Ivo has worked for us for so many years that I forget when she first started. She came at the time when I was looking for someone better to clean the house, when I was not very happy with the job Josephina had done.
Our first cleaning crew was two young Brazilian ladies whose names I have forgotten. They worked to earn their college tuitions and quit the job as soon as they got their degrees. I found Josephina then from the business cards taped to my front door. These cards usually meant cheap labors of immigrants who crossed the border from Mexico to find better life here. They were willing to do the jobs that the American citizens don't want to do, lawn care, cleaning services, construction work, restaurant chores.
Josephina came with her teen daughter and worked well at the beginning. But they speeded things up bit by bit and eventually cut their working hours by almost half. They swept across the house like whirlwind and moved on to the next family. Squeezing a four-hour job into two hours caused some consequences - The surfaces of the kitchen cabinets might leave unattended and the shower tiles might not be thoroughly cleaned.
My dentist mentioned Ivo one day when she was working on my decayed tooth. I called the number the dentist gave me and decided to switch to her after one trial. That was probably more than ten years ago.
Ivo was of course not perfect. But I did not have much to complain about either. She was a little bashful and polite. She could speak English well and had no problem to communicate with. She was agreeable to most of the things I asked. I loved the clean feeling every time she brought to the house. Cleanliness can make people like me happy. Happiness is priceless. So I believed that was the best money spent. Ivo usually came with one or two of her partners and worked the same way at the same speed throughout the years until, well, the pandemic struck. The whole world was shutting down so was our home. I waved goodbye to Ivo last April and did not know when we could have her back.
The cleaning routine became my burden. It was intensive and time consuming. And I could never reach the level of cleanliness that the cleaning ladies performed. The glass was still blur and the kitchen was still greasy no matter how much I tried. So I asked Ivo to come back soon as the vaccination started to get around and the State governor declared the reopening of business. But I was too late. Ivo told me she no longer had the time slots for us.
That was when I realized how difficult it is to find someone like Ivo nowadays. The reason behind is probably a tight labor supply. According to the statistics, the number of Mexican immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, has steadily declined since its peak in 2007. Times change. Situations change.
My friend Sue who also has Ivo for house cleaning later told me that she had paid Ivo half of the usual amount during the quarantine when Ivo was unable to work. Sue worried about Ivo and her family being completely without income. Shame on me that I didn’t pay attention to what Ivo would suffer if everyone stopped using her services. When Ivo finally managed to add us back to her busy schedule last week, I knew I needed to do something to make it up to her.
Maybe we should all hang a question mark on the things we have long taken for granted, not only the people who have served us, but everything that has blended so naturally in our life that we often lose sight of their value and forget to be grateful.
