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This is an old story, but it still makes me grateful whenever I remember it.
I had a very pregnant friend who was living in an RV while the barn she and her husband had purchased to convert into a home was being updated. She would drive into the city to provide cleaning services for people's homes.
She was nearing her due date around Christmas time and we were visiting one night and she was bemoaning the fact that she couldn't fit her pregnant self into the tiny shower cubicle in the RV! I gave her a key to my apartment and told her to feel free to drop in anytime she was in town. I warned her that I'm a bit of a slob, but the bathroom was clean. She gladly took me up on it.
A few weeks later, I went out of town for a few days to visit family up in Cleveland for the holidays. When I came home, she had cleaned my apartment from top to bottom as a thank-you for being able to use the shower! And I had left the place in a particular mess because I'd pulled out the wrapping paper and ribbons and left snips and leftovers all over the place.
It truly brought tears to my eyes to have the place so shiny and clean-smelling. If she'd made me a batch of homemade cookies, that would have seemed a "fair trade" if she'd felt she needed to repay me. But that was service WAY above and beyond.
I lost track of her when I stopped going to the same church as her and she (and her family) moved out to that rural barn to live. But I always send good thoughts her way when I think of that story, and hope she's doing well.
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