This is my least favorite of the fired sagas to write because I've been lying about it for 16 years.
I was an au pair (fancy title for a foreign nanny) in Wuppertal, Germany, for two little girls, Charlotte (3) and Frederika (1) in the spring of 2003.
I was supposed to live with them for 6 months from January through June, but my time was cut short because I was - once again - a completely self-absorbed teenager. But to everyone except maybe my mom and the Germans, I have been saying the same thing - I was always going to come home in May, or that I chose to come home on my own, it was totally a 4 month thing, I loved my time there....and I leave out the part where I was asked kindly to leave.
The great part about THIS entry though, is that it's one of the only times in my life where I consistently kept a journal that I still have. I'll pull some excerpts straight from 17 year old me to illustrate my saga into the first 2 months of my life outside the United States. Most of my entries are about watching MTV, taking the bus into town to use internet, drinking beer, and missing my friends. It was life pre-Facebook, without cell phone, where internet cost per minute to use. Here are some actual pencil to paper quotes to set the scene for my German life in 2003:
4.2.03 - Day 10
"I had a slight confrontation with [the dad]. I didn't clean Rika's room and he says I'm still speaking too much English. I really do have to work on my German more. Granted, it's my first week, but whatever. So I was a little crabby and angrily cleaned my room."
5.2.03 - Day 11
"I got a disposable camera because my friends say they want pictures of me. I also got batteries and a CD player so I could finally listen to Alanis again!"
11.2.03 - Day 17
"After dinner, Tabi [my Canadian BFF] called me. We went out for drinks, although [the mom] wasn't so happy about it, but we had another great conversation."
12.2.03 - Day 18
"Like a total idiot, I took a nap this afternoon. I woke up 20 minutes after I was supposed to take my bus to get the kids....Charlotte was on a bad day just to piss me off. She didn't cooperate at all until home I was pretty sure I was going to scream on a crowded bus. [The parents] knew about me being late and I got a 5 minute lecture. Yeah, I know I'm screwing up all the time, I've been here 3 weeks. So after dinner, I just wanted to be alone. I cleaned and read and watched MTV in my tiny room the rest of the night."
15.2.03 - Day 21
"Once again, I woke up to coffee, Gasoline, birds chirping, and a half naked good-looking guy [my friend, Stefan, who I wrote "looks exactly like Justin Timerberlake!"]. Man, I love mornings."
19.2.03 - Day 25
"Those kids definitely have a hold of my mood. After dealing with them for the hour on the way home, I was gonna explode!...I realize I don't have to work much and it's pretty easy work, but my tolerance level isn't built up yet."
23.2.03 - Day 29
"Before his bike ride, [the dad] wanted to talk. Yep, third "talk" in a month. He didn't say anything that hurt I guess, but here I have been trying really hard and it's not hard enough. I can't help but think this isn't where I belong. I don't fit the job description. I really do like Germany, it's just the stress and all. So with the whole house to myself, I played sappy songs, read freinds' old letters, and just cried until my eyes hurt. I needed it."
24.2.03 - Day 30
"OK, I know my mom is my guardian, but if she trusts me enough to send me 3000 miles away, she should be able to let some stuff go. I can't sleepover - even just at Tabi's - anymore. GAH!"
27.2.03 - Day 33
"The best thing that could ever happen...the bar had The Simpsons on IN ENGLISH! You have no idea how awesome that was for Tabi and I....I went home in a good mood and told [the parents] all about my night in more German than I've said all month. I think they were happy to see me so happy."
15.3.03 - Day 49
"[The dad] asked "So how do you like it here?" I knew I was done. They had a bunch of examples of why I'm not working out. But the thing is, it's all stuff I could have done, but I was never told to do! I was kind of just sad because it's like getting fired or something. But honestly, I've been homesick and I think a semester will be enough. I've learned a lot and I'm glad I got the experience, so the conversation was bittersweet."
I stopped journaling at Day 52, which is unfortunate because the second half of my stay was SO much better.
My high school friends and family came to visit over spring break, we toured Amsterdam and Wuppertal together for a week, my German got a LOT better when I actually spoke it, and I grew to love the family despite my resentment about their heightened cleaning standards and expectations. In the early part of May, I had even asked if I could stay, and they agreed I was doing much better, but they said the new girl was already planning to come from Ireland.
So I coasted out for another month, trained in the pleasant new girl, and flew back to Minnesota a few days before the spring semester of my junior year was even over.
Overall, I still loved my time in Germany, and I understand the family frustration NOW reading the thoughts of a teenager from a 30-something mom perspective. I was whining about getting PAID to be with the kids for MAYBE 4 hours in a day! Now that I've lived through my own toddlers, and many toddlers of my friends, I fully acknowledge that I was ridiculous and I would have fired me, too.
If I could go back, and if I, as a teenager would have listened to any adult ever, I'd tell myself to live in the present. Stop being homesick for the past or planning what you'll do when you get home in the future, and just be with the girls, be helpful to the family, and be a good friend when I had time w Tabi and the group. I would tell myself the classic Andy Bernard line, "I wish there was a way to know you're IN the good old days, before you've actually left them."
I have to remind myself of that even today, even knowing better. 60-something year old me with 40-something year old kids, is going to remember the good old days of living with my teenagers who are full of potential, who I still see every day and who miss me when I'm gone. Someday our house and our pets and our shows and our games and our after school activities will be done and we'll just remember them as good old days. I know I'm in them, and it's likely you are, too.
Since starting a regular meditation practice, I've been more present in the last 6 months than I have in the 33 years preceding it where I have constantly looked forward and wished to skip months, years, and phases at a time. I have wished to be 16 to get my license, 18 to be an adult, 21 to drink, I wished for years of deployment to be over with, I wished for babies to grow up out of diapers, then out of t-ball, then out of car seats, I've wished away semesters of schools and final months at bad jobs. And the crazy part is that allllll of my wishes came true. And it was never enough. I would just fill it with another wish, look forward to the next thing.
There is a serene happiness is not wishing away years anymore. And there's an odd balance in being content with what I have and working every day to grow and be more. I will still write about the past and work toward a future as a professional writer and speaker, but truly, if today with my kids and my pets in this house, writing this blog, was to be my every day, I wouldn't be mad about that, either.
Obviously, I can't go back to 2003, but I can be honest and share those thoughts with my own kids so that they are slightly more present 17 year olds someday, and maybe they'll be less about unrequited crushes and MTV (is MTV even still a thing?...make that YouTube) and more about the people and experiences in front of them.
I was an au pair (fancy title for a foreign nanny) in Wuppertal, Germany, for two little girls, Charlotte (3) and Frederika (1) in the spring of 2003.I was supposed to live with them for 6 months from January through June, but my time was cut short because I was - once again - a completely self-absorbed teenager. But to everyone except maybe my mom and the Germans, I have been saying the same thing - I was always going to come home in May, or that I chose to come home on my own, it was totally a 4 month thing, I loved my time there....and I leave out the part where I was asked kindly to leave.
The great part about THIS entry though, is that it's one of the only times in my life where I consistently kept a journal that I still have. I'll pull some excerpts straight from 17 year old me to illustrate my saga into the first 2 months of my life outside the United States. Most of my entries are about watching MTV, taking the bus into town to use internet, drinking beer, and missing my friends. It was life pre-Facebook, without cell phone, where internet cost per minute to use. Here are some actual pencil to paper quotes to set the scene for my German life in 2003:
"I had a slight confrontation with [the dad]. I didn't clean Rika's room and he says I'm still speaking too much English. I really do have to work on my German more. Granted, it's my first week, but whatever. So I was a little crabby and angrily cleaned my room."
5.2.03 - Day 11
"I got a disposable camera because my friends say they want pictures of me. I also got batteries and a CD player so I could finally listen to Alanis again!"
11.2.03 - Day 17
"After dinner, Tabi [my Canadian BFF] called me. We went out for drinks, although [the mom] wasn't so happy about it, but we had another great conversation."
12.2.03 - Day 18
"Like a total idiot, I took a nap this afternoon. I woke up 20 minutes after I was supposed to take my bus to get the kids....Charlotte was on a bad day just to piss me off. She didn't cooperate at all until home I was pretty sure I was going to scream on a crowded bus. [The parents] knew about me being late and I got a 5 minute lecture. Yeah, I know I'm screwing up all the time, I've been here 3 weeks. So after dinner, I just wanted to be alone. I cleaned and read and watched MTV in my tiny room the rest of the night."
15.2.03 - Day 21"Once again, I woke up to coffee, Gasoline, birds chirping, and a half naked good-looking guy [my friend, Stefan, who I wrote "looks exactly like Justin Timerberlake!"]. Man, I love mornings."
19.2.03 - Day 25
"Those kids definitely have a hold of my mood. After dealing with them for the hour on the way home, I was gonna explode!...I realize I don't have to work much and it's pretty easy work, but my tolerance level isn't built up yet."
23.2.03 - Day 29
"Before his bike ride, [the dad] wanted to talk. Yep, third "talk" in a month. He didn't say anything that hurt I guess, but here I have been trying really hard and it's not hard enough. I can't help but think this isn't where I belong. I don't fit the job description. I really do like Germany, it's just the stress and all. So with the whole house to myself, I played sappy songs, read freinds' old letters, and just cried until my eyes hurt. I needed it."
24.2.03 - Day 30"OK, I know my mom is my guardian, but if she trusts me enough to send me 3000 miles away, she should be able to let some stuff go. I can't sleepover - even just at Tabi's - anymore. GAH!"
27.2.03 - Day 33
"The best thing that could ever happen...the bar had The Simpsons on IN ENGLISH! You have no idea how awesome that was for Tabi and I....I went home in a good mood and told [the parents] all about my night in more German than I've said all month. I think they were happy to see me so happy."
15.3.03 - Day 49
"[The dad] asked "So how do you like it here?" I knew I was done. They had a bunch of examples of why I'm not working out. But the thing is, it's all stuff I could have done, but I was never told to do! I was kind of just sad because it's like getting fired or something. But honestly, I've been homesick and I think a semester will be enough. I've learned a lot and I'm glad I got the experience, so the conversation was bittersweet."
--
I stopped journaling at Day 52, which is unfortunate because the second half of my stay was SO much better.
So I coasted out for another month, trained in the pleasant new girl, and flew back to Minnesota a few days before the spring semester of my junior year was even over.
--
Overall, I still loved my time in Germany, and I understand the family frustration NOW reading the thoughts of a teenager from a 30-something mom perspective. I was whining about getting PAID to be with the kids for MAYBE 4 hours in a day! Now that I've lived through my own toddlers, and many toddlers of my friends, I fully acknowledge that I was ridiculous and I would have fired me, too.
If I could go back, and if I, as a teenager would have listened to any adult ever, I'd tell myself to live in the present. Stop being homesick for the past or planning what you'll do when you get home in the future, and just be with the girls, be helpful to the family, and be a good friend when I had time w Tabi and the group. I would tell myself the classic Andy Bernard line, "I wish there was a way to know you're IN the good old days, before you've actually left them."
I have to remind myself of that even today, even knowing better. 60-something year old me with 40-something year old kids, is going to remember the good old days of living with my teenagers who are full of potential, who I still see every day and who miss me when I'm gone. Someday our house and our pets and our shows and our games and our after school activities will be done and we'll just remember them as good old days. I know I'm in them, and it's likely you are, too.
Since starting a regular meditation practice, I've been more present in the last 6 months than I have in the 33 years preceding it where I have constantly looked forward and wished to skip months, years, and phases at a time. I have wished to be 16 to get my license, 18 to be an adult, 21 to drink, I wished for years of deployment to be over with, I wished for babies to grow up out of diapers, then out of t-ball, then out of car seats, I've wished away semesters of schools and final months at bad jobs. And the crazy part is that allllll of my wishes came true. And it was never enough. I would just fill it with another wish, look forward to the next thing.
There is a serene happiness is not wishing away years anymore. And there's an odd balance in being content with what I have and working every day to grow and be more. I will still write about the past and work toward a future as a professional writer and speaker, but truly, if today with my kids and my pets in this house, writing this blog, was to be my every day, I wouldn't be mad about that, either.
Obviously, I can't go back to 2003, but I can be honest and share those thoughts with my own kids so that they are slightly more present 17 year olds someday, and maybe they'll be less about unrequited crushes and MTV (is MTV even still a thing?...make that YouTube) and more about the people and experiences in front of them.
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