As I scrambled into the kitchen and furiously scrubbed the sink, I heard the opening notes to the third movement of Mozart’s Sonata No. 11, Rondo alla Turca. Only then did I know that I was running right on schedule and could relax. I was cleaning an apartment in a senior living community; I had been a housekeeper there for about two years when a new resident, Mrs. C., was added to my schedule. She is a trained pianist, and every morning after her checklist is done, she sat down for her daily practice. The music always started right as I got in the kitchen—I could set my clock to it.
Mrs. C.’s home was a challenge. For one thing, she crammed an estate’s worth of furniture into one small apartment. It looked like someone tried to squeeze the Taj Mahal into a Motel 6. It was hard for me to move freely in there, and it only got more treacherous once I started pushing around the vacuum. She had a lot of expensive furniture and artwork, and she was very particular about how I cleaned it. She had different dust cloths for each piece of furniture. It was a lot to navigate, but once I got the routine down, I didn’t mind. (In college when my sister and I ran our own cleaning business, we were contracted by a realtor to clean a property so he could sell it. We showed up sight unseen and quickly realized that we were, in fact, cleaning a crack den. So, my eyes have seen some things; a couple of fancy paintings wouldn’t scare me away.)
Mrs. C. was in her mid-eighties and had immigrated to the United States in her twenties then raised a family here. She is intelligent, highly motivated, and had three separate careers before retirement. Her driven nature rubbed a lot of staff the wrong way, but she and I were very natural around one another. The idiosyncrasies that other employees complained about are ones I found endearing. She was a pain in the butt, there’s no denying that. But she wasn’t mean-spirited like some of the other residents. In fact, I found her lovable. I quickly became the only staff member she trusted in her home. This meant that she was constantly hunting me down with questions about her cleaning schedule and making requests far beyond my pay grade. I’d be sent in to change her bedding and would have to negotiate my way out of reupholstering her furniture. But I knew these demands directly related to her trust in me, and I tried to honor that.
When we first met, Mrs. C. was writing a book—an autobiography of her very interesting life. English is her second language, so she came to me many times for help. I never told her I was a writer, that I love words, or that she came to the right person. But I always had an answer, so she kept coming with the questions. She might have asked for the correct pronunciation of a word, or she wanted me to explain the definition in terms she could understand, and I obliged. Once, we went down a rabbit hole of German expressions. I don’t speak German and neither does she, so I’m not sure how we landed there, but life is life. Every time we finished our discussions, she giggled and in broken English said, “you my personal editor.” Hearing her say that always made me feel proud.
When was time for piano practice, Mrs. C. ran through scales and warm-ups. She played a few lullabies and always ended her sessions with the Mozart piece. I took music history in college and was so fascinated by the composers that I hoped to visit Vienna one day to learn more. So, I loved that the soundtrack to my morning was a Mozart classic. I studied Mozart enough to know about his silly disposition. It always made me laugh to think of the contrast between his frivolous nature and Mrs. C.’s highly regimented approach to life. But that approach is what’s needed while playing the sonata; there’s a small section in the middle that she struggled with, and every time she attempted it, I stopped in my tracks to see if she’d make it through. But every week was the same—she’d fall off tempo, and her aging hands couldn’t hit the chords at the lower end of the piano like they used to. When I heard her mistakes, I’d smile to myself. “This part must be super difficult—Mrs. C. ain’t no slouch.”
Toward the end of my tenure at the community, Mrs. C.’s son encountered some health battles. She was a private lady, but the longer her son’s struggles went on, the more she spoke of them. One of the last times I cleaned for her, her son had a setback, and she was a wreck. I walked into her apartment that day and knew immediately something was amiss. Her blouse wasn’t buttoned, her hair was not brushed, and her breakfast was still on the table. Mrs. C. followed her schedule with a surgical precision, but today she was behind. As I greeted her, she told me about her son. The words fell out quicker than she could keep up with them. Before I knew it, she was sobbing. I had no medical advice to offer. Instead, I blurted out, “Do you need a hug?” She declined at first. “No, I’m okay.” And then, “yes, I do.”
I ran over and gave her a squeeze. As we stood there, I thought about how we were vastly different people who bridged the gap with a curiosity for words and music. We were from different countries and spoke different languages, but we didn’t have to go any farther than our hometown to make a connection, and I didn’t have to go all the way to Vienna to hear a little Mozart.
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