A World Fair Trade Day Reflection
The Lesson I Learned From Seeing My Mom Cleanup After Others
By Sergio Lopez, CRS
If you are used to paying an extra couple of cents for coffee then you probably know that May 14th is World Fair Trade Day. As I reflected this week on my passion for economic justice, solidarity and the fair trade movement I began thinking about my mom and the twenty years she spent as a self-employed professional housekeeper.
Years before I knew anything about bring your kids to work day, this had already been a custom in our household. According to my mom, I was about four years old the first time she took me and my sister to clean houses with her. At the time we were still getting used to the whole potty training thing and you can probably guess that we weren’t much help when it came to housekeeping. As we got older though, we learned along the way and were eventually able to help my mom when she took us to work during school breaks and school holidays. While I have many memories of these days (like the times my sister and I would raid clients’ pantries in search for savory snacks!), it dawned on me that there was a lot I didn’t know about my mom and her 20-year career as a professional housekeeper. So for Mother’s Day this year I decided to take my mom out for breakfast to ask her about it.
I asked her how many houses she cleaned a day, how long it took her to clean each house, how much she charged and how many days a week she used to work. It must have come across very strange, because at one point she asked me if I knew someone who was interested in starting a housekeeping business! I told her I was just curious and continued by asking her about her favorite clients, her greatest struggles, about what it was like to be a single mother raising two kids and why she chose to remain a housekeeper for all those years. As she shared and I listened, I found myself feeling like I had learned more about my mom and her career in those few minutes than I had in the 12 years of her taking me under her wing. As she shared and I listened, I found myself “seeing and seeing again.”
As I reflected on my mom’s answers and my own 15 plus years of memories and seeing my mom clean up after other people, I began to understand more deeply where my respect for the dignity of workers comes from. It is rooted in a life-long experience of relationship with a brilliant professional who, despite her years of hard work and perseverance, has remained on the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder. If there is truth to St. John of the Cross’ saying that “the language of God is the experience that God writes into our lives,” then the experience of my life tells me that God speaks with the dialect of those who struggle on the margins of society.
To me, my mom represents the millions of workers who struggle under the yoke of low wages. She represents the millions of women and men who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. She represents the millions of parents who take that bread from their mouths to offer it to their children.
In listening to my mom I was really touched by one thing she said. When I asked her about her favorite clients and why they were her favorite, she named them easily off the top of her head and answered that they were her favorites because “they were the ones who treated me most like a person.” While it could have been very easy for these clients to let my mom go quietly about her business, these kind people would invite my mom to sit at their tables and chat over coffee. As a result of these conversations my mom got to know their families and they also got to know ours. Over the 10-15 years that these clients invited my mother into their homes she listened to them, laughed with them and cried with them. In her words, “me dolía lo que les pasaba” (It hurt me to see what they were going through).
In listening to my mom share about her 20 years of experience cleaning up after other people I learned just how transformative relationship can be. Anyone who is used to staying in hotels can tell you that it is all too easy for housekeepers to go unnoticed. Just as easy as it is for housekeepers to be invisible, so too are millions of laborers, farmers and artisans around the world. But relationship lifts this veil of invisibility and in doing so transforms workers into sisters. Relationship breaks down barriers of division and transforms employees into brothers. Behind every made bed there is a story; behind every cup of coffee a human face. This is the transformative power of relationship. It is the transformative power of fair trade. By placing us closer to those whose work serves us we can begin to see through their eyes. It is then that we see that the extra cents we pay for a cup of fair trade coffee aren’t an extra cost, but the cost of love.
About the author:
Sergio Lopez works for Catholic Relief Services serving Catholic dioceses in California. A former youth minister and worship leader of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Sergio now seeks to serve Catholics in the United States as they live their lives in solidarity with those who are most in need around the world. Sergio and his wife Ellie live in the Greater Los Angeles area. You can follow Sergio on Twitter @SirIvanLopez.
Thank You Sergio for sharing such a thoughtful story on what life is really about.