Maid: On Caring for Those Who Serve You

"Rent plus groceries plus utilities plus laundry plus insurance plus gas plus clothing minus an hourly paycheck of barely more than minimum wage and the scant assistance parceled out by the government with spectacular reluctance — the brute poetry of home economics recurs throughout Land’s book."

A book review by Emily Cooke in The New York Times last winter, quoted from above, prompted me to read Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive, a memoir by Stephanie Land. Land is a young woman who made many mistakes that cost her in significant ways, including connecting with and getting pregnant by the wrong guy and at the wrong time. Raising her daughter on her own and needing to earn a living, she became a maid who worked for a cleaning service and also for her own clients.

Read this book if you ever wonder about who is behind the ads for cleaning services or ever wonder about the woman who cleans your office space or perhaps even your home, if you ever see or think about the woman who cleans your hotel room. Land writes of her very difficult life trying to provide for her daughter, trying to keep her warm in the winter, trying to provide enough food. She writes of the struggle to care for her when she's sick because the means aren't easy to come by, neither money for cough medicine nor paid time off to stay home with her.

When I was in early grade school, my mother had a "cleaning lady" come in sometimes to help clean our three-bedroom rambler. I'm not sure exactly why her help was needed and it didn't last long. In fact, I don't remember much about it, but here's what I do remember: every time she came, my mother set the table to serve her lunch. I can still picture the plate of food on the cloth placemat and a beautiful paper napkin, usually a floral design, folded on the left side of the plate. I remember my mother served her. I remember that she and my mother would sit in the living room and talk. I also remember having to clean my room before she came. More than a means to obtain a clean house, those few months or however long it lasted taught me something important about caring for people, a topic about which I still have so much to learn. Land wrote of a few similar caring customers and her deep gratitude for them, but far too many were of the sort that she had to endure in order to be paid.

Who is the person waiting on you or waiting on me at the grocery store or the drug store? The person bringing the mail to your door? The man handing me stamps at the post office? The woman pouring your coffee at lunch, or the woman picking up my dirty towels from the hotel room floor, leaving behind perfectly folded towels, clean and fresh?

Many years ago I read something written by Margie Haack, co-director of Ransom Fellowship and author of the quarterly, “Letters from the House Between,” about tipping hotel maids. I'm sorry to admit that I'd never before thought of doing that. But I started right then leaving cash and a note of thanks and have been doing so ever since. Sometimes I get notes back, with thanks and often a hint of surprise, as if no one before had ever left them a tip.

Let's make life easier for each other, not harder. More kindness. More respect. More sharing. I have a long way to go in this myself, and am so grateful for those in my life who have taught me and those who continue to teach me, like Stephanie Land has done in her book.

Read Maid. Look at the faces of people who serve you and care for them. Leave a tip next time you stay in a hotel.

~

Related post:

• The Philosopher Kings

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[Photo: taken of a view within the Minneapolis Central Library]

Thinking and Writing About Your Work

Those of you who have read my blog or newsletter for awhile may have seen mention of this before, but given that the second edition of Finding Livelihood was recently published, I wanted to mention it again in case you missed it the first time around and also to let new readers know about it. I've put together a guided journal that you can download, print out, and write in. While it corresponds to the book, you neither need a copy of the book nor do you need to have read the book to make use of the journal—although I always highly recommend both having a copy of the book and reading it (wink). Each page of the journal has a writing prompt to get you thinking about your work life, and you can define work as broadly or as narrowly as you like.

Here are a few examples of the writing prompts you'll find. There's 18 in all.

 What unexpected turns has your work experience, or the work experience of a spouse, taken?

In what ways are you satisfied and unsatisfied in your work? How has your degree of satisfaction changed over the years?

What people and events can you witness—pay attention to or “see ”—through your work?

I hope you'll download the journal, consider the questions, and even write for a bit. I also hope you'll let me know what you discover.

~~~

[Photo: Grass from Jay Cook State Park in northern Minnesota. Aren’t the colors gorgeous?]

A Presidential Model

There’s a scene at the beginning of episode 6, season 3, of the television series “West Wing,” in which President Bartlet and his wife, Abbey, are bantering about their morning at church as they walk down the West Wing Colonnade. The day’s text was from Ephesians and back and forth they go on the handling of it in the sermon. I only recently started watching this show on Netflix, 20 years after it first launched on NBC, and am finding something noteworthy nearly every time I turn it on. President Bartlet ends their discussion by, rather heatedly, pointing to and expounding on verse 21 of chapter 5: “Be subject to one another.” But then a number of his team arrive and bad news descends and the mood shifts. Even so, as Bartlet and his chief-of-staff, Leo McGarry, turn toward each other to talk, Bartlet, in a calm and gentle tone, starts their conversation with, “Be subject to each other, Leo. What can I do to be subject to you?” Imagine what could happen if each of us at least thought that, didn’t even say it, when we were at work each day no matter our status above or below those around us? What can I do to be subject to you?

~~~

[Photo: taken of an outside wall at the Peter Engel Science Center at St. John’s University.]

Susan Orlean, The Library Book

I just finished reading Susan Orlean's The Library Book (Simon & Schuster, 2018), which follows the story of the 1986 fire at the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles, the largest library fire ever in the United States. Was it arson or not? More than one million books were damaged or lost. Interestingly, not many people heard about this fire as it was happening or afterward because the fire started on the same day as the news broke about the Chernobyl  nuclear disaster. The book is about more than the story of that fire, however. The book expands to include the story of libraries. Libraries! What they mean, or have meant to us, personally. What they mean to society.

Orlean wrote of often going as a young girl with her mother to the library in her Cleveland suburb and the deep childhood memories those visits instilled in her. Her memories reminded me of all the times in grade school when I rode my bike along with my best friend who lived next door to our neighborhood library and then returned with bike baskets full of books, which we'd read on the grass under shade trees. Orlean wrote next of a long span as an adult during which she never went to libraries, forgetting the joy and magic they held, until her young son wanted to interview a librarian for a school project. When she entered the LA Central Library with her son, all her childhood library memories came back and the library "spell" was again cast on her. I remember spending years as a young mother going only to the library's children's room with my sons and coming home with stacks of their books. Then one day I let myself walk out of the children's room and pick a book of my choosing. Like Orlean, I was again hooked. There's probably not been a time since then when I haven't had at least one library book checked out.

What was most fascinating to me in Orlean's book is finding out the nearly unbelievable scope of action librarians practice. They do more than order and keep track of books. They do more than books. Librarians are our historians, our social workers, our public health spokespeople, our childhood educators, our teen counselors, our _________ —fill in the blank and librarians are probably busy doing it. The role of the library has increasingly expanded to take a frontline position to care for people in its community.

In the book's conclusion, Orlean underscores that libraries—through the work of librarians and all those who help fund and source the libraries—hold our stories. Think of that "our" in the biggest possible way. All of our stories. Orlean writes:

"The library is a whispering post. You don't need to take a book off a shelf to know there is a voice inside that is waiting to speak to you, and behind that was someone who truly believed that if he or she spoke, someone would listen. It was that affirmation that always amazed me. Even the oddest, most particular book was written with that kind of crazy courage—the writer's belief that someone would find his or her book important to read. I was struck by how precious and foolish and brave that belief is, and how necessary, and how full of hope it is to collect these books and manuscripts and preserve them. It declares that all these stories matter, and so does every effort to create something that connects us to one another, and to our past and to what is still to come."

~~~

[Photo: taken in the Cadillac Center Station of the Detroit People Mover]

The story of a rabbit

We recently had a visit in our home, sort of, from a little rabbit of about teenage status. He came in through the dryer vent. My husband heard him late one evening when he went downstairs to turn out the lights before bed. The trapped animal was crying and scratching to get out of the exhaust tube he’d fallen into. Wisely, my husband didn’t tell me about the dilemma in our basement until the next morning when he set about calling a specialist in wild life retrieval to come and get the creature out of the tube. At the time we didn’t know what it was although suspected it to be a chipmunk, which are abundant in our yard. Years ago, one had slid down that same exhaust tubing.

The wild life retrieval specialist came and disconnected the tubing from the dryer and from the outside venting structure and caught the little rabbit in his gloved hands as it slid out. He told me he’d rescued lots of animals from dryer vents but never a rabbit. With great care, he carried the little rabbit outside and told me to get it some water, which he waited for—such kindness—before setting it down. I took a good look at the rabbit and recognized it as the one that had come up to our front door and looked inside just a few days before. My husband and I both met him then, face to face for a good half minute or so, and we thought how unusual to have such a close up meeting with a little rabbit, and then he hopped away. Now here he was again but not in a good way. He was trembling. He barely moved. After the retrieval specialist left, I went back in to work, but walked back out to check on the little rabbit every 5 minutes or so. After just a short while, though, it was apparent he was doing very poorly and so I put him in a shoe box, along with some grass and water, and covered it with a screen to keep flies away.

I texted my daughter-in-law who texted her sister, who frequently rescues all kinds of animals from all kinds of situations, and she suggested putting a heating pad under the shoe box. I microwaved a rice heat pack and put it alongside the box on the side where the rabbit was standing, and then went online and started putting in search terms to find someone or something that could help this little guy. Let’s call it divine intervention. It took only a few minutes before I pulled up a spreadsheet of names of “Permitted Wildlife Rehabilitators in Minnesota.” This list cataloged who to call for ducks and squirrels and even bears. Yes, rabbits too. Regular people who do this as volunteers. I picked a name from my county and called, leaving a message.

About an hour later, a woman called back, her voice full of kindness, full of concern, and since she lived only about 10 minutes from me, came right over to pick up the little rabbit. When she got there, she picked the rabbit up in her bare hands—such gentleness—and turned him over to examine from all directions. He was injured and infected in ways I hadn’t been able to see, and she figured that he had probably tried to hide inside the tubing because he was ill. She would take him home and see what she could do to nurse him back to health. I said to her that given how many rabbits are in all of our yards, and how so many people try to keep the rabbits out of their gardens and so forth, that it was remarkable that she would go to such lengths to help a little rabbit live. She said, “But he’s here and he needs help.”

The next week I emailed her to see how the rabbit was doing. She wrote me back that she had given him a number of therapies, including injectable fluids, pain meds, and antibiotics, but that he had died the next day. She wrote how at least he had died without pain and in a warm and safe environment. I read her email with a huge lump in my throat, which is back now as I write this post. It’s not only that I came to care for that little rabbit, but it’s also, to a huge degree, that I’m overwhelmed that this woman was there with such love and care and that she is there for more creatures than this little rabbit guy and that there are more amazing people like this all over, under the radar. With all the emphasis placed these days on vocation, all the talk about how we need to carefully follow our calls, all the assessments so many of us make about what will bring us money, first author status, top billing, on and on, the image of this woman carefully examining this little rabbit and carrying him to her car is going to stay with me a long time.

~~

[Photo: taken of a boardwalk at a nearby place of beauty]

A New Venture

This blog space has been quiet the last several months. At the turn of the year, now already more than 5 months ago, I had planned to pull back from writing here for a time so as to devote more time, in the already too few hours unclaimed by work and other commitments, to moving along my manuscript on hope, which already has taken way too long. But just as that plan was made, I found out that Kalos Press, the publisher of Finding Livelihood, my book that came out in 2015, had gone out of business.

While I was still absorbing this news, grieving it actually, and wondering what to do, the book's editor, Jessica Snell, emailed me to say that she and the book's designer, Valerie Bost, were on board to help me republish it if that's what I wanted to do.

Republish it?

I hadn't even gotten that far in my thinking yet. But, yes, I did want to republish it. I think this book still has some good to do in the world. My new publishing venture, Metaxu Press, was born!

Instead of having a next draft of my hope manuscript to show for these months of silence, I now have a second edition of Finding Livelihood. I've been learning about copyright law, and the Library of Congress, and business structures, and book distributors, and pricing models, and printing options. Thankfully, I didn't have to also learn about book design because Valerie allowed me to use again the same cover design and, slightly modified, inside design (did you know that a book's cover and inside design belong to the designer?).

Valerie also designed a new logo, which I love. Whether I publish anything else through this new press in the future, I can't say for sure, but it's been a fun process. So maybe I will?

The new edition of Finding Livelihood is now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online booksellers. Kindle and Nook versions too, although the Kindle version hasn't loaded yet for some reason.

You can also order it from Hearts & Minds Books and Eighth Day Books. If you live in Minneapolis, you can buy it at Milkweed Books or Magers & Quinn. If you live in St. Paul, you can buy it at Next Chapter Booksellers (formerly Common Good Books). No matter where you live, you can ask for it from your local bookstore and they can order it.

All books need some help, even second editions finding their own way out into the world. If you wanted to help this one along—and if you did I'd be ever so grateful—here are some ideas:

• Post something on social media, such as an excerpt from it or just a word about it

• Order it from your local bookstore or ask them to stock it

• Ask your library to order it (this is surprisingly easy to do)

• Write an Amazon review

• Buy a copy for a friend or for your church library

Thank you for being here and reading along. I promise I'll get some new content up before too long.

~~~

[photo: taken of the Lilies of the Valley in my yard. It was such a long winter here; the appearance of these triggered a surge of joy.]

Beyond work

Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, I watched the 2016 film Paterson for the first time. For those of you who haven’t seen it, Paterson the film is about Paterson the man who lives in Paterson the village. Paterson the man, played by Adam Driver, is in his late 20s or early 30s and drives a city bus. He is married to Laura, played by Golshifteh Farahani, who is passionate about many things, including home decorating, learning to play guitar, and baking and selling cupcakes at a weekend community market. Paterson does more than drive a bus; he also writes poems.

He writes poems in his head as he walks to work each morning. Before he drives his bus out of the garage, he writes down the lines that came to him during that morning’s walk in the notebook he always carries with him. At lunch, while he eats his sandwich and drinks coffee from his thermos, he again takes out his notebook and adds the lines that came to him while he drove. At home, he goes down to his basement office—a desk and some shelves in an unfinished basement—and adds a few more lines. His wife begs him to read some of his poems to her, and he keeps promising he will but never does. She begs him to send his work out to some magazines. Instead, he just keeps writing, line by line.

The world around him seems to give him signs that what he’s doing matters, although the signs are not profound or recognizable to anyone else. No readers show up cheering his work, and no agents or publishers suddenly appear. He has no social media account that magically gains followers. The signs are more along the lines of “I see you.”

As he writes line by line in his head and in his notebook, he has a steadiness about him and an inner drive, not toward success, which is usually how the word ‘drive’ is used today, but a drive to keep putting the words together until they fit, and the final click unlocks some inner release and the eyes widen and the soul opens.

I wish this film had been around while I was writing Finding Livelihood. It probably would have made its way into one of the chapters. While the film features a man writing poetry while he also drives a bus, the broader implication can be a fill-in-the-blank sort of prospect for any of the rest of us. What else are you about beside your work or alongside your work? In what ways do you seek the opening of eyes and soul to what is beyond your work?

~~~

[photo: taken of the juniper berries on the table at the American Swedish Institute while I drank my coffee last week.]