The first nun I ever met was Sister Mary St. Patrice, my kindergarten
teacher. She was a Sister of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, an
order which I believe originated in Ireland, though the sisters I had for
grammar school were not Irish. I was four years old and I don't
remember what my first impression of her was, so I guess I wasn't too
traumatized. I recall she was a very nice, gentle lady.
You wonder what sadist decided that the holy women who do
God's work, whether teaching or nursing, should wear such outlandish
costumes.
I don't have a clue what the significance of this habit was,
but it had that hard tightly pleated/stiffly starched piece that went around
the face, with a strap that fit under the chin, and a tight starched collar
around the neck and the big stiff box over it all and a veil on top of that.
Then there was the black dress that went down to the ankles, a kind of a
long bib that went over the top, and the rosaries around the waist.
There were tales of nuns bonking kids on the head with the large crucifix,
but I don't think I knew of any such event personally.
They were all bald, of course. We didn't know
that for a fact, but we assumed that taking the veil meant shaving your
head. It was a shock years later when I saw The Nun's Story and
realized the hair was just clipped very, very short. We weren't sure
if they had ears or not, but since some wore glasses and the earpieces hid
behind the headgear, we assumed they probably rested on hidden ears.
When
I got to high school, we were taught by Daughters of Charity, "God's geese,"
as they were affectionately known. Anybody who remembers Sister Bertrile,
"the flying nun" has encountered the Daughters.
Different costume, same problem. Only it was worse for
the Daughters because it was difficult to know how close you were to a wall
or a door or another sister (these were "sisters," not "nuns" we were
taught, but I have long ago forgotten the difference). I suppose if you wore
the habit for any length of time you got your own sense of radar for spatial
situations, but I wore the habit for a career day one year and I could see
neither to the right nor to the left and if I hadn't had someone to guide me
along, I don't know that I ever would have gotten anywhere.
The
headpieces were called "cornettes" and they were washed, starched and folded
in the laundry at the school I attended. But I don't think that as a
grammar school child I ever gave a thought to how the nuns kept their
clothes clean. I think I thought the angels probably did it.
In fact, you couldn't imagine holy women doing anything
that us mere mortals did. I know for a fact that they never went to
the bathroom. There was no nuns' bathroom in the school and we certainly
never saw them in any of our own bathrooms. (I didn't know about such
things in grammar school, but I'm sure that no nun ever had a menstrual
period!)
I remember being scandalized once when I saw a black
stocking-covered ankle on a nun whose skirt was just tad
shorter than the others, so that there was actual flesh--covered
flesh, to be sure--between her hem and her shoe.
The Daughters wore heavy woolen habits and it was probably a
clue that I didn't really have a vocation when the only thing
that worried me about leaving home and joining the convent was how I would
cope with a hot, humid St. Louis summer in wool.
I'm sure the BVMs drove a car, but I never saw it. The
Daughters had a car, a large station wagon, and they had clips they
used to bring both tips of the cornette together and clip them so they could
fit inside the car. Lord only knows how they saw anything behind them,
especially if there were a gaggle of geese inside the car!
In San Francisco, there was a benefit to wearing habits.
Out of gratitude for the work nuns did during the 1906 earthquake and fire,
they were given free bus rides forever. All a nun or sister had to do
was board pubic transportation and they never paid a dime.
We never saw nuns eat, but given the size of a couple of my
teachers, I'm sure they got their share of food. But we knew it was a
sin if we ever saw them putting food into their mouths.
In my senior year in high school, my plan had been to enter
the convent but I needed to prepare for college. To do that, I needed
to take Algebra II, which the school didn't offer, so dear little Sister
Benedicta tutored me every afternoon after regular class (I was a
terrible student....still can't understand the math concepts she tried
so patiently to teach me), but my make-shift classroom was right by the door
that led into the sisters' living quarters and I got to glimpse a bit of
their non-school lives, not enough to see anything (still never saw
them eat), but enough to wonder if I was sinning by seeing what I was
seeing.
It was quite a change when I was an adult sometime in the
1980s and was in St. Louis for a meeting. My typing teacher and
lifelong friend was retired by then and living in a retirement house a few
hours away. She drove in to St. Louis to get me and bring me back to
the house to spend the night, so we could get caught up. What a
revelation! By now the cornettes were gone and the hems were shorter
(but still below the knee) and the sisters had more physical freedom in
their clothing. They had a swimming pool. (Nuns swim? Who knew?)
But the thing that got me was visiting the convent BREWERY and
learning that Sister Anne was the brewmaster. In fact, after dinner
that night (yes, I ate with the sisters and can attest that they do
eat) she came back to the guest house with a couple of bottles of her
special beer and we sat there drinking and visiting. It was surreal.
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