There and Back Again: An Au Pair’s Story

Au pairing can be a lonely experience… photo by mel!nka via Flickr.

‘This is the arrow that the bow of exile shoots first. You are to know the bitter taste of other’s bread, how salty it is, and how hard a path it is for one who goes ascending and descending others’ stairs.’ (Dante. Paradiso XVII)

This is the quote I was pointed to when I returned from my time as an au pair in Italy. It was very high-minded, and very beautiful. It was, however, not particularly helpful.

I was meant to have been in Italy for over two months; I was back in less than three weeks. I was meant to have become a fluent speaker; although I had learnt the words for several new flavours of ice cream, I was in no danger of being taken for a native any time soon. I was meant to be spending that time getting to grips with another culture, throwing myself in at the deep end, living with strangers. Instead, I was back at my own kitchen table, feet propped up on my suitcase, trying to explain to my bemused family what exactly had gone wrong.

While growing up I spent a good deal of time being looked after by au pairs myself. Girls would come and stay with us to improve their English. They would help out around the house, look after me and my sister and, in return, get free board as well as earning some money. An unfortunate incident or two aside, the experience was an incredibly successful one. Most of them have stayed in touch and now have families of their own whom we see as often as possible.

I, for one, am immensely grateful for having had this experience – it allowed tiny and wonderful insights into the way people from different parts of the world viewed things which I took to be the everyday and ordinary. It also instilled a love of travel and of languages and I planned to take advantage of the long vacation to indulge myself in these as much as possible.

There’s an old joke that goes roughly along these lines: How can you tell if someone’s a nerd? When learning a foreign language, a nerd will buy a grammar book. Anybody else will get a girlfriend/boyfriend who speaks that language. My own grammar book had a cracked spine, peeling covers and automatically fell open to the ‘mistakes beginners commonly make’ page before I ever heard that joke. This theory holds pretty strong: the best way to learn a foreign language is to go there and speak to people using it. Hours spent in coffee shops, taking advantage of a free wifi connection, eking one cup of tea out over a whole afternoon and pouring over irregular verbs are all very well, but it’s no match for the real thing. My family had reservations about my just heading off into Europe in the hope of picking up some new vocab and perhaps getting lucky along the way, so it was suggested that I gave au pairing a shot. It seemed an obvious choice. I had plenty of experience of it , albeit from the other end, and had a pretty good idea what it would be about.

Of course, every experience is different – one based on that utterly unique relationship between the au pair and the family they are staying with. This is true of every relationship, but there’s nothing which exaggerates problems like living with someone. This seems to be the basis of every ‘you’ll never guess what my flatmate’s gone and done now…’ anecdote, as well as nearly every ‘not under my roof’ talk you are ever fortunate enough to get from your parents. By living in another person’s home you are agreeing to live by another person’s rules and, in most cases, to give up a degree of personal freedom. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Just imagine how dull and frustrating a place the world would be if we all refused to compromise. The great collaborations would never have happened: Lennon and McCartney; Simon and Garfunkle; Ozzy Osbourne and Miss Piggy. (Ok, so I’m not being serious on the last one, I just need more people to listen to it and prove that it wasn’t some bizarre cheese-induced nightmare).

There is, however, a bit of a skill in deciding what will or won’t work for you personally. Opening yourself up to new experiences doesn’t always mean that that experience will be successful. In my case the main issue seemed to be an enormous gulf in expectations. I was simply not able to live up to the family’s expectations. For my own part I just couldn’t come to terms with what I was or was not allowed to do, many of which seemed unreasonable or just plain ridiculous. It all seemed remarkably one-sided. This lead to some particularly fraught moments: ‘the day I cut the courgettes the wrong way’ rather neatly sums it up. These were in no way bad people; they just had very hard-and-fast ideas which I found very difficult to live with. Of course, they had to be protective of their children, and this was perhaps their way of doing so. A large part of their protectiveness seemed to involve them – and consequently me – not leaving the house or meeting people. I wound up feeling stifled and immensely lonely.

After a particularly difficult few days, having failed to teach or learn anything, I was told that if things were really that difficult perhaps I should consider going back a little earlier than planned. I was on a plane by the next afternoon.

So, this time, things didn’t work out. But one thing that I do not regret was going and giving it a shot. Even if it was not quite what I was expecting that short time told me an awful lot about what to expect from myself and other people. To anyone considering anything like this I say go for it. I think my experience was best summed up by one of my own au pairs: ‘Life is about experiences. When they’re good ones, keep going. And when they’re bad, stop.’