SOMEBODY'S LUNCH MONEY

Over the weekend, I managed to squeeze in some time to see The Help, Disney's marvelous new movie about an aspiring young white woman who defied the racist laws of Mississippi to write an expose' about the toils of black women who clean the houses and raise the babies of the wealthy white people in the early 1960's.

I won't wreck the story by telling you about the movie, only to say that it's definitely worth the price of admission and more.   I always shed a lot of tears at movies like this (The Long Walk Home, Corina Corina, etc.), not only because I'm empathetic toward the plight of these women, but because I see my Mom bending over the toilets and snapping the sheets of the rich and famous who came to Waikiki to vacation during the years she worked as a hotel maid.

With 11 people jammed into a small house with just 2 bedrooms and one bathroom, my Mom ventured out into the working world in 1960.   With little formal education, but a work history of cleaning, she landed a job as a maid at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, Hawaii's largest hotel.    At 37 years old, she was almost a generation older than the young Filipino women the hotel was starting to hire.  Most of the existing maids were uneducated Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian women with large families to support.

"Chambermaids," as they were called, were assigned 16 rooms to clean during an 8 hour shift.   If you do the math, that's 30 minutes a room, but it's very easy to fall behind when guests aren't ready to have their rooms cleaned or you come across a room that's such a mess that it might take 90 minutes to clean.  I know that in the 10 years Mom actually cleaned rooms, she came across every vile, putrid and repulsive combination of body fluids, excrement and vomit the mind can imagine.  But a woman who's had 8 children has seen it all before, so to her, it was just "another day at the office."

One of the "perks" of cleaning hotel rooms was that sometimes guests would leave unopened food behind.   The maids got to keep this food and if my Mom came home with a box or a grocery bag, we knew it was filled with a huge dose of "Vitamin C" (cookies, candy, cereal and chips).   While my brothers and sisters would languish over the Oreo cookies and the Fritos, I was getting my high-fructose corn-syrup-rush chomping on sugar-coated cereals like Fruit Loops, Apple Jacks, Sugar Pops and Sugar Smacks.   The two dollars in coins Mom earned as tips would be laid out on the kitchen table the next day as our lunch money.  We each got a quarter and nickel, enough for lunch and and the recess snack of guava juice and a graham cracker back in the early '60's.

By 1970, she had elevated herself to "Housekeeping Supervisor," a position that was part Drill Sargent, part classroom teacher and part social psychologist.   She quickly gained a reputation as a "working" supervisor, someone who was not afraid to jump in and clean rooms if one of her girls fell behind.  That wasn't the case with some of the other supervisors, who chose to just sit in the office.   When the maids were finished, the supervisors would inspect the rooms.  When guests would leave tips for the maid, some of the supervisors just pocketed the cash because the only way a maid could get a tip is if her supervisor passed it on to her.   Mom detested that practice because she knew how much her maids needed the money.  She knew those coins were going to be someones lunch money the next day.

By the mid-70's, Mom was the "Top Gun" of the housekeepers.  Her crew consistently received the highest marks from guests. Many returning patrons would request her as their housekeeper during their annual visit.   She was regularly assigned the top two floors of the Rainbow Tower where movie stars, heads of states and the world's elite would come to vacation.   She demanded a high level of performance from her maids and only the "best of the best" could survive her driving style.  But the girls respected her because she always "had their back" and was never too proud to bend over and scrub a toilet if need be.   When dignitaries would give her $100 tips, she'd march down to the Cashiers and break it down so all the girls could share the fruits of their labor.

When she finally retired in 1986, they threw her a retirement party in the Coral Ballroom that was more befitting of a hotel executive than someone from the housekeeping department.  The General Manager of all the Hilton Hotels in Hawaii came to honor my Mom.   The hundreds of young maids that Mom trained over her years carried on her legacy of tough and compassionate leadership and that's how Kathy Medina is remembered to this very day.

She had a lasting effect on us, too.  When we were children, after a long day at work, Mom would come in to our bedroom while we were sleeping and fold the clothes in our drawers.  Whenever she stayed in a hotel, she would "inspect"the room first and if it wasn't up to par, she would call the housekeeper and give her a quick lesson on the definition of "clean."  Even in the final days of her life, when she barely had the strength to eat, she would slowly fold towels and sheets because her self esteem was tied to her ability to be useful.   "You have to get moving," she would say, right to the very end.

I was on a business trip in the early 80's with another guy from my company.   We were hustling to check out of our room and catch our flight back to Honolulu.  But I stopped for minute, took out a $5 bill and wrote a note of thanks to the maid.   "Why bother?" my buddy asked.

"Because that's somebody's lunch money," I said.  Thanks, Mom.