Monday, January 15, 2007

Part Time Nanny

We've decided to hire a part time nanny to work half the day, five days a week. Her duties would be to care for Salma, feed and change her, and also to teach her Spanish by speaking to her, reading, and singing. We want someone who will interact with her and keep her engaged. We put up a flier today on the bulletin board at the Centro Commercial, and I just got a call from the first applicant. She's coming by in the morning for an interview.

So we'll have three employees (I'm not going to call them servants, because we are all servants of Allah): a gardener, a cook and a maid. We're becoming bourgeois, for heaven's sake. Who'd have thought? But it's so easy here.

I think it's ok as long as Salma grows up understanding that our employees are still her elders, and people to be treated with respect and deference. And as long as we ourselves do not begin to think we are important in any way. Last I checked, I did not live off my investments, and I do not own any means of production. And though I don't work with my hands anymore, I do work. So perhaps I can still cling to my proletarian roots.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I am looking forward to having time each day to tend to myself (rest,hygiene, exercise, betterment, self-expression) although I carry an almost equally weighted worry that I will, with the hiring of a nanny, become increasingly self-critical. Since Salma was born I have often felt inadequate--fairly normal from what I have read. The "books" say it is also normal for a parent to develop envy for the relationship a nanny builds with her subject--this dosn't worry me. I fear witnessing my beautiful daughter being well cared for, perhaps (yes, this could happen) even better cared for, by another while I flog myself mentally for not being a mother who can take care of herself AND of her baby.