Babysitters

On the drive southward through California, one of the things we listened to was a CD recording of an NPR broadcast having to do with babysitting stories.  I enjoyed the broadcast and it made my mind turn to memories of my babysitting experiences. 

First, I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s.  I am number five of seven children in my family.  The seven of us are spread across a nine year period.  My parents rarely went any place.  My father worked in a cannery and from April to November he worked seven days a week and any where from ten to fourteen hours a day.  This left little time for him and my mom to go any place.  On the rare occasion that they went shopping without us (usually at Christmas time only), they didn’t leave us with a babysitter.  Instead of trusting a stranger to stay with us, they left us alone.  They left us alone with each other.  Things usually worked out just fine but once in a while, something went wrong.

Once, when my parents were out looking at house with a real estate agent, they left us alone and something went wrong.  It was in winter.  February, I think.  They had been out with the real estate agent the day before and that particular day was a Sunday.  We expected them to be gone all day long.  As siblings do, we had little spats that didn’t amount to much more than verbal attacks and, once in a while, a push or shove.  My sister, Sylvia, is a year older than I am.  I was in fourth grade.  I think I was about ten years old and she was eleven.  I don’t remember what petty thing started it but she got a ruler and started chasing me all over the house.  We were laughing.  Carlos, our oldest brother, who was about fifteen, told us to stop running but he couldn’t come get us to stop because he was busy with our youngest sister, who was about six.  I started to run down the stairs, Sylvia hot on my trail.  My dad had built bedrooms for us in what had been our basement.  He covered the wooden stairs with carpet.  That had been years before and the carpet had worn out.  Somehow, my foot got caught on a worn spot and I fell all the way down the stairs, rolling head first.  I tried to break my fall but failed and in the process, I managed to break the ring finger on my left hand.  I was in agony and there was no telling when our parents would come home and no way to get in touch with them.  It was 1966.  There were no cell phones at that time.  My brother picked me up and put me into one of the beds.  He checked my finger but it was way too painful for anyone to touch.  It had also swollen immediately.  I couldn’t help crying.  Carlos got me aspirin for the pain, and ice.  He knew to do at least that much.  We waited for our parents to come home, knowing it could be hours before they came home.  Eventually, I fell asleep as I waited.

It all turned out okay.  It was broken.  I had to go to two hospitals because the first one wouldn’t treat me because we didn’t have the right kind of insurance so they sent us to the county hospital.  Hours later, the doctor had set my finger and I was sent home with pain pills.  That finger took much longer to heal than anticipated by the doctor.  Learning not to run down the stairs turned out to be a very painful lesson.