I Can Barely Take Care of Myself

• If you go to Dunkin’ Donuts instead of church on Sundays—you’re not fooling God! That’s an automatic purgatory sentence!

• Diaries will be randomly searched! You shouldn’t be writing about secrets anyway!

• You can only go to your friends’ houses at night when a parent is home. Even then I’m not happy about it because your friends’ mothers are pushovers!

• Sleepovers at girlfriends’ houses are strictly forbidden! Are you really just “sleeping”?

• Curfew is at 10:30 p.m.! No exceptions. Except to come home earlier.

• No driving a car unless one of your parents is in the front seat. And even then—where do you think you’re going?

Once I’d successfully survived my teen years by following their foolproof guidelines, my mom sent me to college, having saved every penny she’d earned. Her dad had told her that women didn’t go to college, so she and all the other moms of her generation raised their daughters to aspire to college. And I think my mom telling me not to be so boy-crazy was more than a subtle hint that the priorities of a new era of women were emerging (that and she really didn’t want me to end up enduring a teenage pregnancy).

But each generation makes new mistakes. For example, I know that I wouldn’t feed the son that I’m never going to have white bread or processed cheese, but I wouldn’t have the answer if he couldn’t sleep and called out to me in the night, “Mommy, Mommy, there’s a monster under my bed!” I believe in monsters and if he were telling me that in the next room there was a monster on the loose? I’d yell back, “Of course there’s a monster under your bed, honey, that’s where they live!”

I’ve already tried to influence kids by doing things differently than my parents and I’ll tell you right now, it didn’t work. Most Saturday nights from 1988 to 1992, you could find me at the Reinhardts’ house, babysitting their four-year-old son, Eli. I fell into babysitting for Eli through a friend. I substituted for Eileen one day and after that fateful afternoon, Eli started saying, “Don’t want Eileen. Want Jen to play.” And from then on, my Saturday nights belonged to a four-year-old. That was the only time I ever stole a man from another woman.

I still think it’s weird that adults would leave a toddler with a fourteen-year-old, whom they barely know, especially in a house filled with sharp-edged glass coffee tables. It makes me feel old, like I grew up in some kind of 1940s It’s a Wonderful Life world where everyone knew one another and Eli wasn’t in any real danger because an angel was watching our every move and the townspeople would come over with baskets of money in case of emergency.

When I interviewed with Mr. Reinhardt for the position of babysitter (or, what I think is a more accurate job description, “Person in Charge of Making Sure Someone’s Kids Don’t Die While They’re Out Seeing a Movie”), he asked me, “So, do you like kids?” I was stumped. Like kids? I never thought about kids. I was the youngest and basically an only child. I didn’t have any experience in playing with kids younger than I was. I don’t even remember playing well with others when I was a kid. My friends enjoyed things like sledding, which involved too much prep for my taste, plus putting on long underwear, a few more layers over that, and a big, puffy Michelin Man coat—only to have snow find its way into your sock. I hate being cold and spending ten minutes walking up a snowbank just to spend two seconds sliding down. I always wanted to skip to the good part—going back inside, having hot chocolate, and watching Richard Dawson host Family Feud.

“Name something that most kids like doing, except for little Jen Kirkman. Survey says? Having fun!”

I didn’t know what to tell Mr. Reinhardt. I didn’t hate kids. I just never thought about them. Kids evoked an “eh” emotion in me at best. But I wasn’t going to make eight dollars an hour sitting at home with my parents on a Saturday night, so I told my first but most definitely not my last white lie on the subject: “Yes. I love kids. I’m great with them.”

Babysitting every Saturday night felt like the world’s most boring New Year’s Eve, as I sat there counting down the last hour before little Eli’s bedtime. One night Eli couldn’t sleep. He was talking as if he’d been reading a Nietzsche pop-up book. Right before I was about to turn out the light he asked, “Jen? Is there a God?”

Me: “Well, what does your mom say about God?”

Eli: “I never asked her. I just thought of it.”

Me: “Why don’t you wait and ask your mom about God in the morning? She has all the answers.”

Eli: “I thought all grown-ups knew. You’re a grown-up!”

If only he knew that even though I was in charge, I was just a kid myself. I hadn’t even had my first real kiss yet. I was wearing an A-cup bra. Really it was a training bra. There were no cups. It was almost like wearing an Ace bandage around my upper torso. I was so not a grown-up.

Eli persisted. “If God can see me, why can’t I see him?” (A Jewish kid wanted a Catholic girl to explain to him why we can’t see God. Oy boy!) Then he started to get hysterical: “I don’t want God watching me sleep!”

I had no idea how to answer Eli. I didn’t know the first thing about the Jewish God. I knew that Jesus was Jewish and that Moses… did some… stuff. I’m not even sure of the timeline. I couldn’t remember whether those guys knew each other or whether they just sort of respected each other’s “miracle corners.”

When I was a little older than Eli was then, my mom tucked me in every night and we said that prayer: “If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” That prayer is comforting—if you’re ninety and on a respirator. It doesn’t make much sense for a healthy eight-year-old. Then, after we prayed about this Lord guy coming to take me away in my sleep, my mom would shut the light off and close the door, leaving me to stew in my newly developed neurosis. I couldn’t do the same thing to Eli.

Standing in Eli’s doorway, looking at his innocent little face, I didn’t have the heart to just turn the light out and ignore him. I wouldn’t have to wait until I had my own kids. This was my moment to make an impact on the youth of America by doing the exact opposite thing that my parents did. I would not tell him that there is a God waiting to take him in his sleep.

While I racked my brain for the best way to answer his question without really answering his question, Eli, in the manner of children everywhere with too much time on their hands, came up with more questions. Such as, “When am I gonna die?”

I knew I had to protect him and let him remain a kid. Kids need myths, like the tooth fairy, and when they’re older they can handle the truth: that your parents flush your teeth down the toilet like they’re getting rid of forensic evidence and leave you only twenty-five cents, not accounting for the inflation that’s occurred since they were kids. You’ll have to borrow a dollar from them later anyway in order to afford a Charleston Chew candy bar and they’ll guilt you and say, “That will pull your teeth out.” By the time Eli knew the truth about anything I’d be in college and wouldn’t have to worry about helping him process it. For tonight, in order to protect him and get myself out of his room and on to the bag of Oreos waiting for me in the Reinhardts’ kitchen, I would lie my ass off.

“Oh, Eli,” I said. “You will live to be two hundred years old before you die and that is a very, very long time from now.”

I was proud of myself until Eli said, “So, I am going to die?”

I said, “No. No. I mean, if you die, you will die at two hundred, but… not everybody dies.”

Eli said, “So, some people die and some don’t?”

Um. Yes.

Eli said, “Why did God make my grandpa die?”

Um…

Eli asked, “Can I die before I turn two hundred if I’m murdered in my bed?”

I’m glad that I didn’t think to raid the Reinhardts’ medicine cabinet to see whether the missus had any “mother’s little helper,” because I seriously would have considered crushing some into the orange juice on Eli’s nightstand to help him take his mind off bed-murder.

Fuuuck. How did this kid know about murder? He’s right. Murder is scary. And it’s real, even in seemingly safe havens like Needham, Massachusetts. Some guy in our town had chopped his wife into tiny pieces in their bathtub just streets away from where little Eli Reinhardt lived. I was terrified of murder myself