La empleada

I have help.
To write that sentence is exceedingly humbling.

It is somewhat of the custom to have ladies come into the homes of the students here at language school to help them with household tasks, cooking and childcare. My kids asked “we are getting a maid?” I refuse to say “maid.”

I’ve never had help with my house, except for my closest friends who knew when I was sinking under the enormity of moving and dove in and rescued me. My primary job title for the last nearly 20 years has been homemaker. I care for my home and family. I clean. I cook. I do laundry.  Oh yes, I have taught my kids to help. I have long joked that I am working my self out of a job. Even so, the responsibility of order in our home has mostly been mine.

And then we move to Costa Rica.
I stand in the grocery store and I stare at the cleaning products and nothing is the same. What cleans the floors here? And why is everything in a bag?
I don’t have my pots and pans. I don’t even have the same food! I stare at the food in the grocery store, too.  And the oven doesn’t really work well… How do I cook here? What do I cook here?
And, I’m out the door with the kids in the morning, and in class, and studying… I can’t stop by Sam’s for a roasted chicken on the way home.
Not much is the same.

I can barely describe how much of a blessing sweet Concepcion has been to me. Concepcion, who might be 5 feet tall if she stretches, who works as hard as anyone I’ve met in my life! She comes twice a week, for 6 hours. Those two days are such a relief to me.
She cleans our tile floors to a glaze so shiny I can see myself.
She makes the old tile bathrooms look clean again.
She washes our sheets even though I told her not to, that I could do it.
She lines up my girls’ dolls on their pillows, awaiting their arrival home from school.
And she cooks!
She cooks amazing Costa Rican food, so I’m learning how to cook with local ingredients.  And she tells me what to buy!
She speaks Spanish, only Spanish, knows not a word of English, so I’m learning how to communicate better.

I know that because of working for our family and another at the school, she is eligible for health care benefits, and that she has income to care for her family. So I hope that we might be a blessing to her, too. I hope that I communicate well how much she helps me and my family.  I hope that we do not burden her with our messes!  (we still clean up, just like usual.  The kids still have chores everyday.)

It is difficult for me to really understand how, after we have taken such a significant salary decrease over the last year, when we move to a home less than half the size of our last, when we have less possessions than ever before in our life, when I have kids that are exceedingly capable, now is the time we have help.
But, I am so very grateful that we do…