Finding Help When You Need It Most, Part 1

Finding the right person to help care for your family takes a lot of time and a little bit of luck. Keep an open mind. In large cities, such as New York and Los Angeles, agencies may be a good first step. You must be careful. Some may charge a high fee, sometimes to the employer and sometimes to the employee. Some agencies continue to act as the “employer” while renting out the services of that person to you. Loyalty and bonding then become issues. So beware.

We started out in NYC. We found our first family care giver, Daisy, through an agency. She came with excellent recommendations, but having met her I had some vague reservations. So we had her start 6 weeks before the baby came so she could learn the routines and we would get to know her. She was home with me when I gave birth and seeing her with the baby helped put my mind at ease when I went back to work.

One Friday night, 3 months into Jeremy’s young life, we came home to a voice mail. Daisy would not be back on Monday morning. We were hysterical. We even tried to engage our reluctant mothers to help us out if nothing came through. But luckily our friend Diane’s caregiver was going to have a one month between jobs and we knew her well. (She was moving on after two years for a job much closer to where she lived.)

We had a guarantee on Daisy and even though she quit one month after the guarantee, the agency made good. No fee this time. A little gun shy, we started to interview. That’s how we found Pam, a very quiet Jehovah’s Witness from the island of St. Lucia. When we told her she would be responsible for meals and keeping a kosher home, she did not blink an eye. She assured us she would be able to learn whatever it was. We also asked her to refrain from proselytizing us or our friends. She agreed.

Pam adored Jeremy, took care of our home, and of us. She turned into a great cook and house keeper. When we getting ready to move to Buffalo, only 6 months into her job, I told her that I knew we could find her a great job. She looked at me dismayed.

“Are you firing me?”

I said, “No! What makes you think that?”

“Don’t you want to take me to Buffalo with you?”

That was a no brainer. She came with us. Her first Sunday at the Kingdom Hall, she met her future husband, Greg. A few years later they married and brought her two children from a previous marriage from St. Lucia. When Pam brought her children to Buffalo, we knew she had to live at her own home and not in ours. That is when we went the student helper route and found Robin. We put an ad in the student newspaper (in the days before Craig’s list) and she was the best of the bunch.

For more than a year, Robin and Pam job shared. Robin was given room and board and a small allowance to be at home so Pam could leave to be home by 5 or 6 p.m. Robin was there in the mornings to help get the kids ready. She did occasional baby-sitting. And she was in the house sleeping whenever we were called out at night. She became another member of our family. The kids loved her—she was kind and gentle and patient. And we became her surrogate family.

Pam became pregnant and needed to stop working. Robin was moving on. We had more than four years of great help. We had to look again. No agencies here in Buffalo. Next chapter, next blog post.