The New Mommy Wars

I've decided the new mommy wars aren't working mothers versus non-working mothers but mothers of "gifted and talented" kids versus the rest of us poor schlubs. I can't tell you how many women in my circle dine out on Junior's awards, starring roles, and fabulous SAT scores. Oh, and did she mention that Little Precious is also a violin prodigy? And a math genius?

Often this bragging is couched in the sheer difficulty of it all: the exhaustion of touring top-flight colleges, the difficulty of fitting in all those award ceremonies, the problem of finding enough challenges in the fifth grade curriculum for their oh-so bright little darling. But it's bragging all the same.

I have one nice, average kid and one hard-working dyslexic kid who struggles to read. The only awards these two are going to win is "Most Episodes of Lost Downloaded" and "Most Bags of Cheetos Consumed in Two Days."

I kind of miss the 19th century (at least as depicted in literature), when moral qualities such as kindness, generosity, and yes, even humility, were more valued and avidly sought than straight A's and the top soccer team are today.

Maybe some of these "gifted and talented" kids would be a little easier to like if that were the case.

Saved by the Nanny

On Mother’s Day I got a call from a beautiful and intelligent 21-year-old woman, a history major at the University of Minnesota. She was calling to wish me a happy Mother’s Day, but she isn’t one of my children. Both my girls are still in grammar school.

Instead, my caller was one of my current nannies, the latest duo in a long line of responsible young women who have helped my husband and me raise our children over the past several years. I have found these young women not through an expensive agency or a trusted friend, but by placing ads in the Minnesota Daily.

Every one of these nannies has been a hard-working University of Minnesota student who needed extra money. At first their work for us was just a summertime convenience, an easier alternative to day camp. Sara from Owatonna worked at a Dinkytown bookstore and recommended literature to our budding 9-year-old reader. Her art teacher-mother’s influence led to many craft projects; she also made each girl her own book, featuring that girl as heroine. It was fun to have her in the house and made life simpler, but it was really just a convenience, not unlike a cleaning lady.

Then, four years ago, my husband had a stroke, and the nannies suddenly became essential. Those first weeks I had to ask Sara and Heidi of Phillips to drive our weepy and frightened kids to hospital visits, to lead outings that would prove distracting, and to help the girls just remain kids while their whole world was turned upside down. My younger daughter, then six, sat on the nannies’ laps, hugged them, depended daily on their affection and constancy.

Later, I counted on these young women, barely out of their teens, to pick up kids from school, help them with their homework, take them to the dentist, even attend an occasional performance in my place. At age 19 or 20 these remarkable undergraduates were arranging play dates, overseeing school-supply shopping, refereeing sibling squabbles, drying tears. They made my life as a quasi-single parent manageable. My motto became, “I get by with a little help from my nannies,” but most weeks it was more than a little help.

When my mother died, Kelsey from Spring Green made sure the girls had proper funeral clothes and drove them five hours to the service. When I faced my first family vacation without a spouse’s help, Stephanie from Rice Lake came along so I could relax. When my younger daughter feared the water, Heidi, who’d grown up on a lake, taught her how to swim. When I’ve needed to get away, Maddy from Middleton and Ashlee from Mequon have stayed overnight.

When I felt that my girls, both adopted from China, could benefit from a nanny who was herself an Asian adoptee, Kelsey answered my carefully worded Daily ad. She spent hours as a nanny/mentor, talking with the girls about birth parents, homeland trips, and growing up in the Midwest as a member of a minority group.

When 13-year-old Grace began to experiment with makeup or needed advice about friends, Ashlee was there to guide her through the thickets of female adolescence. After all, she’d been through it herself just a few years earlier, whereas I’d first wielded a lipstick during the Nixon administration.

When 10-year-old Julia developed a classic horse fixation, Maddy was there to share stories about her own childhood riding experiences, to drive Julia to a weekly therapeutic riding class, even to volunteer for the same program.

Through the years, as I’ve talked, eaten dinner, and vacationed with these young women, I have become close to them as well. They tell me about their boyfriends (many), classes (hard), and money woes (legion), and I offer advice on grades (worry less), marriage (wait), and travel abroad (early and often). We’ve been to two of their weddings, with another coming up this summer.

That’s how these Twin Cities campus students have come to consider me their Minneapolis mom—sort of a more urban, more detached version of their own mothers. And that’s how, too, I’ve become familiar with the good and the bad of today’s U of M: the very real impact of rapidly escalating tuition, the difficulty of finding summer internships, the frustration of a bad teacher, but also the excitement of a research job, the fun of new friends, the transformative power of a charismatic instructor. I was ready to tell off the absentee landlord who wouldn’t turn on Heidi’s heat and the financial aid officer who tried to cut off Ashlee’s loans. I’ve seen how hard these young women work at everything they do, and I’ve ached that I couldn’t do more for them.

So I guess it made sense to get that Mother’s Day call after all. For our nannies have been not just household help, like the guy who shovels the driveway, but more like members of the family. These nannies, University of Minnesota students every one, have made all the difference in my life and in the lives of my daughters.

Surely no one has ever been quite so satisfied with a Minnesota Daily classified.