(31) Hire a maid?

I was shelling beans in my brother's home. As usual, I was speaking nineteen to a dozen things, jumping from topic to topic. It is a good day as my mother has had enough sleep the previous night and the usual chores are not too tiring for her.

The day before I met up with a childhood friend and we asked after each others' mums. Hers is older than mine and is currently facing mobility as a challenge. Mine is still diligently brisk walking each morning for at least half an hour. She just returned from visiting her youngest brother in Canton, China. She may have passed her eightieth birthday, but she is still game to travel and see new places of interest.

My old friend was surprised that my mum was still shouldering household responsibilities at such an advanced age. Well, she thought a maid should have been hired to take over. In this beloved country of mine, families are divided into two broad groups: those with maid(s) and those without. For those with maids, you find some with infants and young children and senior citizens requiring care, but some families simply hire maids because they can afford to and would rather spend their time doing more interesting things than house work. For the second group, you find families who do very well without help (like mine) and those who limp along refusing to live with full time maids as a matter of choice. My brother's family fell into the last sub-group. This last segment of this society is very small. As the choice to do without help is not due to the lack of finances. The choice has much to do with the risk of bringing the wrong person into the home.

In the newspaper we read often of maids being heinously abused. Not many people would high-light how employers are regularly being made fools of. When maids run away, employers must make police reports and each report costs several hundred dollars. Employers lost not only the sizable amounts paid to agents, they may lose items stolen by absconding maids, and they lost the convenience of having household help for x number of months. After saying all these, you may wonder why people are so stupid as to run such risk time and again! Well, the flip side of the coin is I have met maids who have worked 6, 8, 11, and 18 years for the same families. Such maids are treated more like an elderly aunt by the entire clan.

I have met a high-flying lawyer who has had such reliable help that in all the years of bringing up her four children, she never have to do a diaper change. In all her married years, she never washed a single item (as a tea cup) in the kitchen.

Interestingly, people like my lawyer contact are often extremely impressed with any of my children being well trained in performing household chores and assisting me without being asked in or out of the house.