The Baboon Congress

Mary Poppins in Russia

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Today’s guest post comes from Plain Jane. It was originally part of a conversation on our companion blog, The Baboondocks, related to the sudden shift in King Juan Carlos’ job description. The question was “What is the best job you’ve ever abdicated?”

The best job I ever had was working as an au pair for the Bridges family in Moscow in 1964.

It was a fun job with lots of challenges, satisfaction and privilege. Certainly not a high paying job, but at $90.00 per month and free room and board, all the necessities were covered. The rest was gravy.

Taking care of three kids ranging in age from three to nine was a blast. Mary and Elizabeth, the two youngest, were early risers. By the time I’d get out of bed around 7 A.M. they’d already have played ballerinas for hours and left a trail of fancy dresses discarded on the floor of the hallway. After a breakfast of Danish pancakes, they’d be off to school and daycare, and I’d a have a few hours to do laundry and tidy up our quarters.

After school we’d explore Moscow on foot, by bus, train and embassy car. If I didn’t feel like making them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, we’d head for the embassy snack bar where a German cook made wonderful burgers, BLTs and the best German potato salad. Then we’d hang out on the embassy playground in the afternoon. Au pairs from Canada, Australia and several European countries lounging in swim suits on beach towels spread on the ground, watching their charges happily at play.

On days with no school, we’d pack picnic lunches and take the bus and subway to whatever destination struck our fancy that day. One such place was Gorky Park. There we’d while away the hours. Locals – mostly old men drinking Kvass and playing chess at small tables, and work crews of matronly, babushka-wearing women with big shovels for maintaining flower beds would give us curious looks – our brightly colored clothes in stark contrast to their drab hues. Other days we’d go to the Red Square, hike through the Kremlin or explore the banks along the Moscow River.

I’d take a lot of photos on these excursions. Pictures of David staring longingly at a toy train display at the Gum department store on the Red Square, or of Elizabeth posed in front of the Tsar canon inside the Kremlin walls. Snapshots of all three of them in swimsuits, munching on a picnic lunch on a weekend outing to the beach along the Moscow River.

After dinner, bath time and a little horsing around in their pajamas. Then the kids and I would pile into David’s bed for bedtime stories and singing. Of all her obscure childhood memories, Elizabeth wrote me a few years ago, the one that stands out as her fondest is of me singing “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polkadot Bikini,” to them. To this day it a song that she often hums to herself when cleaning house. She says it cheers her up to remember that summer fifty years ago. And David told me that he still makes those Danish pancakes for his own kids on their birthdays.

That’s a legacy I’m proud of.

What lifelong habit have you inherited from a teacher or caretaker?

53 thoughts on “Mary Poppins in Russia”

  1. Good morning. One my favorite teachers was my junior high school science teacher. He was very supportive of my interest in nature. His class room was filled with various things from nature including tanks with aquatic life. One one occasion he brought a crow into the room which roosted on the light fixtures.

    There is no single thing that stands out above other things that I learned from him. Mainly it was just his enthusiasm for nature that I appreciated and that moved me more strongly toward developing my interest in studying living things. I was very impressed by him on one occasion when, during a field trip, he climbed up to the nest of some Great Horned owls to put bands on the legs of the young owls in that nest.

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  2. i start almost every day with a bath and a cup of tea. it is hard for me to ge tinto a routine wher i do my excersise and then take a shower int he morning even though that would be the correct time to do it. i have a habbit of quietly slipping into my day with a cup and a blog and if the schedule doesnt allow it i get up put on my shoes and am gone but the day isnt quite right. in order for the correct start i need a full tub a cup of tea some reading material and a radio and or television to ge the news of the day as i begin. i love cbs the world in 90 seconds at 7am before i switch over to the beaver to begin my day. if the y switch the programming (it used to be gunsmoke and bonanza) i will use netflix to continue the beaver tradition. i find it the perfect way to begin the day. 30 minutes of wisdom presented in delightful retro homage to the days i grew up in. i had an eddie haskel and lumpy a gilbert and a larry mondello in my life my mo was june cleaver and i have become ward i am told.
    ill be tthere are another one or tow that will come up over the corse of the weekend but i will never be practically perfect in every way as plain jane obviously is in her story. the dansh pancake recipe needs to be posted in the weekend transpirings. i can taste those cloves and my mouth is watering

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    1. Oh my gosh, tim, “perfect in every way” is something I have never been, not even on my best days. But I thought I’d focus on the good parts of the job rather than on the disasters. I made a grave error on one of my first days on the job, I washed Elizabeth’s blankie. It was a rag of an old blue sweater, all gooey from dirt and saliva. When I removed it from the dryer it was clean, fluffy and full of static, you couldn’t touch it without getting a small shock, and Elizabeth was not a happy camper. It took several days for her to forgive me.

      I’ll post the Danish pancake recipe later – nothing to it, really – it doesn’t include cloves of any kind.

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    2. Hey tim, I met (even knew!)Hugh Beaumont (Ward Cleaver) when he summered up in Grand Rapids MN. I worked at the library where he was a regular patron and I used to check out books and find info for him. Lovely man.

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      1. cool i really like the way that show went and you got thefeeling early on he had something to do with it and noticed later he was involved in production of the show

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  3. I don’t know of any actual habits I got from any of my teachers, and I’ve had some very good ones, but I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to note the passing of my third grade teacher, Miss Erna Lund this past February. Her very brief obituary does not even mention her dedicated career of many years.

    I suppose one “habit” I got from her is my interest in the local history of places I have lived, even briefly. The social studies curriculum for third grade was Iowa and local history-I think I first gained my understanding that every place has an interesting history came from that.

    I’ve been thinking about making a “pilgrimage” back to that town (I am told it has suffered the fate of many small, midwestern towns, and barely exists as we knew it) with the s&h. Maybe I will bring an apple for the teacher.

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    1. On a whim and because I am stalling on starting this weekend, I mapquested this trip. Just over 4 hours to drive there- no hotel in the town, so we would perhaps stay over down the road at Elkhorn. Very Danish area of Iowa and I believe Clyde has some connection with that part of the world.

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      1. Though I’ve never been there, mig, I know there’s a Danish windmill and a Danish Immigrant Museum in Elkhorn. I also know they have an annual fund raising breakfast of æbleskiver and, of all things, medisterpølse, two foods no Dane in Denmark would eat for breakfast. Pancakes, by the way, are not eaten for breakfast in Denmark either, they are served as a dessert with a compote of fresh strawberries or raspberries and whipped cream. Unlike American pancakes, Danish pancakes are paper thin and larger, more like crepes. Here’s the recipe:

        Danish Pancakes
        1 cup flour
        3 large eggs
        2 cups of milk or buttermilk
        Generous pinch of salt
        1 to 2 Tbsp sugar (I don’t like things too sweet)
        A few drops of vanilla extract
        A little shredded lemon zest
        2 to 3 Tbsp melted butter

        Beat all ingredients together, and let the batter rest for about 15 minutes. When ready to fry them, give the batter a stir to distribute the melted butter throughout. (The batter will be considerably thinner than the American pancake batter.)

        Melt a dab of butter in the frying pan (for the first pancake only), and when the pan is hot, pour in a thin layer of the batter to cover the entire surface of the pan. When the edges are firm, flip the pancake with a spatula (unless you have tried this before, it’s not a good idea to flip it by tossing it into the air and catching it with the pan).
        Repeat with remaining batter.

        To serve, smear each pancake with your favorite fruit preserve and roll it up. Can also be filled with a compote of fresh strawberries, raspberries or blueberries. One of my favorite fillings is a squeeze of lemon juice sprinkled with a little sugar.

        These pancakes are also wonderful if you omit the sugar, vanilla, and lemon zest from the batter and fill them savory fillings.

        One last hint, if you’re trying to go easy on butter, melted cocoanut oil works well.

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        1. Forgot to mention that this recipe makes about 12 pancakes. Guess what we’re having for breakfast.

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        2. Surely, PJ, these are quite similar to the Norske version we encountered in April? These were served with “Brown Cheese” Sandwiched between the 2 halves of the pancake which then looked like a taco. The other option, which I favored, was raspberry jam. On a festival day in downtown Bergen, they were serving these freshly cooked out of booths that sprung up overnight. Wonderful.

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        3. Jacque, I’m sure Danish and Norwegian, maybe even Swedish pancakes, have a lot in common. David, the nine year old in my story, told me in a letter that his mother-in-law makes those same pancakes but calls them German pancakes. But as David said, I know better.

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      2. Had the Danish pancakes at a Sunday buffet in a Danish restaurant, under the windmill. I’m not big on any pancake, but they were good. My daughter did her pastoral internship for one year there and up in a country church west of “Odd-u-bun”as they say it there. She ended up as the only pastor of both churches for 6 months.
        Also, my mother’s ancestors come from all around that area, but mot a drop of Dane in her gene pool. Solid Iowa German and some Scots-Irish that Canuck in the back door.

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        1. I can well imagine the intern ending up as the pastor of a 2-point parish in that area. I have been neglecting all responsibility this morning and googling around. It looks like so much of the human infrastructure of the area is gone or sadly diminished. Good thing the s&h is a solid citizen, or I would be kicking over the traces and making a road trip.

          As it is, I will, of course, be doing the daily round and showing up for work this afternoon. Those of you keeping score, at this point, I once again do not have a totally “free” weekend.

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        3. PJ, It means that I have at least one shift, every weekend, yes. Might still make BBC. Should really find a copy of Bluebeard…..

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        4. Canuck for snuck. Spell-check in Ipad is weird. This morning I am staying in the bedroom keeping an eye on someone, who scared me last night.

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        5. Speaking of BBC, I have lost track of it, despite asking once before. So when and where?

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        6. I’m not sure I’m putting this in the right place. The “Reply” feature in this version of the Trail isn’t the best.

          BBC is at BiR’s house. June 22???? This I wouldn’t bet my life on.

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      2. WordPress is telling me you are replying to me, not Linda, so I am going to go ahead and reply back-
        coon
        The town is Coon Rapids, Iowa (we used to laugh about the signs for it in Minnesota when we came to visit the ancestors). We moved there after we lived in Tama, near your old stomping grounds of Marshalltown.

        I was the home of Garst and Thomas Seed Corn. Over time, that company changed, was acquired and/or I know not what all, but like so many of the little communities in Iowa, it seems like the community has dissolved and is now just another dot on a corporate map someplace.

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    1. Debating with myself who you were most envying- the nanny or the kids. I know I am having a tough time deciding that for myself.

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  5. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    PJ, what a great story. Thanks for this. My learned habit is SO boring–a psychiatrist I worked with taught me to do every case note and billing charge as part of the session before seeing the next client. Boring as this is, it makes my life managable.

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    1. this is a most excellent habit and one I am fighting with myself to do. In my case, billing one day’s worth of orders before starting the next (as opposed to my usual letting them pile up to a dreaded “paperwork” session)

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      1. Yup. I learned my lesson back in the 90’s when I had to catch up on paperwork–FOR SIX WEEKS–before I could quit the job! Never again.

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  6. Morning all. In 5th & 6th grade I had Mrs. McCracken as my teacher. I didn’t care for her much; she was hard on me and I was at a place in life where I wanted to fit in more than I wanted to be smart. She would give us long lists of vocabulary words…but we didn’t have to learn them in the regular way. If we found the words in our lives outside the class, and notated them, we got extra credit. This led me to a lifelong habit of looking up words that I don’t know, rather than letting them slip by with context.

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  7. PJ – I thought the other day that this was worthy of its own blog post – wonderful detail. A question – when were their parents around?? And did you speak Russian? And do you still have any of the photos?

    I had a favorite teacher in 6th grade, Mrs. Mary Latch. Although I can’t think of a specific habit, I probably try to emulate her tendency to try doing things in unique ways. Instead of desks in rows, we had ours in a circle facing center, two deep. Often there’d be an hour or so when we could work on something like a mural in the hallway, and we were free to be up and walking around. Kids who understood the math were paired up with kids who didn’t to work on homework. She taught us memory tricks, songs I’d never heard, and how to be kind to each other. I’ll never forget her – luckily, when my own son was in 6th grade I started remembering all this and sent her a letter.

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    1. Thanks, BiR. The kids didn’t really spend a whole lot of time with their parents, except on weekends when I generally was off. Perhaps they’d see them an hour or so before bedtime, or if they’d stop in for lunch. They were never absent, but had a pretty relaxed and casual relationship with their kids.

      I spoke and read enough Russian to be able to navigate the transit system, ask directions, go shopping, and communicate with our Russian maid, Tamara. Not well enough to carry on a deeper philosophical conversation.

      Unfortunately, most of my photos were colored slides, and over time they faded so badly that you could barely see the images. I tossed them a few years ago. I may still have a few snapshots around here somewhere. I’ll have to look.

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  9. OT – Did anyone watch the French Open’s women’s final? What a match. Can’t wait for tomorrow’s men’s final. That should be another great one. I love tennis.

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  10. My caretaker was my mom, not that she did much besides feed me and let me run wild outside, but we sure as heck did not have a nanny. The habit I got from my mom was talking to myself. She would mutter to herself a lot while she was cooking, as well as other times, and now I find myself doing it. I even have caught myself here in the city walking alone and talking to myself; sometimes I wonder if people think I’m a crazy old lady who talks to herself, but I hope they think I’m talking on some invisible cell phone.

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    1. Most people are so damn busy carrying on their own cell phone conversations that chances are nobody is noticing, ljb.

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  11. I can’t think of any one person whose influence has resulted in a life-long habit. It’s been more bits and pieces picked up along the way that have either encouraged or discouraged my innate inclinations.

    I’ve always loved botany and zoology, and both my dad and Frøken Sørensen, my high school botany and zoology teacher, encouraged that. I recall telling her about an albino black bird that I saw daily in our yard. I’m not sure whether she believed me or not, but she went home with one day after school to see it for herself.

    I also loved physics and chemistry, which didn’t interest either of my parents, but my high school science teacher managed to convince me that I was too stupid to pursue that interest, so I closed my basement chemistry lab and quit. Same thing with algebra and geometry. Both subjects were taught by our math teacher, who knew me to be impossible with numbers and therefore concluded that I couldn’t possibly be any good at those subjects either. It wasn’t till my freshman year in college that I discovered that I could actually do that work – at some elementary level – and really enjoyed it.

    Good teachers can have a lasting impact on their students, unfortunately so can bad ones.

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    1. The albino blackbird brings to mind a quote by Jean-Paul Sartre: “The white blackbird, who is spurned by all the black blackbirds, at least has the consolation of looking out of the corner of its eye at the whiteness of its wings.”

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  13. I had a number of teachers who I liked or taught me things, useful and not. One teacher I owe a thank you to is Ms. Mashek, my AP English teacher (I also had her for British Literature). A former nun and a no-nonsense woman who loved Jane Austen, Shakespeare, and teaching kids (Gothic romances as well – including the cheesy ones – I discovered on a post-high school visit…she also had two cats at the time named Rhett and Scarlett). Along with reading a lot of the top books in “the canon” (a prep for college she knew to be necessary – and useful beyond college both for literary allusions as well as life in general), she read poetry aloud. Beowulf was especially memorable – she didn’t read all of it, but read for most of a couple of classes, in the original Old English, so we could hear the lyricism and beauty of the language. Read aloud, she reminded us – and I still read poems aloud to myself so I can hear them. Shakespeare, Maya Angelou, Walt Whitman, Shel Silverstein…they all come alive when they are read aloud.

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  14. Very cool PJ. You are exactly the kind of au pair every Iowa farm kid growing up in the 60s would have dreamed for, had they any notion of such a concept, which they did not. Trust me.

    My mom was fond of saying, “It’s not what other people think of you that’s important – its what you think of yourself.” Another one was, “When in doubt – don’t.” I will always have her to thank for my jitters and low self esteem. A teacher friend’s mantra was, “Never lose an opportunity to keep your mouth shut.” I attribute these wise words to my inactivity on Facebook. (Does anyone besides me ever wish there was a “Who Cares?” button?)

    I read about au pairs on Wikipedia a while ago and really had my eyes opened. (It’s not unusual for me to fall asleep doing research.) Did you know it’s becoming more common for older people to enter the field? These, typically, females, aged 45-70, are called “granny au-pairs”. At first I was a little offended at the term, but then I started imagining Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies as an au pair and I’ve been chuckling ever since. You know darn well she’s gonna force possum on those kids, and feed them misinformation about the Civil War!

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  16. captain kangaroo taught me how to be nice. bob dylan taught me how to write my mind richard nixon taught me not to trust government, kristy kirtley taught me never to trust girls and mary skruppy taught me you cant help yourself no matter what you do. my dad taught me about being fair and that when you marry a girl you married her family. my mom taught me going through life with a positive outlook makes all the difference. my kids teach me i dont now beans….every day.
    the trail teaches me life is good.
    thanks all

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