finally found her family, her routine, her stability.
Nuns are nothing if not predictable. They commit their lives to the sanctity of routine. After all, remember their husband’s M.O.—the sun, the tides, the rotation of the Earth—and maybe you’ll get some small sense of a Catholic nun’s aspirations.
Sister P.V., Sister Robert Ann, Sister Maximillian, Sister Pat, and Sister Michael lived together in the convent behind the church. They woke at 5:45 a.m., even on weekends. Each Sister, beginning with the eldest, was allotted seven minutes of bathroom time. “Age before beauty!” the younger ones loved to say, with chuckles. They said grace before slurping tea and unsweetened oatmeal at one big table. They strolled to the garden to water vegetables and pull weeds. Yes, it was quite a community. They lashed each other’s naked buttocks with rosaries if the laundry didn’t get done on time. Fortunately, it always got done on time. You see, the laundry routine, like every other routine, was carved into the stone tablets of their wizened heads.
In addition to sharing bathrooms, the nuns shared delusions. They also shared an unwillingness to perform self-examinations of any kind.
Undoubtedly, these qualities appealed to Grandma Pencil.
Where you would see stubbornness, the nuns saw conviction. Where you would see vindictiveness, the nuns saw the even hand (read: the open backhand) of justice. Where you would see pettiness, the nuns saw the Devil in the details. Where you would see nosiness and invasion of privacy, the nuns saw council.
Where you would see hate, they also saw hate (of the “sin,” not the “sinner”).
Where you would see sin, they saw the sinner.
28.
The years drifted by, as years do. A more accurate verb has never been applied. Like rafts upon an ocean, or astronauts cut loose from their space walks, the anni float at a languid pace, with no set direction, providing an arbitrary definition of “progress.” Always moving, yes, always arriving somewhere and nowhere at the same time.
And of course, by “years,” I mean our lives. Our selves. Us. You and me. We drift.
1982, ’83, ’84, ’85. A dazzling era. Arcade games, home video games, Olympic Games,
Trivial Pursuit
games,
War Games .
The Year of the Bible. Swatches. Sally Ride. A bull terrier in shades pitching beer. The first execution by lethal injection. Music Tele-vision. Moonboots. Styrofoam. Chinese yo-yos. Happy Meals. The Computer is
The Man of the Year
. Saved whales, bludgeoned seals.
What began as a volunteer stint became a paying gig. St. Monica’s named Grandma Pencil the official Classroom Assistant—a position created for her. Five days a week, five hours a day, she went into rooms as needed, lending support, zipping zippers, licking gold stars, pitching in, scolding, making herself useful. Never mind that she had no qualifications, no formal training in education . . . Neither did the nuns! So it worked.
Grandma Pencil was, after all, just under fifty years old. A spring chicken by today’s standards, and what’s a chicken if it’s got nothing to peck?
Like her daughter, she’d never held a job. After the G.I.s freed her and her family from Los Baños on February 23, 1945, the Pen-solotschy clan came back to the U.S., to Kalamazoo, and lived off the money the government paid out to war widows. Her father hadn’t been a soldier, but all internment camp survivors were given this status. The money was a pittance. Annabelle’s mother knew what she had to do.
She remarried a year later. As Pencil would describe it, “Mommy got herself a little leprechaun.” By this, she wasn’t only referring to her stepfather’s diminutive stature, bright orange shock of hair, and deep Irish roots. What Grandma Pencil also meant was that Sean Flannery McCain had a giant pot of gold. But instead of having to be tricked, this leprechaun shared his gold recklessly, drunkenly. He foisted it on people in the same way a shore
Nuns are nothing if not predictable. They commit their lives to the sanctity of routine. After all, remember their husband’s M.O.—the sun, the tides, the rotation of the Earth—and maybe you’ll get some small sense of a Catholic nun’s aspirations.
Sister P.V., Sister Robert Ann, Sister Maximillian, Sister Pat, and Sister Michael lived together in the convent behind the church. They woke at 5:45 a.m., even on weekends. Each Sister, beginning with the eldest, was allotted seven minutes of bathroom time. “Age before beauty!” the younger ones loved to say, with chuckles. They said grace before slurping tea and unsweetened oatmeal at one big table. They strolled to the garden to water vegetables and pull weeds. Yes, it was quite a community. They lashed each other’s naked buttocks with rosaries if the laundry didn’t get done on time. Fortunately, it always got done on time. You see, the laundry routine, like every other routine, was carved into the stone tablets of their wizened heads.
In addition to sharing bathrooms, the nuns shared delusions. They also shared an unwillingness to perform self-examinations of any kind.
Undoubtedly, these qualities appealed to Grandma Pencil.
Where you would see stubbornness, the nuns saw conviction. Where you would see vindictiveness, the nuns saw the even hand (read: the open backhand) of justice. Where you would see pettiness, the nuns saw the Devil in the details. Where you would see nosiness and invasion of privacy, the nuns saw council.
Where you would see hate, they also saw hate (of the “sin,” not the “sinner”).
Where you would see sin, they saw the sinner.
28.
The years drifted by, as years do. A more accurate verb has never been applied. Like rafts upon an ocean, or astronauts cut loose from their space walks, the anni float at a languid pace, with no set direction, providing an arbitrary definition of “progress.” Always moving, yes, always arriving somewhere and nowhere at the same time.
And of course, by “years,” I mean our lives. Our selves. Us. You and me. We drift.
1982, ’83, ’84, ’85. A dazzling era. Arcade games, home video games, Olympic Games,
Trivial Pursuit
games,
War Games .
The Year of the Bible. Swatches. Sally Ride. A bull terrier in shades pitching beer. The first execution by lethal injection. Music Tele-vision. Moonboots. Styrofoam. Chinese yo-yos. Happy Meals. The Computer is
The Man of the Year
. Saved whales, bludgeoned seals.
What began as a volunteer stint became a paying gig. St. Monica’s named Grandma Pencil the official Classroom Assistant—a position created for her. Five days a week, five hours a day, she went into rooms as needed, lending support, zipping zippers, licking gold stars, pitching in, scolding, making herself useful. Never mind that she had no qualifications, no formal training in education . . . Neither did the nuns! So it worked.
Grandma Pencil was, after all, just under fifty years old. A spring chicken by today’s standards, and what’s a chicken if it’s got nothing to peck?
Like her daughter, she’d never held a job. After the G.I.s freed her and her family from Los Baños on February 23, 1945, the Pen-solotschy clan came back to the U.S., to Kalamazoo, and lived off the money the government paid out to war widows. Her father hadn’t been a soldier, but all internment camp survivors were given this status. The money was a pittance. Annabelle’s mother knew what she had to do.
She remarried a year later. As Pencil would describe it, “Mommy got herself a little leprechaun.” By this, she wasn’t only referring to her stepfather’s diminutive stature, bright orange shock of hair, and deep Irish roots. What Grandma Pencil also meant was that Sean Flannery McCain had a giant pot of gold. But instead of having to be tricked, this leprechaun shared his gold recklessly, drunkenly. He foisted it on people in the same way a shore
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