#274 Coins- Mona Simpson
It seems that stories about foreign nannies taking care of
American children is a popular short story subject. We’ve seen a few by
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and we just had another by Edith Pearlman a few days
ago. While each has it’s own theme, I find most of them to feel very similar.
Here we have a Philippine live-in nanny. She jokes that
people always want a nanny from the Philippines: “Like a BMW…we are status
symbols.” I find that way too true to be funny actually. Like the other
stories, the parents seem to be loving and well-intentioned, but aloof, guilty,
and slightly jealous of the closeness between their children and their
employee.
“Dee told me, when I first came here, I don’t need to teach
you children. You have been a mother to five…Children they are not hard. But
most you need to think about the mother. Here, the mothers are the ones that
throw tantrums.”
What a weird system. The nanny is here raising another
couples children so she can send money to her own children. Her services are
needed because the couple is so busy working to give their own children—the
ones they put in the care of a stranger—the best life they can. Seems we’ve become a satire about ourselves.
This has nothing to do with the story, just a thought while this topic keeps
popping up in my reading.
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