Dias para las Tias

For the past three days we’ve been offering spa service to the Tías. From 12:30 until 4:00 the Tías can come to our guest house for facials, manicures, or pedicures. We’ve been playing peaceful spa music, or Enya, along with decorating the table with crackers, cheese, grapes and boiling water for hot chocolate and herbal tea.

Over the past few weeks I have gotten to know all of these women through the English classes that I’ve been teaching along with helping them in each of the three houses with the children. Most of the time there are three Tías in each of the three houses: the baby house, the toddler/preschool house, and the special needs house. The special needs house is right below our guest house and we often hear them playing music at around 8:00 in the evening, imagining all of them having a dance party down there.

At 8:30/9:00 at night I have gone over in the dark to the preschool house just in time to hear the children going to bed or a Tía reading or praying with them as they drift off to sleep. A couple times I have gone over and little Joshua or Josue has been sitting on the landing, being punished for not wanting to go to sleep. I only know he’s up there by the little feet that are sticking out of the railing. Meanwhile, I sit with the three Tías below the stairs and teach them the alphabet song.

That moment of rest at the end of a busy day is when I get to see their personalities exhaled, which is really enjoyable. We’ve played matching games with vocabulary words such as crib, blanket, bottle. The first game that I created I drew amazing pictures of the items and they had to find the matching Spanish word. Each day I would teach three different groups of Tias, so it was fun to see some of them excel and others laugh and fumble at their lack of English knowledge.

In the baby house there are two Tias that are around my age: Nancy and Alisha. Alisha brought us out to her house in the countryside one day and says that I know more Spanish than I speak, which makes me laugh. Whenever I walk in I hear, “Senorita Saaaaaarah. Beunos Dias!”. There was one afternoon when I was looking for some social company, so I visited them while the babies were sleeping and showed them pictures of Scotland, Europe and friends back home. They both came into our spa a bit camera shy, despairing with a smile at any picture I would take of them.

There are some other Tias that I click with more than others. There’s Merry from the toddler house, who one of the other Tias jokingly referred to as Merry Christmas during one of our games. She’s very funny, in a dry kind of way, and seems to get a kick out of the children, wanting to mess with their minds a little bit sometimes (in a playful kind of way, which is right up my alley). Isabel strikes me as a strong woman yet retains this sense of loveliness and openness. There’s also Marcia, who has a harder looking face and is stooped when she walks or stands because something has happened to her leg. But when she feeds the babies or works with Thalia (who has special needs) she sings to them in the most motherly way, gently holding them and rocking them.

All of the Tias come with their own way of disciplining and mothering the children, carefully watched and monitored by the directors here. Most rooms have cameras , making them very intentional about how they instruct or play with the children. We’ve been told not to pick the toddlers up as much because once we’re gone they start to cry. Everyday all of the toys are disinfected and every piece of laundry is washed. I’ve had to sit and wash the balls in the ball pit: it was not the most fulfilling task, especially since I wanted to shoot the children’s music that played on repeat in the background.

Giving back to the Tias and offering them a day of treats was so wonderful for us. Sometimes I felt like I had found my true calling, since I strangely enjoy picking at things – therefore, picking at people’s toes and nails all day was actually quite fun for me. Jen would pull off their fask masks when they were finished, Sharon would carefully paint their fingernails. We were like the Asian nail places, only we were speaking English amongst our Spanish speaking Tias – quite humorous.

The kids here have such a wonderful home as a consolation to their lack of real family. When the children are adopted, it must not be easy for these women to let them go, but they know they have to. They’ll have a place in the child’s photo album of their years here, but continue on raising children and babies until others are ready to do so.

Muchas gracias, Tias.