It happened. Out of the blue. (People always say that, but it’s a cliché for a reason) In just a few words, and my happy mommy train was knocked off the track:

“I’m I going to be happy with this money after I count it?”

This simple sentence, uttered by my nanny, imploded our system of supply and demand. What she was supplying, I wasn’t buying anymore. Namely, her services.

All over the amount of her Christmas bonus. A bonus. A gift. Not a given.

As a writer I treat words more seriously than civilians. So, when my nanny made what she considered a simple question, there was no going back; her greed, her ingratitude, now exploded across the Holmes Family universe.

So, from the last of December when I informed her that “ I wouldn’t be needing her services in the New Year,” ; the search for a new babysitter began, lasting until the third week of January, thanks to an assist from my Mom who came from Michigan to help care for Julia, with my sister in law in the wings waiting to provide coverage, while I worked and interviewed new child care workers on the side, in the evenings, I thought of the gift my former nanny had given me.

For a long, long while I believed the goal in life was to get all my ducks—or sippy cups— in a row, with all the tops matching, aligned then everything in my life would be ducky. Once Julia came home, I thought my Mallards looked marvelous. I’d hired a great nanny. My job was going well, my grad school thesis, accepted.  Things seemed to be going along swimmingly until that sentence was launched from my nanny’s mouth, when she revealed her true self. And in that Big Bang I understood, there’s no perfection. No time when the machine runs without a hitch. There’s always, a Big Bang waiting to expand the universe, to stretch it, pull it into a new definition of life. And reality.

Change is eternal in life, especially true in the Big Bang Theory of Life and Nannies.

Childcare workers, like all people, are complicated creatures. An email reply from another mother from my Upper West Side Mom Yahoo Group put it best,” This is person who’s giving your daughter examples to live by when you’re not around. Get rid of her.”

Life as a money-grubber is not on my Julia list.