimed I just wasn't a family person, but of course I desperately was. I just preferred other people's families.
©2007 Annsley Chapman and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Annsley Chapman grew up in Ohio, graduated from the University of Virginia, but is just as rude as any New Yorker. When she's not interning at Nerve, she divides her time between nannying in Manhattan, reading, and wasting money on Ebay. |
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