In 2001, I bought an Arts and Crafts home built in 1911 in Los Angeles. There was good and bad news. The good news was that nothing had been touched since 1911, so everything original was still intact - the beautiful quarter-sawn oak woodwork, the doors, the stained glass windows. The bad news was that nothing had been touched since 1911 – the plumbing, the wiring, the roof, the furnace. The house was a “tear down” according to my realtor. The current owners of the house were a family from Bangladesh, the Attygalas, and they had lived in the house for 21 years.

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​​This house was unrecognizable as Arts and Crafts architecture from the outside. It was painted bright Pepto Bismol pink. The Craftsman style windows were completely covered with aluminum awnings painted Kelly green. The front yard was covered with cement squares and the family parked their cars there. Inside, every room was a different color - lime green, sky blue, lemon yellow, and a vibrant purple. The carpet was navy blue deep shag.

There was a narrow room at the back of the house that was painted fluorescent orange. It was empty except for two large brightly colored pillows on the floor and a large framed photo at the end of the room of some strange Indian guru guy. The guru had wild eyes, a mass of crazy black hair and a long kinky black beard, and he was wearing saffron robes and prayer beads around his neck. The room reeked so strongly of sickeningly sweet incense that I choked when I walked in. The back yard was a mish-mash of live and dead plants, 11 palm trees, dead fruit trees, a huge potato vine that completely engulfed the garage, and weeds that hid the remnants of broken benches and a crumbling fountain. Under all that, this was a fantastic house.

As soon as I put in a bid, I started taking architects and contractors by to get an estimate of the remodel costs. When I needed to take contractors in, I would call my realtor, and he set an appointment with Maggie, the owner. Every time I went to the house, Maggie would be sitting on the front porch reading the newspaper – the LA Times, the NY Times, USA Today – each stacked next to her waiting to be read next. Maggie was Bangladeshi, about 5 feet tall and "big boned" as we used to say in Texas. She had dark brown skin and a round face, black eyes and a broad flat nose with a little jewel post in one nostril. She had a mass of long black hair with grey streaks braided into a single thick braid that hung down her back. She had a big smile and she smiled all the time. She wore traditional Indian saris and leather sandals.

When I arrived, Maggie would put down her newspaper and come to the top of the porch steps. “Hello Mr. Michael. Please come. Please come” she would say with a heavy accent, motioning me up the steps. “Please come” always smiling, and she would push me into the house. I took a half dozen architects and at least as many contractors to the house. Every time I scheduled a visit, Maggie was there, sitting on the front porch, reading her newspapers. “Hello Mr. Michael. Please come. Please come.” No one else was ever home.

On one visit, I needed to take the measurements of an upstairs bathroom. Maggie was on the front porch reading her newspaper. “Hello Mr. Michael. Please come. Please come”, she put her newspaper down, smiling, pushing me through the front door. I made my way upstairs and into the back bedroom. There was a young man sitting at a desk and he looked up when I walked in. We surprised each other.

I apologized for walking in on him. He knew who I was and he invited me in and introduced himself as Jay Attygala. I told him his mom didn't tell me anyone else was home when she let me in. He smiled and told me that Maggie was not his mother, but the housekeeper. Jay was about 6’ tall and thin, with light brown skin and black hair and eyes. He was very handsome and looked to be in his mid-20s and was articulate and gracious. His room was painted bright turquoise blue with thick Kelly green shag carpeting, but the furnishing and art work were modern - something a stylish LA 20-something would have.

He told me he was home studying for a test. We talked for a while. He lived there with his mother, Malika, who was a pediatrician, and Maggie. His sister had moved out a few years earlier. At the end of the semester, Jay would finish med school at UCLA and would start his residency somewhere other than LA. He didn’t mention his father. Jay had lived in this house since his family moved to the US from Bangladesh when he was a baby. Now that the kids were moving on, his mom wanted to move to a smaller house, closer to her hospital.

He asked me what my plans were for the house. I told him I would not change anything that was still intact, but would restore everything to its original condition.

“I’m sure you’re going to repaint” he said with a little smile. “Maggie picked out all the colors” he said. “It’s really Maggie’s house.” He asked me about my plans for the yard as well. “It’s also Maggie’s yard” he said with another wry smile. We talked for a few minutes and it was clear that he had tremendous love and respect for Maggie, for this house and his life in it. The conversation flowed easily and I wanted to sit and talk longer, but his books were laid out in front of him, so I took my measurements and wished him good luck and left.

On my last visit to the house to measure something, Maggie was sitting on the front porch reading, of course, and welcomed me in her usual way, but with no smile. She left her newspapers on the front porch and followed me inside this time. She followed me around the house, but kept a safe distance standing just outside the door watching me from the next room. I realized she was crying. Every now and then she would wipe her face with a handful of crumpled tissues. When I looked at her or spoke to her, she turned away.

I closed on the house a week later. A month or so into the remodel, the back of the house was completely gone. We had to pour new foundation walls and reframe the back of the house to meet new earthquake standards. One day one of the carpenters yelled that I had a visitor. All of the doors had been removed and sent for restoration, so the house was completely open and you could see from the street through to the back yard. The neighbors wandered through all the time. But it wasn't a neighbor. I looked around to see Maggie standing in the front door frame. I said hello and invited her in. She had a look of shock on her face. She walked in slowly looking all around her. We walked through the remnants of her rooms. Every wall and floor in the house had been ripped open for new wiring, or plumbing, or insulation or windows.

After a while of not saying much she said “House beautiful. House beautiful.”

I laughed. “Well, it isn’t right now is it?” She added a single word that made me understand her.

“House beautiful, please” she said. My heart broke. I promised her it would be.

A couple of times after that, while the remodel dragged on, I saw Maggie standing on the sidewalk across the street looking at the house, but she never came to visit.

Over my year of restoring the house, I got to know my neighbors well. To the north were the Gillettes - Roger and Laurel and three kids. They were wonderful people and their kids are crazy smart. They all graduated from high school early and became a nurse, a psychologist and an Air Force Pilot. Roger and Laurel are both architects. As the house remodel progressed I told the neighbors we would be tearing down the rotten fence around the back yard and building a new one. Roger told me that in this neighborhood, the neighbors always install a gate in the fences between their yards. I told him I would be happy to do that, knowing secretly that I would also put a pad lock on my side of the gate. He told me that they had never closed the gate between their yard and my yard when the Attygallas lived there. He told me the kids and dogs had the run of both yards. I told Roger about Maggie coming to visit and seeing her across the street.

“Do you know Maggie's story?” he asked. I did not.

Dr. Attygalla, or Malika, and Mr. Attygalla, were from prominent and well educated families in Bangladesh. Their marriage was a traditional arranged marriage between the families. As a part of the dowry, Malika’s family had given Maggie as an indentured servant to the new couple. Maggie was a young teenager at the time. When Mr. Attygalla and Malika moved to the States, they asked Maggie if she wanted to go, or stay behind. Maggie decided to move with them. I can only guess that she had little or nothing there that would make her want to stay.

Mr. Attygala was an engineer with Lockhead Martin and he died of a heart attack four years after the family moved to the US. Malika was a pediatrician in Bangladesh and got her medical license in California and became the sole bread winner in the family. Maggie raised Jay and his sister, and after they reached an age when they no longer needed looking after, Maggie became the nanny and babysitter to other kids in the neighborhood.

Roger told me that when his kids were small, they were always with Maggie and the Attygalla kids, or playing in my back yard as much as their own. Roger and Laurel were both architects with growing practices, so when the kids got home from school, they would check in with Maggie. Through the years Roger and Laurel came home from work each day to find Maggie and both sets of kids at their home, or next door. Malika would not let them pay Maggie for taking care of their kids, but they would slip Maggie a little money sometimes. Roger told me he had spent many weekends over the past 21 years making repairs to what was now my house. Malika and Maggie never asked him to do so. He would just do it when he noticed something was needed.

Maggie never learned to read in Bangladesh. I can only guess that this was not unusual given her status. When the Gillette kids started school and learned to read, they wanted Maggie to learn to read too. Roger asked Malika if it would be OK and Malika said it was up to Maggie. Maggie decided she wanted to learn to read.

Every day after school, the Gillette kids would bring Maggie to their house, and she would sit at the breakfast table with them and they all worked their way through the first grade primer - "See spot run" - the second grade reader and so on. The Gillette kids would write out an extra copy of their reading and writing homework assignments so that Maggie had a copy too.

I thought of Maggie, sitting on the front porch, reading every page of those newspapers while her last child sat upstairs preparing for his life; preparing to leave home. Roger told me that whenever I saw Maggie in the neighborhood now, she was there to babysitting the Martin kids or Richards kids across the street, or the Lass kids just up the block.

I finished restoring the house and moved in. It took just over a year. I went back to work from my home office, which was in a bedroom at the front of the house. I was sitting at my desk one day a couple of months after the house was done and looked out the front window and saw Maggie standing on the sidewalk in front of the house, just looking. I realized that she had not seen the house since it was in shambles. I went downstairs and opened the front door and went to the top of the front porch steps and called to Maggie to come in.

“Hello Mr. Michael” she called. “No no, Mr. Michael. No bother. No bother.”

“You’re not bothering me Maggie. Please come in. You should see the house now that it’s done.”

She came in, smiling as big as ever. She walked around the house with me VERY slowly, looking at everything. She ran her hand across the woodwork she had walked past every day for 21 years while she became an adult. She opened and closed and opened and closed the doors of the old china cabinet in the dining room. She pointed to the 1911 stained glass window with a rose pattern that she had seen a thousand times, with several pieces of glass missing and the bright California sun beaming through. It was restored and back in its place.

“So beautiful Mr. Michael. So beautiful.” She kept repeating it and would giggle and hold her hand over her mouth.

The tiny maid’s room downstairs, Maggie’s room, and the back maid’s stairway were gone, and the library and kitchen were twice their original size. I took her upstairs and showed around. She had lived more of her life in this house than any other.

“So beautiful Mr. Michael. So beautiful.” She giggled and covered her mouth.

The changes didn’t seem to faze her at all. The house was dramatically different in many ways, but still the same in most. Maybe she liked the changes.

I thought Maggie might enjoy some time in her home without me. I told her I had to go back to work, but that she was welcome to stay and wander around the house and take her time. I went back to my office and after about a half hour, I heard the front door close. I looked out and saw Maggie going down the front walk. She turned up the street and walked toward the bus stop.

Maggie came to visit four or five more times over the next few years. I would see her on the sidewalk looking at the house and go out to the top of the front porch steps and call her in. “Hello Mr. Michael.” She would say, smiling. She never came up and knocked on the door or rang the doorbell. I have no idea how long she had been standing outside on the sidewalk until I noticed her there.

She would wander around the house, and I would hear the stairs creak or hear the back door open and close, and after some time, I would hear the front door close and she would walk down the front walk and turn toward the bus stop. On a few occasions, I saw her on the street coming or going from one of the neighbors' houses, but she didn’t come by.

Over the years following the remodel, I saw Maggie less frequent until I didn't see her at all. I asked Roger if he kept up with Maggie, or Malika or Jay Attygala. He told me that they were doing well. Dr. Attygala’s practice is going strong. The daughter is married and is a Radiologist in the Valley. Jay is a doctor and lives in San Francisco, and Maggie is doing well, but she doesn’t come to this neighborhood much anymore. The Martin and Richards and Lass kids are all in high school and driving and escaping home as often as possible. A few are off at college. There’s not much reason for Maggie to come to our street anymore.

I think about Maggie often, and always with utter astonishment. How she was a young girl when she was given as a wedding gift. How she was basically born to that job. I think of her packing up and moving to another country that was, roughly, as far away as she could possibly go. I think of how her role changed when the father died suddenly leaving a single mother and two young children in an unfamiliar world. I think of a grand house that was gradually? willfully? lovingly? begrudgingly? given over to her and how it came to be her joy. I think of what humility and fearlessness it took to sit with children generations younger than you learning to read for the first time in an unknown language. I think remarkable kindness and effort of those kids to teach her. I think of two families intertwined and immeasurably richer for it.

It's interesting that it had to be the neighbor's kids who thought to teach her to read. It amazes me that a tiny little lady who could barely speak English or read helped produced five children who became doctors and nurses and psychologists and Air Force officers. I hope those two families know how blessed they were by that wedding gift.

I think about how lucky she was to land in a house with an open gate in the back fence. I think about all of the ridiculous tragedy and drama in those newspapers and the view of the world that Maggie must hold in her head. I think of her relentless, big, beautiful smile. I think about the day Dr. Attygalla told Maggie and the rest of the family that it was time to sell this big old falling down house and move. I think about how lucky I am to have met Maggie.

A lot has changed since I became the curator of this home. I now study with an Indian Maharishi and meditate every day. I have a picture of Guru Deva in my living room. Guru Deva has wild eyes and a crazy mass of black and grey hair and a long kinky black and grey beard, and he’s wearing saffron colored robes and prayer beads. I burn incense when I meditate. I like Sandalwood or Nag Champa because they are sweet and familiar to me now.

I like having guests in my house – friends from out of town, dinner parties, back yard barbecues, and charity events. My Guru teaches meditation classes here and the living room will be stuffed with 60 LA granola heads in yoga pants with colorful malas around their necks. The Gillettes have a lot of back yard barbecues and I open the gate between our yards on those days and their guests come and eat on my back porch and their dogs tear around my back yard and dig up my flower beds.

Everyone talks about how they feel warm and welcome in my house and the “energy” feels calm and grounded and inviting. I would like to take credit for it, but I’m not sure I can.