Ready for an Adventure

Wanted: a full-time, live-in nanny to care for twin five-year-old boys in our Manhattan home for the summer. Must be responsible, energetic, willing to work hard, but most of all, ready for an adventure! Serious inquiries only.

Natalie heard the door click behind her and let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She was alone.

The room—her room— smelled like fresh white paint. It was small, maybe a ten by twelve foot rectangle, she guessed. Just enough room for a twin bed, a small dresser and a tiny rolltop desk under a window. Everything in the room, everything she’d seen thus far in the house, actually, looked inexpensive in the way that extremely expensive things do: thin olive green curtains that looked to Nat like muslin but had a prominent West Elm tag, a dresser that had obviously been sanded and stained strategically to look distressed, a gingham quilt that was too perfect to have been made by anyone’s actual grandmother.

Ready for an adventure, Nat reminded herself. But now that she was here, in a guest room thousands of miles from home, she felt less like the pioneering explorer she had imagined herself, and more like a scared and lonely 19-year-old girl who had maybe just made a really big mistake.

“We were so impressed by your credentials,” Sylvia (“call me Sylv!”) had said when Natalie arrived. They sat across from each other at the table with a post-flight late-night snack of toast and tea. “Everyone told us to get a Mormon nanny because you all come from such gargantuan families, so you’re great with kids. How many in yours again?"

Natalie pretended to take a sip of tea. Apparently Sylv’s knowledge of Mormons didn’t extend to their dietary restrictions, she realized, and wondered when, if ever, she’d tell her employer about the error.

“I’m the—” Nat bit her tongue to hold back the usual phrase ‘the last of’—"I’m one of seven kids.” Two lies of omission in one day, she tabulated. Not the way she'd hoped to start a relationship with her new employer.

“Seven kids! I can’t even imagine. Two is, honestly, more than I can handle. Well, Titus and Tyrell will be excited to meet you in the morning—they’re in bed of course…”

Sylvia’s voice drifted into the background as Natalie took in her surroundings with dinner plate eyes. This was an adventure, all right. She hadn’t left the country, but this upper-class home in New York City felt like an alien planet compared to her home in Lewiston, Utah.

Natalie’s fingers closed around the phone in her pocket, but quickly released it. Even with the time difference, it was too late to call her mother. Both because she would be in bed already, and because Natalie was here, in this bare guest room, and it was too late to change her mind. Ready for an adventure. Nat always thought she was an adventurer. Maybe she just flattered herself.

She always thought it was only money that held her back. When she was young, and she wanted to go somewhere or do something and her mother said no, she would stomp her foot, lower her brow and clench her fists.

“I AM going to [Jamaica, the Eiffel Tower, Panda Express, a Spoon concert, fill-in-the-blank with the adventure of the moment], and you can’t STOP me!”

On her best days, her Mom would laugh off Nat’s moods, or sometimes even try to play along. (“Okay, let’s go to Chile! What’s the best way to get there? Will we need our machetes if we go by foot!?”)

On the days when she had already “had it up to HERE,” Nat’s mother would explain, through gritted teeth, that NO, Natalie was NOT going to fill-in-the-blank because she had no car, no food, no gas, and most of all, no money to attain those necessities.

Then Natalie grew up, and she went to college in the next town over, and she spent a few hours each day working at Lee’s Marketplace, and when adventure came calling in the form of a Care.com ad, she had a bank account with enough money inside it to answer.

She offhandedly mentioned it to her mother one night as they were folding laundry and watching a re-run of “Little House on the Prairie.”

“I heard you can travel to be a nanny during the summer. Some people see the world that way.”

“Hm,” Mom said, and Natalie couldn’t tell whether she was mulling or deflecting.

“I’ve always really liked babysitting,” Nat added, trying to set the hook of the conversation.

“Well, being a nanny is not exactly the same. Full time childcare is…exhausting.” Mom said it with a hint of a smile, reminiscing on the days when she had seven children aged 12 and under. Then the ad for Old Spice ended and Laura Ingalls Wilder was pretending to be stricken with laryngitis and the conversation died.

So Natalie took one small step toward adventure and submitted an application, without saying anything about it to her mother. And after a few back-and-forth emails and a Skype interview, Natalie was offered the position. It only took a few mouse clicks before Natalie was the owner of a one-way ticket.

“I got a summer job,” she said the next morning as her Mom handed her a bowl of hot oatmeal. “It’s in…I’m going out of town.”

“Oh?” her Mom said, one eyebrow cocked, as if she didn’t quite believe that her youngest was capable of leaving her cozy nest.

“Yes,” Nat said slowly. “It’s in…it’s in New York City. I’m going to be a nanny.”

“Oh,” Mom said. A statement this time. Her face looked blank, a little surprised perhaps, or was it angry? “Are you sure… what will you do there?”

Mom’s words were carefully measured, but Nat’s temper flared like a strike-anywhere match. “Well, I’ll be working, obviously. And there’s lots of stuff to do, it’s New York City for crying out loud! I’ll go to shows, and museums, and whatever I want. And they have a ward there, Mom!”

A small smile. “Yes, I know they have Church there, Nat. I just didn’t know you were seriously thinking about this. It’s so far away.”

“Well, I bought a ticket, and I’m going. I leave next Saturday.”

Mom answered the echo of the unsaid words from the past with her hands up to signify surrender. "I'm not going to try to stop you! You're a big girl, you can make your own decisions. I'll help you pack."

Now that she had trekked here, in this small, quiet room with its fresh-paint smell and it’s $400 fake quilt, Natalie wished her mother had put up more of a fight. Why hadn’t Mom told her she wasn’t the adventuring type she always wished to be? If she had, would Nat have dug her heels in harder?

Nat’s cheeks burned and tears stung at the corners of her eyes. She angrily wiped them away and snatched her suitcase, unzipping it and hastily stuffing clothing into the drawers of the dresser.

Stay busy. Stay focused. Don’t think about it, don’t think about how you’re here now, and you’re alone, and you’re going to be taking care of two little kids full-time, and making meals and cleaning house and you’re not really sure you’re qualified for any of it, and you’ve never stepped foot in such a fancy place or associated with such rich people and your clothes are stupid and your hair is too frizzy and you need to get a ticket back home but now you don’t have enough money anymore.

Natalie sat back on her heels, the suitcase empty of clothes now, and tried to let out her sobs as quietly as possible. Her tears soaked her cheeks, drained down her chest and dampened the front of her shirt. She wanted to scream into this tiny, expensive room, You were right, Mom! I’m not an adventurer, this is too much and I want to go home!

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she changed into pajamas instead. She decided to skip teeth brushing since she didn’t want anyone to see her tear-stained face in the fancy hallway to the fancy bathroom. As she reached out to shut her suitcase, she noticed something wrapped in paper at the bottom.

Carefully, curiously, she lifted the loosely wrapped bundle and saw a maroon and purple braided rug. Her Granny had made it for her when she was six, years before she would eventually pass away from dementia, and it was definitely shabby (hold the chic). But more than anything, it was a tangible piece of home, a rug upon which she had knelt each night for nineteen years, thanking God for her safe home and her family and asking Him to grant her adventures.

Softly, she set the rug down on the hardwood floor and rolled it until it lay flat. It clashed horribly with the curtains, but the delicate bumps felt soothing beneath her fingertips. She knelt in the center, closed her eyes and bowed her head. She felt a warm sensation, like a hug, like she was right at home. And she felt a surge of strength.

Ready for an adventure.