Cast of Characters

Dodie was an alcoholic just beginning her road to recovery. She wasn't ready to look at her behavior and attitudes.  I trusted her too much in sharing my vulnerabilities. 

She punished me by giving me the silent treatment.  This was the same punitive method employed by so many others in my past. I remember many times yelling at my mother who stood silently with eyes fixed on the dishes in the soapy dishwater. I pleaded for her to say something. Yell at me if you want to.  Don’t just stand there saying nothing.  

I evidently had done something to disappoint her. I always felt I didn’t measure up to someone’s expectations when they gave me that silent treatment.

I wasn’t sure if my own five years younger sister had learned this technique from Mother but there has seemed to be a cold war going on between us, for nearly our entire life.  My sister never had anything to say. It was as if she came into this lifetime with a chip on her shoulder. I suspect it has to do with her recognizing me from an unpleasant, possibly horrendous situation in a past life.

Then there were the Religious Sisters who for no reason stopped talking to me.  It was all such a puzzle to me, clearly Karmic. There was one whom I had pretty well put on a pedestal.  This was definitely a pf, particular friendship,  situation from my perspective who was barely twenty years old, a forbidden friendship.   Looking back I recognize the several crushes I had.  

When its compelling Sister came to the town I lived in, this Sister and I had wonderful times together, going for walks, saying the rosary, one of the permissible activities together, and sharing inspiring spiritual talks. I wasn’t sure I’d ever met anyone so wonderful, spiritual and ethereal. 

That came to a sorry end when this Sister was transferred to the same living situation as me. Not only the same living situation but the same room. There were four beds in a fairly tiny room separated by cloth curtains. 

I was so excited, I couldn’t believe it. My friend would be sleeping in the same room as me. A very strange thing happened. This wonderful Sister began to ghost me and no longer spoke to me. She just stopped talking to me and acted as if I didn’t exist. This went on for a year and finally, I could take no more.  I was plunging deeper into depression and as a teacher, my effectiveness was suffering. 

I finally confronted this Sister, as to why she no longer spoke to me.  Her answer felt like a slap in the face. She said she had become disillusioned to see my little curtained corner of the room was messy. I was too messy. That was it?  I was just too messy.  This was no one's business. It was my little curtained corner with a bed and a window sill for which to set things.

I don’t remember what happened after that; I am good at forgetting hard situations.  Maybe that Sister moved onto another mission as they called it, another town with another school.  Or possibly, she just moved to another room. We never seemed to find ourselves in the same place after that.  

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The Iconoclast  

Around the time I entered the convent, the walls protecting the bastions of conservatism, structure and tradition were beginning to crumble. I was in the middle of a religious revolution.  Religious life or the convent was a microcosm of the Church and/or the world.  

When there was unrest in the Church, there arose radicalism in the convent. Naturally,  the other youth and I brought that society and its values with us. Although the conservative faction tried to uphold tradition, the iconoclasts were undaunted.  

This activity in the convent mirrored politics. Viewing any old newsreels we can see why the Sisters walked in two’s. Hitler’s army marched two by two.  Previous to the revolution in society, the convent had been very communistic in its principles, with everything belonging to the whole, with nothing owned by the individual.  

We had to share everything in common with one exception, maybe, the toothbrush.  We had to refer to everything as 'our,' and I cringe to say it; even ‘our toothbrush.’  I want to assure everyone that no one used my toothbrush, nor did I have to use anyone else's.

It was mostly community terminology.  As individualism hit the middle 60s, when I entered, there were threats of breaking away to form new communities.

During one of these volatile community meetings I, the original iconoclast, felt compelled to get the conservative groups to see what the more liberal groups were trying to say. 

I didn’t know of the unwritten rule not to speak until you had professed your first vows or more profoundly were what was termed finally professed, making vows for life.

I was standing with friends in the way back of the old gymnasium. The minute I began to speak to share my inexperience, one of the Sisters barked, "Have you made your vows yet?"

 I was transported to my childhood where I was on the cross-examination stand with my father again. How dare she ask such a question?  My hackles raised, I ignored the question and mistakenly continued my dissertation. She would not let it go and kept pushing, repeating the intimidating question. 

A cold silence filled the room, awaiting my response. I was trapped in front of over 120 Sisters, every one of them professed and every one of them knew the answer to the question. Sets of eyes studied me. I had to respond.  At that burning moment, I was all too familiar with this type of trap, similar to the many I’d had tried to squirm out of being set up by my father. There was no winning this one. 

I blurted out, It’s none of your business. I’d never heard in my life, such a loud chorus of gasps, tsks and shushes.  Weak-legged and faint-hearted, I was whisked away up the hard metal steps, out of the gym, out of the dark pit, and as far away as possible.  I broke into gut-wrenching sobs on the shoulder of Sr. Mary, my  Novice Mistress, our director.

I have no idea what went on in the meeting after that. I did observe even the temporarily professed, three years in, were discouraged from speaking their thoughts. I don't think any earth-shattering discussion arose. The conservatives held control of any discussion from the floor.  

Who was I, a Novice, to have been so bold to even think I could get away with expressing my own opinion? If I looked around, I would remember I was in a group where people were discouraged from even having an original thought. They were, possibly through penance, conditioned to refrain from expressing it.