Snuggles and Shit - The Story of a Sitter’s Summer (1)
- 1. Snuggles and Shit: The Story of a Sitter’s Summer So you want to be an au pair. You want to step off that airplane after nine hours of polite small talk and sharing personal space into the oven that is the Mediterranean summer and take a deep breath of that fresh Italian air. You want the humidity to envelop you, fill you, push away the memories of the stale plane, too cold for the paper-thin blankets provided. You want the trip full of screaming babies and the creepy old man who offered to let you use his lap as a leg rest to seem worth it. Maybe you’re looking forward to the new places you’ll see: Rome, Florence, Venice, the Alps; maybe you’re in it for the adventure, for the “nice Italian boy” your host mom will introduce you to within your first 24 hours there; maybe you just really like kids. No matter what your intentions are, you should first ask yourself a few questions: Can you handle bodily fluids? Are you able to dead lift thirty pounds of squirming, screaming chaos? Do you like to snuggle? If you answered yes to all of the above, read on! Job Requirements: • Patience: Be ready to read the same book, sing the same song, and watch the same TV show over and over again. This is where all those nights of Netflix binging finally pay off. It’s surprising how similar that time you watched the entire second season of Orange Is the New Black in one day is to watching seven episodes of Peppa Pig in a row. Sure, there’s a lot less sex, but by the third or fourth episode they both turn into the same mindless drama with the occasional joke thrown in. Patience also comes in handy when playing any sort of game with a one-year-old. Whether it’s pushing him on the swings, catching him as he splashes into the pool, or coloring a picture (and the table and the floor and his shirt), be prepared to spend at least three times as long as you expected to on the activity. Who says toddlers have short attention spans? • A stomach of steel: Did you know that baby wipes don’t exist in Italy? Nope. But bidets do, and that’s what you’ll be using every time the baby needs a clean diaper. A simple, three-step diaper change – take off diaper, wipe, put on clean diaper – turns into a ten-minute ordeal involving lots of splashing, a change of clothes for both you and the baby, and even the occasional poop-filled diaper flying across the room. Besides having to deal with that shit (literally), you’ll also be expected to blow runny noses, catch food the baby decides to spit out before it hits the floor, and wipe up any pee accidents that occur when the baby decides to pull down his pants and go for it in public. You won’t be welcome at that fruit stand anymore. • Basic Italian vocabulary: Helpful words and phrases include: Cosa fai? (What are you doing?), Dove vai? (Where are you going?), Ferma (Stop), Aspetta (Wait), and Non mordere la tua sorella (Don’t bite your sister). • Iron (Wo)Man: Babies may look small, but they’re solid. It might not seem like there’s room in that tiny tummy for a second helping of gelato, but trust me, there is. You’re going to need more muscle than you think to haul the little guy around. Sound easy? It won’t after your first week. Co-Workers:
- 2. Host mom. Chain smoker. Compulsive spender. Nice for you, since she’ll spontaneously buy you cute earrings as a thank you gift. Not so nice for your host dad – she drops 300 euros on a glittery winter coat for her five-year-old daughter. Owns a tobacco shop. I guess that’s where she gets all her cigarettes. Says “Oh my God” and rolls her eyes a lot. Mainly at the kids. Host dad. Makes bad jokes about Polish people. Likes soccer and beer – you’ll get along great. Gelato pusher. Reason you’ll gain twenty pounds. Nonna. Grandmother. Eighty years old. Worst cankles you’ve ever seen. Grumpy as hell. Maybe because of the cankles. Comes over in the afternoons to boss you around. Don’t let the baby fall down under your watch because she’ll force feed you a bowl full of raw tomatoes as punishment. Room and Board: Ah, this is what you’re looking for. This is where I tell you how magical your life will be for the next three months. And it will be. Besides all the poop and slobber, it’s like a fairy tale. Think of a mix between Rapunzel and Snow White – living in a tower with a bunch of tiny people running around. The first time you see the eleventh-floor apartment where you’ll be living for the summer, you can hardly believe it. Standing on the balcony, taking in the orange light of the sunset reflecting off of the ancient stone buildings, warming your toes on the concrete floor that has soaked up the heat all day, you’ll want time to stop. That is, until your host mom calls you in for dinner. Speaking of dinner, don’t go into this expecting to be able to fit into your clothes when you leave. Italian food is like no other, and you’ll find that your entire summer revolves around meal times. From tangy apricot marmalade in the morning to fior di latte gelato when your sweet tooth kicks in at 9:00 p.m., you’ll eagerly await each and every breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack. Never thought you were the type to sit at the kitchen table eating spoonfuls of mozzarella with two small children? You’ll prove yourself wrong. Didn’t think seafood was your favorite? Wait until you have spaghetti with clams and mussels as you sit looking out at the Mediterranean Sea. What’s that? The scale says you’ve gained twenty pounds? Sorry, you can’t see it over the chocolate-dipped gelato cones you’re double-fisting. Travel Stipends: Since you’re the nanny, you’re expected to go everywhere the family goes, and that includes on vacations. Perhaps your favorite destination will be the Alps, surrounded by mountains, just like good ol’ Rockbridge. You won’t be able to get Julie Andrews out of your head. “The hills are aliiiive…” You’ll go into it expecting days full of walks through nature and gorgeous views from the tops of peaks, but that isn’t possible while two kids are running around with just you and the lazy old Nonna in charge. Instead, you’ll spend your days pushing the stroller down the same quaint street lined with shops selling hand-embroidered oven mitts and carved wooden cows, surrounded by old women just like Nonna. In fact, Nonna’s best friend will be visiting the mountain village as well, and the two will spend hours at a time gossiping in
- 3. Italian about the inattentive nanny who let the baby fall off the swing that one time. I guess they forgot you speak their language. Meanwhile, you’ll be pleading with the little girl to get her hands out of the fountain while simultaneously grabbing the back of the baby’s shirt so he doesn’t demolish the nearby flower patch. Or maybe you’ll enjoy the Mediterranean Sea, with beaches full of women who may have been beauty queens in the ‘60s and saggy old men in Speedos, if you’re into that kind of thing. The baby will get bored of throwing sand at you, of course, and wander off into the beach café that sells Coke in glass bottles and little chocolate-covered ice cream balls. You’ll chase after him to find him with his arms around a stranger’s dog, shouting to everyone in earshot about the cane he found. But then you’ll travel to Venice, and every city that you previously thought was your favorite will be pushed to the back of your mind. It will be just how you imagined it. You’ll be surrounded by water on all sides, inducing the best claustrophobia you’ve ever felt. The sun reflects off the water in a way that no photograph or painting will ever be able to emulate. The gondolas rowing by and the accordion players standing in the doorways may seem like a romantic overload, and you’ll realize how cheesy it is, but you’ll love it all the same, kind of like Titanic. No number of Instagrams will ever be enough to show how beautiful the city is, so you’ll just have to tell your family and friends to go there themselves someday. It is then that you’ll realize that all the exhaustion and getting hit on by old men and the degradation of washing a baby’s butt three times a day is worth it. Still Interested? You’re in Italy. You’re living 150 feet above a city older than anything you’ve ever seen at home. You have two young children who love you and trust you, even when they’re at their most annoying. You didn’t expect it at first, but this job will become a mirror. It will cause you to look at yourself as a person, studying yourself from angles you’ve never seen before. You think you’re patient, but that patience will wear thin during day after day at the pool, the playground, the carousel. You know you’re caring, but you don’t realize that you’ll grow to love the children you spend so much time with. You’re pretty sure you’re not adventurous, but then you’ll travel to a foreign country on your own and learn a new language and take a weekend trip to Florence with three guys you’ve never met before, sharing a tent and a bottle of wine. You’ll handle bodily fluids and you’ll dead lift the world’s heaviest one-year-old and you’ll snuggle your heart out, because it’s your job, and you’ll discover that you’re way more of a grown-up than you ever imagined.