The rainy season has begun in Bangkok. Literally overnight, the heavens opened. We now get downpours every day, often accompanied by jagged lightning and grumbling thunder. The humidity is on full blast. It feels like living in a sauna.

Earlier this month, our housekeeper took bereavement leave. One of her brothers had died, and she needed to go to “her country” as she puts it, to Isan, Thailand’s northeast province. When she returned, she brought us back bags filled with mangoes. All different kinds: green, yellow, ochre, some still hard and others with skin that gave way when you pressed your thumb into them.

Growing up in Utah, I didn’t eat mangoes often, if at all. I can’t remember buying them from the supermarket, and if I did, I bought frozen mango chunks for smoothies. They were economical, they got the job done. But it was never a favorite fruit for me.

Unlike some of my Utah friends, I had never spent considerable time in Central or South America or in Asia. My friends who served LDS missions in Brazil or Taiwan would ache for the mangoes they had during those formative years. I could only nod, believing that I had never had a “true mango,” knowing that there are some tastes you can never recapture, as they are tied to a moment that will never return.

I’ve had true mangoes now. Our neighborhood grocery store stocks different varieties, displayed like precious stones—rubies or peridots.

I don’t know the names of the mangoes our housekeeper brings back from Isan, only the taste.

“This one we don’t have in Bangkok,” she says, holding the yellow and green fruit in the palm of her hand. “Only in my country.”

She peels it, warning me not to let my children touch the skin—“they might be allergic.”

The fruit is different than the mangoes I usually have in Bangkok. More delicate, just barely sweet. Almost like a peach. She cuts another mango for herself, a green one, and her eyes tear up at its sourness. But she smiles.

“Farang (foreigners) like mango too sweet,” she says. She points to the small, peach-like mangoes she cut up for us, the ones only found in Isan. “We feed these to the cows when there are too many,” she says.

My son is confused by this information. I, too, am bemused, thinking of cows chomping on mangoes in the dry fields of Isan. I then think of zucchini season in Utah—I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to feed the extras to cows!

It is still strange to me that we hire someone to help take care of our house. It’s almost an expectation here as a foreigner. An American salary goes pretty far here, and labor is cheap (and even then, other foreigners begrudge that Americans pay “too much” for household help). That doesn’t mean everyone does (I know a couple of families who don’t), but almost everyone I know either has part-time or full-time help in different configurations—drivers, nannies, housekeepers, cooks—they all make up an important part of local and domestic economies.

But it’s still strange to me. It’s not how I grew up. It’s not how most families I knew did things (or, at least, I never really knew about it). So there is something (prideful) in me, thinking that I was somehow be “less of a Mormon woman” if we hired someone to clean our house and babysit our kids.

I realize this is ridiculous. On many levels. Every mom needs help. Even the ones that seem to have it “all put together” need or have help. My mom, even though she didn’t hire household help, still had help from neighbors, or from phoning her sisters, or from the local library. (Heck, if I’m going to compare myself with a nineteenth-century prototypical Mormon woman, I know my great-great-great grandmother who was the fifth wife of a polygamist had help raising her kids!) The myth of “having it all together” is just that—a myth. None of us can, truly, do anything by ourselves.

I’ve certainly been a beneficiary as a mother. Becoming a mother was one of the most life-changing things which has happened to me, on so many fronts. It feels like a cliché to say that, but it’s still true. It certainly changed the way I viewed my own dependency on others—and seeing the holiness of it. In the raw days after giving birth (after both my son’s and my daughter’s births), I recognized more fully my need for other people . . . and that I was lucky enough to have people who wanted to help me. The help I’ve had raising my children surrounds our family like a halo—from my mother-in-law watching my son so I could work on my dissertation, to the teenagers in our ward congregation who came to our apartment during the workday to help wash dishes and watch over my toddler when I could hardly walk because of sciatic pain—all of this work, all of this care, is holy to me.

Still, coming here to Thailand and recognizing the need I had to hire someone to help was humbling. It is still humbling, even as I remind myself that we have no family here, and that there are no public libraries, and that there are no good sidewalks, that this city is not walkable, especially with young children . . . it’s a different environment here. The networks and structures of support that I had in the States are not available here.

One of the best meditations on housework, hiring household help, and the purpose and dignity of housework I’ve read is Kate Holbrook’s essay on the subject in Both Things Are True. For Kate, a full-time historian and a full-time mother, hiring someone to clean her house once a week gave her peace of mind and allowed her to focus more on her family. At the same time, she felt conflicted. There are, as she said, “moral questions” that surround the decision to hire someone to help with housework.

“The nature of [housework] is that it is relentless,” she writes. “Doing it myself means giving something else up—some cooking, some writing, going on a walk with [my husband] or one of my girls. [. . .] I would rather give up the cleaning than those things. But what does that mean for the people I now pay to clean our house? [. . .] Does it mean that by choosing to do something else in my home, I devalue the work they do?

“Part of my response would be to say that I feel grateful to and honor the dignity of those who specialize in cleaning work. I think a large part of finding a moral approach to outsourcing cleaning work is to acknowledge the dignity and expertise of those who perform it.” —Kate Holbrook, Both Things are True, p. 79

Kate Holbrook is right. These are moral questions. Acknowledging the dignity of this work and of those hired to do housework (whether in our homes, in grocery stores, in our offices) is crucial. But there are other moral questions involved, too. It is not so simple to just, “just outsource this” or “just hire someone to do that.” For so many reasons—financial, personal, familial, and moral—it should never be a reflexive decision. We all need help. But there are different ways to ask for and receive help. I do not think paying for help should be the default position.

Housework can be drudgery, but it can also be a gift. I take pride in doing my own housework. I’m trying to teach my kids the importance of taking care of our house, too.

At the same time, it is nice to pay someone to iron my linen shirts (and it’s nice that she is really good at ironing shirts!).

It’s not something I take for granted. I see it taken for granted often in this city. (Oh, the stories I hear and the things I see!) But it’s not something to take for granted. Labor might be cheap here, but dignity should not be deemed so lightly.

We are all shaped by the work we do and by the people around us. I want to be shaped by those I love. Being away from family and friends in the States, I feel the loss of being close to them, of sharing the same space, the same air. I miss their help. I miss helping them, of working alongside them. So I jealously guard the time and space I have with those close to me right now. I am shaped by my kids. And I want to be. I am shaped by Sam. We are all shaped by our housekeeper and the care she shows us.

The bags of mangoes are gone now. We had mango-inspired dishes for days after our housekeeper brought them from Isan. Poke bowls with sushi from the Japanese grocery store, topped with mangoes; mango-avocado salad with fish sauce and lime dressing; chicken topped with mangoes and cashews. We ate fresh mangoes until my husband and daughter broke out in hives.

Now the mango sits in Ziploc-baggies in the freezer, waiting for morning smoothies. I’ll place a few slices in the blender, my son will ask to add frozen strawberries (since they are hard to come by fresh here—our housekeeper does not understand the farang hype), and we’ll top it off with some honey, yogurt, and milk. My daughter will run out of the kitchen when we start the blender, but will laugh when her brother offers her a smoothie of her own, creamy and sweet.