Babysitting in Corona Del Mar

In recent news, I have been working as a babysitter for a family in Corona del Mar. I couldn’t ask for a more chill job, working with a 16 month old with some cool ass parents who make me food and provide boarding. As much as I’ve learned from this job about parenting styles, I am very aware of my role within the community.
As a back story: Knowing that financial aid doesn’t cover my summer expenses, I applied for this job spring quarter via an ad in the New University, but I didn’t hear back from her until July. This was perfect timing for me because people who just graduated were having a hard time looking for work so I felt very blessed to get this job out of the blue. These are the perks: I get paid cash without tax, I get fed home cooked meals by the mom, I have a room that I can crash at, and a living room with a huge ass TV, I go to the beach every day (seriously, I’ve scaled Corona del Mar), I get to hang out with this happy kid, and I am learning about my teaching style as a parent.

Let me add that at 21, I already feel tired taking care of one kid by myself. In other words, I don’t know if I want to have kids anymore. I am so grateful that I have a huge ass family that took care, played, and nurtured each other’s growth. I am very grateful to have this family teach me how to positively reinforce, affirm, and encourage play as a learning device for happiness. It’s crazy how I was trained to be that domestic housewife—cook, clean, laundry,--be 100% selfless, sacrificing, and slaving away for the family. Now, I can see that it doesn’t have to be that way; I can still have my own life outside of my kid. I understand that hiring a babysitter is a privilege, but I also see that having family around is a privilege. Having help is such a gift that I will take it in any form and would love to give it back. For me, my parents were either authoritative or way too lax, both styles are too extreme—traumatic and lack of presence. What is important to me now, though, is taking care of the inner child who had to experience those extremes. Seriously, I love my inner child and try not to spoil it (She is 5 years old btw), raising myself the way I wanted to be raised.

My latest analyses of my position: Something I’ve learned about having a baby is that people will be a million times friendlier, saying “Good morning” to the baby, but really I am saying “Good morning” back. People smile, laugh, stop and play with her, say she’s cute and gorgeous, and those comments help get the day started right. When these strangers say “Bye” I always hope that Ava has changed their day or life around just because she made them smile. I hope my inner child does that to people too.

You can basically call me a regular at the beach because I’m there every morning, doing the same routine with Ava. On our walks though I have encountered some very interesting regulars. The first man I met is named Leonard Bernard. He has blonde, beachy, curly hair, his olive-tanned muscles bulging out of a red, muscle tank top, and wearing black sunglasses to cover the age of his soul. He has been feeding these stray cats around the neighborhood for over 10 years now. What is interesting about him is that he is a self-published writer, selling his books online. He writes children’s books, poetry books like “Poems about the beach and girls,” and etc. He was really happy to hear that I was a Creative Writer, that I am a fellow poet. Why is he interesting? He is the first person I know who lives such a quirky lifestyle. He writes, lives next to the beach, and he feeds stray cats! What a life! Today (Thursday) he gave me one of his self-published and bound books. Not bad.

I met Ascension this morning. He was sitting on a bench looking out of square, gold-rimmed glasses toward the hazy grey where the horizon fogs into the ocean, his skin hard-wood floor brown with dark sun spots like knots. I sat on the bench next to him, getting Ava’s banana ready for her when he sparked up a conversation. He moved to California from Mexico 15 years ago, in a city in the sierra, where there were no schools, electricity, water, and etc. He got laid off from a company that makes multiple-choice scantrons; his first and last job here in America because they moved the company to Pennsylvania. He asked his family if they would move there so that he can work. His wife, also a babysitter in CDM, said, “No, Go by yourself.” His 18-year old son didn’t want to leave is girlfriend. This man, 65 years old, didn’t want to move to a colder area when he realizes that his body isn’t as resilient as it was 15 years ago, and of course, he didn’t want to leave his family. What does a person do in that situation? He has no choice but to wait, keep his body in shape, and hope that the future holds better things. He said to me that it was good I was in school because I am working hard towards the future.

After walking with Ava, I caught a glimpse of a flock of 30 pelicans flying in a ‘V.’ It was a pretty crazy sight to see. What made it even crazier was that the next day I saw probably the same flock but now with 42 birds! The meaning of life. 42

There is street sweeping on Mondays and Tuesdays. I got a ticket by a white woman with brown hair and blue eyes and asked if there was any way I could get it written off. She was in the midst of a conversation with the street sweeper, a tall black man with glasses and curly grey swabs and white hair. He said this to Ava, “You don’t see many people like me around, huh?” And I responded, thinking that he was implying racial critique, “Yeah, it’s unfortunate that there aren’t.” The woman was smiling but I felt her shift tensely. Ava and I walked away, but I still wonder if that’s what he meant, or whether he meant that there aren’t that many street sweepers around. Should I take off this critical race lens?

Part of the reason why I feel so aware of the race relations in CDM is partly my own presence as an Asian-American woman carrying around a hapa baby (Chinese-Italian American) in a predominantly white area. Granted, there are other hapas (a white mother with her obviously more “Asian looking” children), but it’s mostly white woman who workout together, pushing their strollers and children in pairs, congregating at the main grassy knoll. I am all for female empowerment and physical fitness, but when I came home and talked to Ava’s mom about what I saw, she responded, “Yeah I know. It’s not the right crowd.” So where do we go? Women of color, women with children of color, where is our grassy knoll of congregation?

Another thing about being here is the constant construction taking place on every block. The construction workers are all men of earthy-brown skin tones and the blue-print handling people are white men. They sit on the corner eating their lunches and I pass hoping to draw some connection to them, hoping they can see that I am brown too and we are servicing the wealthy. Fuck! This was a big reason why I never wanted to work at the restaurant again. I hated serving dishes to white, wealthy people, especially in North Berkeley. I didn’t like the way they talked differently to my mother. I didn’t like the way they tried to manipulate their orders into something negotiable, bargaining. Likewise, I passed a dark Latina woman pushing a blonde, blue-eyed boy in a push car and following the white older sister on her pink bike. We made eye contact, and I understood my place here. We, women of color, were replacing white mothers. I don’t want to say this is a form of exploitation because I don’t feel exploited, but I do feel something off about the situation.

After talking with Floyd at SMLI, I realized how hard it is to balance a kid and work. It is important for me to be there for my child’s development. It is also important for me to be there for my career. How can we provide more accessible and affordable resources for quality childcare for parents in the workplace? So many questions with no real answers yet….