Last night over dinner with an old friend, I found myself explaining, for the nth time, our childcare situation: We have two nannies, one who works three days a week and is awesome, and another who works two days a week and is pretty good. There’s one problem with both of them, however. Together, they cost at least $2,000 a month—our single biggest household expense. Honestly, that is a a fuckload of cash. (Or, apparently, only about a quarter of a fuckload.)
So, even though we love at least one of the nannies, we’re doing something about it. We’re going to send Sasha to day care. And we think we’ve found the right place, a bilingual English-Chinese school in a brand-new building in Chinatown. There, for about half what we’re spending right now, little Sasha will get to sing songs, finger-paint, eat home-cooked Chinese meals, and play with kids her own age who, at the moment, include one French kid, one Japanese, two mixed Chinese-white kids, and a black kid. It’s called, aptly enough, the Preschool of America.
So why do I feel so guilty? Is it because we’re going to have to reduce the hours of, and eventually fire, our awesome nanny, who herself not only adores our little Sasha but cleans the house, does the laundry and takes out the trash? (About the only thing she doesn’t do is speak English; her sole language is Mandarin, which has made for some comedic episodes in the nine or ten months she’s been working for us.) Is it because sending Sasha away for up to 10 hours a day seems like too much for a 14-month-old? Is it because I feel, on some level, like I should be able to watch Sasha myself and get a ton of writing done? (This is what women have dealt with for decades, right?)
Or maybe I’m just jealous: I want to go back to preschool, take naps, sing songs out loud, and eat food other people prepare for me!
Oh, wait, I forgot: I’m already a freelance writer. I’ve been doing those things for years.