At a party recently I bemoaned the fact that my babysitter was leaving us, when I woman I barely know turned to me, a look of recollected horror on her face.

“I went into therapy after my favorite babysitter quit,” she said, eyebrows knitting together in consternation.

I gave her my patented “cocktail party/fellow parent” laugh, and started to leave the room.

“No, really,” she said. “I did. She did everything, I never had to worry. It was like having a third parent.” She looked off into the distance, and I could almost see her chaotic household, now at least 20 years in the past: three kids, a demanding job in a male-dominated field, a husband who also worked.

“I understand,” I replied. “You know, I really do.”

***

Bethany responded to my ad on Craigslist. She’d just graduated, she said, and didn’t have a job for the fall. She was moving home, could she set up a time to meet us when she got into town?

It was love at first sight.

Lively, intelligent and with pretty green eyes, Bethany and I clicked instantly. She took to The Poo, and, more importantly, The Poo fell in love with her, too. We sealed the deal with a handshake, after a tour of the house.

“Oh!” she said. “You have that bedding from Garnet Hill! That is my favorite, I love it.”

For almost a year, Bethany watched over The Poo while I started my freelance career. Three times a week, I went to the coffee shop while my daughter played and drew and laughed and learned with Bethany.

Bethany emptied my dishwasher one day, just because. The next, she folded a basket of laundry. It was just sitting there, she said, sheepishly, as I hugged her. She showed The Poo how to make a capital E and then they made alphabet letters out of glitter glue and Popsicle sticks.

I avoided asking her about her job search, praying fervently, guiltily, every night that she’d remain unemployed at least until I had a solid portfolio built up. One day, about four months into my pregnancy with The Babyman, she announced that she was moving to Chicago.

She didn’t have a job, she said. She just needed to go. It was time, she couldn’t stand living with her parents anymore. I looked at her, seeing myself at 23, longing to get out of the house and on with my life. I lived at home until the ripe old age of 25, something I never regret.

But I saw it in her, the restlessness. She had a plan, sketchy though it was. She was taking her pretty, emerald green eyes on the road to her future.

The Poo wept when we bid Bethany farewell.

So did I.

***

Our last sitter was capable, and she loved The Babyman. She came into his life when he was just five weeks old, fresh from a terrifying visit to the hospital and cranky from reflux and his lazy larynx.

Tina was angular where Bethany was curvy, with straight blonde hair and sexy librarian glasses. She was a snazzy dresser and she was never, ever late. She cuddled my son, and even took pictures of him on her cell phone, which she later printed out and glued to a hand-made Christmas card she gave us, along with some gifts for the kids.

She was The Babyman’s sitter; The Poo was at school when she came. I kissed my son’s soft spot as I walked out the door every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning for eight months. I never looked back, because I knew he was in caring, competent hands.

When I came home the high-chair train was spotless and the coffee mugs were in the dishwasher, my towels folded. Tina graduated in May, and set off for her own uncertain future, degree in hand and a job nowhere to be found.

She kissed my boy on the head and drove off into the prairie sunset, taking with her my sense of freedom.

***

Three sitters in less than two months. The first girl had family problems (mom with cancer, aunt who committed suicide) and an air of unpredictability that she managed to subvert during our interview. A negative review from The Poo (she yelled at me, she plays a little video game while I watch TV, Mama) helped usher her out the door.

The second girl, a wonderful personality. All whimsy and giggles, I find her, at age 31, dressed in my daughter’s tutu and scampering around the sofa in a game of “Princess and Fairy.” Later, the baby’s diaper gaps at the waist and food dries on the high-chair tray. I email her later: Playmobile toys are choking hazards, please only let the baby play with toys from his green bin.

Girl No. 3 is beautiful. Her eyes are perfectly spaced under eyebrows so impeccably groomed that I am suddenly concious of the juice on my T-shirt and the trace of a mustache over my upper lip. I cover my mouth as we chat about her experience as a middle-school Spanish teacher.

High school kids want to be entertained, she says. I think I like this age better.

She’s quiet, shy, almost. She talks about her family vacations to Arkansas, how she is always happy to see the flatlands of the middle west again. Her parents were missionaries in Holland, she says, and she would like to someday spend time on the European mainland.

Her mother ran a daycare center; she can change a diaper with one hand while sweeping the floor and feeding The Poo her lunch. She is not vivacious.

She is … servicable.

***

Some days, I think about Bethany and her quirky, cotton handbags. I wonder what her apartment in Chicago looks like, and if she ever comes back home to visit. I wonder if she ever thinks about The Poo.

And then I know, suddenly, why that woman I hardly know got that faraway look in her eye, when she thought about that one perfect babysitter, the one who got away.