America, the beautiful.

A few days ago, I was speaking to my coworker in the kitchen. 

I spend 6 days a week with this woman and I’ve gotten to know her as well as any two people who don’t speak the same language can get to know one another.

Here’s some of what I know about her: 

She’s roughly 5 feet tall. She has shoulder length, jet black hair that she wears in a hairnet all day at work. She guards her personality and her emotions. She’s apprehensive to let people get to know her. She’s observant and vigilant in ways that I’ve never seen a person be. She’s always laughing once you get to know her. She’s from Guatemala, along with most of the rest of her family. She shows up to work every day and works circles around most of the rest of us. She takes pride in her work. And she never expects a pat on the back. 

She was skeptical of me when I first started working in her kitchen. It’s more her kitchen than it’ll ever be mine. I’m ok with that. She’s worked there for 7 years. When I met her, it was my first step into a commercial kitchen.

In the beginning, I messed up a lot. She saw everything. She showed me more patience than she could have.

We don’t speak the same language and so when I’d mess up, it always felt personal when she’d correct me. As much as I was aware of the communication gap, I couldn’t help but take it personally. It took time for us to understand each other. Today, we do. At least, I adore her. And I’m hopeful that, after 8 months, she likes me too.

About 2 months ago, the younger of her two daughters had a birthday party that she invited me to. Her daughter was turning 4 years old. She invited her entire family to her home to celebrate. I got there before the rest of the family showed up. I sat in the living room as a seemingly never ending onslaught of Guatemalans filled the single level home. I was the only white person there. And I was the only person not fluent in spanish.

She made a beef stew and enough homemade maseca tortillas to satisfy a starving army. With so many family members present and hungry, we fashioned ourselves like an assembly line. There was a singular table in the dining room which we all used to eat the birthday stew. Since the table was tucked up against the corner of the wall to save space, only 4 chairs were available. The chairs were occupied on a first come first served basis. When you arrived, you’d get a paper plate from the kitchen, serve yourself the stew, sit at the table, reach into the tall bag of homemade tortillas at the center of the table using them to shovel the stew into your mouth until full, then you’d get up so the next party guest could eat and this process repeated itself until everyone was happy and fed.

The young girl whose birthday it was ran in the front yard among her cousins and other neighborhood friends. Soccer balls flew everywhere, children were tackled; screaming, laughing, yelling, crying. All of it. A scene familiar to me from my own childhood.

When everyone was finished eating dinner, we occupied the front porch to watch the children take turns at the pinata hanging between the two giant oak trees in the front yard. They used one of my old golf clubs to beat the giant ears off of the cardboard Minnie Mouse. After a few wacks, tootsie pops and Reese's cups came spouting from every orifice of Minnie’s face and rained on the grass where all of the children jumped on the ground to collect their bounty. 

This memory looms large in my mind when I think about my coworker and I ask her about her daughter. I ask her questions like: “how is she doing” and “what she’s doing”, and “what she’s eating”, and “what she's watching on TV”, and “when she’s starting school”, and “who’s taking care of her while I’m at work with her mother”?

Because of the large family she has, my coworker is able to patch together childcare for her daughter. Most days, she goes to a babysitter who is also a family friend. When the babysitter isn’t available, one of her family members takes the responsibility. 

All of this was true until yesterday when her babysitter notified her that he’d no longer be able to babysit. 

The babysitter got another job.

Now, she has one week to find alternative care for her 4 year old.

This would be bad news for anyone. It’s especially so for an immigrant single-mother who simply has to work as much as she does to pay her bills.

And I’m not writing any of this because the woman who I’m speaking of needs sympathy from anyone who might read this. She’s never gotten it in the past. She’s figured it out before and I know she’ll figure it out again. But it does pain me to watch her in a situation like this.

She needs childcare for her daughter and she has no idea where she’s going to find it.

I don’t know where to tell her to look either. It seems that childcare is difficult to find these days and quality childcare is even harder. 

I’ve heard horror stories about childcare institutions that hire staff unfit to care for children. I’ve seen some of the childcare employees and they barely seem fit to care for themselves. 

And so I started to think about all of the potential solutions to a problem like the one she’s having. The best I came up with was this:

I know that there are millions of elderly adults living in nursing homes in this country. Many of these adults live there against their will. Many are as lonely as they’ve been in their entire lives. Many of them would love the opportunity to supervise and care for someone like my coworker’s child. And I bet they’d all do it for free. 

When I think of a group of people qualified to take care of America’s youth, I can think of no group of people more qualified than the seniors living in the nursing homes of America. 

To bridge the gap between the greatest generation our country has ever seen and the future of this country is as beautiful of an idea as I can come up with. 

America won’t ever be perfect. But with some creativity, we just might preserve its beauty.