Hindsight is often described as 20/20, while foresight is at best a dim picture of the future. Before watching the movie “Aid” but after reading the reviews for this movie, I was struck by the parallels of the characters in the movies and my own mother’s experiences.
My mother’s experiences are seen through the eyes of a five year old to her early twenties and reflect my observations now as an experienced adult.
Aid
my mother was “Aid”, a domestic worker who did the day job so I can speak with authority and credibility. Though she didn’t have to wear the trappings, a starched uniform, of a maid; her busyness and that of countless other women was evident in the faces and expressions of the women who left for work very early in the morning and returned home late at night tired.
Some of you aren’t old enough or just have the footage from the movies to put this in context, but as the oldest son, I remember that the servants were paid eight dollars a day plus passage. This day’s wages symbolically represented and demonstrated the courage, sacrifice, love, and quiet dignity required to keep a family together.
Eight dollars a day plus car fare added up to the total salary paid to housecleaning maids in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and it’s the amount of money I remember my mother making. Surprisingly, this was not the starting wage, in fact the starting wage was $5.00 per day plus travel during the 1950s through the early 1960s. This daily wage was pay to clean suburban homes in Mt. Lebanon, Sewickley, North Hills and other similar communities. This daily wage also included the responsibility of assisting and I use this word loosely with the “rearing” or raising of the young children in those homes, as well as doing the laundry and any other assigned chores.
Love
Although my mother may have been away from our home eight to ten hours a day, I never felt alone or abandoned. She had to spend most of her waking hours with the children in the houses she cleaned simply because she couldn’t be in two places at the same time. Maybe she was too young to feel anger or resentment, but I always felt loved and whole as an important part of our family. Those children don’t know how hurt they were to have my mother as part of their lives. Knowing mom, she helped shape and establish values that they did not know but have brought to their lives.
Unlike today, this day’s salary did not come with a defined benefits package; without medical, disability, life or pension insurance. However; this day’s salary came with public transportation because few of us had cars and public transportation was the main mode of transportation. If you got sick, you weren’t paid (unless you had a kind employer), if you were injured or wanted to attend a school activity for your child, you weren’t paid, which probably explains why parents were absent from important events in those days. days. However, despite her absence, Mom, I would commend your contributions or achievements because her love knew no boundaries. Mom’s love and spiritual presence continues to grow stronger even today.
Courage
Pittsburgh was a heavy industrial city known as the Steel City in its heyday and my mother was strong as the steel that came out of the hot furnaces of J&L on the south side of Pittsburgh. Steel mills, when steel was a major industry in the United States, worked three shifts 24 hours a day, employing thousands of men, and the red glow of the furnaces could be seen lighting up the sky at night. My mother’s sense of purpose and resolve was her strength because she knew she had to make it happen that day. We live our life day by day! I couldn’t be sick or hurt, you had to get over the pain. You can’t plan much beyond the next day because you get paid day by day and the next day wasn’t guaranteed.
Pittsburgh was a diverse community that on the surface didn’t seem to show racial animosity or discrimination, but if you peeled back the layers of society, the racial discrimination was there. It was disguised and evidenced by the neighborhoods where one could live. The discrimination was disguised by the types of employment available to people during this era. Typical jobs were preaching, teaching, working at the post office, or collecting garbage. A few were able to join the police force but ironically I never met or saw anyone who worked for the public transport system, particularly as a tram driver.
The fare to ride the streetcar costs about twenty-five cents ($0.25) for a one-way fare that may or may not have taken you somewhere near the house you had to clean that day. So can you imagine that on top of the $8.00 a day you also got an extra $0.50 for the hassle of walking many blocks or several miles for the privilege of cleaning someone else’s house? More importantly, you walked through the heat of summer, through the storms and cold snows of winter with your head bowed praying for the strength to get through another day.
Before going to work early in the morning, he made sure we were awake and left breakfast on the stove for us to eat. As I remember him, hot oatmeal was always left in a bain-marie for breakfast. Lunch, because we got home at noon, consisted of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich topped off with a can of tomato soup that I heated up. I ate this lunch so often that it was several decades before I was back to eating peanut butter, jelly, and tomato soup. Today it has become a comfort food, a resting place for my warm memories.
When mom came home at night, she always had time to smile and chat while she cooked a hot meal for our dinner and only scolded us when we made her nervous. She continued to work around the house at night with other household chores until it was time to rest. In retrospect, her day never seemed to end, rivaling J & L Steel’s manufacturing schedule.
I have moments of reflection as I drive to work and see the black and brown faces getting off the bus in the suburbs or walking down the sidewalk to work. In my mind I can see my mother on her way to work or at the end of a long day at work late at night standing proudly and waiting for the trolley to take her home. Not many years ago, my mother was doing the same thing trying to support her family and these thoughts stir deep emotions inside that could rock a battleship at sea.
Sacrifice
Eight dollars a day plus fare is a true story of a family that, despite economic circumstances, overcame the reflux based on sacrifice, love and quiet dignity. I can’t begin to describe the sacrifice and love without getting emotional. After I graduated from high school and went to college, Mom would, without fail, send me a $5.00 letter once a week with words of encouragement. This was not just for freshman year, but she sent $5.00 a week for four years while I was in college. That $5.00 was a full day’s work for her that she voluntarily sent even though my younger brother and sister were home. Mom never complained, but she shared her love and encouragement through her strong sense of purpose in earning a degree and becoming someone.
This is just one of the many tangible and intangible sacrifices he made during my life that has served to keep me humble and aware of my responsibility to help someone.
quiet dignity
It may not have been easy to endure the indignities of 30 years of housecleaning, but she endured it with a quiet dignity and grace that I find remarkable and have tried to emulate. We never had everything we wanted, but we had everything we needed from a parenting and spiritual perspective. She couldn’t buy new clothes for herself, but we always had what we needed to go back to school in the fall; new jeans, shoes and a winter coat.
Mom always walked fast and when I was a little girl, when we would go shopping in downtown Pittsburgh, she would walk so fast that I almost had to run to keep up with her. Even walking fast, she kept her head high and talked to everyone as she passed as if she were a major celebrity. I guess in her own way she was a celebrity, but only those close to her knew of her celebrity.
The aid salary of eight dollars a day plus transportation is more than a story to me, it is a life lesson that I have embraced and cherished. It has sustained me through some of my most difficult times and has helped me chart a life course based on sacrifice, love, and quiet dignity. I hope that you will adopt these same concepts and “Aid” in you will share your symbolic eight dollars a day and your ticket with someone you know with love, quiet dignity and grace.