Back in the 1930s, in Tuscany, Italy, there were three old women who shared one tiny little house near the river. They were very close and had lived together for over ten years. One worked as a maid for a rich family, and the other two worked in the town bakery. They were very hard workers and had a small paycheck.


These three women together have a remarkable story to tell. They each came from unusual backgrounds: the maid was from Manila in the Philippines, and the two bakers were from Braga, Portugal. They each saved up all their wages for twenty years so that they could move to a rich country and start a new life.


These women never knew each other as kids but met at a little coffee shop when they were fifty five years old in Tuscany, Italy. They would sit there for hours and never got bored. The reason they could sit there all day and talk is because they had so many stories to tell each other about their lives. They would meet before work and after work every single day. They knew each other so well after a while that they became like sisters.


At around 7:00 in the night, the three women met again in the coffee shop. But something today was utterly wrong. The maid who worked for the rich family was crying. The two other women were worried about the maid. The two women thought that they should discuss this somewhere else. They walked out of the coffee shop and turned right. After a five minute walk they found an ancient staircase made out of stone. They decided this was the perfect place to sit and talk about what is wrong. The two bakers ask the maid what was wrong and she explained everything. She had lost her job working for the rich family because she had given the child of the rich family the wrong cereal for breakfast. All of the sudden, the two bakers had an idea to help all of them. They offered the maid to live at one of the baker’s house. The two bakers told the maid that she can stay at the baker’s house as long as she needed. Tomorrow morning, the maid would search for a new job. But then the two bakers had an even better idea: they could all share the same house.


They to put their money together and bought a sweet little house by the river. They had good and healthy food on their table each night. They also saved some of their wages for when they were too old to work. And soon enough, they were too old to work and so they just relaxed all day in their little house by the river. But the one thing they were extremely thankful for was to find each other.