Singing the praises of Jane Doe ~ June 13, 1991

David Heiller

This is a true story about babysitting. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Babysitters. They come in all shapes, sizes, sexes, ages, and abilities, and we’ve run the gamut over the past eight years.

Some have been good with the kids and do some of the “extras” too, like picking up the house and keeping the dishes washed. Others have been good housekeepers but chained the kids to their bedposts. Then there are those who don’t even wipe the table and get chained to the bedposts themselves by the kids after falling for that fatal line: “Mommy and Daddy let us do this to them all the time.”

We’ve had some very good babysitters, including Jane Doe, who we have hired for the summer.

Babysitters... the good ones make
life so good, and the great ones fill us
with gratitude, even decades later.

Jane Doe watches Noah and Mollie one day a week, while Cindy and I put together this newspaper. Jane started last week. She had watched them before at night, but never for a whole day.

When we came home that first evening, Mollie raced down to greet us. I asked how things had gone. She said fine. Jane had played with them, had walked with them to the culvert to see whether Noah’s turtle egg had hatched yet, had fed them a good lunch and supper, had gotten them washed and brushed and “jammied” and up to bed, after reading a story (of course).

I noticed that the living room seemed brighter somehow. I looked closely at the windows, then stepped up to one and peered closely. “Did Jane clean the windows?” I asked with some disbelief in my voice. “Yes, and I helped,” Mollie said with a proud tone. That explained why all the paper towels were gone.

I looked at the carpet. It was spotless. “Did she vacuum too?” I said in that same tone. “Yes, and she swept and shook the rugs too, “ Mollie answered in a voice just a tad too righteous, one that said maybe I should have been the one who had swept and shook the rugs and vacuumed and washed windows.

(We are not slobs, and I really had been meaning to wash the windows at least, but this time of year, with the garden and biking and visiting friends and a dozen other excuses tugging, the house does get a bit shaggy.)

I walked through the house in a trance. Jane had cleared off the dining room table, a job that normally takes a front-end loader. She had washed dishes and baked cookies. She had picked ticks off the dogs and cleaned the outside of the refrigerator. She had taken the clothes off the line and folded them.

Jane had even cleaned the pantry. This is not a typo: SHE HAD CLEANED THE PANTRY, a place where fruit jars and paper plates and plastic bags and cookie tins and graham cracker boxes all get stacked on top of one another until they fall over and you pick them up and shove them back on the shelves again Now totally shocked, I turned on the switch to the water pump. It kicked in, then stopped, like a pump is supposed to. But it was unusual, because the pump has been waterlogged for a few weeks, and it usually doesn’t stop running until I hit the switch. I walked outside to the basement door and peered inside, half expecting to see a new pump which Jane had installed. Nope, no new pump. But somehow Jane had gotten the old one working. I figure she shamed it into submission. My mother used to get me to chop ice off the porch that way when I would watch football games on TV. She’d just grab the ice spud and start chopping, and soon I’d feel so guilty that I’d take it from her and finish the job. That’s what Jane had done to the pump.

I glanced out to the fields, half expecting to see a new pole barn which Jane had erected, and maybe a couple acres fenced in to boot, with some young stock and a 50-cow herd of Holsteins grazing on the hay bales which she had also baled, after clearing out the willows and hazel brush that have taken over the back 40.

Cindy was equally impressed. In fact, when she returned from Jane’s house and had a look for herself, she called Jane up and thanked her again.

Maybe this was all a fluke, like a guy who hits a home run in his first at bat in the major leagues, and then never hits another. But I don’t think so. We may have another Kirby Puckett on our hands here. If baseball were babysitting, this kid would be rich.

But hey, you parents: don’t get any ideas about spiriting Jane Doe for your own two kids and unkempt home. Like I said, her name has been changed to protect the innocent, and the parents who hire her. The Twins would never trade Kirby Puckett, would they?

Another chapter on growing up ~ June 24, 1993

David Heiller

It’s funny how children can grow up and you don’t even notice it. It’s like leaving your bare garden for two weeks in early June and coming home to see everything sprouted and growing like crazy.

That’s what we did last week. We came home and saw a garden full of young plants, and on the east side of the house, the yellow irises were in full bloom. Like Emily.

That’s how I felt after our family took a vaca­tion to Texas. We had been there six years earlier, and that was the last time I had really seen my niece, Emily.

Malika and Emily

Oh sure, we saw her briefly a time or two since then. We had seen pictures at Christmas, and heard tidbits in letters and from Mom, who keeps tabs on her grandchildren like good grandmothers do.

But we didn’t see Emily grow up, which is the way things go in this modem world of ours, where people move far away in search of jobs and security and happiness.

Six years ago in Texas, when Emily was 12, she took our daughter Malika under her wing. She shared her room, and watched out for her, and bought her a necklace and bracelet for a going-away present, and generally had the patience of Job, which she needed for that two ­year-old.

She impressed the heck out of Cindy and me. I even wrote a column about it, because she had brought back some fond memories of me singing her songs and reading her books and watching her grow up. That was when she was about eight, my daughter’s age now, before she had moved away.

I hope Mollie turns out like her, I thought six years ago.

I still think that, because we found almost the same Emily in Texas last week. She shared her room without a complaint. She bought Mollie a pencil pouch and barrette for her birthday.

Emily even took Mollie to the day camp where she works as a counselor. Mollie had a grand time, played all day, and made some new friends. It was the highlight of her vacation. Maybe it was Emily’s too.

But something was also different about Emily. I really discovered it when I took her to a deli on our last night. We had gone there six years ago, so it was a reunion of sorts.

The last time at the deli, we made small talk, the way you talk to a 12-year-old. This time though, we really talked. She shared her dreams, talked about her boyfriend, told me other per­sonal joys and sorrows. I suddenly realized that I was talking to a different Emily, a grown up one.

Yes, she’s got a lot more growing up to do. Everyone can remember how they owned the world at age 18. But here’s one kid that is going to make it.

My sister had told me how lucky she was to have a daughter like Emily. I didn’t tell Emily that. Hopefully she knows it.

This is a story that hasn’t ended yet. Six years from now maybe I’ll add another chapter. I hope it has a happy ending. I think that it will.