Perfect Moment Monday

This Perfect Moment Monday is going to be dedicated to someone who touches my family more then any of us could have imagined. She is our cleaning woman.

Long ago and far away, a neat freak (me) and a slob (him) married. For quite a while they got along okay and eventually learned to compromise on domestic duties. Then they had a son. And the slob got promoted, meaning more money but longer hours. And the frazzled neat freak asked if it was okay to hire some help because the house was "going to kill me" (paraphrasing, of course)

So, we hired a maid service for a while. And what bliss it was. Occassionally. Because the service had good cleaners and bad cleaners and you never knew which ones would come to your house. But it was fine.

Then, we had some hard economic times, so we stopped the service. Once things got back to normal, we found her--on a bulletin board. Adrianna.

Adrianna has cleaned up our house every week since my son was 5 years old. And now she seems like part of our family. Not just because she has been with us for so long. She is more than just a service to us.

Like any family member, she trys to help out when she can, well meaning, but not always in the ways one needs or wants...like the time she moved all the organizational stuff around in our large bathroom--and we ended up putting it back the way we wanted to that weekend. Or the times she has dusted pictures on the walls and accidently broke the frames...or the many things (books, toys, important papers) that she has put "away" for us...and we couldn't find them.

But there are other times. When she brought down our huge hamper of laundry (which is not one of her duties) to the basement because she knew I was pregnant. Or when she moved the furniture in Michael's bedroom--and we liked the new configuration!

Or, the two Perfect Moments below:

Perfect Moment #1: Husband is not a morning person. Meaning, given the opportunity, he will fall asleep..which kinda sucks because he is in charge of the kids in the morning, as I go to work earlier. About 2 weeks ago--Willow fell asleep in his arms and he fell asleep. He woke up to noises. Voices in the other room. Then he realized Willow was not in his arms. Panicked, he got up--to see Adrianna and her helper playing with Willow, while cleaning the kitchen. They had been there about 1/2 hour. Adrianna LOVES Willow and has doted on her since she was born.

Perfect Moment #2: This Friday I got home as usual. Kids in tow, rushing around, trying to get things dealt with because we had people coming over in a few hours. I rushed upstairs, not looking forward to having to go through the HUGE pile of clean laundry to find a more relaxed outfit to wear...when I walked into an utterly clean bedroom. Our laundry was all neatly put away in our closet. And the broken shelving was put up on top of the bar--and in pencil (as I only afterwards found out) she had written "shirts" "pants", etc. under the neatly folded laundry. Adrianna even put up the hanging sorter I had bought months ago and put my shoes in it!

Bear in mind, we let her know that we are grateful to her (monetarily and otherwise). Bear in mind, that we have come to know each other through the barriers of class and language.

The sense of relief, care, warmth and gratitude I have for this woman, a woman who I don't really know as well as I should. That is a perfect moment.