Black Shoes

While I was receiving indecent proposals at the grocery store, I was also frequently teased about being good nun material.  The deepest part of me knew that I wasn't nun material. When I thought seriously about entering the convent, it was always accompanied by a horrible sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Yet, somehow this chasm of gnawing doubt became easier and easier to ignore.

I'd dropped out college at the end of my freshman year,  I was working and living at home but there was a lot of tension between all of us.  When things erupted in a physical confrontation with my father, I fled.  For over a month, I lived in a spare storage room at my boss' house.  Then I moved in with one of my grandmothers.  Gram and I had always been close.  After she died in 1984, I discovered how close we were.  Even ten years later, I'd think about something and want to call her and tell her only to have to remind myself that she was no longer a simple phone call away.  We never talked about anything deep or even anything very personal.  She was usually in a good mood and being with her always made me feel better.  (My daughter is very much like my grandmother.  I am especially blessed.)

Both my grandmothers always lived within easy walking distance.  I would often show up hoping for a cookie or a slice of freshly baked bread but more than that I was looking for their companionship and a little attention.  They always were happy to see me.  They both told wonderful stories if you spent enough time directing them back to where their stories waited.  They needed an audience, to feel young again, to see themselves through younger eyes and I needed their wisdom, their humor, their honesty.  They always had something good to eat and my stomach, mind and heart loved their company.  I didn't always appreciate it back then.  I was afraid to show them how much they mattered to me.   I was afraid to acknowledge it to myself.

When I first moved in with my maternal grandmother, I needed her.  She was there for me as she had always been.  We never talked about why I left home.  She never asked.  I never said.  There were so many things that were never said.  In time, I realized that just as I had once needed her, she was now needing me, relying on my company.  Frightened, I tested the limits.  She never scolded or reprimanded me.  She would lie awake at night if I wasn't home and wait until I came in before she could fall asleep.  If I tiptoed in at 2 or 3 in the morning, a small quiet voice would call out to me as I passed her bedroom.
"Carol, are you okay?"
I always replied, "Yes, Grandma.  Go to sleep.  You don't need to worry about me."
"Goodnight", she'd say.
"Goodnight,  Gram.  Get some sleep."

I might have been out late at 19 and 20 years of age but I was still a good girl.  I wasn't sleeping around.  I rarely drank and only once remember driving after having too much champagne at a wedding.  Once sober, I was upset with myself for being so careless.  Driving home at 1 a.m on country roads with a light snow falling,  I hadn't met a single car.  So fascinated was I by the snowflakes, I drove about 20 miles an hour all the way home."
I can still see beautiful snow flakes dropping out of the night sky and melting on my windshield on that Dec 29th, 1978.

Grandma's waiting up for me was both touching and frustrating to a late bloomer like myself.  I thought myself old enough to have passed the stay-up-and-worry-about-me phase.  As time passed, my life felt stagnant.  As much as I loved my Grandmother, I also wanted to live my own life.  I wanted to go to college, to travel.  I didn't know how to have my own life without hurting her.  We never spoke of this out loud.  Maybe things would have been different if we had.  As it was, the odd pieces of my life began to assemble into the perfect storm.

One day as I walked up the hill to Mt. Angel Abbey, I struggled with the idea of what to do with my life.  I looked down at the black shoes I was wearing and thought to myself,
"I could wear black shoes.
I could wear all black clothing.
I could become a nun.
I could do this."

Those black shoes with the faint white stitching and the smart t-strap are captured in a snapshot in my mind. I see them now almost as clearly as I saw them that fateful day when the decision to enter a convent was based on my ability to wear a pair of black shoes.  My desire not to enter was as strong as ever.  I decided  to accept what I had been fighting inside.  I resigned myself to the decision not with a happy heart but with a sense of duty and obligation.  It wasn't what I really wanted but it seemed like the way to solve a bunch of problems.  I didn't see this then.    I'd convinced myself that it was the right thing to do without listening to my heart,  the signs in my life or the voices of doubt that whispered in my head.  After all, didn't I usually make the right choice?  Didn't I do what was expected?  Wasn't I the good Catholic girl?

I'd never come close to dating in high school.  Very shy, nerdy, a smart girl didn't make me an attractive option to the young men in my world.  I'm sure I appeared aloof.  People probably thought I thought I was better than they were.  Sometimes, I actually thought that but I know it was a defensive way of dealing with the profound feeling of inadequacy that lie under any feelings of superiority.   The convent offered me a way out.  I could get an education.  I would gain a level of respect in my Catholic world.  I could leave my Grandmother's house with only the best of intentions.  She couldn't argue with me or try to hold me back without going against much of what she believed about her faith.  Once my mind was made up by those pair of black shoes, there was no turning back.

As my family said a final goodbye in that fancy convent parlor, I knew I was making a big mistake.  I wanted to stop all the social niceties and say, "I was wrong.  I'm going home with you."
But, I didn't.  After they left, I thought about calling them and begging them to come back and pick me up.
"I don't belong here.  I was wrong."
I didn't.  The resulting embarrassment and humiliation would be too much to bear.  I had my pride.

Following a beaming formation director, I carried my small suitcase through the cloister doors.  Up the flights of stairs, she lead me to a simple, dormitory divided into smaller sections by curtains the color of pink Pepto Bismol.  My stomach lurched at the sight of them.  I was not a quitter.  Out of my suitcase, I pulled a simple black skirt, baggy black cardigan and white blouse.  I slowly changed into my new clothes.  Carefully, I slipped my feet into a pair of black shoes and walked into my new life.