It Does Take a Village

To stem the flood of outraged emails I've received over my cat pranks, let me clarify that I did abandon the cat in a park, but it was a mere few months after it strolled into our life as a stray that literally walked into our kitchen and demanded a meal. I figured it could do the trick one more time and get someone else to fall for it. In any case, we've had the beast for ten years and he's not going anywhere soon. And we have another cat, Whiskers, MY cat, who is an indoor cat and has no bad habits other than urinating on the basement floor NEXT to the litter box that he'll only use for the other business.

This sketch is from my vacation journal of a few years ago. It's a drawing of the Little One and my older sister. Mar has always been our Auntie Mame, the aunt who takes the kids to Splish Splash, who doesn't mind having the three girls sleep over half the summer, and our companion on our vacations since the kids were born.

Mar and my other sisters are the only way I can work in the summer and vacations. They fill in as surrogate Mom, taking my kids where they need to go, providing meals, sleep overs, trips to the club, and advice over everything from how many Advils to take to what to wash with what when they can't reach me in court. Between my sisters and the grandmothers, there's always someone who can take in the Little One if no one is home or she needs some company. I'm very grateful to all of them and when I get fed up of living in New York, I remind myself over and over that family is the reason we moved back to New York.

I've always been extremely lucky in having good childcare available as a working Mom. I say "I" and not "we" because it's always been my responsibility to find and attange the childcare for whatever reasons, that's just the way it's been.

When I quit my prosecutor's job after I had The Princess, the neighbor behind us was going through a divorce and raising her son and looking for extra money. "Bobo" as the kids called her, was about ten years older than I was and a wonderful mother and babysitter. She gave them hot meals, took them to the Mall and bought them little gifts, and had a big household of relatives and two energetic dogs. I left for work each morning after opening the gate between our houses and the two kids toddled over and never looked back. She was the kind of neighbor that sent over meals when you were sick and had more patience with my kids than I did myself.

When we moved to California, I took an extended child care leave, as I called it, and my mother in law moved in with us. For the next seven years, the kids lived in an extended family and we never had to worry about finding someone to watch them when we went out on a Satuday night.

In the last few years, we haven't had to worry about babysitters. The older kids were here and my sisters live within blocks of our house. Even after The Princess went to college two years ago, Mystery Man was usually around. When he got an after school job, my mother in law started coming by after school, or Julia went to my sister's house.

This year we're going to have to be more creative about an after school program. She's technically old enough to come home by herself, but I've found that is not a good thing on a regular basis, both for her and for me. I think she needs more structure than just hanging around with her cousins every day. They get bored with each and fight if they are together constantly. Homeowrk is heavier now and she wants to be in the neighborhood to play with her own friends. so we're still talking about what to do.

Yesterday was the first day since we came home from vacation that I didn't have a list of college-related errands to do. We grocery shopped, went to church, Stan did laundry, and I took Julia and her friend to the pool in the late afternoon. We had an actual sit down at the table dinner, one of the few of the summer. Stan grilled steaks and zucchini and his homegrown tomatoes. (all 3 of them:) Later we were home by ourselves, watching the end of the Olympics and I think we both relaxed for the first time in weeks.

And no cats were in the house!