Sep 9, 2022 4 min read

The hardest time in my life was about 23 years ago, when my daughter was a baby.

Grace slept through the first night she was home, and then proceeded not to sleep for the next 18 months. My sweet baby girl had a severe case of eczema – making raw and itchy her long, thin torso and legs. When she finally learned to use her hands to scratch, I’d find blood on her crib sheets in the morning.

Pediatricians put us on a routine that helped, but she was uncomfortable in her skin, literally. Grace was trapped behind an itch, and it showed in her behavior. When she learned to walk, she stormed around like a creature from “Where the Wild Things Are.” When her brother built a tower of blocks, Grace would stomp over and knock it down. She was angry – maybe because of the skin, and who would blame her.

Days were a blur of oatmeal baths and slathering. Three times a day she would squirm in protest as I coated her legs with Aquaphor cream and then thread them into thick cotton leggings. At night, she would sleep two hours before erupting in screams. She stormed and I stumbled.

Six weeks into this, Maritza walked into the house and saved me. A naturalized immigrant from Ecuador, she’d been the nanny for a friend whose youngest child was starting school. Maritza needed a new job, and we needed her.

She was a few years older than I, soft-spoken and gentle. Each day at 9, after I’d been up for hours feeding and bathing both kids and driving my son to preschool, Maritza would arrive at the door, and I would be waiting, exhausted, with a fussy baby in my arms. Maritza walked toward us, smiling with her manicured hands extended, would gather Grace toward her and tell me to go get some sleep.

I would wake an hour later to find the kitchen clean, the floors mopped and Maritza bouncing Grace on her knee. Most days I’d put Grace on the back of my bike for rides around the neighborhood; other days we’d go to baby music classes, and every time we came home, Maritza would be waiting there with her arms open, the house spotless.

I think of her often, and still wear the tiny gold butterfly ear studs she gave me when we moved away. I’m remembering her this week because Grace will soon turn 23. She doesn’t remember Maritza, but I tell her about those days, and how Grace’s first words had a certain Latin American flair.

And I tell her about the time Maritza gave me a warning.

“This one is going give you trouble,” Maritza said as she held Grace. She said it as matter-of-factly as if telling me we were running out of Aquaphor cream. She’d cared for many children, and she knew about these things.

Maritza was steadfast and gentle and patient. She ironed our bed sheets and I never saw her sit down to rest. She rescued us when I was hanging by a thread.

But she was wrong about just one thing. She knew baby Grace as well as I did, but she was wrong. As Grace grew up, she never gave us trouble – not even a day of it.

Last weekend, Grace was going through a box of old photos and came across a photo of Maritza holding her.

“I don’t remember her,” Grace said.

But I do. I remember. I still picture beautiful Maritza walking through the front door, arms extended, coming once again to save me.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.