Our nanny Yvonne is getting married on Saturday. It's kind of last minute, she admitted. She could not contain her grin or the light in her eyes. The groom is a friend from her church that she has been dating for some time. He's joining the Navy, which means he will be shipping out soon, to who knows where for who knows how long. They decided to get married before that happened. They just got the marriage license yesterday.
It was going to be a small affair, just the two of them downtown at a justice of the peace. But his mother and their church community decided they needed a bigger celebration, and everyone is chipping in to put it on for them on Saturday. They have the church, people are cooking, invites are coming by word of mouth. Yvonne invited us.
Unfortunately, we won't be able to go, as we will be on Martha's Vineyard with Seth's family. But we will give them a thoughtful card and a check. It's our standard wedding gift. It's always the right color, the right size, everyone can always use it, and no one ever returns it.
The happiness has made Yvonne simply alight. I am genuinely happy for her. She deserves something good in the most profound of ways. I hope and cross my fingers that this is the right thing, a great thing, and that it lasts (and lasts). "The boys are happy too!" she says, talking of her five and seven year old boys, sweet boys that the Olive adores. "That's the most important thing," we agree.
I am happy and hopeful and strangely relieved. Yvonne's life is not easy. She is a single mother of two young boys. We do the best we can by her. We pay her well, try to treat her fairly, and we try to help. We've driven her to appointments with various social welfare agencies as she tries to sort out the conundrum of procedures and benefits with surly, jaded city employees. So her children can get subsidized food, daycare, and medical care. We've referred her to the DC Bar pro bono clinic, to help her sort out a tangle of immigration and family law issues that has prevented her from taking her sons back to visit her home on the Carribbean island of St. Vincent. When Yvonne's employment with us ceases in September, we have realized that we would still do anything we could to help her, and we hope she will ask us for help if she needs it.
I have never thought that everyone "needs" to get married or "should" get married, nor do I think of marriage as an end-all, be-all solution to anything. I absolutely think that women need to know how to be independent and take care of themselves, and that they should never be 100% dependent on someone else. You just never know what is going to happen.
I know Yvonne can take care of herself and her boys; she's done it for almost all of their lives, with little to no help from their father, who lives in St. Vincent, or from other family members, because they aren't any better off than she is. I think there are times that she did not eat, but I know her boys always did. She knows how to save money, how to take advantage of social welfare programs. She's done the best she can, and it has been eye-opening to see how hard it is to be a working single mother.
Yet I am hopeful, relieved and grateful that she is getting married. There will be someone else to help her. Maybe they can move, so she can get out of that apartment where the heat seems to be perpetually on too high, and the carpet is unspeakably old and stained. If he is in the Navy, and she's his wife....the military will take care of her and her boys. It may not be the fanciest health care in the world, but the military health services are nothing to sneeze at, and can be amazingly innovative. It just means (I hope) more stability for her and her boys, more opportunity, more help, more hope. I just want her life to be easier, because she deserves it, this woman with the radiant smile that cares for our daughter and helps us every single day.
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