'I knew the children better than their parents': the nanny's story | Madeline Stevens

The novelist recalls a job that combined powerful intimacy with jealous distance – and how its discontents fed her writing

Every morning at 7.30, I climbed the stairs at Manhattan’s 86th Street subway station with a horde of others. Pushing past us down into the subway were kids in private-school uniforms and office types, all with their loafers and heels and buttery leather briefcases. Meanwhile, I followed the maids, the construction workers and the other nannies up to the street. The working class, I thought to myself, and the phrase buoyed me a little, waking me up after the long sleepy ride from Brooklyn. We were the invisible forces, the childcare workers and housekeepers, arriving just in time for our bosses to make their way to work. We were the foundation of that city.

As a first-generation college graduate, I had never been anything but working class. Every job I’d had involved some amount of waiting on people wealthier than I was, in restaurants, offices or their homes. On the Upper East Side, I’d been hired to take care of a toddler. She was 18 months old, walking and very verbal for her age. I’d already been nannying full-time for years, in other parts of the city, and I’d sworn that this time I wouldn’t get attached.

We are all so fascinated by the lives of the rich: we love to nurture our resentment, lust and jealousy, to hold it close and live inside it

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from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2McJahS