According to the formidable buzz of my alarm clock, it was 7:30am. Judging by the distinct silence and darkness of my modest 8'x6' basement room, my guess, even with my early morning grogginess, would've been that I still had a few more hours of dormancy before I had to grovel from my twin sized bed. I had been in such a deep peaceful sleep that the dreadful sound of the alarm flustered me. I was so confused that I reached toward my nightstand and tried to answer my phone and then I started to smack everything within in my reach that had a button or a knob... or a pulse. The elderly house cat, Tigre, who was too deaf to hear the alarm, was not pleased with my disoriented physical urgency.
I hadn't heard the drone of my alarm since the previous winter when a snowstorm came through in the early morning. During the storm, the lack of sunlight had prevented the boys from waking up at their usual early morning hour. Thus preventing them from unintentionally awakening me from my slumber an hour before I had originally intended. But it was the middle of summer so I knew it was not a snowstorm that had caused the lack of early morning sunlight. I got out of bed, apologized to Tigre, and gazed out of my tiny rectangular window. I was semi pleased to see several dark clouds and pulsing puddles. The darkness from the storm had meant that the twin boys that I nannied for were still asleep and I had gotten my desired eight hours of sleep for the first time in months.
Technically, during the summer, when the boys were out of school, I wasn't expected to work until 8am. But on a normal sunny day, the twins woke me up before seven by racing down the loud wooden steps and into the TV room which, regrettably, was directly above my bedroom in the basement. In retrospect, I probably should have gotten paid time and a half for having to deal with the noise and bothersome static of the television when I was not on duty. But I guess that is one of the negative side effects that the perks counteract when you have such an abnormal career. I guess what bothered me, when I was in a tired and pissy mood, was that the actual parental unit was sound asleep in their third floor master bedroom suite while I laid in my tiny dungeon of a room listening to the fruit of their loins argue over the remote.
Sometimes I thought that they had purposely designed the layout of their house to assure that they would get their money's worth when writing me a check at the end of each week. Why should they have to get up early or interrupt their careers to pour milk in their kid's cocoa puffs when they had a nanny that was already awake, standing on her bed, and banging on her ceiling, yelling at the kids to turn the volume down on "Pokemon?"
It was the second week of July and my last week as a New Jersey Nanny. Kayleigh, the new nanny from Ohio, was overlapping with me for a few days before I headed back to Florida. Together we were the ultimate Nanny duo. We managed the children's summer activities, made sure they were safe, and fed them three meals a day, all while having a great time.
I went into the living area of my "nanny quarters" to wake Kayleigh up but she was already dressed and ready to go. I stood there in my mismatched pajamas combing through my knotted hair with my fingers and explained to her the boys activities for the day. She went upstairs to get the boys out of bed and force them to brush their teeth, which surely had fuzz growing on them by now. It was a Monday and I knew that the kids hadn't touched there toothbrush since Friday morning. They had the undoubtedly powerful skill to manipulate and take advantage of everyone except me and their Grandmother so I knew that their Mom and Dad just took their word for it when they told them that they had brushed, flossed, and polished their tiny baby teeth every night that I wasn't on duty.
I went into the kitchen and prepared breakfast and packed some lunch for later. On that rainy New Jersey morning, the boy's schedule included morning swim lessons. From my experience the previous summer, I knew that almost nothing could cancel swim lessons. It would take severe lightning to delay them but they would always continue once the storm passed and you hardly ever saw lightning in New Jersey. From my experience with the twin's mother, I knew that if she paid for something, she was going to get the most of it, even if it meant sticking her miserable sons in an icy pool of water while it was pouring down rain.
Kayleigh and I packed a swim bag and drove the two whining boys to the community pool where we were met by a long line of Nanny's with umbrellas in one hand and the hand of a pissed off kid in the other. I was not surprised to see so many kids whose parents were willing to put their kids through the suffering of such an uncomfortable swim lesson. I was all too familiar with the odd ways of Westfield, New Jersey. The pressure was always on every parent and child to be good at everything, all the time. Even if it meant that the kids would despise something that was meant to be a fun learning experience. The kids needed to do everything like everyone else in order for their parents to be accepted socially. The priorities were all screwed up in that town and sometimes the nannies were the only residents who noticed.
I'm sure that the cold and rainy weather along with the icy water was the least of the kid's worries. The stormy weather had exuded an eerie presence upon the day that would discourage almost anyone. To a five-year-old who couldn't swim, the pool was already a scary place to be and now it was dark and rainy. I was sure that, to them, the pool seemed like a haunted pit of venemous snakes, ready to bite. For the boy's sake, I prayed for lightning, but it never came. The boy's stood by my side and looked up at me in hope that I would wrap them in their Scooby-doo beach towels and take them to Chuck E. Cheese for the afternoon. But as a Nanny, I had to ask myself what their parent's would do, so I gave them each a guilty hug and pointed them in the direction of thier teenage swim instructors.
The wind picked up and the drops of rain continued to get bigger as Kayleigh and I sat under a large canopy cuddling together under two beach towels. The kids swam, with the help of floats, out of our sight and into the deep end of the pool. A few minutes later, just as we were explaining to each other the weird feeling that the weather had given us, a loud whistle blew followed by several more whistles, followed by a stampede of lifeguards heading toward the pools. This happened once in while when the lifeguards were practicing safety drills but I knew something was wrong when the mantience worker yelled for someone to call an ambulance.
The thought of twelve five-year-olds with hypothermia crossed my mind and I immediately sprinted near the deep end to check on the twins. I was relieved to see the boy's sitting on the edge of the pool, a little scared, but safe. All the lifeguards had ran up to the diving pool and huddled around a young female lifeguard. With all the confusion, the kids were very curious about what had happened to the girl. I calmly distracted them and warmed their shivering blue bodies while Kayliegh carefully investigated the scene.
From what I could see at the time, the girl was conscious but crying in agony. I heard someone say "Put them on ice so they can be reattached." Hearing that made my stomach hurt and my appendages tingle. Kayleigh returned and whispered to me that the dive pool had a lowered drain grate with tiny holes in it. Apparently, the young lifeguard was walking on the grate and stuck her toes in the holes, then she slipped and fell into the pool, breaking two of her toes off in the fall. A nearby lifeguard blew his whistle and jumped in to drag the girl to the edge of the pool where her two bloody toes were still in the grate.
The ambulance came and several paramedics took over the rescue efforts. A short time later, the shaken lifeguards returned to their posts, closed their umbrellas, and announced the continuation of the swim lessons. After all, there was no lightning that they could see. The boys gazed up and at me with concern. Their blue shivering lips and sad eyes made me reconsider the "What would mommy do?" rule. I looked down at my toes, grateful that they were still attached to my feet then grabbed the boy's tiny frozen hands and dragged them to the warm showers before asking "Who wants to go to Chuck E. Cheese?"
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