With Keyla off to California yesterday, we’ve closed the chapter on having au pairs in the house. It’s been about 8 years since the very first one, we started in 2008. Yvonne, Eliana, Denise, Se Hyun, Nat and Keyla. There are so many stories and memories of all the girls, mostly good, but like everything in life, there were also little mishaps and arguments and misunderstandings – but I’m happy to report that we are generally in touch with all of them and there is a fondness back and forth. I like thinking about these young women, out an about all over the world, growing up! And when they tell other people their life story, they’ll have a bit that goes – “…and then I spent a year in the US near Washington DC with this family, taking care of these couple of kids, Vince and Edda…” Since I will never raise a typical girl, it’s nice to think of these girls as my surrogate daughters, teaching me all the things about having a girl -> young adult in the house.
We are busy turning the au pair room into a study and a guest room so we spent a lot of time upstairs today. I like thinking about all the conversations and adventures the girls had from that room. And our cars! Our cars! They went on a million adventures without us (And only one fender bender backing out from our driveway into the parked car behind us, I thought for sure there would be a car accident – most of the au pairs needed to be taught how to drive.) Who knows where they drove to? As long as they paid for the gas, I didn’t ask them and now I have only the car – and the car won’t tell me any their secrets.