Chapter 15: Tracy

Should I have a kid? Idk, let’s find out!

The thing about our nanny, Tracy, is not only is she the main character in her life but also in ours.

She lives just two blocks away but enters our home every morning, 8:01 on the dot, with the energy of someone who’s just been spit out of a tornado. As she sheds her many layers (it’s 62 degrees), kicks off her shoes and socks and sets down the plastic grocery bag that is her purse, her stories are already tumbling out:

“You know my garage door?”

(Yes.)

“It’s doing that thing again.”

(Okay.)

“Welp, guys, I’ve got bad news: Otis and Blondie aren’t getting along any more.”

(They are cats.)

“Last night, Tom left his phone unlocked…”

(Don’t like where this is going.)

“So, I went through it…”

(Oh no.)

“Turns out he’s texting the new girl at the deli counter."

I knew it.

Didn’t I tell you I knew it?"

You just can’t trust people to not go behind your back—”

All while we’re still wiping the sleep-crust from our eyes.

She’s an open book, that Tracy. She’s a side-sleeper, menopausal, harboring a dark family secret, and has a bleak prognosis for her twenty-year relationship: “Sometimes people grow apart.” I know more about Tracy than I do some in my own family. I learned all of this within the first week.

The other thing about our nanny, Tracy, is that she’s durable, and flexible. Just like her purse. In the span of a year, she’s called in sick only twice: once when we were coming off a red-eye, the other time when I was away spreading my dad’s ashes and Eleanor had an interview— final round.

She’s weathered every schedule change we’ve thrown her way. We started part-time, then Eleanor got laid off, and we down-shifted into parter-time, till we found another family who needed a nanny, entered into a Tracy-share situation, and rode that out until they moved their kid into daycare— at which point we ramped her hours back up to something closer to part-ish time.

All the while, she knew our number could be called off the daycare wait list at any moment, Ava would be off to small-school, and Tracy would be out of a job, big-time.

But Tracy doesn’t flinch in the face of turbulence. She is turbulence. She keeps showing up with a purse full of water bottles, Starbucks gift cards, and ripe tales of her voyage, from all the way down the block to our front door.

It’s been hard sharing my space with an agent of chaos. I work from home, am self-employed, and when it comes to focus, I’m the Princess and the Pea. With so much time and energy dedicated to Ava, those good working hours — when all three of my beverages are at the perfect temperature, and the sunlight’s filtering through the window just right — feel increasingly precious. So why am I currently detained in my own kitchen being force-fed someone else’s inner-monologue?

We’ve tried setting boundaries, but they’ve proven as effective as putting a traffic cone next to a hurricane. So, we’ve considered making a change.

I grew up with a revolving door of babysitters. Emma, a babushka older than the Soviet Union, poured my little sister a bowl of cereal using OJ instead of milk. Ruth sent my big brother home from group daycare with a shiny new toy: the word FUCK. Anesta left my little sister with bruises on her forearms, until big bro tipped off our mother: I don’t like the way she pulls Clarissa off the bus.

As the middle child, seemingly spared from starring in any of this drama, I found it all very exciting - who will be next to walk through that door?

Then we found Jennifer, who drank hot tap water to burn calories and speed-walked with a trash bag wrapped around her torso. I eagerly awaited the moment she’d do something unforgivable, get let go, and we’d spin the Wheel of Nannies once more to see what we’d won.

But Jennifer stuck. God bless her. And two decades later, I’d invite her to my wedding.

Every single person who walks through your door will come with their own plastic bag full of stuff.

Bad news, Tracy hollers, loud enough to find us wherever we’re hiding, 8:02 AM sharp as she strides into work. Tom and I are breaking up.

Turns out, she picked a fight with her landlord who’s also her quasi-mother-in-law, so now she’s getting evicted which means she and her boyfriend are going to call it quits.

I begin to receive daily updates on her apartment hunt: too pricey, too far, too many roommates, doesn’t have room for a turtle and multiple cats.

If she doesn’t find something soon, she tells me, she’ll have to sleep in her car, which isn’t ideal because she’s a side sleeper and just bought an armchair off me for two-hundred bucks.

Somewhere in all this, I begin to find my rhythm with Tracy— when to preemptively engage, when to hide, when to avoid eye contact so that I don’t get sucked down a bottomless storyhole. We settle on a schedule that feels like the happiest medium for all parties involved.

But as soon as we develop a routine, that’s the surest sign that things are about to change.

We have news, I tell her as she stumbles through the door at 8:04 AM on the dot.

She knows immediately.

Daycare…

She utters, deflated. I nod.

A spot has opened up early. It’s ours, if we want it. It will save us time, and money, and give Ava more everything at a moment she’s showing us she’s ready, whether we are or not.

I’m not. I wish a spot hadn’t opened up. I wish we could just ride out this rhythm and stick to the plan for once in Ava’s little life.

Daycare, I confirm. Tracy staggers past us and collapses into the breakfast nook, shoulders slumped.

There, we walk her through how the next month will look as if arranging a funeral with the guest of honor. We use terms like “transitional period” and “ramp-down,” find hours where there are none, and agree to pay her under the table so that she can collect unemployment from the state.

I’m ready to go to bat for her when she needs a reference. I’ll tell potential employers that she’s:

Punctual, arriving exactly five seconds later with each passing day.

Diligent about side-work, sweeping beneath my feet even though I’m on a Zoom call and the baby’s in the other room doing god knows what.

And takes only two sick days per year but don’t worry, they’re high impact.

I want her to be okay. I don’t want to be the last family that employed her before she and her band of felines begin their life on the street.

I knew something bad was going to happen, she sighs, after all the details have been squared away. I can always sense when something bad is going to happen.

By the time she compares our daughter starting daycare to having her truck broken into 30 years ago, I realize that I’m ready, oh so ready—

To leave this storm behind, and venture on into the next.

Should I have a kid? Idk, let’s find out!