“I want to be a nun,” she said.
She was 18. I was 11. My sister, my roommate, my friend, my teacher, and my guiding light for everything wanted to be a nun. She quietly repeated it. Her voice was firm. I was eavesdropping, while peering through a crack between the living room door and its frame. We saw a lot of things we shouldn’t have seen, through that crack. My father’s expression was, as always, open and caring, but the deep furrow in his brow betrayed his concern. “Why do you want to be a nun?” he asked calmly. I listened carefully for the answer thinking maybe it might answer the hundreds of questions colliding in my head. Our mother was out of earshot, no doubt busy with one or other of the younger six. “I just do,” my sister said. “I want to be a nun.”
My eldest sister had shared my bedroom for as long as I could remember. She had read endless bedtime stories aloud to me and taught me how to ride a bike. We had cycled to school together every day. She had explained Irish words in English and had helped me with my maths. She passed on her old bike to me. I wore her old school uniforms, hankered after her hand-me-downs and cherished her guidance (although I never told her this last bit). She kept my head up in a sea of brothers and sisters. She walked with us to 7:30 Mass every morning before school. “Oh, my goodness,” I thought. “Does going to Mass every day make one want to be a nun?” If so, was it just a matter of time before we all wanted to be nuns? I didn’t want to go to Mass the next morning. I was shushed and pushed along as usual.
How long would it take for this overheard snippet of conversation to become a fact? Perhaps it never would. Perhaps it would fade away and cease to be a problem, never to become real. But it happened. At our father’s request, not demand, and with his loving guidance and innate respect for fairness, he prevailed upon my sister not to join the convent straight away. “Go to university, get your degree. Then come back and tell me how you feel,” he said. I am sure he thought she would change her mind. She went to university and obtained a teaching degree. Several boyfriends were acquired and gently disposed of along the way. She attended concerts and discos, frequented the Belfield bar and vigorously took part in the annual Rag Week. Yet, she came back to my father’s hopeful face three years later. “I still want to be a nun,” she said.
And so my parents relented. The first time I saw my father cry was the day they drove with her across the Irish countryside to the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Postulant Preparation Centre, Co. Mayo. His tears remained even as he returned to Dublin a couple of days later. Those tears unashamedly present whenever he thought of having left his first-born in, to quote his own words, “a godforsaken place.” At the time I thought this was rather amusing, but I didn’t chance saying so. We clamoured for news. We had been looked after by a good friend and neighbour for two days. The simplicity of the request from our mother to her neighbour – “can you watch the children for a couple of days?” Nowadays it would be a long list of scheduled activities – tennis at 3, ballet at 4, speech and drama at 5, hockey at 10 on Saturday morning. Not so back then, just simply “can you watch the children?” and the simple answer “yes of course.”
Having left my sister 200 miles away in The West of Ireland, our parents recounted to those of us old enough to understand, their approach in the pouring rain to the sprawling Convent estate, lost in the dismal black darkness of the barren Mayo countryside. The looming shadow of the ancient convent building did nothing to quell their fears, but only increased their anxieties. They hurried from the car to the entrance as the unrelenting rain soaked them through. The sodden dangling rope of the overhead doorbell was yet another sign to my father that they should be anywhere but here. An old nun deputed to welcome the new postulant, opened one side of the great double doors, silently led them into the huge hall and showed them to the parlour. My parents told us of wanting to run away from this place, back home to Dublin, to take my sister with them, to tell her it was all a big mistake. But she was smiling, happy to be there. She wanted to be a nun. Her happiness was the only consolation in this otherwise desolate moment for our parents as they watched their eldest daughter leave them for a new and unknown life, which, even as Catholics of strong faith and values they still didn’t quite understand.
Our father told us about meeting the Mother Superior. Wasn’t this a contradiction in terms? Again, I thought better of saying so. Weren’t religious sisters servants of God? So, what made a Mother Superior? They needed to change that, I thought, but I kept my thoughts to myself.
At the time, we didn’t realise that becoming a nun meant we wouldn’t see her on a regular basis. We learned quickly. I missed her. My younger sister moved into my bedroom and I became her older roommate, her teacher and her guiding light for everything. We witnessed the joy on our parents’ faces when the little white envelope with the tidy handwriting dropped in the letterbox each week. We fell into a new routine. The family dinner table now sat eight instead of nine, so place settings were farther apart. We could discard the backless chair with the suspect legs. Two of us got an extra fish-finger for dinner each Friday. I missed being the younger sister, but I took my new responsibilities seriously. I soon became the resident teacher of all things, as my younger sisters grew up and each took their turn as my roommate. I even walked them and my brother to morning Mass before school. But I didn’t want to be a nun.
She didn’t visit home very regularly. When she did, she couldn’t help it but she was different. The black and white wimple and nun’s habit changed her appearance. It gave her a holy countenance. There was a palpable air of distance between us now. Was she now a different sort of sister? Was this fair? Were we still a family of nine or had we ‘lost’ one? We tried to think of her as holy, picturing her kneeling down praying when the rest of us were getting on with the rough and tumble of being a family. Was she still the same sister who climbed trees for crab apples with us? The same sister who for years ran with us through the woods behind our house as we gathered conkers and played hide and seek? We didn’t really understand why she wanted to be a nun. We had already conveniently chosen the lanky blonde chap living on the opposite side of the road, up a bit, as her intended, her future husband, father of her children. They looked good together, our pre-teenage minds thought innocently. We’ll have a wedding and it’ll be great fun. She’s the eldest and we’ll all follow her. But now – we knew we wouldn’t all follow her. I certainly wouldn’t. I examined my conscience regularly. Was there any part of a nun in me? I always thought my eldest sister and I so alike in many ways, thought that was why we shared a room. But this nun business didn’t fit with my plan. I had to adjust.
Her new family was now made up of similarly dressed women of all ages. Some young, bright and smiling like herself, others wizened old crones, and, at least to us, rather scary looking. Our eldest sister was now wrapped in the black and white blanket of the religious community. Slowly, we got used to this and the years passed. Our family changed. Our father’s fairness in life was not rewarded in kind by life itself. Shortly before his 61st Birthday he was snatched away from us by the ravages of colon cancer. The Sisters of the Religious of Jesus and Mary sang like angels at his funeral, my sister amongst them. Yet she grieved alongside us, her first family. From that day I witnessed and experienced first-hand our mother’s true inner strength. The rearing of our family was unfinished and now she carried that responsibility on her own. I had reached adulthood, but my younger sisters and brothers were still children. When my sister joined the convent years earlier, I felt my guiding light had left me. I realised then that my sister’s beam was just one of the bright bulbs of our family’s main beacon – our mother – our real guiding light. Our father’s passing had left her alone, but with us all around her. She wrapped us all tightly in the cocoon of her love and brought us the rest of the way by herself.
The year of the Millennium arrived. How times had changed. Many religious orders, including my sister’s, had renounced the rigidity of the habit and now permitted the sisters to wear secular clothes. On a rare sunny Irish day in May, her hair was shiny and peppered with grey. The wind blew it around her face as she entered the parish church where we had all been baptised, had received First Holy Communion and had been confirmed. She wore a wide smile, a fashionable beige ensemble, matching beige shoes with a 1-inch heel, a beaded necklace, a chunky bracelet and a plain gold ring on the third finger of her left hand. The ring was the only evidence of the commitment made 25 years earlier. This May-day’s celebration was to mark her Silver Jubilee, 25 years a nun. It was a mighty occasion. My sister’s extended family, the Sisters of the Religious of Jesus and Mary were the life and soul of the party. The many hundreds of students she had taught and guided through secondary school were well represented. All spoke glowingly of her disciplined fairness through the years, no doubt inherited from our father. On a different day, in a different era, when her postulant clothes were drab and grey, with her shiny black hair soon to disappear under a plain black and white wimple, she had committed herself to religious life. At the time, I know my parents questioned her decision. I know I questioned her sense then and many times since, but she assured us that she never felt anything but total support from all of us. She wanted to be a nun, and she became one.
She gave of herself generously to become a valued and humble friend to her religious sisters and a strong supporting arm in the structure of the Order. She had become a teacher to children other than us, her sisters at home. She was appointed school principal, a position she holds to this day. Our mother at 90 is her greatest fan. Had he lived, our father would be so proud of her. For me, she remains my sister and my friend.
Published by Ireland’s Own Winning Writers Annual May 2015
