Childcare options were extremely limited as a kid growing up in rural Georgia in the late ’80s, early ’90s. If both parents were working then you could send your kids to a daycare facility but those were limited and had disturbing similarities to many scenes in Lord of the Flies. You could leave them to fend for themselves, which was of course Lord of the Flies on a smaller scale. Or you could hire someone to come to your house and take care of them.
I do not think there are words to express how thankful I am that my parents opted to hire someone to come to our house and take care of us as kids. I was a sensitive kid and I am absolutely certain if I had gone to one of the local daycare centers my life would have been markedly different. Now, that’s not to say that these places were bad, per se. No, it’s just to say that I was a wimp and would have been eaten alive.
We were blessed to have a woman named Sharon visit our house for a few hours almost every day and watch us during our tender, formative years. Believe it or not, before Sharon ever came into our lives I had never experienced sweet tea. You know, true sweet tea. Like spoon can stand straight up, better have your insulin ready, sweet tea. If you are a ‘true southerner’ you always have a pitcher of sweet tea in your refrigerator. Always. Before Sharon, we never had that, so maybe I was never southern until meeting her.
The thing about my parents is that food and drink were not so much about enjoying as they were about sustaining life and being easy to make. If you want tea, put a teabag in water and drink it. You want a hotdog, eat a hotdog. What’s a bun? Sharon showed me that there was more to life than drinking liquids just to hydrate. If you’re going to hydrate yourself, you should enjoy it. So when she came over and dumped half a bag of dixie crystals into about four cups of tea my eyes nearly bulged out of my young head.
This lady could make things happen. A Southern Mary Poppins if you will. If we would so much as suggest a box of cookies or snack cake would be good, within minutes a pickup truck would appear in the front yard and they were hand-delivered. It was the most amazing thing a kid could have imagined. She even introduced us to our first buffet restaurant, which may seem like a strange thing to remember, but as a kid who had never been into a restaurant before, can you imagine seeing steaming chafing dishes for the first time?
I have been thinking about childcare workers and teachers a lot lately. Especially ones that have kids. Because to be someone that has your own children and have to go to someone else’s house or building to watch other kids would have to be a somewhat torturous experience. Here you are using all your energy on these kids that are not yours and by the time you get home, you barely have enough energy for your own. Of course in Sharon’s case, I do remember her bringing her kids over from time to time. I still have a few scars from her son.
I would imagine a lot of people like Sharon, who end up sort of fading from our lives, think they never meant much of anything to anyone. Teachers, Babysitters, old ladies at church that volunteer. They are a much larger part of the equation of what makes a person a person than they will ever know. If I didn’t have the army of selfless caretakers and educators in my life from such an early age I really doubt that wimpy kid would have turned into the slightly less wimpy adult he is now.
As for Sharon, she does not know this but she is somewhat responsible for a lot of my writings. In addition to teaching me what sweet tea was and keeping me alive through my childhood days, she also taught me what caffeine is. I was not allowed to tell my parents, but she let me drink Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper for the first time, and let me tell you...without caffeine, none of this is possible.
Thanks, Sharon.