Miguel Vidal is a 33-year-old from Vigo who has dedicated the last four years of his life to being a manny: a babysitter in the United States. It all started as a job search abroad and has ended up being the greatest adventure of his life, which has even served to write a book.

In his first novel, he tells how he decided to go to New York, the city where his father is from, and how he began what would be the most complicated stage of his career there. From sleeping on the street to working for multimillionaires in San Francisco, Miguel tells his original story without losing his smile and "without regretting any decision he has made."

With a few months of perspective and already in his native Galicia, this young man talks about a story of learning, empathy and resilience in his book El nanny manny.

From Vigo to heaven

Although he is "from Vigo all his life", Miguel studied INEF in A Coruña and did not return to his hometown except to see his family. "My life has always been linked to sport, but when I finished I didn't see myself linked to it professionally and I decided to look for other professional opportunities", he explains when talking about how he studied restoration to work as a waiter in the Canary Islands and in Barcelona.

It was in this last city where he began to work for a large multinational that sells sports clothing and equipment and realized that corporate work was not for him either. «Working between four walls was not my thing, I always wanted to dedicate myself to children and decided to give it a try». This, together with his desire to find a life abroad, were what ended up taking him to England to work as an aupair.

In London he spent some time, "and he was very happy, the work was very satisfying and just what I was looking for". The problem, in this case, was the remuneration. "He's not compensated, you work long hours for little pay, and I didn't want to be like this forever."

cross the atlantic

Thus another need arises: to fulfill the American dream. "I knew that in the United States nannies were well paid and I always wanted to live in New York for a while and learn about my family's past." It was the origin of his father, who grew up in Manhattan, which ended up pushing Miguel to live in The Big Apple.

«I will never forget September 20, 2016: that trip changed my life«. With a suitcase and a great desire to work, Manuel took a Madrid-New York flight with the promise of taking care of two twins as soon as he landed. The children's mother, an Italian who raised them alone, paid him in return with the possibility of sleeping on her sofa.

Thus, with no place of his own to sleep and no income, he began his own adventure. The job interviews were not long in coming, but none of them went well and Miguel found himself on the street after a few months.

Symptoms Of Liver Cancer And Know How To Diagnose Liver Cancer Early. https://t.co/QqhgJlcE1a

— Ram dharel Sun Aug 30 17:14:31 +0000 2020

Near Madison Square Garden, on 42nd Street, Miguel found a small corner in which to spend the nights while he did not have an apartment, "because the few savings I had left were not enough to pay a pension." Fate was the one who wanted him to regain control of his life by making him bump into a Spanish woman who had flown with him from Madrid a few months before.

"I decided to approach her and take her out for ice cream, and in the end she invited me to sleep in her apartment for a few days while she couldn't find another place to live." At that moment, the young man reconsidered and decided that it was time to ask for help.

Bottom

Sleeping on the street, says Miguel, "is an experience that I wouldn't change for anything because it transformed me." However, after months of searching for a job and having hit rock bottom, he gave in and sought help from his father's friends and relatives "whom I didn't know or see since the 1960s."

He began to live in an apartment "borrowed" by one of those relatives and asked for a job in a restaurant where they still remembered his grandfather. «I worked there at the beginning of the last century and the owners remembered it fondly, I was very lucky and I was working for them for a few months«.

Miguel acknowledges that, despite having lived through the darkest moment of his life, he can say that he has achieved what he has for himself: «It is one of the things that I least regret about my trip, not having asked for help before made me see things I wouldn't have known otherwise.

Life, in the end, proved him right and after hundreds of interviews in the most exclusive skyscrapers in the Big Apple, he had two "luxury" job offers. «I got a job with a multimillionaire family in San Francisco and I went there, I would finally be manny«.

The eclipse

Living on the street, even if it was only for seven days, is what has changed Miguel Vidal the most, "because I didn't let the life of luxury that I lived afterwards overshadow me". His arrival in California enveloped him in a world full of millionaires, people with lives far removed from his and his family and with a rhythm that he did not know.

His new job begins with meeting an estranged father and his son, whom he has won custody of "after a long and hard legal battle." He says that it was a broken family and that he realized that they were the billionaires in dollars, "but I was the billionaire in everything else".

«In my family there was always a network of affection and they knew how to value that I transferred to their house that climate of affection that I had experienced in my childhood«. Supported by a team of psychologists, Miguel was "raising" a twelve-year-old boy and "re-educating" his father in the love, coexistence and empathy necessary in a family.

For four years, the young man from Vigo "gave everything he had" to become part of the family and enrich the lives of that father and his son. "Until the day came when I felt like Mary Poppins: I knew my job there was done because I would do more for the child if I opened my umbrella and took flight."

The following six months, by way of farewell, he gradually left that house, that life and that family that he had gained, to return to his Galician life.

In the summer he landed again in Vigo and decided to start working in a hotel establishment in Pontedeume «so that the transition would be easier, he did not want to stop suddenly». Now, a few weeks before the end of the season, he wants to recover his free time and enjoy it with his family and his friends, "I want to recover my life from before."

At the moment, says Miguel, he is not considering looking for a job when he finishes his contract in Pontedeume, but he wants to rest "after four years in a job that squeezes you to the fullest". When he can, yes, "I'll take a backpack and go a whole year to travel the world, to see other places and continue exploring."