Adventures in Baby-Sitting

Ever helped a 4-year-old floss? It’s like putting lipstick on a lemur.

When I painted the house a year ago, I tried to incorporate Van Gogh’s textured brush strokes into the brick areas out front. Did a single neighbor notice?

Such is the life of an artist.

FYI, when Van Gogh was beginning to lose it, he got into a raging argument with Paul Gauguin — you know geniuses, prickly about the stupidest things.

In the course of the argument, Van Gogh cut off his own ear and later presented it to a prostitute. This caused a stir, because most people back then paid for affection as they do today, with cash and broken promises.

But an ear?

The next day, French police hurried Van Gogh to a hospital, where they treated the ear but not his bigger emotional needs. Were they more astute, Van Gogh might still be alive today. He’d be almost 200 years old, living in Big Sur and painting cottages for tourists.

That’s my theory anyway.

I have a theory on everything. It’s why I’ve been banned at dinner parties and thrown out of three colleges (four if you include beauty school). I’m what they call a disruptor … a revolutionary … a goof.

No wonder I can’t get many baby-sitting gigs.

I was watching my wee granddaughter the other night. “Cakes,” I call her, for she is sweet and fluffy and celebratory. Angel food.

Remember that stretch of time, two summers in a row, where I attended four weddings and didn’t manage to acquire a single slice of beloved wedding cake? As journalists point out, the first time is an aberration; the fourth time, a trend.

I wrote extensively — and quite well — about how weddings no longer offer cake to their guests, which to me jeopardizes the entire marriage.

No cake? What other traditions will you forsake, what other tribal pleasures will you deny those who love you? Every society offers tiny signs if impending collapse. This may be ours.

Which brings me to this living room in Santa Monica, where I’ve agreed to sit my two grandkids, Cakes and Puddles. It’s a little like caring for raccoons.

They own me, as grandkids often do. When Mom and Dad leave, they take the rules with them. “No ice cream,” they say as they dash out the door.

So the very first thing we do? Gobs of ice cream, one of the last great tribal pleasures that America has left.

This improves morale immediately. Yum, Papa!

Then I let them watch too much TV and stay up past their bedtimes, mostly because the bedtime routine sucks the marrow right out of my tired bones. There are teeth to brush, and now Cakes has even started flossing.

Have you ever helped a 4-year-old floss? It’s like putting lipstick on a lemur.

And Puddles? He’s 1.7 years old now; hence, a squirmy acrobat. You can’t put pajamas on such a creature. You would have better luck getting him to sit for a tattoo.

Doesn’t help that they both just had gobs of ice cream, which triggers in them revolutionary impulses.

By the time, I start putting them to bed, it is well past their curfew, and even I am starting to fade, as I do every night around 9.

Out front, we hear a car door slam, then another. Boom-boom. Oh no! It’s the cops: Mom and Dad.

If Mom and Dad catch them up at this late hour, I will lose this baby-sitting gig, my only remaining legitimate work. If I lose this job, the only client I will have left is baby Mookie, who lives down the lane with Aunt Rapunzel and Uncle Truck.

Word will get out about the ice cream and the broken curfews, as it always does in L.A.

“GET IN BED! GET IN BED!” I yell, and the kids giggle quickly toward their beds, as if some sort of air raid. Cakes and Puddles both know that they will be busted too if Mom and Dad walk in at 8:30 on a Friday night to find them still up with Papa.

“They have a schedule, you know,” says every mother since the dawn of time.

Oh, sure. Blame all your parenting problems on me, the free baby-sitter who drove through Friday rush hour to get here.

I raised four kids, you know. And that was before baby monitors or sleep sacks or specially made “night diapers,” the ones with little cows and moons.

It was a simpler time, and we mucked that up too.

Point is, I know what I’m doing. I’m just a little rusty, that’s all.

And look, Mom: After 40 years of this insanity, I still have both ears.

Coming Saturday: I still drink from garden hoses. I still kiss under porch lights.

Can’t thank you enough for supporting me on Substack. I’m grateful beyond words, which I’m not much good at anyway. English isn’t my second language. It just seems that way sometimes. Especially when I try to be grateful and sincere. I am also blown away by your nice notes.

If you have problems or complaints, please email me at Letters@ChrisErskineLA.com

Hiking note: Our Saturday March 21 Pasadena event is a sellout. If you made the list, you should have received details by now on place and time. If not, please email me at Letters@ChrisErskineLA.com

More hikes and gin events just ahead. Cheers!