Member-only story
I Asked my House Cleaner if She’d Harbour My Family
Her response shocked me
Like many, I aspire to a house with clean floors, organized drawers, and towels that don’t tumble out of the linen closet when you try to remove one. Which is why I feel such respect and gratitude for Kasia, our Polish house cleaner of nearly 20 years. She can do what I struggle so hard to pull off.
Except for the white streaks in Kasia’s jet black hair, she still looks like the fresh-faced, lovely young woman who came to our family back when I was in the throes of raising young children. She still wears the same size slim jeans.
What makes her extraordinary in my eyes? Once I bought Zebra blinds from Bed, Bath & Beyond, but because the blinds were missing a clamp they couldn’t be installed. BB&B honestly tried to be helpful — they kept sending me variations of clamps that almost worked — but after six weeks, the blinds remained in their box. I had given up. One day I see Kasia heating a nail on the gas stove. She fiddles with a metal scrap of this or that, bends and molds it with the heated nail, and voila, seven minutes later the blinds hang perfectly, seamlessly, in the window. Doesn’t that example say it all? But let me go on.
She does these sorts of things all the time, without fanfare, quickly, under the radar, and only a month later…
