Babysitting and Pictures of Me as a Baby
- Babysitting lets me be young again
When the sand box could be 10 feet deep with sand
And the colored toddler toys were made of a real rainbow
And the circular tunnel way, an accordion toy that a toddler climbed through
that stretched across the carpet
Was the entryway to another universe
Where I could stay up late and eat ice cream for dinner
I made my cousins lunch, and
While my cousins ate their turkey sandwiches and chips,
I looked through the back-door window,
And watched the swing turn itself around, dancing in the wind
As if an invisible person was sitting in it,
Swinging his or her invisible legs to the beat of their heart,
His or her invisible hair shifting in the breeze,
As the squeaking sound that came from the rocking swing
filled the air
They wanted to play video games,
so, I turned on the television and the Nintendo,
and told them to keep it down
and as they played Tetris
I looked through the photo album
On top of the China cabinet
- I leafed through the old family albums,
and my pictures are on the first few pages
In one I am a baby in a green dress with a white smock,
my head is almost bald, shadowed in orange hair
my eyes are a woodsy shade of brown,
and I am looking up to a ceiling instead of to the photographer
and it makes me wonder what was going on behind the scenes
the pictures capture my parents’ youth and my first years
as an only child, the first niece born into a large family,
but even more important, a one-year-old
who’s favorite thing in the world is the rainbow animal toy
my mom kept in the living room, on the brown carpet
that covered my parents’ and I first apartment, under
a television, and a cabinet containing a China set,
that my Mom only used when we had company,
that I can hardly recollect
but I can still see in pictures
First Niece
As a child I spent a lot of time with my family, especially my Dad’s side- where I now have eleven aunts and uncles. I often babysat my Aunt Maryann’s and Uncle John’s children. Their family lived in a big house, that for a while was filled with my aunt and uncle and four kids. Now three of the four are out of college and on their own.
My Uncle John is a carpenter, and he was always doing home improvement projects. They had a peach tree outside, in the corner of their backyard; and their neighbor had the type of swing that was attached to a high-set limb of a tree. My Aunt Maryann’s and Uncle John’s children that I babysat were named Erin, Katie, Jack, and Tommy. Sometimes, I would spend several days in a row at their house, helping out and babysitting.
There is a picture my mom has of me in a green dress and white smock, hanging in a picture frame in our basement. I am looking up towards the ceiling with big brown eyes. Under me is a furry carpet and the background is a shade of brown. I look so much different as a one year old, as opposed to the me that is in the pictures my mom keeps in the photo albums under the television set in my parents’ basement, where I am with my cousins and my sister, smiling and having fun.