THE POSTSCRIPT, Carrie Classon
My husband, Peter, and I have landed in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and already the strange seems familiar again.
One of the things that impresses me every time I am here is the attention given to jobs that I don’t always think of as needing a lot of attention. Masonry work is meticulous and crafted to last centuries. Cloth is woven one thread at a time, creating utterly unique works. Gardening is done with such patience and consistency that there are blooms every month of the year. But this morning, I was noticing the street sweepers.
The street sweepers are legion. I have no idea what their actual numbers are, but in the center of the old town, where we stay, you cannot walk down a street from the first light of morning until well after dark without encountering a person dressed in red, with a homemade broom and a sturdy dustpan affixed to a stick. Litter does not stand a chance in this town. Stray leaves are corralled as they fall. And, to me, the most amazing thing is how they sweep up the confetti.
In San Miguel, there are a lot of reasons to celebrate. There are weddings every weekend, the city throws a party every week, and quinceañeras—the special 15th birthday party celebrations for girls in enormous poofy dresses—occur nearly every day. And most of these events involve confetti.
But between Valentine’s Day and Easter, cascarones are sold on the street by the boxful. Cascarones are just ordinary eggs with the insides blown out, filled with confetti. Children throw them at each other. Lovers smash them over each other’s heads. Everyone runs and laughs, hurling confetti-filled eggs at one another. It is a huge amount of fun. It is also terribly messy.
And so, every evening without fail, the street sweepers are out, sweeping every fleck of confetti and eggshell off the streets, a job that would be tricky under any circumstances, but is made much more difficult because the streets are made of brick and cobblestones.
They sweep up after parades and wedding processions. After the young quinceañera has hiked up her hoop skirt and moved on (usually revealing a pair of sensible sneakers beneath her voluminous skirts), the sweepers move in.
This morning, I was out earlier than usual, and I saw a pickup truck filled with street sweepers. There was a white fence around the pickup bed, and the sweepers were standing in the moving truck, talking and laughing as they were deposited at whatever street corner they were scheduled to start work. And I thought how much I have to learn from the street sweepers.
It is easy to sweep up the big messes. A lot of folks do it, in one way or another. They get paid for doing the bare minimum and that is the end of it. But to do a job—particularly a job that few people truly appreciate—to do that job really well takes a special kind of dedication and, I believe, repays the sweeper in a special way.
Showing up earlier than absolutely necessary, smiling at the person I am working with, doing a bit more than is required just to make the next person’s work a little easier—there is an intrinsic value to these things that brings joy and a sense of accomplishment.
The sweepers show me the value of a job well done, whether one is creating something that will last for decades, or sweeping up the confetti that will surely fall again later that day.
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