Building a Village

Around the time that my daughter turned four months old, a lot of things changed. The weather, which had been disgustingly abysmal for her entire life, suddenly became quite wonderful; there were days where we could see the sun. Zelda was changing too: She could roll onto her belly from her back; she could hold her head up and look around; and she could focus without crossing her eyes anymore. And I felt better, too. Physically, my C-section wound felt truly healed, and mentally — well, I was sleeping well and feeling much better.

Zelda and I had also developed a pretty bad case of cabin fever. We were kind of tired of one another. Despite thirty-six years as a true loner — a person with almost zero need for daily contact with friends — I suddenly and desperately wanted to be around people. I found myself making eye contact with mothers at the park, smiling maniacally. I’d scoffed for months at the idea of “mommy meetups” but began reading the emails from my Brooklyn Baby list, thinking, “well, maybe we could just shoot over to the beer garden one afternoon.” Zelda seemed to want to make friends, too. It was time.

My parents were twenty-seven and twenty-five when I was born. This meant that they were comparatively younger and more full of energy, I assume, but also that their parents were much younger. My grandparents, all four of them, lived less than an hour away for my entire life at home. This was great fun for all of us kids, but also, no doubt, a blessing for my parents. We not only knew all of our neighbors, but had keys to their homes (or knew where they hid them, under the rock to the left of the door).

There are lots of perks to New York City parenting — easy access to stores and sidewalks to walk those miles and miles on. But, unless you’re a native, you’re probably far from your family. If you’re like me, most of your friends have busy careers. I learned a hard truth about becoming a parent for the first time at thirty-six and living in New York City. The “village,” as in, “it takes one,” doesn’t really exist. There’s no village.

I relented and went to a mommy meetup, which was just a few moms in the park on blankets with their still fussy and largely unsocial babies. I made a friend, Lisa. She lived just a few blocks away, and her daughter was born just one day before Zelda. We had things in common besides our newborns: We were both musicians in another life; our family backgrounds were similar. She was cool, I was forced to admit. We started hanging out, first once a week or so. Then almost daily. We started texting each other questions about the babies. She became more valuable to me than a doctor in those moments when Zelda seemed like she was teething (she was) or wasn’t sleeping very well (she wasn’t). Long mornings and afternoons became shorter as we walked our strollers around Greenpoint together, talking, sometimes while one or the other baby wailed or snoozed. We made failed attempts at actual lunches in restaurants. We took the ferry to parks farther away than walking distance. We went to museums and zoos. We became friends, and eventually, our daughters began to recognize and smile at one another.

But new friends weren’t all the help I needed. Around the same time, when Zelda was half a year old or so, I decided to work again; I couldn’t spend a hundred percent of my time caring for my baby. I knew it wasn’t good for either of us, and I wanted to get back, even slowly, to writing. To doing other things. In New York, where my brothers and family and neighbors were in short supply, that meant hiring people to help me. I did the math. I knew how much money I’d need to make to offset the expense. The numbers didn’t exactly make sense, but I wanted to work anyway. I knew that unless I got a job making a lot more than I had before Zelda was born, I would essentially be making negative money, which I am currently doing (and am fortunate to be able to do).

In plenty of parenting circles, there is a great deal of guilt about having someone else care for your child, especially when that child is a baby. Modern motherhood seems to have regressed in this way — to “mommy knows best, and should be there, at all costs.” Reading baby forums I saw countless desperate mothers asking questions like, “how do you go to the bathroom?” or, “my baby is 8 months old and screams if I put him in his highchair to make his dinner, help!” The demands of a full-time, stay at home mother (SAHM in mommyblog speak), it seemed, have increased to where basic human needs — showers, sleep, food — must fall by the wayside to meet the demands of the little one. I’d never been on board for that; since she was quite young, I’d simply put Zelda safely into her crib with a few toys if I needed to use the bathroom or make an important phone call. She was just steps away from me. I could see her on a baby monitor. She learned quickly to entertain herself.

So I was surprised to feel the guilt that came with looking for a caregiver for her. Me, a person with a career I’d never really dreamed of giving up; a person who wasn’t sure until the age of thirty-six that I wanted to have children at all: I was now wondering, “should I just do this for a few years? Isn’t that what’s best for us?”

But it wasn’t, and it’s not. First, I got a housekeeper to come twice a week. She helped me with laundry, did the dishes, and changed our sheets. She also became a friend, happy to see us, and Zelda happy to see her. For two hours in the morning, twice a week, we had someone else to keep us company. But still, it wasn’t enough. If I was going to work, I would need a nanny, I had decided. The fact that I would work from home would make this transition easier, I told myself, but even still, I couldn’t really say the word “nanny” aloud to myself at first. I would have a “babysitter,” which made it sound less formal, more “oh she popped in for a few hours while I ran to the dentist.”

In mid-June, I interviewed nannies until I found one that I clicked with instantly. She started just two days a week, then eventually, in September, she went full-time. She is kind and intelligent and loving. She and Zelda have their own special relationship. At first, it was hard to allow that, but I am so happy for it now. Zelda’s nanny has become part of our family, just as invested in Zelda as we are. She has also become my friend, and hiring her is easily the best decision I’ve made since becoming a parent, for all of us. It gives her parents peace of mind, but also the space to relax or to talk to one another like actual adults, in private, the way we did, before. And it gives Zelda a much-needed break from her parents, with a friend that she trusts, and adores, and learns so much from.

For some of us, there are fewer villages than there used to be, maybe. Our families are far away, and our friends are just as busy as we are. But it is possible to build one, even if, like me, you are mostly averse to human contact. Building a new life, with new friends and relationships beyond the ones we have at home takes a sometimes monumental-feeling effort: I didn’t want “mom” friends, so I didn’t make any; I just made friends. And I learned how to ask for help, and how to accept it.

The Parent Rap is an endearing column about the fucked up and cruel world of parenting.