I was a well-sought-after babysitter. I specifically remember an altercation between two of my mothers when one of them tried to “poach” me away from the other. She wanted first “dibs” on my availability. Besides the Friday and Saturday night gigs, when my married clients went out on date nights, I had longer engagements, like the one I had for the entire summer, for two summers, working for Mrs. Fox.
Mrs. Fox, married — (her husband is a cloudy memory) — had three very small children, one in pre-school, two in early-elementary school. She had a full-time job in retail, in some type of management position. A corporate career. This was fairly unheard of in 1967, in 1968 when I was her babysitter. I was 13 and 14 years old.
Mothers with children that young, mostly stayed home. Indeed, my own mother became a school cafeteria worker, a lunch lady, only after my younger brother started first grade. During the school year, she worked “mother’s hours.” She was home all summer.
For those summers, I was with the Foxes, five days a week, Monday through Friday, 10 hours a day. (Mrs. Fox needed some commuting time.) At eight each morning, my mother drove me the two miles from our house to my job at their house. She picked me up each evening at six. I was paid 50 cents an hour for my 50-hour work week. Twenty-five dollars. A fortune!
I do not ever remember any interaction with Mr. Fox. Even if you were working hard to climb that corporate ladder, if you were the woman, the mother, you were also still responsible for the kids. Anyway, that’s what I witnessed.
I am sitting in my mother’s car, in the Foxes’ driveway, about to get out. My mother says, “Hold on a minute, Babs, I want to talk to you.”
I turn my head to look at Mom. She says to me, “I’ve been thinking that if you have the time, try to do some extra jobs for Mrs. Fox. It must be hard for her to have three little kids and a house and a job and a husband. So, look around and pay attention to how you can help this woman.”
I was not yet the know-it-all teenager I would soon become, so I still listened to my mother. I took her advice.
I can see myself standing over a plastic laundry basket that sits on their sofa. The basket holds clean clothes. I am folding a little sunsuit, that one piece, cotton outfit that all little girls, at the time, wore in the summer. I fold it in half and then in half again. A small blonde girl stands beside me and I am saying, “When we are done, show me where the clean clothes go.” I follow her to her bedroom where she opens the drawers to her bureau. I see neat stacks of clothing. We put her clothes away. She leads me to her brothers’ room. I make two tidy piles on top of their bureaus. The empty basket goes back in the laundry room.
Mrs. Fox was delighted when, with my mother’s encouragement, I added light food prep to my chores. “I can peel the potatoes. I can make a salad. My mother wants me to help you,” I told her.
Years later, when we had computers and the internet, I “Googled” Mrs. Fox. I discovered that she had died. She was 81. In her obituary, I read how she had indeed climbed that corporate ladder, becoming one of the first two women in her company’s management training program and that she had retired after 35 years of service. Her marriage had ended in divorce.
I thought about when I had known Mrs. Fox. I thought about how my mother, also now deceased, was ahead of her time. My mother, with her raised consciousness, had taught me both empathy for, and awareness of, other women’s lives. My mother taught me how I could be an important part of social change.
Barbara A. Rouillard is a retired public school teacher who lives in Springfield.