he gave me, I looked in his eyes with such longing that I knew it would excite him. Several weeks later he told me that all he’d wanted to do was hug the life out of me.
Chapter Three
Telling Father
Within a month of meeting with Father Relici, I met with Sister Lorraine and two Sisters of Charity, Erin and Teresa. Sister Lorraine was a buxom woman in her fifties who wore a large silver cross around her neck and had warm eyes and short brown hair. After some small chat about work and family in her tiny diocesan office, she told me that before I pursued a religious vocation, I should go for spiritual direction, a process of learning to trust God and discern His will. She recommended Sister Erin who worked at a Jesuit retreat house not far from me and who, a couple of weeks later, greeted me with a hug and then offered me a seat in her office. As soon as I glanced out the window at the climbing ivy, I remembered I’d been there before in sophomore year of high school and again with my mother in my early twenties before I’d started pulling away from her. I remembered how much I loved retreats—the quiet time for reflection and journaling, Confession and Mass, the talks about God’s unconditional love—and how I always left feeling happy and fed.
After I answered Sister Erin’s questions about my job and told her about my meetings with Father Relici and Sister Lorraine, I said what I’d never said to anyone quite as clearly before: “I’m drawn to God but so afraid.” It was as if some closed latch in my throat finally opened. Except for telling her about Father Infanzi, I told her everything else about the previous four and a half years since I’d broken up with Dave and how ashamed I felt about not being able to pull myself together better. I was crying, and she was handing me tissues as she nodded her head with no judgment or even pity in her eyes. When she asked if I was going to therapy I said yes, though the truth was I’d stopped at the end of October. Maybe Father’s attention had given me the false sense that I was doing better. I was hoping that spiritual direction could take the place of therapy.
Sister said very gently that God never forces, He only invites, and that the aim of discernment is to figure out if I have a vocation and then which religious order would be the right match, but that the underlying purpose is always to draw closer to our loving God. She described discernment as a series of conversations with a particular order that would help us learn about each other, like dating. Then she told me about her order, the Sisters of Charity, that they were founded in 1809 by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first native-born American citizen to become a saint and who was a wife and mother before she became a nun.
“Really?” I asked, but then I remembered the book my mother had on our shelf when I was growing up, Blessed Mother Seton. In the first part, there were pictures of Elizabeth with her husband and five children, and in the second part, a picture of her wearing a widow’s cap, which later became part of her habit. She closed the gap between marriage and celibacy a little for me and made being a nun seem less strange, at least for the moment. Before I left, Sister Erin and I scheduled another appointment for a month later. She also gave me the name and number of Sister Teresa, the Vocation Director, adding, “You’ll like Teresa. She’s Italian, from Brooklyn. Call her when you feel ready.” It was probably premature, but I trusted Sister Erin, who hugged me goodbye like she was trying to gather fallen leaves to her chest and was afraid one would slip. A week later I was driving north on the New Jersey Turnpike to the Convent of Our Lady in Fort Lee filled with dread. I hadn’t been in a convent since high school. I didn’t know anyone my age who was a nun: I hadn’t even heard of anyone becoming a nun anymore. As I zipped past Newark Airport, planes descended and ascended as my mind buzzed. Is there any turning back after tonight? How will I explain to everyone that I’m considering religious life when I don’t want to, that I really want to get married? A half mile later, as I passed a fuchsia billboard for a vacation resort with a couple lying in each other’s arms on the beach, my throat tightened.
While I waited for Sister Teresa to open the door, I looked at the one-family houses across the street and then back at the enormous stucco convent. All I could see of the Blessed Mother statue a few feet away from me were her palms facing upward in surrender. Within seconds, a tall, slim woman appeared behind the screen door, her short hair completely white even though she wasn’t yet fifty and perfectly tapered as if she’d just come from the beauty parlor. She was wearing gray slacks and sensible shoes and a light pink, V-neck sweater with a white blouse underneath, its collar folded over the V. I apologized for being late, and she said, “Don’t worry” and “I’m so glad we’re getting to meet each other.” Then she hugged me generously, her shoulder blades sharp through her sweater. Inside, the quiet was like a thick blanket over the hallway, which was long and dim and bare but that had to be bustling in the 1950s with lots of young women in black habits trying to get to chapel on time like a scene from the Sound of Music before Maria leaves.
“We used to have a lot of Sisters in this house, every bedroom occupied, so we really needed the space. Now we’re two Sisters and two novices.” I wanted to ask her what happened, why she thought women weren’t doing this anymore, but I was afraid to offend her. “Oh well, God always has a plan,” she continued, as if reading my mind. As she showed me around, I smiled, trying to hide my unease. It felt like a museum, everything silent and placed and old like the books in their library and the 1970s television in the living room, the same kind my grandparents had until my mother and aunts, after years of trying, finally convinced them to replace with a new one. There were none of the aromas of a home like cookies in the oven or fresh-cut flowers on the table, and the kitchen had pastel tiled walls and a dumbwaiter they no longer used.
“This is my favorite room,” she said smiling broadly. “On Sunday mornings, I’m usually the first awake. I get my coffee and the paper and clip my coupons, then I have a second cup. It’s heavenly, the solitude.”
“That sounds nice,” I said, but I thought, How lonely in this big kitchen by herself every Sunday morning.
Afterward we met in her office where two chairs were set up facing each other in the center of the room like confession without the screen. It was an orderly and modest room with short shelves filled with books whose spines read words like Charism, Apostolic, Contemplative and still others that said Praying with Vincent de Paul, Praying with Louise De Marillac, Praying with Elizabeth Ann Seton. There was a picture of St. Elizabeth before she became a nun, with her long, curly brown tresses falling passed her shoulders, and a statue of her afterward in which she’s in her habit looking attentively at two small children. Sister offered me the more comfortable chair and then sat down, her legs so long her knees extended way past the edge of the chair.
“Sister, as I was telling you on the phone, I feel like I’m supposed to be looking into this, religious life, but I don’t wa—,” I said crossing my legs. “I’m just not sure.”
“There’s no pressure. Really,” she said. “But maybe we could talk a little about what makes you feel like you might have a calling.”
I told her about that night in church when I was eight, how drawn I felt to prayer in high school, and that most of the time I didn’t make it to a fourth date. She nodded and asked, “Is there anything going on that’s making you consider religious life now?” I looked at her surprised, Father Infanzi in my head. “No, just that if I don’t explore it, I’ll always have this gnawing feeling.” I wanted to ask her if celibacy would always feel like an interminable longing, but she looked so happy I felt silly, so I asked if it was normal that I didn’t feel drawn to the poor.
“Are there students who come to you seeking more than just a job?”
“Sure.” A male student came to mind whose father shamed him into being a business major when he really wanted to go into the arts. Another student was battling with a severe disability, and there were plenty of students who felt like they’d never be enough. I did my best to listen to all of them and to offer possible solutions when I could.
