My mom had a little girl in her preschool/daycare a few years back named Taylor, who was the "foster" daughter of a woman whose son has been my brother's best friend since they were in preschool themselves. Jesse, my bro's friend, is the biological son of Taylor's "foster" mom. The reason I put foster in quotations is that I don't think Taylor was ever a legal foster child or that Gina (Jesse's mom) was a legal foster parent. In fact I'm sure she wasn't, because she's a single parent and not financially stable at all. I never understood exactly how all that worked out, but my own mother must have been involved in something illegal, if Taylor was registered at the daycare with Gina as her legal parent or guardian.

Taylor's real mom was a 16 year old crack addict living in the same apartment as Gina at the time. She didn't take care of her baby at all, and she threw Taylor out of a two-story house when she was 6 months old. I guess that Gina knew of this girl and her baby, and didn't want Taylor to be posessed by the province into foster care for some personal reason, so she took Taylor instead. That's what I assume, anyway. I've never really been told how it worked out to be the way it was.

So, I started babysitting for Taylor and Nathan when she was 3 and I was 15. Nathan's her younger brother (biological half-brother to Jesse) and was 1 1/2 when I started. Despite all that Taylor had been through, she was absolutely gorgeous - big brown eyes and long blonde curls. She looked just like a doll, and just as I've always pictured my future daughter. They were both beautiful kids, but because of their living situation they weren't very well-behaved (entirely not their fault, of course). It was really difficult sometimes, but I fell in love with them, especially Taylor, right from the beginning.

I baby-sat for them full-time in the summers, and I do mean full-time. Taylor's life would have been much worse with her biological mom I'm sure, but I kept having to remind myself of that. It was hard to keep that in mind because Gina wasn't a very good mother either. But again, not her fault entirely. She worked three jobs (2 at bars) just to maintain a very small portion of a one-story house. Often the cable was turned off or the phone didn't work. She was never home, never cleaned, never bought real food for the fridge. Dishes were piled up so that there were never any clean utensils or bowls. Everytime I made a meal I had to wash all of the dishes so that we had something to eat off of.

For the summers I was 15 and 16 especially, I baby-sat usually 6 days a week, sometimes from 8 am until 10 pm, or more likely noon until after midnight. I literally became a second mother to these kids, and I really did feel like it. Sometimes it stressed me out so badly that I'd go home and cry, or I'd get so emotionally involved in their situation that I'd try desperately to fix it for them, and realize there wasn't a whole lot I could do, being the babysitter and not a real parent. My mom's friends would joke around with me and say, "I remember babysitting at your age - after that, I never wanted to have kids again!" and I laughed and agreed, but really, it only made me want to have kids more. It was so hard dealing with young children for full days at a time, and providing them with the total basics of survival - but at the same time, it was so fulfilling. I became very protective over them, and found myself literally mothering them - giving them rules, teaching them things, etcetera.

Often the house was so messy it drove me crazy. I had to clean it. After I'd get the kids in bed, I'd spend the next couple hours doing all the dishes, moping the floors, and straightening out every other room. I felt like I was the single parent, cleaning up the shitty little house that I was constantly afraid of, as Taylor always said, "bad guys" coming into. There was a single deadbolt lock on the front door, and it was a sketchy part of town. I was terrified of someone breaking in, especially after Jesse told me one day he was really upset because his bike and things from the backyard were being stolen. I'd go to check the locks on the doors like twenty times in an hour.

Nathan's crib was crammed into a little laundry room, and Taylor shared a room with Gina. That room was always so messy it was disgusting. I will never forget the one time it was at its worst. There were pieces of bread covered in mold around the "bed", which was a couple really dirty mattresses on the floor. Cups of tea with layers of mold on top. Everything in there was rotten and smelled digusting, and you couldn't see the floor. Every single one of Taylor's toys were pulled out of every box and closet, so that I was almost shin-deep in junk. You literally couldn't walk in the room. So that day, I made a game out of cleaning the room with Tay. I forget exactly how I did it, but it took several hours. We had all of the Barbies in one box, all the Sailer Moon stuff in another, and the blankets on the mattresses again and everything. Gina came home and couldn't believe it. She told me over and over, "You didn't have to do this, you didn't have to do this" and I told her it wasn't just me, it was Taylor and I, and we had fun. I thought she was going to cry. She always got like that every time I cleaned up the house.

There was never any food. Sometimes Gina would give me $20 and send me to the store to buy stuff. It was those times that I really felt like a mother and not your average babysitter. It was a pain because I couldn't drive yet, so we'd have to walk and carry everything back with us. Sometimes I'd go to make them lunch and realize that there wasn't a single thing for them to eat besides some stale chips or mustard. I used my own money to buy milk, bread, cheese, Kraft Dinner, and usually a little treat for after they ate some healthy food. They were so accustomed to eating junk that it was really hard to get them to eat anything else. I had to make my own rules for them and punish them for not eating good things.

When I went shopping with them it was quite the chore. I'd strap Nathan into the stroller, and then Taylor would scream about it because she wanted to be in the stroller but there wasn't enough room for her. I told her to be a big girl with me and hold my hand when we walked. I was so nervous about walking there because the sidewalk on our side of the street was totally decrepid, full of cracks and bumps and sometimes didn't exist at all. I had one hand pushing the stroller and one holding Taylor, and I knew that if the stroller hit a bump it would easily tip over, or jump on to the street where there was busy traffic. The worst part of the entire trip was that one little strip of sidewalk. The rest I could deal with - the older women staring at me, giving me dirty looks, thinking the kids were mine and that I was a teenage whore. I had never in my life realized how badly teens with babies must get stared at and whispered about. Sometimes I felt like going right up to those women and screaming "They're not mine!", but then I thought, you know what? What if they were mine? It's none of anyone elses business. I loved those kids like they were my own, or at least like they were my siblings.

Taylor and Nathan had no concept of any sort of bedtime ritual. Taylor would go to bed whenever the hell she wanted, which sometimes wasn't until midnight. At first, the only way she'd fall asleep was if she curled up with me on the couch and we watched TV until she fell asleep. Taylor would sleep in her clothes all the time. She rarely wore underwear or socks, and her feet and clothes were always disgusting. She'd sleep in the same clothing she'd been wearing for two or three days in a row. She owned maybe one or two nightgowns. Eventually I taught them the way they should be going to bed - first, get in your pajamas. Taylor would scream about it at first and refuse to, but then I refused to play with her or talk to her anymore that night until she got changed. I taught them how to brush their teeth, pick out two stories each, and then get in bed and listen while I took turns reading them, then go to sleep when I turned off the light.

I also taught Taylor how to do puzzles, some easy preschool workbook stuff, and how to draw people more cartoon-like and not stick-figure. I showed her once how to draw a girl, and from then on she'd beg me to draw girl after girl, with different hair and skin colours, some in skirts, some in dresses, some in jeans. Then we'd name them a different name on the bottom. When I came the next day she'd show me pictures she'd drawn of girls, traced from my pictures. She made me tons of pictures, with "To Krista I love you Love Taylor". I used to have them stuck all over my wall. I'd take her and Nathan out sometimes to movies (we had to take the bus there) and the parks. If you've ever read The Babysitters Club books, you'd remember the "Kid Kits" they'd take sometimes - I had something similar to that I made myself. Everytime I came I brought all my felts, crayons, scissors, glue, glitter, colouring books, and sometimes special things I bought for them. At Easter one year I bought a carton of eggs myself, plus all the colouring stuff and we made Easter eggs.

Anyway, I could go on forever with little stories. The thing is, Taylor was very depressed and had very little confidence. She probably should have been seeing a child psychologist, and with reason. Gina told her at a very young age about her past, and I don't know if that was a good idea or not. You don't really know with things like that, you know? When are you supposed to tell a kid the truth? I think Gina was just trying to have an honest relationship with her, but this was a 4 year old who would tell you nonchalently, "My mommy didn't like me and she threw me out a window, that's why I don't live with her". Taylor was very sensitive and would cry at the drop of a hat. Some days, she'd cry all day and not tell me what was wrong. She'd lay on the floor in a ball and pout - similarly to the way I acted when I was really depressed. She thrived on being loved, she'd absolutely beam if you praised her, but if you punished her or disapproved of anything she did, she'd begin to cry immediately, and sometimes run and hide. I don't mean just angry crying like almost all kids do, I mean really sad crying, as if she thought I didn't love her anymore. At one point, Gina started finding little bald spots on her head and we realized that she'd been pulling out her own hair from anxiety. This was a four year old girl with complex psycholgical problems of an adult.

So I babysat these kids really heavily for about two years, and then they moved 45 minutes away from me to live with Gina's mom, their Grandma. I didn't seem them as often, but still every once in a while. I'll never forget the last day I babysat them in that house. Taylor and Nathan both knew it was the last time because they were moving in two days. When I was putting her to bed, Taylor asked me, "Krista, are we like sisters?" I thought I was going to cry. I said, "Of course we are", and she asked if sometimes I could come to their new house and we could have sleepovers together. I said sure, and that I'd still see them when their mom dropped Jesse off at our house, and that maybe sometimes I could come out and visit. After they went to bed I cried for the rest of the night, and all the way home.

A year later, Taylor was already 5 or 6 and she'd been going to a Montessori School for kindergarten - I probably spelled it wrong, but one of those private schools that goes up to Grade 3 or 4 I think. Gina had managed to save enough money to send her and Nathan both to it. At their old house I remembered a box that had a lot of money in it on top of the microwave, that Jesse had written "Disneyland" on. I think that money may have gone towards their school. It's funny because I used to slip twoonies or loonies I had into that box from the money she paid me. So I guess I may have helped (in a small way) to send them to private school.

Anyway, one day they came by with Jesse to visit me, and I couldn't believe how much they'd grown up. Taylor showed me her math books and read out of another book for me, and sang me a song she learned in school about all of the continents of the world. I was totally blown away. I hugged her and told her she was so smart and that I was so proud of her. I still can't believe the change she went through. When she was naming a whole bunch of countries and continents for me I just kept thinking that I always knew she was a smart girl. She just needed the oppertunity to learn, she just needed to be loved and supported. She'll probably still have some difficulties in her life, but I know she can get through them. I feel so proud of her for so many little things - just for being a good girl. Being nice to her brother. Reading her books for school. I just want to hug her right now and tell her I always believed that she was a really great person, and that she had a charm about her that could change other people.

They live in Seattle now, so I never see them. Haven't seen them in a year, probably. Taylor must be so grown up now, and so smart. I think that someday when she's a little bit older, I'll contact her and I'm sure she will remember me. I still think of her as a little sister, and someone I care about deeply. I've never cared for children more than I do for her and Nathan. I think about them all the time, wonder how and what they're doing.

I've read before of teenagers having older friends, like a friend of the family sort of confidante-type person. I'm really not that much older than Tay. When she's 16, I'll be about 27 or so. I really hope that she'll move back here, and that we can be like real sisters. She's everything I'd want in a younger sister, and I really hope she'll feel like she can confide in me. It's wishful thinking, I know. I mean I know she'll remember me, but I don't know how much. How much do you remember from when you were 4? Not a whole lot.

I have a really hard time separating myself from those kids, even though I haven't babysat them since I was 17. I still think of them as part of me, somehow. I like to believe that a lot of what they know of the world and how they see themselves was instilled by me and not their own mother.

I really miss those kids now.

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