Scaregiver

My sons are young and strong and resilient. They'll have to be. The world is a harsh, scary and unpredictable place, and the sooner they find out, the better it will be for them. What won't kill them will only make them stronger.

Not.

Not by a long shot, dammit!

I feel so helpless about having failed to protect and shield my babies from real life monsters. Especially if those monsters hide behind the mask of a caregiver.

Woog finally snapped and rang my office from the apartment next door. Yaya Merly had locked him out. Hot and sweaty in the noonday sun, he knocked and hollered while she ignored his pleas. In desperation, he ran to Door 4 and dialled my number. Oh bless little 6-year-old boys who have just recently learned to use the telephone!

I was speechless at her temerity. How dare her! I called her straight-away and she whined about how noisy Woog was, and how disobedient. Then she hung up on me.

We sent her away without preamble, trembling with rage at her haughty assumption that she was indispensable.

Did she hurt you, Woog? We asked. He didn't let out a single tearful word until she had packed her bags and exited the door.

Sometimes. Because I'm so misbehaved.

That he would think that of himself, my wonderfully precocious, hyperactive and insatiably curious little boy. That she had stomped down on his delicate self-esteem, stooping to the level my children, the bitch! Were she in front of me I would have punched her square on her insufferable smirk.

But she was gone, and good riddance to bad rubbish.

I blamed myself for each time I pooh-pooh'd reports from next door of how Woog and Yaya Merly held regular shouting matches: oh, he's always that noisy, I'd say. And whenever poor Eli cried while she gave him a bath, I put it down to his being skittish about water. I didn't give a single thought to why my normally sweet children were standoffish around her.

Even my own mother was vocal about how the nanny would continuously be texting on her cellphone while the baby made his own unsupervised way about the living room. She makes my blood heavy, my intuitive mother often said.

And now it comes to this. Because I didn't listen. Because I didn't take time to sit down with my babies and feel their inner temperature.

Despite the horrible guilt I harbor, I take heart that my sons are tenacious. In time, they will forget, I try to reassure myself, strengthening my resolve to be more involved and more vigilant about these two priceless jewels that I need to protect with my life.