Inept Babysitter No. 3 (Unhealthy, Actually)

This is part three in a series of five posts about my experience hiring babysitters between May 2002 and September 2003. This post picks up in September 2002.

Writing this series reminds me how surreal the whole experience was. I mean, all I needed was a person to come to my house and hang with my babies for two four-hour shifts a week. Yet, here I was, two hires and two inept babysitters into my quest. I felt so humbled. While working at my various jobs, I had conducted at least 70 interviews and hired many people. They weren’t all psychos. (Ok, there were a few, but that’s another post.)

But I am not one to give up. Just this Sunday, I arrived at my niece’s bridal shower 2 hours and 45 minutes late, the latest I’d ever been for anything in my life. Did I give up? Did I drive home when I found myself without a cell phone and with a wallet full of Canadian quarters, spinning my wheels on the back roads of York County, Maine, failed by Yahoo Maps, my global positioning system AND the phone number on the invitation? I did not! I kept plugging, and I got to eat some cupcakes and watch my sweetheart of a niece open most of her gifts.

All of which is to say, after two dismal failures, I didn’t give up on my babysitter search. Need I explain that eight hours a week of “get stuff done without a toddler biting at my thighs” sounded like nirvana? Need I remind you that I was four months into my recovery from severe whiplash? No, I would not be denied a competent babysitter.

I’ll never forget the day I met Kerri. She was a preschool teacher for several years until being sidelined a year previously with severe complications from Crohn’s disease, which involved a ruptured intestine. Now, she was on the mend and in the process of adopting a six-month-old boy from Guatemala. (The medication for her disease made pregnancy impossible.)

She showed me his picture. With his bright eyes, bulging cheeks and wide smile, he was the most beautiful baby I'd ever seen. She expressed her pain at the slowness of the adoption process, and I sympathized, thinking how much it would hurt to miss the first year of my baby’s life.

She felt like a soul mate. She was just one of those people I guess.

She played the cutest games with Ben and John, singing songs, drawing, reading. She exclaimed over how smart Ben was because he knew his letters at 2, while I beamed with pride.

And this was all during the interview.

I hired her before checking her references, but when I did, everyone told me how special she was and how lucky we were to have her. Brian and I congratulated ourselves on sticking it out and finding the ideal candidate: a real “kid person,” a PRESCHOOL teacher, an all-around awesome gal.

Kerri worked two shifts, then her husband called over the weekend to say she’d had a relapse. Despite leaving her a few messages, I didn’t hear from her for a few weeks. When I did, she said she was still struggling to get back on her feet and would call me the next week.

I never heard from her again.

Her health issues were too severe for her to return to work, and if my hunch is correct, she was just too sad and embarrassed by the whole thing to even talk to me. I had lent her a book and never got it back, but it didn’t matter. This time I felt more like I’d lost a friend than a babysitter.

I think of Kerri every so often. I pray she’s OK, and that she achieved her dream of adopting that little boy in the photograph.

Stay tuned for part four of five: The Best Babysitter in the World.