The other man in my life is a middle-aged MARY POPPINS
He looks NOTHING like the part, but this mum says her male au pair is practically perfect
CLOvEr, do you know there’s a man in the garden playing Frisbee with your children?’ At my friend’s surprised words I turned from the kitchen table and looked out of the window. On the lawn my younger children — Lester, two, dash, four, and Evangeline, six — scrambled delightedly around Meto, our Macedonian au pair.
My friend’s reaction is typical. Meto doesn’t conform to most people’s idea of what an au pair should look like.
Aged 44 and sturdily built, he’s a year older than both me and my husband. But he’s a Mary Poppins in disguise.
Since he arrived last summer, he has made himself indispensable. And when he leaves us next month we are going to miss him a great deal.
Yet the simple sight of Meto doing his job has raised eyebrows. At the school gate, I’ve noticed pressure from fellow mums to explain clearly who this is picking the kids up.
A friend once texted, alarmed, to warn me she’d seen the children being driven away from the house by an unfamiliar man.
We nearly missed out on meeting him because I felt ambivalent about a middle-aged bloke looking after my kids.
It’s not like we’re new to the au pair thing. Over the last 15 years, I’ve lost count of the young people who have passed through our home. With five children — the three youngest plus my teenagers, Jimmy, 18, and dolly, 15 — we have needed a lot of help.
Meto arrived in our lives at a particularly desperate moment. At age two, Lester still doesn’t sleep through the night. Jimmy gives me sleepless nights of a different kind, and is always needing help with his Ucas form or lifts into town to meet friends.
And last year my husband Pete had an accident, breaking both his legs, and spent a lot of time completely immobile. I work from home as a writer and journalist, but while this is flexible in theory, it means I may need help with childcare if I’m handed a sudden deadline.
So last summer, I spent many evenings on an au pair website, trying to find the right person.
With each child I’ve had, finding an au pair has got harder. Add the fact we live in rural Oxfordshire and need someone who can drive, and it’s a tricky proposition.
Sick of wasting hours online building relationships with promising Czech or French girls, only for them to tell me they’d found a family with one child in Central London, I turned to nicky Cuffe at Larah Au Pairs. We agreed that my demands were intense. Then she nervously mentioned that she had a candidate with excellent credentials — as long as I didn’t mind that he was a middle-aged man.
At least half my au pairs have been male. I’ve found boys are just as good at looking after children as girls, and often more enthusiastic. Still, it felt odd to have anyone — male or female — older than me looking after them. And bumping into a 22-year-old on the landing is one thing; a bloke in his 40s is another.
But by that point I’d have tried almost anyone who was enthusiastic, could drive, and didn’t have a criminal record. We interviewed Meto and were struck by his confidence, good English and responsible demeanour. Still, we only agreed to give him a trial. Fools! We’d struck gold. Of all our au pairs, from david, the Slovak who mucked in changing nappies, to Giovanni, the impeccably-dressed Parisian who kept everyone guessing at the school gate when I was a single mother, Meto is one of the best, and the most unconventional. He’s patient enough to read endless stories, and doesn’t mind getting down on the floor to play. He’s spent longer at baby and toddler groups in five months than I have in five years. He’s the au pair parents dream of.
He’s also brimming with the confidence that comes from age and, goodness, it makes life easy.
Take his arrival. Younger au pairs want to be picked up from the airport, which takes a whole day, with the drive back stilted, exhausting and tear- stained. Meto told us cheerily that he’d jump on a bus from Luton.
HE Walked into the house, endeared himself to the children by setting up toys, then started folding a pile of laundry while chatting to Pete about the future of the European Union.
Although it was disconcerting asking a man older than me to change nappies, make lunchboxes and sweep the kitchen, it was a relief to know I was dealing with a grown-up. With a husband recovering from a major accident, I don’t have the time, or energy, to care for another child — which is, occasionally, what the au pair/ mother relationship can be.
Meto, who has run an au pair agency in Macedonia for ten years, and came to England to learn what makes a placement work, looks out for me rather than the other way around.
My husband is often abroad working, and juggling five kids, plus work, is incredibly intense. Meto is happy to pick up the reins, whether that means waiting outside ballet for Evangeline or picking up a teenager from a party.
He talks with his parents on Skype most nights, and their close relationship is reassuring. It’s clear he’s a good man. And it didn’t take long for everyone he met to realise, too. I’m proud of the example this sets. It’s proof men are just as capable at looking after children as women — something I want my sons and daughters to learn.
Sadly Meto will be returning to Macedonia shortly to help look after his parents. I’ve tried to persuade him to stay but, like Mary Poppins, once his mind is made up nothing can keep him.
He tells me, ‘It’s been wonderful. I’m surprised, but I’m really going to miss the family life in England and the kids.’
The children have made him promise he will Skype them, and there’s a plan to visit Macedonia. I will feel forever indebted to him for looking after our family with such generosity, and taking a huge weight off my shoulders.