Aunt Sandy

I’ve got a new parental dread: daycare. I’m starting to worry about daycare because sometime in the next six months (and no I don’t know when I’ll go back to work, stop asking) I’m going to have to find Hannah a spot. It’s very difficult in this city to get daycare, as most places have a waitlist that is on average one year long. If your child is less than a year old, it’s even harder. I’ve come to the conclusion, however, that it probably doesn’t matter that much if the day care you get is the best in the city or the filthy home of some neglectful days-of-our-lives addict with a half-finished basement. Your child will turn out fine either way. And the only clue you need to avoid the really bad ones, I have decided, is to make sure there’s no blood on the wall.

Which takes me to Aunt Sandy’s house. Oh Aunt Sandy. Not an aunt at all, but some stranger who made her manicure money by neglecting the neighbourhood kids. The only thing I can remember about her is her red, red nails. It was her house with the half-finished basement to which we were exiled, and except for meal preparation she spent the day watching soaps and polishing her nails. Aunt Sandy’s preternaturally keen ears were always tuned to the opening of the basement door – WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I need to go to the bathroom, Aunt Sandy! Okay, then right back downstairs! There was a day that the plumbing was wonky, so if we had to use the bathroom we were marched down the street to the home of some family of seven children whose names all started with J.

The basement was less than idyllic and probably not at all safe for children. Our play area took up most of the basement, but not all. Aunt Sandy’s husband had a work room in the back, which held dusty tools that had not been moved since the Nixon administration and less dusty piles of porn. I don’t remember how many of us children there were, but I do remember that her son Derek made my life miserable. He was a year older than me and quite the bully; I’m sure that now he’s a cop, principal, or dentist. No, he wasn’t smart enough to be a dentist. Maybe he’s in parking enforcement. Anyway, a budding scientist from day one, I remember being partly thrilled and horrified after my dad told me how every surface of our body was colonized by various organisms, and that wasn’t a bad thing. With little kid glee I told Derek that his eyelashes were covered in bugs. He held me down until I yelped “MY EYELASHES!! MY EYELASHES ARE COVERED IN BUGS!!!” (In retrospect, maybe I deserved that one.)

I mean, this place wasn’t just substandard, it was a twisted, demented joke. In retrospect, it should have been patently clear that Aunt Sandy’s house was unfit for children from the blood on the walls. Upon entering the house through the garage we were welcomed by the family dog, a poor, stupid lab whose name is lost to the sands of time. He would be so excited to see us that he would come running, wildly wagging his tail. Wagging his tail against the narrow walls. Leading to bleeding of the tail, blood smears on the walls, and eventually, the docking of said tail. It was quite the greeting, a new Rorschach pattern on the walls daily.

What can I say? It was the 80s. Ahem, 70s. Standards were lower then. And my sister and I turned out okay. In fact, maybe I learned an early lesson on controlling my nerdier impulses from the resident bully.