Dedicated to God (19 page)

Mom met Dad there at Marquette. Dad was studying; I think he had a fellowship. He was teaching while he was studying. She started going with Dad; my grandparents didn’t like that. They offered, if she would quit school—because then she wouldn’t go with Dad—to give her a fur coat. So she quit school. And then she got married. She got her fur coat and married Dad. I really don’t know why they weren’t in favor. It might have been religion. It was a real quiet wedding because they weren’t in favor of it and also because she converted to the Catholic faith. She said it wasn’t because of Dad—he didn’t convert her—but Dad’s parents had a good marriage. She didn’t want to get married outside the Catholic Church. She saw there what she would want in marriage so she converted before she married Dad.

One of the hardest things for her was she knew when she got married she couldn’t play out in the sandlot anymore! She had to stay home and take care of the house and hopefully raise a family. That was one of the hardest things—hearing the kids out in the sandlot playing and she wasn’t able to go out.

Dad was studying to be a teacher. Mom read all the books on education, on educating children. She gave Dad the books she thought were worth his reading. Really, she read all of the books and she gave him the best. In a way, she got quite an education even though she never had a degree.

Mom started raising boys and she had boys and boys and boys. She wanted a girl all along. But she kept on getting boys. She wanted twins, too. After she had four boys, she was praying. She prayed to Saint Joseph for twins. The next ones were twins. Mom thought the doctor knew she was going to have twins because he told Ma when she went to visit him, “Sometimes these
things happen.” He told her what to do and that she wouldn’t have to come back as much because he knew how hard it was with four kids out there in the waiting room. He was not expecting twins, but there were twins! They were born at the Deaconess Hospital. One was much smaller than the other; Joe was the smaller of the twins. I guess the nurses decided he wasn’t going to live. At that time, the children didn’t stay with the mother in the hospital. They were in the nursery after they were born, and so Ma went to the nursery to see the children. They had put Joe up by an open window, no blankets or anything. Mom was really upset. She put covers around him and she insisted he stay in the room with her. When it came time to go, Joe must have been a little underweight. They let Mom and Dad take him home because they were afraid of her reaction. And he survived fine. Mom decided then she would never have a baby in a non-Catholic hospital again so I was born in Concordia, the Catholic hospital.

We moved to Elm Grove, Wisconsin—near Milwaukee—when I was a year old. Before that they were living in Wauwatosa. I think because of the size of the family, they wanted to move out where there was more room for the family.

It was just a very good family life with brothers and my little sister. It was at the time of the Depression, back in the ’40s when you didn’t do much driving around because the gas was expensive. Mom and Dad saw an ad for a cottage on Lake Michigan that was for sale. They went by bus to see it and they bought it. It was very reasonable at the time because dad was teaching at a Catholic school, where the salary was way less than you’d get at the public school. During the summer, we would go to the lake, back and forth. We were just very frugal. We grew as much of our own food—produce—as we could. I know other children always had allowances. We never had allowances. If we needed money, we’d ask Dad and he’d give us whatever we needed for school, but we didn’t ask him unless we really needed it. The boys would sometimes get a job and go bean picking with the migrant workers and the farm children around, or they worked for the cannery in Belgium. That would be their summer job if they didn’t work in Elm Grove. Some of them, when they got older, worked at the brewery in the summer. The boys would also get babysitting jobs. I don’t know whether other boys babysat, but I know my brothers did and the people liked them. They babysat for the family that owned the brewery. The people liked my brothers. They always felt safe with them and they were good boys, so they got a lot
of good babysitting jobs. When I was old enough, I babysat, too, but I had my own clients.

I have a lot of memories with my brothers—being with them, playing with them, living with them. We had an acre and a half and we did quite a bit of gardening to raise food for the family as much as possible. We had apple trees, pear trees, plum trees, and cherry trees, and so we spent a lot of our time during the summer months picking fruit or taking care of the garden. My father was a teacher and so during the school year he was going to school when we were going to school, and during the summer he was home with us and working in the garden. His master’s degree was in botany and so he was really into gardening. He loved the iris. That was his specialty in the garden—crossing the iris to develop other varieties. Now, when I see the iris today, I think, oh, he would have loved it! They’ve developed the iris so beautiful now that he would have really delighted in it.

Dad was also very interested in music, and so all of us played instruments. Some of us played piano, but if we played the piano we also played another instrument. A few times we all played together. I think my oldest brother played saxophone; he was twelve years older so I don’t remember playing with him. I played flute. My sister played flute. One of my brothers played flute, another played clarinet, and the twins played trumpet. Dad was also the band director at the high school, where he taught chemistry until he had a heart attack.

My sister was four years younger than I was. We had our differences. When she was real little, with our family size, there were a couple of us in each bedroom. It was a big farmhouse and the boys were in two rooms. After Mary grew up enough, she came into the room with me. I must have been five or six by the time she came in. It was just a little room. We quarreled a lot. When the boys began leaving—my oldest brother got married when I was in the seventh grade and my second oldest brother got married when I was in high school—we could move to the bigger bedrooms. When the boys were gone, we had separate rooms and we got along better.

My brothers were everything to me. Since there were so many of us, I can’t remember many times when they had friends over. They stuck together, though, so they didn’t need a lot of other company. I looked up to them and they were wonderful. There was nothing better than being with my brothers. Being with them meant more to me than anything. Whatever they did, I wanted to do. In a way, my life was sheltered because they took care of me
and made sure nothing ever happened to me. I was the youngest in the family for a few years, and that’s why, when my sister was born, we didn’t always get along; she was the youngest then, and she was the one getting spoiled. I didn’t consider myself spoiled but they said I was.

I went to a Catholic school and I admired the sisters. We had the Notre Dame Sisters at the parish school. I got along really well with them and I admired them. Around seventh grade, during noontime, I was just daydreaming and looking out at the country woods near the school. I was praying and looking at the woods, praying about having a big family. I wanted to get married and have a family—a great big family—and one of the sisters came by and said, “Did you ever think about being a sister?” I said, “No,” but then I began thinking about it and praying about it and I began to feel the call. My family went to daily Mass, six o’clock Mass every morning after I received Communion in the second grade. With our Lord, you have a daily relationship that you develop in prayer. The sister suggested it, but then in listening to Him, I did feel that He did want me.

The Notre Dame Sisters used to have an aspirature over on the Mississippi River in western Wisconsin. After eighth grade, I said to Mom, “What would you say if I wanted to become a sister and I wanted to go to the aspirature?” Mom didn’t want that. She said, “You have a good family life. There’s no reason to go over there. Wait until after high school.” I would have had to go to a boarding school to go to their aspirature. I went to high school and there were different sisters, the Divine Savior Sisters, a different order than the Notre Dames. In a way, I liked the Divine Savior Sisters more and I admired them; I saw things in them that I liked better. I think the Notre Dame Rule was way stricter than the Divine Saviors’, who seemed to have a more personal relationship, a human dimension rather than a focus on the rules. I thought, maybe I’ll try the Divine Savior Sisters. I went to a guidance counselor and she encouraged me, but she didn’t encourage me to join them.

In high school, I always read a lot. From the time we wanted to read, Mom had signed us up to a Catholic book club for children, so we always had good books to read. She got me books about Saint Therese of Lisieux and Andrew Jackson’s daughter. My brother and his wife gave me
A Right to Be Merry
, which is about the Poor Clares. It was that book that sparked my interest in the Poor Clares, especially the chapter about the Rule of Saint Clare. The Rule of Saint Clare was to live the holy gospel. That was what
drew me—the simplicity. There weren’t any other pious practices, just the simplicity to live the holy gospel in poverty, chastity, and obedience.

And so I became interested in the contemplative life. The guidance counselor had books on the religious orders, and I read through all of the contemplative orders and I didn’t like any. Right off, I didn’t want to join any that had lay sisters doing the work, and the other sisters praying. I didn’t want that; I didn’t want someone else doing my work for me. I thought the prayer and work should go together. I didn’t think there should be two standards, like the rich and the poor, or the publicans or the peasants and the nobility and more educated socially or elite—all those different standards in social life.

I think the guidance counselor gave me the names and addresses of orders that were already reformed. She thought I should join one that had already reformed. I came down to visit the Poor Clares. That was what I was interested in. The Colettines were reformed Poor Clares and that’s what we are—Colettines. I looked at the addresses, and they had monasteries in Chicago and Rockford and Cleveland. Mom said she wouldn’t want me to be in Chicago. Even as a contemplative, she didn’t want me in Chicago; Chicago is a rough place, so I came to visit Rockford.

In a way, I didn’t want it but I did believe it was what God wanted for me. It’s where He wanted me to be, and so that’s what I wanted.

Before that, I was planning to go to Marquette. I sent in my registration but when I had to finalize it, I said, “Do I need to send this in? I really want to enter the religious life.” Dad said, “That’s all right if you’re sure.” When he found out I wanted to come here—to a contemplative order—he wasn’t so happy. He said it would be the end of my education. He said I should have more education. He was teaching at a Jesuit high school, and he said all the Jesuits he asked said the same thing: I should go for at least a year of college or university before I entered here. I don’t know that anyone here has, but you can take courses by mail; theoretically we could, and I think some do. He didn’t realize that. And then it was too late to finalize my registration for Marquette.

A number of my classmates, or in the class ahead, or the class behind entered the religious life. None entered the contemplative life. In a way, I could have been anything I wanted. I could have been a doctor, or I could have been a teacher or a nurse. In fact, they called me a dentist in high school. I knew I was going to enter the religious life but during vocational days for different professions, different people would come to see what you were interested in.

Although I was planning on entering here, I had never been here for an interview. I came down here for an interview at the end of the summer. That was my initial visit. I came down on the bus and I got lost in Rockford. They said to take the bus, and so I got on the bus. The trouble was, the bus I got on went the wrong direction. It went out to
North
Main Street. I was about to get off and I said, “It doesn’t look like a monastery.” I asked the bus driver, and he said, “Oh, you’re in the wrong place,” and so he gave me a transfer to come back down to South Main. I can’t remember whether I was drawn to the building or repelled by it. I must not have been repelled by it or I wouldn’t have come back. I was just happy I got to the right place. I rang the doorbell and it was dinnertime, noon. Wrong time. I was very young and I wasn’t used to being out alone, but I wasn’t scared either. I was just doing what had to be done before I came. You had to come for an interview, so I came for an interview.

I didn’t realize they would make me wait until November before I could enter. They gave me a date in November—the sixteenth—where, if I wanted to come, I could come. It was the novitiate’s Patron Saint Day for Saint Agnes of Assisi, Saint Clare’s younger sister, who followed her to the religious life. Saint Clare followed Saint Francis, and then a few weeks later, her younger sister followed her.

They gave me a list of things I would need: towels, blankets, underwear, nightgowns, and shoes for the garden. I can remember Dad helped me with that. He took me to the shoe man, and that way I knew what size to get in the Sears catalog for the boys’ shoes. The Poor Clares said garden shoes could be high shoes. Back then, girls didn’t have high shoes, but I ordered them in the Sears catalog. I got a real nice lightweight pair of shoes for the garden. I don’t have them anymore; I think they did give out.

They said you could bring along anything you needed or would want so I brought along a few books and a flute and sheet music. I had time to clean up my room before I left. I can remember everyone was going to school or their jobs. I was still at home. I felt bad because when the boys were cleaning up their things, I always considered it an honor to have their junk; but when I offered Mary some of my things, she wasn’t interested. But, of course, she didn’t need them. It was at that time that the boys discovered stuffed toys. Mary and I got all these stuffed toys that had character. I got a monkey and a couple of dogs. I had a number of those that they had given me, and so I had Mom give those to my nieces and nephews after I came.