Last days of summer

The quasi-au pair left yesterday. The relief I felt, after booking her a replacement flight and transferring her to an Uber driver ('Here's £20 for lunch. Let me know when you get to the gate) was immense.  

21, this young woman. Such a young 21. It...baffled and confounded me neymerous times during her two weeks with us.  

She did her own laundry (in some cases washing just one or two items), was quite tidy (but in that oblivious way I associate with siblings), and has a razor wit and intellect when she feels safe enough to open up. I worried about her leaving the house on her own, worried about leaving her with meals to prepare that required the oven.  I felt more comfortable with the 11 year old chaperoning her than the other way around. 

Needless to say, I was asleep by 2130 and have already had 1 two hour nap today with another very much on that cards. 

I don't ever really think of my upbringing a odd or exceptional. I mean, yes, we definitely traveled more than some of my peers but there were people with far more exotic backgrounds and lives than mine.  But I was a latch-key kid from 6, babysat/childminded from the age of 9 for money, and was running a gift shop on weekends and a rather large Army museum by the time I was 13. My value system definitely needed re-calibrating but damn! I know how to get sh*t (usually) done. This is not unusual, by the way. Not for Army Brats.  So to be confronted with such...stillness, it threw me, especially when I know she comes from a military family. 

For the two weeks she was here, I felt like I had an additional child to worry about. I suppose that says more about me and my occasional inability to find space to articulate what I need in the moment.  But now I am back in my own bedroom, shaking with exhaustion, wearing a dress I haven't worn in just over 2 years, about to take my second nap of the day. 

Tomorrow the littles are back at school.  I was supposed to meet a potential play partner for a coffee and look-see but that has been rescheduled and my relief is almost as palatable as my desire to be wrapped in and around a stranger's body. In the aftermath of more loss and relief, I am shedding skin again, becoming a more refined version of myself, caution tape and all. 

The weekend is my own. Painting, crafting, a swim on the beach, posing on Sunday. Pace myself.