In my last post I wrote about how I met A, and the first day I babysat her... how I knew something was different, something was going on with her, but I didn't know what it was. Also, how I vowed to myself to give her every possible moment of happiness that I could. In this post, I'll write about the first few months in which I tried to do just that.
The next day after school, I drove to A's house to watch her again. Being the first Wednesday of the month, I had a Spanish club meeting that I didn't want to miss. I had the last period of the school day free, so I was allowed to leave early, and customarily came back for club meetings and events. I wasn't sure if I'd make it to Spanish Club that day or not... spending time with A was more important. But when A woke up well before the beginning of the meeting, I decided to call her grandma and ask her permission to drive A down the street to go to Spanish Club with me. I'll never forget the enormity of her words to me that day on the phone, "Of course, that's fine! As long as she's with you, I know she's safe."
As long as she's with you, I know she's safe.
I always took the safety of the children I cared for seriously - I even had my own car seat (although I didn't know at the time that I was violating about a million car seat no-nos)... but this felt different, maybe because of A's strange behaviors, maybe because of the mysterious 'bad situation' that had been mentioned... I felt as though I was taking a sacred vow. As long as she was with me, she would be safe. I was so determined to keep that vow.
But back to that Wednesday. When I hung up the phone, I hunted down some clothes and a hair brush for A, which took longer than I'd expected, and then encountered a battle trying to get her to allow me to brush her hair, which was pretty tangled. On the plus side, I was spared a repeat of the previous day's diaper change incident - A seemed to feel more secure with me, and though she fussed when I changed her, it was no more than I'd previously experienced with other children. I assumed the newness of the hair brushing was what threw her off that day.
When she was ready I packed a bag. Diapers, wipes, a change of clothes, a color wonder coloring book and markers, some books, a few random toys, and a baggie of animal crackers (which had been left open and were somewhat stale, but once A saw them, she insisted on eating them and refused to do anything else until I gave in). She seemed satisfied with them, so I figured what the heck - if she wanted to eat stale crackers, so be it. The car seat was already in the car, I kept it there just in case I needed to transport one of the many children I watched, but I hadn't actually been expecting to be able to go to the meeting, so I hadn't brought along a stroller. Oh well, I thought. It would be an experiment.
Together we set off for my high school. I talked to A on the way there, told her where we were going and what we were going to do ("Speak Spanish like Dora? Uno Dos Tres? Yeah, that's right! Vamonos! Hablamos Espanol!") because while researching the previous night, I'd read that her speech should've been further along than it was (still no words from A) and that describing what we were doing, where we were going, objects we saw, etc, would be beneficial to her. It would also help to assure her that she was in a safe environment and could relax.
That was the first day I, a sixteen year old junior, walked through the doors of my high school, its hallways still brimming with people, with a two year old girl in my arms and a diaper bag, not a bookbag, slung over my shoulder. Yes, in retrospect, I should've realized the rumors that would have set off... but in retrospect, I realize I still wouldn't have cared. I probably answered "Is she yours?" about twenty times that day - from everyone - students, teachers, even the custodian. My Spanish teacher told me she looked like me. Other students stared at us. I smiled. A was doing remarkably well around all these people. I was just proud of her.
During that meeting, she fed my friend Alex stale animal crackers out of her baggie, some of which she had pre-chewed. After the first one, Alex discreetly stuffed them in her pocket. The next day, she told me in English class that she'd gotten home and stuck her hand in her pocket only to find a wad of soggy animal cracker pieces. Yum. And Alex still liked me after that! What a friend! :)
We had a good time. I introduced A to everyone, all of Spanish club. Someone came around and took pictures for the yearbook - later I saw a picture hanging up on the student activities board of me, A perched on my lap, at that meeting. A got bored a couple of times so I took her to walk (run) the hallways a bit. It made her happy... so it made me happy too.
And so began a routine. I was very active in my high school - I often had meetings two, maybe three days a week, and sometimes two meetings in one day. So I packed the stroller, kept a bag of toys in the car for A, and most days, when she woke up from her nap, I'd get her dressed and we'd go back to the high school. I got compliments all the time on how well behaved and quiet she was. The only time we had trouble was our first Key Club meeting - it was considerably more formal than Spanish Club had been, and A had missed her nap and just wasn't up for it. She had reverted to her old behavior of crying to be held, then crying to be put down. Eventually we just left early. But every day after that, she did remarkably well, even as winter came and Mock Trial started, bringing with it meetings that were sometimes two hours long, when I had to give long speeches and work on notes while doling out animal crackers and coloring pads with my other hand. (By the way, the color wonder thing was ditched after the first attempt. A apparently had a habit of biting the tips off the markers. I swear the child put everything in her mouth).
The teacher who ran Mock Trial kept a cup of dum dum suckers in his closet and gave A one at every meeting, after asking my permission. That's one small act of kindness I'll never forget. Classmates, some of whom knew what it was to be responsible for a little one, played with her and helped me out, to the point that if I ever appeared without A, everyone missed her. In Spanish Club, she and I split a 'skull cake' (a cupcake shaped like a skull that you decorate - it's tradition) on Dia de los Muertos. It had pink frosting. I let her have most of it.
Our routine was not without its trials. Sometimes naptime ran over and we missed meetings, and that was okay. I remember once in particular, a couple classmates were incredibly disturbed by the necessity of performing a diaper change in the lay-down stroller, because high schools really don't think they have a reason to equip their bathrooms with baby changing stations, or even make them remotely stroller-accessible. I remember the whispers that went around about me... and I didn't care. The worst it got was toward the end of my junior year, when I ran for vice president of Key Club. I gave my speech from behind A's stroller, pushing her back and forth as she was having a fussy day. Unfortunately my opponent chose to prey on my perceived weakness and spread the rumor he knew was false, that I was an irresponsible teen mom who couldn't be trusted. I was admittedly hurt, for about a day... not even so much about what was said about me, but that people would choose not to trust me because they believed I had a child. It made me feel sad about the attitudes in my school. But the hurt didn't last long at all, because, as a guidance counselor pointed out to me the next day, I was doing something none of them could understand... giving myself to a child who needed me. And I was okay with doing that over attending hoity-toity officers-only meetings anyways.
In an ironic twist of events, which I'll discuss more at length later, A began to speak this year, and she said her first words at Spanish club: "Uno, Dos, Tres!" My Spanish teacher couldn't have been prouder. Later in the year she learned "Mommy", and I, apparently, was it. Perhaps this was just an 'adult female' word for her at the time - I'm not sure because for a long time, I never saw her with an adult female who she trusted other than myself or her grandmother (who was Mamaw, so, really not much difference). In any case, there was no convincing her to call me "Katie",
x_x
So much for "I'm just babysitting". Surely everyone was going to believe that now. Then, when they had to take my picture, to hang on the wall of the school, because yes, this was that big a deal, I could barely disentangle myself from A long enough to have the picture taken solo, and for a year, a picture of me with a horribly strained smile, trying desperately to comfort the crying toddler just outside the shot, hung on the wall directly outside the guidance office. Boy, I wished I could've given that award back that night. I was so relieved when they replaced the pictures the next year!
When we weren't busy with school (another word A learned, and she would point it out when we drove by), I was trying to share all the best experiences of my childhood with her. On days we didn't have to be back at the school, we'd nap together, affording me the rare cuddles in the photo from my last post. Then we'd wake up and do something fun. I brought her home to meet my mom and my brother, and later, M (more on that in another post). We finger painted with dyed vanilla pudding. We went sledding (it took me a half hour to convince her to sit on the sled with me at the top of the tiniest hill, even after going down once and exclaiming over how fun it was, and another half hour to get her to let me push us off the edge. When we reached the foot of the hill, she pointed up and said "Again!"). We made snow angels and snow men and even a tiny snow fort. We built towers of blocks and knocked them down, laughing and building them back up again. We pulled all the tupperware, pots, pans, and wooden spoons out of the cupboards and drawers, and created our own musical cacophony in the kitchen. We made cookies, cakes, brownies, and cupcakes. We played with play-doh. We went to an indoor junglegym. We played at the space-themed playground at the mall. (We skipped Santa, because of her disdain for strangers. I was later presented with literally the most hilarious photo ever of a horrified A on Santa's lap, in Christmas card form. I may have to go take a picture of it to share.
--Goes and takes a picture of it to share--
Wow, that took longer than I thought and involved lifting a widescreen television (hey, it was free!). I should really write these things earlier in the day. Here you go. Enjoy the merging of cute, funny, and sad. It's cutefunisad!
 |
| In my defense, I was not the one who made her sit on the strange man's lap, I just found the picture hilarious afterwards. And so did she. You know, like six years afterwards. |
Yeah. I told you, she didn't *do* strangers, or being held.
That year was a good year. It was hard, because sometimes A still confused me beyond belief, worried me sick, or even broke my heart... but we made plenty of good memories to ease the troubled times. And I like to think I was learning more all the time about what made her tick, and how to decipher the clues she was giving me.
There was this one day, maybe a couple weeks after I started watching her. Our go-to-the-high-school routine was well established, she knew my car and which door was nearest her car seat. It was the end of the day and her grandfather, who she adored, was the first one home. She was usually fairly apathetic to anyone coming or going, even though I watched as she delighted in being tickled and thrown up in the air by her grandfather, ran to him for hugs, etc. This day was no different at first - he came in and she barely looked up from her blocks. We chatted a few minutes about our day and when I was coming back, and then he and A walked me out to my car. Darkness was just beginning to fall.
As soon as we were out the front door, A had taken off down the sidewalk toward my car. When I caught up, she was standing at the door by her car seat, tugging at the handle, pointing and whimpering. I gently took her and and knelt down next to her. "No, A, I have to go bye-bye now! I would love to take you with me but I think your grandma and grandpa would miss you very much! I promise I will come back tomorrow and we will play, okay?"
A didn't just start to cry. She absolutely dissolved into tears, sobbing, trying to climb onto me and cling to me so that I couldn't leave without her. I soothed her for a minute and then I tried to dislodge her. She screamed like I was hurting her. I couldn't stand it. I stood there with her a while longer. How could I leave a child who was crying for me? But the darkness was creeping over us and any attempts to extricate myself resulted in more and more furious shrieks. Her grandfather was clearly distraught, not accustomed to not being able to calm her. To this day I don't know why she wanted to go with me so badly that day. She loved and trusted her grandparents very much. She never reacted like this any other day... but that day, something struck a chord with her. I had to leave. I had no choice. I pulled her off me and placed her in her grandfather's arms, offering comforting words as I climbed into my car. I rolled my window down as I started the car and put on a fake smile. I waved. "Bye A! See you tomorrow! We're going to have so much fun! I'll miss you!"
But in that same minute, fake smile plastered on my face, my heart shattered. As soon as I was out of sight, I put the window up and sobbed, so hard that I had to pull over before I made it home. I came home and related the events to my mom, who didn't seem to have any more insight than I did, but offered me comfort regardless. I fell asleep crying that night, the thought of turning and driving away from a little girl who only was crying for me ever-present. Both fortunately and puzzlingly, everything was back to normal when I saw her the next day. Still, I never forgot that day. Some things, they just leave marks on your heart.
I don't want it to sound like the good times we had were always punctuated by something traumatic, but as much as I'll never forget the good memories we made together - singing Wheels on the Bus in the car, going trick or treating for the first time, having easter egg hunts, celebrating birthdays, going to the playground, going to COSI, playing dress-up, reading books - I'll never forget the tough times either. Life means taking the bad with the good, and if you live it in such fear of the bad that you miss out on the good (standing outside the fire, as Garth Brooks would call it... yes, that song makes me cry)... well, is that really living at all?
I could have chosen to stand outside the fire, and maybe spare myself the pain that has come with loving A - at least according to all the people who knew me then and all the people who know me now - but to me there never was a choice. Besides, then I would've missed things like this:
...And I already told you, I'd do anything to see that smile.
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