I started babysitting for Jordan and Stephanie around the time I was 15 years old. Jordan was 7 and Stephanie was 5. My youngest sister and Stephanie were friends in their kindergarten class, so as the responsible big sister I was a natural fit for babysitting.
The normal routine was for their mom to pick me up after high school and I would hang out with them a few nights a week. We’d play games, watch T.V., and walk to the corner 7-Eleven for snacks. Stephanie was always centered and wise beyond her years. She loved to write and I remembered being so impressed with her style. She was creating stories where the princess saves the day long before it was cool. Nevertheless, she loved make-up and all things girly. Always equally comfortable being feminine but strong. When she got a little older she was telling me about a boy she had a crush on at school. He wasn’t treating her very well and I thought I was going to have to swoop in with some sage advice. Very matter-of-factly she announced that she was just going to stop talking to him and focus on things that made her happy. She always had quite a remarkable head on her shoulders.
Jordan was just as smart but struggled a bit with his emotions. Their parents had already been divorced by the time I started babysitting them and his father had moved to Texas. He was the only boy in the house and didn’t have a consistent male figure around. He loved to skateboard and watch wrestling; the normal boy stuff that his mother wasn’t sure how to relate to. One day I had come over right after he had gotten into a fight with his mom. She left to go out and he went to his room in anger. I gave him a few minutes to cool down before I knocked on the door. I asked what was wrong and he said when gets mad he just goes to his room to calm down.
“What do you do when you’re mad?” I asked
He shrugged and said he mostly just plays with his toys for a while.
“When I get mad I usually listen to rock music. It makes me feel better. Next time I come over I’ll bring you some music”
I started buying the edited versions of my favorite rock CDs for him to listen to. He loved it, even more than I thought he would. My friends in high school were always shocked that I had the edited versions of songs, especially since they knew how much I swore every day. I would proudly tell them that I was buying them to give to the kid I babysat which always resulted in confused looks and raised eyebrows. After a while Jordan started a habit of banging on any hard surface with pens and pencils. I think a lot of people would have brushed it off as obnoxious or nervous energy, but it was sharp and rhythmic. He was a drummer in the making.
I kept nudging his mom to get him a drum set. At first she was hesitant, as I think most parents would be. She was concerned about the noise and that it might only be a phase. But she gave in and he got a starter drum set. He is still a professional drummer to this day and Stephanie is professional writer and published author. I have always been so immensely proud that they stuck with what they loved as children.
I babysit them all through high school and it was the high point of the day. Most kids were excited to get out of school to party but I was going babysitting. It was exactly where I wanted to be. I’d have Stephanie do my make-up and then we’d watch wrestling with Jordan. There was a time when I knew every pro wrestler's name and signature move. I always burned the microwave popcorn because I could never figure out the microwave settings. They would get extra packs of Pokemon cards just so they could trade me for the better cards they were looking for. Jordan tried his best to teach me how to skateboard but I never got the hang of it. Stephanie started to have crushes on her favorite wrestlers. Jordan would come play Barbies with me and Stephanie. There was always music playing and spastic dance parties. We were fueled on pizza and gas station candy.
Myself and my middle sister Jenny babysat for them for years. Jenny put it best when she said all her favorite babysitters were the ones who played with us, and she wanted to make sure Jordan and Stephanie had that feeling too. We probably babysat them longer than was actually necessary, but after a certain point it was more like hanging out with friends. They both had a phenomenal sense of humor and I loved just talking with them. I always felt like I was somewhere between a mother figure and big sister. I watched them grow up and was lucky enough to remain close to them over the years. I was at both of their high school graduations sobbing tears of pride and admiration. They both told me that I raised them and that has always been the greatest compliment I have ever received.
Babysitting them kept me connected to my inner child and made me feel like I would be a good mother one day.
Time passes like it does and we all carved out our own paths in life. I moved to Orlando to go to college, Stephanie traveled to Europe several times for death metal concerts, and Jordan went on tour with a few bands. I got to see Stephanie a few times when I would be in St. Pete visiting family. I got to buy a signed copy of her first book directly from her. One of Jordan’s tours stopped in Orlando and I was so proud to see him on stage playing.
Jordan eventually got married, moved to Texas, and had a son. I hadn’t seen him in person in a few years but I liked just about every post he made on Facebook. His life seemed so perfect and I thought “who’d want to hear from your old babysitter when you’re out living the dream?”. But it was actually Jordan who reached out to me via Facebook messenger in May 2021. He sent me a music video for one of our favorite musicians and we got to talking. He mentioned that he was going through a divorce.
I was shocked. He’d only been married for three years and everything seemed so perfect. We started calling each other again to catch up. I had randomly asked off work for a few days in July with no idea what I was going to do. Now I knew; I made plans to visit Jordan and his son in Texas. It was a short and mostly spontaneous trip but ending up being one of the most meaningful things I had experienced in a long time.
When I got to his house he swung the door open and wrapped his arms around me. His son was shy, curious, and playful. I spent the majority of the first two days in their daily routine and that was exactly where I wanted to be. We went out to eat, played with toys, ran some errands, and took walks around the neighborhood. When Sterling was asleep Jordan and I got into deep discussions.
About the divorce and how it affected him. How he was going to a therapist and doing everything in his power to put his son first. How his own parents divorce affected his childhood. The way he was struggling with depression and trying to do things differently. Those were long and heartbreaking conversations.
I was flooded with emotion. I have always been proud of him, even more so now. He was full of love for his son and had grown into a caring and devoted father. But he suffered through so much and it killed me. When I had started babysitting for him and his sister I knew that his parents were divorced but I didn’t realize just how bad it was. They would have preferred to stay with their father but due to custody issues they remained with their mother. She had taken care of them but was not particularly motherly. They had infrequent contact with their father that improved when they had gotten older, but he had passed away from cancer a few years ago.
Jordan fell deeply in love with his wife, but she fell in love with another man. Her family took her side and his family was largely unsupportive. He was alone and doing everything he could to make sure his son didn’t go through what he had been put through. I knew that a lot of his life had been difficult, and hearing him relay these stories as an adult was heartbreaking.
When he was in middle school he had gotten beat up by high schoolers. He was out with his friends and some older teenagers thought the boys had thrown something at their car. Jordan looked like the oldest kid in the group so the teens had singled him out. His mother called the house later that evening to tell me what happened and I drove right over. He was laying in his bed, covered in band-aids and bruises with a broken nose.
He was in pain but he was going to be fine. I was angry and burst into tears.
Infuriated, I said “if only I had been there I would have kicked their asses!”
Jordan was slightly confused and replied “ But Missy, you always said not to go looking for a fight.”
“It’s different when you’re fighting for someone that you love.”
It felt the same all these years later. Helpless and wanting so badly to fight for him.
In addition to having similar personalities, Jordan and I had a lot of parallels in our lives. We had both gotten our noses broken, worked for Starbucks, met our most recent significant other while working at Starbucks, and had creative jobs with long hours in our twenties (I worked doing production at DRIP and he was on tour with his band).
Sitting in his home in Texas we talked long into the night. He talked about how difficult it was to have his relationship fall apart. How he tried to save it and she still blamed him for everything. She got to move on with her life and he was left to pick up the pieces. His relationship struggles had been so similar to my own that I felt guilt. If I had talked to him more over the years and told him about what I went through I might have spared him from some of this grief.
On the flip side of the coin I have never been married, I have never been divorced, and I have never had a child. There were so many things he was dealing with that I had not experienced.
In those difficult conversations I realized that Jordan and his sister Stephanie were the closest thing I had to children. I had often thought while babysitting them that if I ever have kids of my own that were as wonderful as they were I would consider myself lucky. I went on to watch my friends have families of their own while I never did. I often felt like motherhood was something that I was built for but had to let it go to waste. A powerful gift I was given with no tangible way to express it.
Jordan and Stephanie had told me that I had raised them and that was always the best compliment I had ever received. Hearing Jordan say it again, as an adult, after everything he’d been through, held even deeper meaning.
I hadn’t fully realized the impact my sister Jenny and I had on them growing up. How we had filled in gaps in their family. All the playing, talking, and just taking an interest in them as kids. They had come from a difficult situation and both grown into intelligent and loving adults. Looking back it made me realize that in some way I had been a parent. As young as I was; I had made a positive and lasting impact on two people.
At one point while Jordan was giving his son a bath I started cleaning his fridge. He came down stairs and caught me towards the end of my little project.
“What are you doing?”
“Listen, my mom always does stuff like this for me and this is one of the ways I can help you out. Just let me be your mom for the weekend.”
On my last night visiting Jordan he had to drop off his son at his ex’s house. When he came to pick me up at the hotel he was in tears. He wasn’t used to being apart from his son. We hugged each other in the hotel parking lot.
We spent the last night of my visit in Downtown Austin. We went out to eat and got ice cream. Walked around and saw some live music. All the while talking about songs we hadn’t heard in ages and all the fun memories we had from years ago. He mentioned how it had been forever since he had seen a live show. We talked about ways to make his Sundays more enjoyable after he dropped his son off. He said spending the weekend with me made him feel like himself for the first time in a long time.
The next morning he picked me up at the crack of dawn to take me to the airport. When we got to the airport he got out of the car to give me a hug and I grabbed both sides of his face with my hands. I told him that I was proud of him. For continuing to fight, for going to counseling, for putting his son first. None of it was easy but it was the right thing to do. We both cried through our goodbyes.
It was monumental to connect with him again in Texas. To meet his son and see the father he had become. To know that I had a positive impact on him. To see him fighting through a difficult situation and remain a loving person.
For as much as I influenced Jordan and Stephanie they were equally influential on my life. They kept me silly, lighthearted, and connected to my childhood. They helped me see that my gifts were not wasted at all.
