Today is blog for Domestic Workers Day. This idea was ignited by Salty Femme, but I found out about it at The Anti Essentialist Conundrum, a blog I frequently read.

My grandmother Rosa Belle and my mom Dorothy spent years scrubbing crud out of other people’s toilets in homes and hotel rooms and taking care of other people’s children.

My mom was a 12 year old girl when she found her first housekeeping job. By 14, she was spending time after school and on weekends as a ‘mother’s helper,’ or what we now call an au pair. This family was kind to my mom and so impressed her that she chose to become Catholic, like they were, while working for them. My mother is no longer a practicing Catholic; that ended several decades ago. And after the age of 15, my mom never did domestic work again.

These days we both enjoy the luxury of having other people come in to clean our homes. And even though we live on opposite coasts, we both employ cleaning services that pay a decent wage to their cleaning crews and pay Social Security taxes and Workman’s Compensation. Truth be told, we’re also a little obsessed with making sure everything’s tidy before the cleaning teams arrive. We know first hand that people will talk bad about you if your house is nasty.

I’d like to think that the memory of my mom’s and grandma’s work inspires us to honor the intimacy of bringing someone into your home and asking them to tend to the relationships (children, seniors, pets) and possessions you hold most dear.