The Biggest Risk I've Ever Taken

It was a big risk and it was a dumb risk, thinking back on it!

Who but a naïve 17-year-old would have left her native land alone to work as a nanny in another country?

Who but a naïve 17-year-old would have thought working as a nanny in “America” was better than working as a nanny in England or anywhere else close to home? It wasn’t, even though an English friend had to be rescued by her father when she was literally living a Cinderella existence in the English Channel Islands, complete with cleaning out ashes from the fireplaces instead of watching little kids, as her contract stated.

Who but a naïve 17-year-old would have believed the slimy man at a Yorkshire job agency and filled out the paperwork? Had I not “known” since I was a small child that my destiny lay west across the Atlantic, I never would have gone through with it.

Nanny or Cleaning Woman?

Nannies in the States were, and often still are, treated badly. We spent a lot of time vacuuming the same barely dirty carpets, stripping beds, cleaning bathrooms, peeling celery and potatoes, dusting and polishing, etc. Three of “my” kids were in school all day, except for summer months, and even then, they went to summer vacation school.

Ergo, I only had a screaming, uncooperative two-year-old to deal with most days for a good chunk of the hours. His temper tantrums were so loud that one day a neighbor three houses away came over to help me calm him. Although the two-year-old brother I had left behind had his problems, he never raged like that. I couldn’t handle this brat, the son of two psychiatrists in the middle of getting a divorce.

As indicated, a job as a nanny is usually demeaning. If you’re lucky, you don’t have to fend off sexual assault when the wife is out of the home. Yet it involves endless hours on the job, on-call at all times, with every other Sunday off, if you’re lucky. The pay was abysmal but you don't know that until you arrive and find out how much everything costs.

On your day off, you can take the bus and/or the train into town, if you’ve got the money. If you don’t, the employer deducts the fare(s) from next week’s pay. The luck of the draw determines your treatment – either as a servant, or one of the family.

Staying was the Biggest Risk of All

Yet even beyond that, actually staying on in the U.S. when the nanny gig turned out to be a bust was the biggest risk I’ve ever taken, foreknowledge or not. I moved from Pennsylvania to Michigan at the invitation of a penfriend.

Little did I realize she had forgotten to tell me that southeastern Michigan had probably the highest unemployment rate in the nation, even in the latter half of the 20th century. That’s where I was first told to “go back where you came from” and “you’re taking a job away from an American” who hadn’t wanted the office filing job until I expressed interest.

Eventually I found work through the British Consulate in Detroit. This time, it was a good family and I stayed with them for almost 2 years before answering the siren call of California. Again, I was drawn westward but first I studied library books about the state and located the YWCA in a safe-sounding town. It was safe, and I was protected there, in spite of the loneliness.

About half a century later, I am again in that same area, having survived many economic ups and downs, relocations, and other hardships along the way. I have also learned lessons about life I could not have learned any other way.

As Robert Frost wrote, “Two paths diverged in a wood and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” (The Road Not Taken)

Keeping in Touch

For all our frequent correspondence, family telephone calls, then Skype messaging, and now Zoom calls, I am not the person who left England.

Instead, I’m the Yankee relative. I have no home country to return to or claim. Britain’s open immigration has allowed hundreds of thousands of foreigners – some seeking asylum -- to settle on their little island and claim benefits, forcing the native born to wait months or years for needed surgeries and other social amenities.

Since the onslaught of mishandled Covid-19 and the completely avoidable post-Brexit nightmares, there is really nothing left there, especially not for someone who is a citizen of the USA. Like everyone else here, I’m dealing with all of our own problems right where I’m hunkered down.

For a naïve 17-year-old to come to “America” alone was the biggest risk I could have taken and it has made a difference I cannot undo. I could not go back if I tried.

There are regrets, of course, but this land was my destiny. That will always be true, even though my coming here alone was the biggest risk I’ve ever taken.