Origami

Every day I rush home from work, wondering what wonderful surprises my maid has left for me in my bathroom and I am rarely disappointed. In fact, if it weren’t for her little gifts, I would think she was unaware I even had a bathroom. While I am at work, she lets herself in, cleans the kitchen, washes the dishes, sweeps the floors, cleans the little terrace areas, makes the bed, hangs up any clothes she sees laying around no matter how in need of a wash they may seem, puts my books neatly in a drawer so I can’t find them, and closes my windows so that by the end of the day my room is hot and stuffy. Let me tell you, nothing says “Welcome home” like a lung full of heated stale air crammed to capacity with mosquitoes.

Given all her efforts around the house to keep me confusedly organized something happens when she enters my bathroom. She doesn’t touch the tub. She doesn’t clean the sink. I can barely see myself in the mirror these days and the dust on the window sill has dust of its own. But what she does do everyday in my bathroom is express her creativity with my toiletries. Everyday when I arrive home, I find them arranged in new and exciting ways. She makes the most magnificent structures using nothing more than overpriced moisturizers, cotton swabs, exfoliating facial scrubs, whitening toothpaste, soap and vitamins, all accentuated with the individual pieces from my manicure set, which would otherwise go unused. She has taken simple cosmetic origami and turned it into a full contact sport. I am tempted to leave a gold medal on the counter one of these days just to express my appreciation for her inventiveness. Now if only she would introduce her sponge to my bathtub we could all live happily-ever-after, but who am I to interfere with the creative process?