Maria you are in heaven

In these days of parties where one becomes sentimental, I miss Maria and Hilda, two inseparable sisters, willing to the hardest work, who accompanied me for years, watching and organizing all the details of my domestic life.

I met them when I bought this house exactly ten years ago.The householdwoman, a very ready woman, with a good heart, told me that Maria and her sister Hilda of her were extraordinary employees and she recommended me to hire them.I did not hesitate to pay attention to him.María and Hilda had been living in this house for years and knew all the secrets to manage and keep it in good condition.In addition, they could be nanas querendonas: the seller told me that both had taken care of their two children when they were young and now they loved them as if they were their alternate mothers, and that is why they were called Mom María and Mom Hilda.

At that time, when buying this house, my girlfriend was pregnant.One of my girlfriend's best friends, an Argentine writer, advised her not to hire employed to take care of the baby as soon as she was born.I, who had been a father twice, who had cared for my eldest daughter when her mother attended classes at the university, who knew how hard and complex it was to take care of a baby, I disrupted resolutely, hired the sisters María and Hilda, Hilda,I raised their salary and asked them to pity us, silly and lazy parents, and help us take care of the baby.

They did it wonderfully. They could not have done it better. Our daughter did not want her bed. Everything that my wife and I ignored the care of a baby knew it well those infatigable, smiling, affectionate nannies, always willing to relieve the girl and encourage her a comfortable and pleasant life. The first four years of our daughter, we were able to travel my wife and I with absolute freedom, leaving the girl in the care of her nannies, with the certainty that they would take care of her better than us. María and Hilda then gave us that invaluable freedom: to go to the movies and dinner on weekends, to travel frequently because of the simple pleasure of traveling, changing airs, landscape. What would we have done without them those four years in which we were free because Maria and Hilda took care of our daughter with a dedication, tenderness and absolutely admirable, unpayable efficiency!

María and Hilda were born in the Peruvian Andes, in a very poor family, and seen of girls how several of her brothers, sunk in the most abject misery, died due to lack of medical care. They had been domestic employees all their lives, from girls almost, adolescents. They had worked long at the British embassy in Lima, where they refined their skills to cook, clean, order that great house in which both, from the kitchen, frequently directed the vast staging and service operation in large dinners, parties parties and diplomatic events. They were so nice and effective that the British ambassador, when he was dispatched to Washington DC, got visas and took them together with his family to the US capital. It was a kind of godfather and protector for the sisters. When the ambassador returned to London, María and Hilda decided to root in Miami and serve wealthy families of the city, cooking for them and cleaning their houses without fainting or complaint. This is how the sisters ended up working at the house I bought, that was how the house saleswoman recommended them with enthusiasm, telling me that if she did not hire them I would regret my whole life.

Maria had three children of legal age who lived in Lima. Hilda had no children. Maria's children lived in a house that she had built with everything she could save in her employee times at the British embassy. She dreamed of retiring when she turned sixty. She was fifty -four when I met her. Hilda was two years old, fifty -two. I was forty -five years old. Maria promised me that she would work with me the next six years of her life and then she retired and return to Lima to be with her children. Hilda promised me that he would work with us all the time we wanted: she also saved, but did not have a house and monthly sent her savings to a brother in Lima, who used that money to cover her expenses as a religious pastor of the Mormon Church and eventually Buy an apartment for Hilda. I told Hilda not to send her silver to her brother's brother, to save her, but he ignored me, that good and naive.

Among the multiple talents that Maria possessed and deployed in this house, cooking was undoubtedly the most conspicuous: it did everything right, she was a professional letter, but cooking was simply insurmountable.She cooked so well that I told her that we had to open a restaurant and call him Mom Maria and she got excited about her idea.Nothing to retire, she told him, when you fulfill sixty we open Mom Mary and you will get rich, you will see.I cooked so rich that of course I gained fat.Of course, when she did not eat the full dish, she got angry with me, she prayed, she demanded that she eat everything.At that time, she was the boss, the tutor, the governess, and I just a Discolo boy who resigned me to obey her, eating everything from her, even if she was no longer hungry.My wife laughed at me, she told me that I was afraid of Maria.She was not afraid, but she worshiped her and did not want to break her heart and that's why she eaten hungry or without hunger.

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Hilda was more taciturn than her sister. Maria gave orders, Hilda obeyed without gutting. Maria was the boss of this house, her owner, and we were all subordinated to her and her volcanic character of her. Hilda was very religious: when she wasn't working, she was praying. He was very affectionate with the animals: he left food to the cats of the neighbors, the dogs of the neighbors, to the pigeons of the neighborhood, to the squirrels of the neighborhood: he had a rare tenderness to talk to the animals and make them love them for them . He was not so good cooking, but he knew how to be loving and delicate taking care of our daughter, taking her to walk to the park, the supermarket, the pharmacy, Hilda pushing the car, singing, praying, counting stories of her contrary childhood, our daughter calmed by The sweet word of his Nana, who, as a young girl, had wanted to be a nun, was good and helpful, but whose destiny had been to follow his older sister and serve the patterns that Maria served diligently.

Maria tormented that her divorce had not been approved for years and she did not be approved because her husband wanted to keep the house she had built with her savings. With great cynicism, her husband, who had left Maria with the three young children of her to leave with a beloved, now demanded that Maria the house, half of the house, the money value from half of the House. That was very distressed to Maria, her dream of her, she poisoned her days. Until she asked me for help. I did not hesitate to help her with the promptness that she helped my daughter. We brought the house, determined the value of the property and gave the money to pay her husband and bend her resistance to sign the divorce. Maria traveled to Lima, paid her to the cachafaz of her husband, he signed her divorce and she could finally register the house, her house, as the only owner of her, in the public records. It was a great triumph for Maria. She sent me photos from Lima, paying in cash to the rogue of her husband, making him sign the divorce of her. She stubborn and unworthy as she was her, she had won the battle of honor and also that of money. Maria wanted to pay me little by little what I gave her to turn off that fire, but I told her that in no way she would charge her a cent and she got excited. It was one of the happiest moments of our friendship. She hugged me and cried and felt that she loved me as if she were my mother.

A sad moment of our friendship assaulted us when we all went to Disney in Orlando.I was poorly medicated, very doping, and apparently I walked very slowly through the amusement parks, and María and Hilda got angry with me and admonished me for walking so slowly and zigzagging as drunk and on a couple of occasions Maria shouted me, called meThe attention, he told me that people looked at me and laughed at me, that I was doing foolish.But I could not walk faster or more right and Maria thought she walked like a slow and crowded by conceited or lazy or because she wanted to sabotage the walk.I'm going to give him a whip, whip! Maria told me, twisted, and I laughed and loved her and I kept crawling like a slug in Disney, while she and her sister pushed our daughter's stroller as if they had an engineOutboard, what energy they had, they were really tireless.

Maria bothered when they spoke in English. She responded to her screams that she only spoke in Spanish and demanded that her interlocutor that she spoke to her in that language. But sometimes, on the bus, or on the trips we made with her and her sister, they spoke in English and she became furious and shouted expletives in Spanish until she got someone who could communicate with her. It was great to see her scream on the phone because the hotel operator could not or did not want to talk to her in Spanish; It was delicious to see her impatient and explode in screams and diatribes because the hostess did not respond in Spanish; It was very funny to hear her stories when she told us that she fought with the black drivers of the bus who did not speak in Spanish and whom she, injured, aggrieved, she refused to pay them. Maria was the boss, the owner, the patron saint, and she was always willing to insult someone and send it to the fuck, including me, of course. Sometimes she listened that the neighbors spoke in English and told me Lord, those people next door are half rare, speak in a language that nobody understands, they must be terrorists. Maria wanted everyone in the United States to speak in Spanish and submitted to her character.

Lacking two years for Maria to fulfill sixty and retire, my wife's psychologist recommended to dismiss Maria and Hilda.The argument of her was that the nanas were too overprotective with our daughter and that was not good for the girl's intellectual development.I disagreed vigorously.But my wife, wishing the best for our daughter, made the decision to separate Maria and Hilda from our lives.It was a very sad, horrible, traumatic day, which should never have happened.It was very painful to see the sisters leave that they had given us so much.Even now I think we should not fire them for following the council of the psychologist.It was a mistake, an abuse, ingratitude.I don't know if it was better for our daughter, but it was worse for me.I did not get used to living without Mary or Hilda.

A year later, Maria got sick of cancer.She fortunately had medical insurance.They submitted her to brutal, invasive treatments, and failed to cure her.We had time to say goodbye to her.I didn't find enough words to tell her how much she loved her, how much she thanked her for everything.Maria should continue living here, in this house.She should not have left, we should not ask her to leave her, it was a ruin that will always weigh in my conscience.She now would be calling me to the screams, telling me that the food is served, that it goes down fast, that it will cool.I would say a little while, Mary, I don't hurry, I'm writing, and she would answer me to the shouts, pure eggs you write, Lord, pure eggs!

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