From the underside of the inside

I asked a friend once why she was a socialist and was pretty unimpressed with the answer ‘well my family has always been working class,’ when it wasn’t backed up by an explanation of how this affected her life philosophy. (She was a strange girl who thought re-distributing the wealth was stealing the tips from the counter in Café Nero). However, even though she was just subscribing to a value system to define her identity, since starting work from the underside of the inside of the ‘haves’ I understand why socialism is so much easier to understand from the perspective of the ‘have nots’.

I am a domestic servant. (I also, in some ways, have a very cushy job). I am an aupair. Since July I’ve thought a lot about whether I would ever personally employ someone to do what I do, and by way of answer, my all too passive socialism has reared its head once more.

My objection isn’t to any of the things I have to do, but to needing extra people to help with the simple living of your life, because you have chosen for it to be bigger and better and richer and contain more things that need polishing.

‘Look Anna, I’ve weed on the floor,’ says the six year old I look after.
‘Clean it up then with some toilet paper please’
‘But you’re my aupair’

My fundamental problem is that the children I take care of are growing up used having someone to wait on them.

It was going to the hospital that did it. Last week, a baby was born in the family I work for, and we all wrapped up warm and went off to visit Mum in the private clinic. It was like a hotel; I am not joking. All the patients had private suites, with televisions and balconies. There were fruit baskets in all the waiting areas. All this isn’t too awful, and I know there is always the argument that they earned the money and can do what they want with it, but looking at the kids racing excitedly through the corridors and going to the nurses to ask for ‘yogurt please, and a spoon,’ I realised that this would all seem completely normal to them; that in their six and three year old minds, all babies will be born in hospitals that are not only clean and comfortable but with individual en-suite bathrooms and restaurant quality meals. (And I’m not comparing it with the third world or anything; take my advice and never get ill in Wakefield, the NHS hospital there is like something out of a documentary about how awful hospitals are in the former soviet union).

A few days ago the dad brought home something that I thought was a giant wedding cake, as I spied it from the other end of the room over my game of This Little Piggy. On closer examination I realised it was a giant arrangement of nappies from the hospital, wrapped in ribbons and the kind of cellophane florists use. I thought it was completely ridiculous.

For three weeks I walked through the centre of town every morning to attend my German course at Graz University. Right in the middle, where Elizebethstrasse intersects Merangasse, there is a big fancy glass fronted furniture shop, where big fancy people go to buy big fancy kitchens and chairs. Sure, I’ve been to Ikea and gone in the little pretend houses and thought how nice it would be to have a load of stuff, or moreover how nice it would be to have the kind of life all those possessions would symbolise. People want to express themselves through what they own and people want security, but as I saw the smart couples earnestly discussing whether to have this thousands of euros worth of surfaces and appliances or the other thousands of euros worth of surfaces and appliances. I felt angry.

I wanted to break the windows and scream at them, ‘None of this is important!’
I think it was seeing how serious they were about it all that awakened this dormant rage; They were all so serious in their leather boots (very fashionable right now in Austria) which were also no doubt very expensive.

In the German film The Edukators a group of anarchists break into posh houses but don’t steal anything. They just re-arrange the furniture, putting all the ornamental swans in the fridge for example, and leave the message on the walls ‘Die Fatten Jahre Sind Vorbei’ (The original title of the film; ‘the years of plenty are over’) or ‘Sie haben zu viel Geld’ (‘You have too much money’). I was put in mind of this last Saturday. The children’s 22 year old brother drove us out to a birthday party in the suburbs of Graz. (With him and me in the front of the car in with a three and six year old in the back we probably looked like teenage parents who’d miraculously made good). I was balancing an incredibly heavy cake, the shape of half a globe with the countries drawn in beautiful detail in green icing on a blue icing sea, on my legs and experiencing the familiar ‘how on earth is this my life’ feeling I’ve had repeatedly since stepping into another family’s world four months ago, when we drew up at this massive house. The film started flashing through my mind, and I couldn’t help planning how I would move everything around if I only had the guts to break in.

What I was struck by once again, was the way that the kids all tearing around playing party games (which I had to encourage my charges to join in with because they were so distracted by the miniature car you could drive around in like a real one), would think of this as normal. They were lovely polite children, but looking at the other aupairs hovering round, the housekeeper in the kitchen, and the house covered from top to bottom in white shag-pile, I doubt any of them will ever relate to giving according to one’s ability and receiving according one’s needs . How can you learn to take responsibility for yourself when someone’s job (and in the eyes of a child, someone’s whole reason for existing no doubt) is to do that for you, for your boredom, for your desire for snacks in parts of the house far from the kitchen. When you realize that not everyone has these privileges, which if you have grown up with them must seem like rights, how do you not surmise that you simply must be better and your needs more important?

I don’t resent my job. I can make rounds and rounds of mayonnaise and ketchup on toast and clean diarrhea out of Disney princess knickers with a smile on my face (no honestly), but I worry about what my position in the family is teaching these children.

- Anna Beecher

This entry was posted by Neil Keating, on Monday, 12 November 2007. You can leave your response.