Talk Vomit

By Amanda Lance

I drove away on that last day, my sunglasses firmly in place while the world blurred from a sheen of unshed tears. I waved goodbye, my tongue sticking out—the silliest face I could manage while simultaneously trying not to cry.  

Sophie stood in her driveway, laughing and throwing kisses at me—the germ-free way of showing affection I had taught her years earlier. As they walked to the curb, I watched her and her mom from my rearview mirror. I managed to turn off their street before giving in to fits of sobs. I had been a nanny for over a decade and worked in daycare in the years before that, so I knew better than to get too attached.

But it happened anyway.

Sophie was five months old when I met her and her family. Her parents’ casual disposition and willingness to hire me on the spot pleasantly surprised me, and I was immensely grateful for it. I was planning my wedding while finishing my MFA, and both endeavors were financially burdensome, so working full-time and under the table was immensely helpful. 

In the beginning, that was how I thought of Sophie—a source of income, with me as the hired help. Admittedly, I was distracted during our first few weeks together. I spent at least half the workday reading fanfiction and the entirety of her naptime writing and editing. She was a relatively easy baby, and I liked her well enough, but my work had no novelty. I had taken care of dozens of babies and knew full well that I was just as replaceable to her parents as they were to me. 

Even now, I can’t pinpoint the precise moment when I started to love her—maybe it was when I realized she’d stick out her tongue when she was concentrating or how she laughed every time I sneezed. Slowly, we started collecting moments together: listening to classical music while she ate, playing peekaboo behind a pillow fort, and splashing around in her blue plastic pool. Before long, I had graduated and gotten married, and more of my attention was reserved for the little girl under my care. 

I spent weeks trying to get her to use some sign language as an alternative to pointing and grunting.  What must she have thought when she saw my reaction after the first time she signed for “more” food?  Excited, I screeched so loudly that she startled in her highchair. She giggled as I clapped for her and jumped up and down. As I evolved into a terrible victory dance, she laughed until she couldn’t catch her breath and her eyes watered. It was one of those rare occasions when I was reminded why I work with children.

Sophie seemed to love learning from me as much as I enjoyed teaching her. We worked on colors as she explored crayons, animal noises with her figurines, and the safest way to climb the furniture. She’d shriek gleefully when I walked in the door every morning—the sound so resembled a pterodactyl that I started calling her Sophiesaurus. Before long, she spoke a few words and took her first wobbly steps. I still have the video her mom sent me one weekend where Sophie clearly says my name for the first time. That moment unlocked something in me, and without realizing it, we’d genuinely begun to bond.

Like everyone else, the pandemic presented considerable challenges. With both of her parents working from home, Sophie began acting out. She clearly didn’t understand why her parents were present during the day but inaccessible to her. She would have tantrums whenever one of them left the room or if she could hear them from another part of the house. My social anxiety was debilitating—no longer free to be a whimsical force—I was painfully self-conscious of everything I did. I would check around every corner before entering a room to avoid interaction with Sophie’s parents. Every time I heard one of their voices or their approaching footsteps, I imagined they were coming to critique me. Was I about to be scolded for letting her pet the neighbor’s dog? Had I used too big of a container to store her leftover lunch? Did I not put the decorative pillows on the couch in the right order? Would they think I was gross if they heard the toilet flush again? Did they notice my socks didn’t match? Did they think less of me for it?

Of course, I had no real reason to have these worries. Sophie’s parents had never critiqued my work before, let alone attempted to micromanage me, but my neurosis wouldn’t let me set the fear aside, and I quickly became exhausted with it.

I thought of leaving more than once. I understood why her parents frequently sought us out to say “hi” to Sophie, but it was challenging to maintain a routine when we were constantly interrupted, and enduring the small talk gave me a perpetual headache. The family prioritized having lunch together every day, so being too uncomfortable to eat in front of them and not wanting to disrupt their time together, I would awkwardly try to find something productive to occupy the time with, but I never quite knew what to do with myself. Was I supposed to stand there and watch them eat—waiting in case Sophie needed something? Should I leave the room altogether? Was it appropriate to take out my phone and read from the Kindle app?

 It reached the point where I would deliberately not put toys away in the morning to have the pretext of being useful while they ate. I would save those tasks to have something to do instead of sitting around like some strange interloper. 

The situation forced me to be more creative. I began planning elaborate arts and crafts for Sophie, and I used the time to maneuver the hot glue gun or cut things out with scissors—stuff that Sophie wasn’t quite ready for. Rarely, if ever, did our projects look like what they were supposed to, but Sophie loved painting and doing anything remotely messy. At least once a week, we’d skip the art entirely for a sensory experiment instead. I’d make “mud” from cornstarch, hot water, and hot chocolate powder, and Sophie would pick which of her favorite figurines had the privilege of playing in it. We’d make slime from marshmallows or, on one very stinky occasion, melted toothpaste. When she started resisting naptime, I could bribe her with the promise of crafting a funny fruit face with her afternoon snack. Then, though she was rapidly becoming too old for it, I’d rock her to sleep sometimes while she stared out the window and ran her fingertips over the tattoos on my arm. 

Sophie and I built Leprechaun traps and bird feeders from plastic containers. We’d decorate cardboard boxes as beds for her favorite stuffed animals and make enough chalk paint to decorate her lengthy driveway. We’d fill buckets with warm, soapy water and put her toy vehicles through our car wash. We’d use food coloring to make rainbow ice cubes and timed how long each color took to melt. I took great pride in fueling her imagination. Likewise, her parents were happy to sponsor our activities and supply me with any materials I requested.

As she continued to grow, so did I. While I was once skeptical of childhood with minimal screen time, I could now see some of its wisdom. I became more open-minded about more holistic child-rearing techniques—after all, if they could produce someone like Sophie, then perhaps they weren’t all ridiculous. But I learned other things, too, like how to prepare tofu and properly use chopsticks. Working with Sophie reminded me that making a mess is okay if you clean it up. She refreshed me on the importance of trying new things—especially when they’re scary. Perhaps the most important reminder was this: sometimes, even the best of friendships are temporary. 

Sophie was three and a half when her parents announced they were moving. One of them had been presented with a career opportunity that required the family to move several hundred miles away, and I was devastated. Her parents had already discussed transitioning me to a more part-time role when Sophie was supposed to start preschool in the fall. While I wasn’t excited about finding another part-time job to make up the extra income, I was relieved that I would continue to be a long-term part of Sophie’s life. But now, with the move only a few weeks away, our time was limited. 

In our final days together, I was incredibly glum. Despite glowing references and a plethora of experience, I struggled to find new employment that would pay me adequately. I was equally subdued by the number of parents posting jobs where one or both worked from home—and how they phrased this as if it were beneficial to a nanny. Phone interviews with families were painful as they explained the step-by-step process of how they liked their baby’s diaper changed or their child’s laundry folded. I had premonitions where I was drowning in a sea of micromanagers, all eager to tell me all the little ways I wasn’t dying correctly.

  I soldiered through it as best I could, smiling while Sophie talked about the children’s library and all the other amenities in the city she was moving to. As I helped in the early stages of packing the house, she swore to me that we would be friends forever. She made me promise that I would visit her at her new house. I knew I never would. I promised her anyway. 

My new job started less than a week after we said goodbye. I didn’t particularly like my new employer, and there were a couple of red flags, but I was determined to make the best of it. The hours were agreeable; I was technically making as much as before, and the commute was practically nonexistent. I reasoned that it couldn’t possibly be too terrible. There were, after all, other children who could benefit from my influence. There was no reason I couldn’t continue to love my work. 

I constantly compared Sophie with the new child in my care. And instead of embracing the challenge of creating structure and discipline for a toddler who badly needed it, I grew embittered by it. I was angered by her parents’ complete unwillingness to potty train her, their lack of rules, and their apparent inability to communicate with each other. They both worked from home and questioned everything I did. They also imposed odd restrictions on me, explicitly and repeatedly asking me never to go upstairs or park in their driveway. They wanted to pay me on the books but made excuses about why they couldn’t provide an itemized paycheck.  Before long, I began to resent them, loathed every day I had to go there. 

I left after five months when, instead of a holiday bonus, they gave me a box of candy I had seen sitting in their pantry for several weeks. My employer’s name had been crossed off the gift tag, and my own was sloppily written underneath. They hadn’t even re-gifted me a candy I liked. 

However, the adrenaline rush of quitting wore off quickly, and I remained unhappy. I initially attributed it to a lack of fulfillment in my professional life. I sprinted to another job opportunity that offered more money but, sure enough, had both parents working from home. Again, I tried to make the best of it, and I did enjoy working with a newborn again, but I was abruptly thrown back into my sadness after I received a handmade Valentine from Sophie in the mail. It was such a sweet, thoughtful gesture that I wept every time I looked at it.

  It felt pathetic and desperate, but I contributed it to my biological clock and what appeared to be my inability to get pregnant. And though I knew my current position was temporary (the parents had no idea daycares had waiting lists), I tried to throw myself into my job. When I wasn’t working, I prioritized spending time with my nephews and niece, completing household projects, and reading as much fiction as possible. I refused to be cowed by my wayward maternal instinct. I would get over this—it wasn’t like I had any choice.

Yet, even when my husband and I ultimately got pregnant, I still thought of Sophie often. One day, I rewatched a video we both enjoyed from a dog I follow on Instagram. I sobbed for the better part of an hour, unable to do anything but think about all the times that I had lured Sophie to brush her teeth with the promise that after she did so, we could check my phone to see if the pet influencer had posted anything new. I told myself my reaction was entirely hormonal, and my emotions were the result of my pregnancy. Unsurprisingly, the cards and letters Sophie and I exchanged had slowed to a trickle. The last time Sophie and I spoke on the phone was the same day—the same hour—I got the prenatal genetic screening results. I learned I was going to have a little girl. 

I thought I would think of her less often after I had my daughter, and in some ways, I did; the way I miss her fills up less of me. Instead, memories come up in my day-to-day—I’ll read Dear Zoo to my child and recall how Sophie and I scolded the lion for sticking his tongue out. I share those inside jokes with the other children in my life, grateful for the opportunity to do so, but in the same bittersweet way anyone thinks of someone they loved and lost. But the trouble with this is another lesson: We don’t stop loving people because they aren’t in our lives anymore. Sometimes, being a nanny means giving away pieces of yourself, knowing you’ll never get them back. We get attached despite ourselves and our professionalism. 

Sophie is too young to remember me, and eventually, she’ll forget about me as other people who love her will take my place in her heart. And while I’ve grown used to saying goodbyes, it’s a different kind of devastation to know that my relationship with Sophie will live on exclusively in my memory. 

I’ll spend the rest of my life thinking about Sophie, missing her and that piece of me she took with her. And while I’m glad she’ll be spared the pain of missing me, I’m also sad to know she never will. 

Originally, I mourned because I would no longer be a part of her life—then, I mourned because she would forever be a part of mine. \\