26. When Nuns go Dancing --?
Chapter 26 | By Helen Hinkson Green
Note: This is the next installment of It Takes a Pair, a 34-chapter memoir written by my grandmother, Helen Hinkson Green (1907-2003). It recounts her memories of raising her twin daughters as a single (& widowed) parent throughout the 1940s. It is being published posthumously in her honor, with new chapters released every Sunday. View previous chapters and more information about this memoir.
Among the small delights that the view from our kitchen window afforded us many mornings as we ate breakfast at the small table beside it was watching for one of the Sisters from the small nunnery next door to appear on the scene and go about her household chores.
Just now as I write this in retrospect it occurs to me that what we were engaging in was possibly a form of eavesdropping--only we did it with our eyes, not ears. Certainly it wasn’t spying, for the only way we could have kept her out of our line of vision would have been to pull the shade. And that would certainly have been an effrontery had she glanced up to see us shutting her out of our world, as if we didn’t want her to see us--or us to see her. It certainly never occurred to us not to watch her as she went about her chores. We even knew which Sister she was, thanks to Mrs. Lorch’s supplying her name, a name I have long since forgotten. I’ll just call her Sister Martha, for certainly she was performing the “lesser things” while the Sister Marys inside might have been “sitting at the feet” by praying in the chapel.
Sister Martha was obviously in charge of garbage and slop detail. Each morning she would come out the back door of the nunnery laden with two huge pails, one in each hand. She had a set routine. She would head down the back walk toward some sort of smokehouse or storage shed, walking very slowly so as not to spill from the heavy pails. Then she would leave the walk and disappear around to the south side of the shed where we couldn’t see what she did with whatever was in the pails. Then she would reappear swinging the pails almost jauntily in a lighthearted manner. (Probably there was a compost pile somewhere out behind the shed where she deposited the garbage--and garbage it must have been.)
Then Sister Martha would straighten her shoulders and glance around as if to say, “Well, that’s done for another twenty-four hours. Now to get on with the more important and uplifting aspects in the business of living.” Now if Sister Martha really did have some such thought, she probably left out the “more important” interpolation I’ve written into it. Sister Martha probably realized all along that “Dear God, what could be a more important contribution to the smooth operation of a communal household--or any household or entire community for that matter--than taking care of the accumulation of wastes of all kinds.” (A city garbage strike can bring that fact home forcibly in a couple of days.) Sister Martha must surely have known that she was helping in His work as she assumed responsibility for some of the lesser chores that had to be taken care of.
At any rate, having disposed of one of the most mundane chores of the nunnery for the day, Sister Martha would seemingly lift up her eyes unto the hills with a sweeping glance across the horizon ahead of her--a horizon partially blotted out by the back of the Lorches big house with the big back window, out of which peered two small redheaded girls, still at the breakfast table, along with their mother, unless she were finishing up her coffee as she stood over at the work table putting up lunches.
Sister Martha would give us a big smile, wave the nearest empty bucket aloft in a big sweeping arc of a salute, and we’d all wave back, giggling at how grandly she could salute us with that empty bucket. There were indeed special happy little happenings in the world outside our window.
Now, to the children, one of the most interesting things about Sister Martha’s daily appearance was the fact that her voluminous habit was always covered by an even more voluminous giant blue-checked apron. It was not just an ordinary “tied around the waist” apron, or even one with a bib. This one came clear up to her chin almost, had some sort of big surgical gown sleeves into which the sleeves of the habit could be tucked up. (Sister Martha could have fried the Friday fish in that cover up of an apron and not had a single spatter on her habit beneath.) That big enveloping blue-checked apron, covering everything but her hands, face, and wimple, simply fascinated the girls. It somehow didn’t belong with the rest of what the Sisters wore.
“Bobby Bartels’ Sister--the one who teaches him and who waves to us out in front each day when we come home--she never wears one of those big aprons,” said Penny who was Bobby’s special playmate after school usually.
“No, but she isn’t doing dirty work when she’s teaching,” I said. “I don’t wear my apron or smock to school, either, do I? But I do wear one when I’m cooking or doing dishes. In fact, the reason I wear smocks instead of aprons most of the time when I’m working here at home is because a smock covers up even more than an apron.”
“Is that why the Sister’s apron is so big? So it can cover up more of her costume?”
“More of her habit? They call what they wear habits, not costumes. Yes, I’m sure that’s the reason.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier just to wear an old dress while she’s doing the dirty work and not put her cos--I mean habit--on until she’s finished?”
“Well, it might be. But I don’t think the Sisters have any old dresses to wear when they work. I think that once they join an Order, they give up all their other clothes. So they have to wear their habits for everything. I think habits are the only clothes they have. Mrs. Lorch might be able to tell us about that.”
Two pairs of eyes stared at me, wide with disbelief.
“You mean,” said Jenny, amazement creeping into her voice, “you really mean they wear those costumes when they go dancing with their husbands?” (Costumes had pushed aside the newly acquired correct word habits as the preposterousness of the situation as she understood it overwhelmed her.)
I glanced at the clock as I bent to give them both a quick hug. (Oh the dearness of children. The dear, funny dearness!) How much time did we have for a brief discussion of the role of celibacy in the Orders of the Church--some churches? Not enough for the inevitable questions leading always to more learning. So I merely said, “Oh Sisters never have husbands. They don’t marry. In fact I’m pretty sure they don’t go dancing after they become Sisters? Come, let’s do your braids, so we won’t be late for school.”
Almost through the second French braid, a small voice said very quietly, “If Daddy had lived, you would have gone dancing with him, wouldn’t you, Mother?”
“Indeed, yes--just as I did before he died,” I replied with assurance. Then quickly, “My but you and your hair both cooperated beautifully this morning. We’re all finished with the first head and it looks beautiful. Next?”
Oh, change the subject quickly when the talk gets close to sensitive areas for which I can offer no complete healing at the moment, no matter how hard I try to do the parenting for two.
Was the child sensing in some indefinable way that there was a void in Mother’s life that was somehow akin to the celibate ones of the Sisters who never went dancing with their husbands because they didn’t have any? Like Mother? And that lack on Mother’s part left a void in her children’s lives too. How big a void? How frequently did they sense it no matter how hard I tried to do parenting for two?
Since they had never known a father did they ever wonder what it would have been like if there had been one to sit at the supper table for a leisurely second cup of coffee and talk and play with them the way that kind Mr. Lorch did on so many evenings when they were “invited” into the Lorch’s kitchen that backed up to our to “visit.” Or to color Easter eggs with them the way Uncle Bob did when we went up to St. Louis on one of the many weekends we spent there?
(Ah, Princey--Why did you have to tell me, “It takes a pair--” when there can’t always be one?)
» Look for the release of a new chapter of It Takes a Pair next Sunday.