Six Cribs in My Living Room
February. I wrote it on the back of an envelope and drew a circle around it. Then I drew a line through it, because February was eight weeks away and I had three twelve-hour shifts on the schedule for next week and a mortgage on a row house that did not care about February.
I carry our health insurance. Nate’s PennDOT job has good benefits too, but mine had the better family plan when Owen was born, so we put everybody on it.
If I stopped working, all three of us lost our coverage. Staying home was not a door. It was a wall.
Friday night, Lauren and Stephanie came over to my house after supper with their babies. We put Wyatt and Owen on a blanket on the living room floor, and Stephanie’s twins, Ava and Ella, in their car seats by the radiator where it was warm.
Our living room is about fourteen feet wide. That is how row houses are in Lewistown, built for mill families a hundred years ago, long and narrow, front room, middle room, kitchen at the back, stairs up the side. We could hear the neighbor’s television through the wall.
“Here’s what I know,” Stephanie said, tapping the pad. “I do hair out of my own kitchen, so I can push my clients to evenings and Saturdays. Lauren’s at the dentist’s office Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Jenna’s on three twelves a week. If we trade right, somebody’s always off.”
Lauren looked at her. “Somebody’s always off,” she said slowly. “For three of us.”
“For three of us,” Stephanie said. “And whoever else needs it. Amy’s in the same boat. Amy’s going to lose her job at the bank if she misses another day, she told me tonight.”
“If we pushed the couch back against the wall,” I said, “we could get five or six of those portable cribs in here. The white ones that fold. Maybe six.”
Nobody said anything for a second. Then Lauren started to cry, a little, the way you do when you have been holding your breath for three days.
Stephanie reached over and put her hand on Lauren’s knee and kept writing with the other one.
We were careful about it. I want people to understand that. This was not going to be a daycare and we never once called it one.
Nobody paid anybody a dime. It was a few moms trading turns watching each other’s babies, short term, while the waiting lists caught up.
Informal like that, friends covering for friends with no money changing hands, is not a business. I read up on the state’s rules before a single crib came out of a box, because I am a nurse and I do not like finding out the rules after the fact.
We did have rules of our own, though. Every baby came with a bag and a written sheet: feeding times, allergies, the pediatrician’s number, the parents’ work numbers.
We kept a notebook on the kitchen counter, and whoever was on wrote down every bottle, every diaper, every nap.
Saturday, Nate came home off a ten-hour plow shift and did not even take his boots off. He looked at the living room, looked at me, and said, “Where do you want the couch.”
That is my husband. He does not need a speech. He needs a direction.