Up his sleevies.
My struggle to go with the flow.
Unfortunately this is the second last journal of the year, but Jeremy’s Journal will be back on the 13th of January!
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I felt oddly betrayed by my body as I struggled to dress the five year old I au pair this morning. He, of course, isn’t very interested in getting dressed and as a show of his distaste he very often takes joy in making the task exceedingly difficult for me. I’m lucky if he simply doesn’t help me, far more interested in discussing various dinosaur species while I jam his waggling feet into socks. Today, however, his protest was far more enthusiastic. I sat at an odd angle with one foot tucked beneath me and one hand immobilising the squirming kid, trying my utmost not to bump his head or mine on the underside of the top bunk bed as I wrestled his arms into the sleeves of a hoodie. As I twisted and shifted my body in ways which I had not prepared it for, I was aptly reminded that I am now in my mid-twenties. It appears I may need a warm up before I attempt the school run.
Though my new job has (quite surprisingly) challenged my physical dexterity, I’ve also struggled immensely adapting to a more flexible work schedule. I live in a household of seven people, three of which are the children I au pair. We generate an endless amount of dirty dishes and consume an alarming amount of food, we all cyclically pass colds and flus on to one another. As an only child from a structured home who began his professional career as a coder, I needed a massive overhaul of my perception of work and what it should look like when I began working as a full-time child wrangler. Long before I walked through the house that I now live in, I imagined that I would clock in and out of work at relatively fixed times—wake up at 7 a.m., drop the kids off at school by 9 a.m. I didn’t account for sick days and tantrums and the great battle to get dressed every morning. My clean idea of clocking in and out at fixed, predetermined times was shattered by the cacophony of two children under six years old ‘playing’ the piano half an hour after they were scheduled to be asleep.
For the first few weeks of my au pairing, I was hostage to my contrived schedule. I felt that I was being unfairly treated. I wasn’t presented with the precise scenario I had imagined when I signed the contract, and it weighed heavily on me; I felt like I had been professionally catfished. As any only child might, I complained to my parents. They took time to listen to my frustrations (though they needed reminding) and once I had run out of breath and my irritable attitude had settled (however slightly) they began to explain how everyone else in the house might be feeling. My parents have a wealth of wisdom when it comes to managing children; between them they have some forty years experience working with children professionally. They also raised me, and while I cannot remember any wars fought over getting dressed for school, I’m sure I presented unique difficulties to overcome. My parents, especially my mom, were quick to point out the opportunities I had: to be a part of another family here in Germany, to encourage and uplift these children and ease the lives and minds of their parents, a little on the job practise before I graduate to fatherhood. They reminded me that I, unquestionably, add my own colour to this rainbow house—I have the power to decide what that colour is.
It was so difficult for me to see the time I spent with the kids as anything other than work. Not work, but work. Something I must suffer through before I taste the sweet, fresh air of freedom. It coloured me grey. I was grumpy and miserable when my work was anything other than what I wanted it to be. I couldn’t see that building a gingerbread house with the whole family, that making pizzas and chatting about our days, that watching the snow out of the kitchen window in the middle of breakfast, was all work. I was on the clock. That sounds more like family, like life, than it does like work. As I chewed on my mother’s words I was reminded of a quote from The Devil Wears Prada. Anne Hathaway’s character is a budding young journalist that takes herself and her career very seriously, far too seriously to consider working at a fashion magazine as a worthy use of her time. Stanley Tucci’s character, an editor at the magazine, hits her with a fat monologue ending in a one liner that flips everything, “where so many people would die to work you only deign to work.” There was a time when I dreamt of working in Berlin and now I have been offered more than a job and roof, I have come upon an invitation into family.
My mom’s words were, I hope you can see, quite transformative. I won’t proclaim that we have another Mozart in our house, but a change in my attitude has turned the sound of disharmonious piano clanking at high volumes into a palatable melody. Instead of quietly carrying on with the dishes, or pushing the kids to turn the piano off and rushing them off to bed, I called their mom over to my vantage point in the kitchen. From where we stood, we saw her two year old daughter and five year old son sitting side by side on the piano bench, chattering about who knows what. A picture that would have passed me and my sour attitude by last week. My life certainly has fewer exact schedules than I imagined, but it also offers more fun, fast paced learning and comfort found in relationship than I was willing to see. My plan is to try and nap where I can, make lots of jokes, share a few stories over good suppers and maybe, if I’m lucky, this year of au pairing might not feel like work at all.
Meryl Streep’s ‘cerulean’ speech is one of my favourite moments in cinematic history. If you enjoyed this journal, please share it with someone you love.