I woke up this morning, Monday, July 15th, and for the first time since I started writing this weekly blog, I didn’t have an essay ready for you. I have a few drafted, but they’re unpolished at this point and not ready to share. Instead, I’m pulling one from the archives, a babysitting misadventure that happened in 2015.
For years, I’ve written my thoughts or stories down and emailed them to myself. Sometimes they’re full essays, but more times than not, they are just a few sentences that I hope will spark my memory when I’m ready to write the full tale. This is a story I had completely forgotten about until I found it in my email and laughed as hard as I did when it actually happened. Enjoy “Don’t Burn the Meatballs.”
I used to babysit a few times a week for a family who lived just on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado in a beautiful and historic farmhouse. The shifts were generally scheduled for just a few hours at a time and mostly uneventful with the usual diaper changes of the baby, playtime with both kids, dinner, bath and bed.
While the parents were both in London for a work trip, the primary nanny and the children’s Grandmother, Bops, were splitting the bulk of the childcare duties throughout the week. I was scheduled to pop in to help for a few times throughout the week as well. On one of the evenings, Bops had asked me to come by to babysit while she cooked dinner. The three-year-old boy, who I’ll call Johnny for the story, wanted to stay downstairs in the room just off the kitchen to finish his movie while Bops bopped around the kitchen prepping spaghetti and meatballs. His one-year-sister, who I’ll call Evelyn, and I made our way to the third floor of the house to play in the toy room.
Evelyn and I couldn’t have been upstairs for more than thirty minutes when I heard Johnny calling for Bops from the stairway. His movie had ended and when he looked up and realized that no one was there to entertain him, he started searching the house. It seemed odd that Bops would not only leave Johnny unattended without letting me know, but when we made our way back to the kitchen, I found her cell phone on the counter, the pasta was at a rapid boil on the stovetop, and her meatballs were in the oven, nearly burnt.
We took a lap around the house, checking each room and calling for Bops, but she was nowhere to be found. I started to worry, as it was obviously unlike her to disappear, especially knowing she was responsible for Johnny while I was two floors above keeping Evelyn occupied. While the kids raced around the floor of the kitchen, I tried to keep calm and kept an eye on dinner. I hate to mess with anyone’s meatballs, but pulled the tray out of the oven before they burned, hoping I wouldn’t offend Bops for taking over her cooking.
When I started to actually get worried, it occurred to me that one of the dogs had been laying by the front door the entire time I had been downstairs and was randomly letting out a high pitch yelp. It wasn’t uncommon for the dogs to guard the doors, or bark for no reason, but the yelp continued to grow more frequent and higher in pitch.
I remembered that there was a chicken coop at the far end of the property and it was possible that Bops had gone outside to feed the chickens and something may have happened to her along the way. It had been almost 30 minutes since Johnny had originally been looking for her, enough time for me to go from slightly worried to scared, paranoid, and concerned.
I asked Johnny if he heard her say she was going to feed the chickens but like most three year olds, he hadn’t been listening. I opened the door the dog had been so diligently guarding, walked onto the front porch holding both kids and immediately heard a frantic and long-winded, “HEEEELLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPP!”
The cry for help was muffled and I could barely make out which direction the call was coming from. It was pitch black on a December night, but it was most certainly our Bops. The three year old was listening now. He looked up at me, terrified, and immediately began to cry. His younger sister, seeing her older brother crying, also started wailing.
If you need a recap, the scene is now: one dog is barking frantically at me like I know what to do, two children are now crying at my feet, a grandmother is screaming ‘help’ in the distance, dinner is still cooking in the kitchen, and I’m about to walk outside the safety of the country farmhouse into the pitch black night.
In hindsight, my plan wasn’t great. I’m not sure what I thought I would do if there had been an intruder - human or animal - but I picked up both kids, yelled at them to stop crying (which, as you probably know, always works to get kids to stop crying), turned on my phone flashlight and took off running across the backyard. I knew the edge of the property well, as I often took the kids to play outside, so I made my way to the fence line to walk that until we found Bops. I also knew that coyotes knew the fence line well as I had watched one walk the same property line from a room on the second floor just days before.
In my hurry, I hadn’t even put my shoes on and was running in the dark in just my socks, one child on each hip, yelling for Bops. I tried to assure the kids that everything was fine, having no idea if it actually was. On the far side of the property was the chicken coop and as we approached it, we found that Bops was locked inside and hadn’t intended to nearly burn her meatballs.
While cooking dinner, she had remembered that the chickens hadn’t been secured for the night, something the coyotes certainly would’ve loved. With Evelyn and I upstairs playing and Johnny occupied with his show, she embarked on what should’ve been a quick trip to the chicken coop to secure the girls for the night. When she got to the coop, it turned into a nightmare when the wind blew the door shut and locked the latch from the outside. She had been yelling for over thirty minutes when, thanks to the dog, the kids and I found her.
It was a complete fluke and just the perfect storm of events. Bops gained her composure about an hour after the incident and was able to laugh at the insanity of the situation before I headed home for the night. I think back now and am so thankful I was at the house when this happened. The meatballs certainly would’ve burned.
So glad the meatballs didn't burn and that Bops was saved. We don't deserve dogs. 💖