Babysitting the Baumgartners

Prologue

I was fifteen when I started babysitting for the Baumgartners. They had two kids. Henry and Janie were four and five the first time I sat in their living room eating pizza and watching “Lilo and Stitch” with them. I still remember them that way, both conked out on the floor, their greasy faces smearing their mom’s white carpet.

I loved babysitting for them. Mr. Baumgartner-”Call me Doc, everybody does”-usually came home drunk enough to pay me way too much for the night. Mrs. Baumgartner-she never said to call her anything but Mrs. Baumgartner, although I did shorten it to “Mrs. B” over the years-was very pretty and very nice and kept really good ice cream (Haagen-Dazs) in the freezer. They had a huge TV, an enormous house, and I became their regular babysitter every Friday night, sometimes Saturdays, too, all through high school.

My parents complained they never saw me on weekends, and would ask “Where are you going now?” as I headed out the door, calling back, “I’m babysitting the Baumgartners!”

“Again?”

Mr. and Mrs. B liked to go out. And I liked the magazines and clothes I could buy with all my extra babysitting money. I never had to flip burgers like my sister, Amy. The Baumgartners even sold me my first car, a 2001 Saturn, at a price far less than I would have been given anywhere else-Mrs. B said Doc was just tired of picking me up and driving me home.

I used to have my little sister, Amy, go babysit whenever I had a conflict. That usually meant I had a date-and the Baumgartners hated it when I started dating. Really, it was a hardship for me, too. Tough call-a date with Toby Lumetto, or babysitting the Baumgartners? Amy complained the kids never behaved for her, but they always did for me. They were great kids.

I loved the Baumgartners and they loved me.

The winter of the year I graduated high school, the Baumgartners went to Key West. When they came back, Mrs. Baumgartner swore she’d never do it again without help. Henry was seven and Janie was eight, and they were “too much of a handful,” she said. Just kids, I thought, but I wasn’t their parent-I was pretty much their playmate-so what did I know?

The next winter, Mrs. Baumgartner called and asked if I wanted to come with them-all expenses paid, over the Christmas holiday-a free trip to Key West! It took me about five seconds to say “Yes!” to that proposition. My parents hemmed and hawed about it, but I was over eighteen by then, and I could pretty much do what I wanted…technically. I finally got their blessing, packed my bags, and we were off to the land of sunshine and bikinis!

Up until then, I’d sort of thought of the Baumgartners as surrogate parents, but it was during the trip to Key West when things changed. The Baumgartners became more to me-much more-and that wasn’t all that changed. Everything changed that summer.

If I’d known… I don’t know. But I had no idea at the time how transformative the trip would be, then and even later in my life.