Right and Left (Part 2)

“In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.”

— John Muir

When I was a kid between the ages of eleven and sixteen, my mother farmed me out for every babysitting job that came her way. And if one was slow in coming, she solicited my babysitting services to every neighbor with a child (or a few) within six blocks.

I had no choice in the matter.

My free time as a child was absorbed by the responsibility of watching over children.

The summer between 7th and 8th grade, I babysat two girls two houses down who were not much younger than I was. Their parents were separated (which was shocking and not spoken about publicly in the 1980’s), and the mother worked full-time.

I didn’t know her occupation, but her daily uniform was a polyester A-line skirt and matching jacket, tan pantyhose, and penny loafers. She took the bus to and from downtown on weekdays, and her feet always hurt after work. I imagined she was a secretary because that was the only profession I was aware of for a woman.

I babysat those kids from 6:50 am to 5:30 pm every weekday and earned 50 cents an hour. Halfway through the summer, I negotiated a rate increase to 75 cents an hour. I was so shockingly shy, it is a wonder how I broached the subject.

I remember the mother’s reaction when I asked. She pursed her lips and crinkled up her face as if she sipped something bitter.

“Well, that is a lot of money, so you will have to start keeping the house clean. I do not want to pay that kind of money and come home to a messy house after I have worked all day.”

And so it was agreed, and every Friday, the husband left a check on the counter for my work. Each check was collected and stashed in the top drawer of my dresser, and at the end of summer, my father drove me to the bank to deposit the short stack into my savings account.

Every single check bounced.

I didn’t understand. How was a check worthless? Didn’t we all agree this paper was actual money?

My father angrily laughed at the teller.

“You mean to tell me they don’t have enough money in their account to cover a single puny check? What a joke!”

We left the bank, drove home, and my father walked straight to the neighbor’s to speak with the husband. I didn’t envy the guy. The next day, my father and I returned to the bank, deposited the checks, and this time they cleared.

I didn’t babysit for them again, and just like their separation, nothing about them was mentioned in our house.

When I was twelve, a neighbor down the alley had a baby who was asthmatic. The parents booked me when they wanted a Saturday evening date.

I distinctly remember putting the baby to sleep and running a type of nebulizer or humidifier to help with his breathing. His room was dark and cool with a single glowing nightlight. I developed a type of dire anxiety over the fear that his parents would come home from a fun date night to find their baby dead.

My twelve-year-old brain was irrationally obsessed with it happening on my watch. Once my mind got a hold of the idea, I compulsively worried about it.

Because of this, after putting him to bed, I staked myself in the hallway, and every few minutes I tiptoed into the baby’s cool, dark room to check on him. This was years before baby monitors. So the best way to check an infant was to watch his chest cavity rise and fall and listen for the sleeping sound he made.

The sound was a combination of a nasally, soft-pitched wheezy whistle on the exhale.

Because of the stark relief I felt that he was alive, along with the calming nature of his room, this became the sweetest sound to my ears, and I clung to it each time I checked on him.

That sound is the same sound the young owls make when they try to vocalize. They can’t “hoot” yet, but they try, and end up producing a nasally, soft-pitched, wheezy whistle on the exhale.

This morning, before the crows started, Left made the sound a couple of times. I think because he saw their approach (or maybe mine).

It is a sound that happily strums my brain, and it feels heavenly to hear it after all these years.

Apparently, sound triggers memory so powerfully because the auditory cortex is directly connected to the parts of the brain where memory (in the hippocampus) and emotion (in the ancient amygdala) exist. The brain’s ability to retain this is called echoic memory.

…

As promised, these are the photos taken when I turned to look back after walking away.

For me, they are some of the most beautiful ones to date and also my personal favorites. Nature is magic and majestic.