The letter finally came from the Dean of Women. I was being offered a job to live in a family with three boys, twins 8 and a 10 year old. I would take care of the kids when needed. And the first need was immediate. The parents were leaving the country for a month and I would take care of the boys alone. I had never dared to babysit, I had never cooked without burning everything as I would forget I was cooking, and I was a shy unobtrusive person who had not the slightest idea of how to go about such a job. My anxiety hit the ceiling, I felt ill, I was disappointed, I wanted to say 'No Way,' but I immediately took the job without question. It would be room and board which is the most expensive part of college. I decided I could learn how to do the impossible.
Now, I was not a careless person, nor selfish and cruel. I would never put children in harms way. I had taken care of my Grandmother, I knew how to take care of laundry, cleaning, and shopping. I felt that I could relate to children the way my Grandmother related to me. And my mother would always be a telephone call away. I was use to anxiety and all the stomach problems that go with it. I never really seen anxiety as something to stop me, I couldn't or I would of been frozen in time and place, and a child does not let much stop them as they see it as normal not as a signal to give up.
Little did I know at the time that that job would be God sent, not just because I could return to school but because it would show me strengths and things about myself I never knew were there. School and others had never really praised me, I struggled for everything, only my immediate family and Grandmother had brought me love, but I was to find out love could go with me, three little boys, I was only eight and ten years older.
Comments