Elsbeth's Nanny

Chapter 3. Memories and loosses

At 4:05 I was down in the kitchen where Thomas and Benjamin sat down at the table while I wore a white clean apron snooped around the kitchen and took out dishes and ingredients to make both crunchy and soft chocolate chip cookies.

“ Tell me about your childhood Lydia.” Thomas asked me and I did. “My mom died when I was very little and my dad locked himself in his work and then to his bedroom. Most of the time he’ll come home drunk and would yell a lot and do a lot of irresponsible things. I was five years old and I watched him scream at a mirror and break it. I knew he was destroying himself faster than I thought. He loved my mom so much the day she died he cried for a week and never  came out of his room that much and just only when he was hungry and to get whiskey or rum. I was taken care of by his employers and he never cared if I did anything. At my quincenira he yelled out that I grow up to be a whore and that literally made me furious and I realized the reason was that he  only did it to take out his anger and grief out on me.’

‘He died when I was eighteen from a heart attack. I started to work for the Thornton family and I quit because my employer’s husband made a pass at me and they got a divorce. I was lucky for it wasn’t for one of my co-workers and her two sons to help me I could have been in a deep mess. I was insulted by that man that night and I just didn’t let that affect me because I knew that he had no reason to call me those things he did, I left and I still miss that family and the staff there are my friends.’

‘The children loved me and call me twice a week even Ms. Thornton and her two oldest sons. I went to Mexico and Columbia to be in the special armed forces and came back and became a marine before I was a nanny. I got a PhD in philosophy a teaching credential and became a mechanic. So my life had ups and downs, but I wouldn’t change it at all because everything happens for a reason. That’s what I use to say for a while until the death of my sister. Then I thought what I use to be told and what I told myself before her death and what I tell myself even now.’

‘I was use to having an older sister to talk to about everything. When I was eleven she graduated high school and moved out with her husband. She got pregnant when she was about to graduate and when my father heard the news about it he literally went silver and said he couldn’t wait until his first grandson was born. The thing he didn’t know was that he was born with a brain tumor. He died when he was a year old. My dad and I paid for the hospital bills and the medication and everything so the baby could live and my dad got drunk again but he just didn’t want to be grandfather anymore because he said if he got attached like he did with little Andy and the child died he would die himself. ‘

‘My sister got pregnant three months after the funeral. She wanted to have another baby and watch it grow up. My dad again became silver and happy and got everything for a baby shower but had to cancel it because my sister was moving to L.A the next day and she didn’t tell us, until we had bought all the stuff. My dad was furious that he didn’t get to make the baby shower the day she was leaving but was happy that there was going to be one. My sister called us a month after it and told us it was going to be a boy and my dad started crying out of joy and said you better not name it coco puffs and my sister laugh and said all of sudden she had to go. But the thing he actually meant was that she should better not name the baby Andy like the last one. A week later she called she had a miscarriage and my dad again got drunk but that night and cried that he missed Andy and was dying even more in the inside because his second grandson was dead’.

‘My sister again got pregnant for the third time and it was going to be a girl and my dad went and bought all the girl baby clothes there was at the mall. Then again a phone call from the hospital that the baby had not made it. My sister was only six months pregnant and I kept it from my dad and let my sister tell him but instead of getting drunk he started breaking the chairs and then got exhausted and fell to the ground and slept under the table.’