Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Wouldn't it be great

to have a nursemaid? You know, one of those spinster types who sleeps in the nursery with the children, so that they can crawl in bed with her if they have trouble sleeping, and who gets them up in the morning and dressed and shuttles them off to their lessons (maybe we need a governess as well) and feeds them tea and bathes them and puts them in their dressing gowns and takes them down to the drawing room for a peck on the cheek from Mummy and Pupah before retiring to the nursery for the night. She'd have to be a Mary Poppins sort of nursemaid, all spoonfuls of sugar and ship-shape, so I wouldn't feel guilty letting her take care of them 99.99999% of their childhoods, but she wouldn't be allowed to fly away under her umbrella whenever the wind changed or the drunken chimney sweeps got too much for her. I think, to round out the image, we'd also need a cook and a housekeeper, just to keep the household running proper. I don't want to be greedy...I'm not asking for footmen or butlers or chamber maids. Just someone else to prepare meals and dispense bandaids and hover while firstborn dilly-dallies over his morning and evening ablutions and read stories and snap her fingers to clean up the toys. That's all, really, I don't ask much.

2 comments:

  1. I so, so, so, so, so agree. I can't imagine what it would be like to have regular help, either a kind family member or some sort of paid employee. A few of my sisters live in this suburb where bigger-sized families are becoming the norm, four kids, even more. Oh yeah, also having a live-in au pair or a 12+ hour a day nanny are also the norm there, too. I say I wouldn't want that but truthfully, help would be.. well, helpful!

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  2. Sounds like you've seen Mary Poppins as many times as I have. My kids have the chimney sweep dance scene right down to the kicks and leaps. It's rivaled only by the Old Bamboo from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang....

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