Note to Readers

Thank you for being faithful readers through my two hundred seventy-six weekly blogs. As of January 1st, I’ll post every other week so that I have time for other writing projects.

Reflections on the First Week of Winter - Her Christmas Gift

Angel in Memory of Sister Loretta

While I waited for Sister Loretta’s answer, my cell phone emitted the sound of oxygen whistling through plastic tubes. Next came a sigh from the depths of her generous belly. “I haven’t been to a single store in months.”

I glanced out my kitchen window at swirling snow. “That’s understandable.” How did shopping affect the date for a visit? Not shopping sounded terrific to me. I didn’t relish sweating in a heavy coat while fingering sweatshirts to determine whether the zip-up or pullover felt softer. Nor did I enjoy waiting in a long cash register line. 

But devastated by fibromyalgia, Sister Loretta had spent the last eight months confined to a reclining chair in the convent’s health care center. She would gladly trade her immobility for shopping inconveniences. 

Shifting the cell phone to my other ear, I said, “I’m teaching next week, but I can drive out after dinner. Which evenings are you free?”

“I don't have any presents for you.”

“I don't need presents.”

Squeaks from a rolling hospital cart came through the phone before her voice. “But it's Christmas.”

Christmas. 

Sister Loretta and I had celebrated all but three Christmases together since 1970. Back then, as skinny twenty-somethings attending Cleveland State University, we’d sat on a plastic sofa in Fenn Tower’s third floor lounge. While students milled around us, we bent our heads over tablet paper and penned a letter to the Dean of the College of Education. Would he waive the graduation requirement so we could take the kindergarten-primary certification class during spring quarter? We finished all the other education courses, we reasoned.

The dean granted our request. 

Loretta’s shoulder-length hair bounced, her eyes twinkled behind silver-dollar shaped glasses, and she linked her bony elbow with mine. Flaunting our woman-power, we strutted through hallways to the certification class.

By the next fall, we’d both landed teaching jobs. Every Friday night, we sat on the braided rug in my Near East Side apartment and swapped stories. Her Willoughby kindergarten student had squeezed the life out of a guinea pig because she wanted the pet to stay still. I countered with my inner-city first graders getting angry that I’d married a white man―they’d mistakenly thought I was black like them.

One spring evening, Loretta didn’t share any stories. Gloom clouded her face. Leaving my husband and our other Friday night guests, I walked her out of the apartment and down the wooden stairs to the foot-worn stoop at the sidewalk’s edge. “What's wrong? What aren't you telling me?”

Loretta stared at her sensible shoes and mumbled, “I’ve been accepted by the Sisters of Notre Dame.”

“I didn’t know you wanted to be a nun. Congratulations!” I studied her slumped shoulders, the antithesis of the woman-power posture we’d strutted the previous year. “Why aren’t you ecstatic?” 

Loretta pulled the fingers of one hand with the other.

Traffic swished by on Superior Avenue. Ignoring exhaust fumes, I searched her face for clues to her silence. “What’s ripping you apart inside?”

“My parents refuse to drive me to the convent.” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. “And my mother says you won’t be my friend any more if I become a nun.”

“Because I’m not Catholic? Ridiculous!”

Later that summer, Loretta opened the side door of her parents’ house, and I stepped into the kitchen that screamed silence. 

“My parents aren’t home.” Loretta picked up a small suitcase. “They didn’t want to see me leave.”

With Loretta’s suitcase stowed in my hatchback, I followed her directions—winding through unfamiliar streets for forty minutes to Notre Dame Convent in Chardon. As I drove through its white gates, Loretta rested her hands on the dashboard and leaned forward to get a closer view.

We followed a curved drive past an apple orchard to a towering, yellow brick chapel topped by a cross that reached to the clouds.

“Keep driving.” Loretta pointed down a road through a wooded area.

When I drove out of the woods, a fountain sprayed jets of water in a double-classroom-size pond. I parked and hopped out of the car. Song sparrows whistled and trilled. 

Loretta stepped out, smoothed her skirt with her hands, and walked to the hatchback. She grabbed her suitcase and strode toward three nuns with hands hidden under their aprons. 

The nuns’ smiles stretched wide enough to connect the opposite sides of their wimples. One nun whispered to Loretta.

She set her suitcase on the asphalt and walked back to me. “They want to take me right away so you’ll have to leave.”

Batting back tears, I hugged her. “You’ve picked a beautiful new home, and you’ll make a wonderful nun.” Letting go, I got in the car and watched her hurry away.

Sister Loretta and Janet [Pregnant with Spencer Charles] September 1973

Three years passed. She professed her first vows, and our visits resumed. In time I brought my children along. One December night, Sister Loretta, my son, my daughter, and I bundled for a drive around Nela Park. We oohed and aahed at General Electric’s Christmas lights. Chilled, we warmed in the convent lounge while sipping hot chocolate and exchanging small gifts.

But Sister Loretta didn’t need Christmas to give. She gave year-round. 

Following my nine-year-old son’s cancer surgery, she danced into his Mount Sinai hospital room. Her habit flew open like the wings of an angel, and she sang “Yes, Jesus Loves You.” At the end of the song, she knelt by his bed, prayed, then laughed at her corny knock-knock jokes until my son laughed with her.

Two Christmases later, my children toted their trumpet and flute to Julie Billiart, where Sister Loretta taught learning disabled students. While my children and I nibbled Christmas cookies in her empty classroom, Sister Loretta dashed around gathering other nuns to join us. Stuffed with cookies, the children took the instruments out of their cases, tuned, and played Christmas carols. Sister Loretta’s face glowed as bright as the Christmas star.

Time passed. The children went off to college. Sister Loretta replaced her round glasses with contact lenses. The convent discontinued their long black habits so she dressed in pastel blouses under plaid jumpers. We both gained weight in unflattering places. Celebrations quieted to movie outings or admiring nativity scenes in Catholic churches near the convent. 

And, every year, she giggled while I opened the Christmas gifts she’d bought on a nun’s sparse allowance―happy face stickers to decorate student papers, more candy canes than a classroom of children could eat, and huggable kitten calendars.

Sister Loretta's voice vibrated through the phone and pulled me back from the memories.  “I don't even have a calendar for you.”

She fretted over a calendar after forty-two years of friendship and thirty-seven years as a professed nun? 

I stared at the December 2012 page hanging from the refrigerator. In the picture, kittens batted ornaments on a Christmas tree. Didn't she understand? Her best gifts came from the heart―thousands of prayers, hundreds of blessings, and her loving spirit.  

“You are my gift.”

Whistles from her oxygen tube came through the phone.

Gripping the phone tighter, I tried again. “How about the seventeenth?”

Sister Mary Loretta Gedeon

Thanks to— 

Darlene, who read Sister Loretta’s dialogue when I presented this Christmas story to the Church of the Covenant writing class in December 2012. 

Kevin, the leader of the church class, who encouraged me to share the story with Sister Loretta.

Sister Julie B., who stood behind me on September 17, 2013 and put her hand on my shoulder when I choked up reading the story at Sister Loretta’s funeral mass.

Keith, who edited the story several times when I revised it for a Kaleidoscope WoJo [Women’s Journal] contest.

Members of Erie Pennwriters and Meadville Vicinity Pennwriters who provided feedback when I revised the story yet again for the 2019 Creative Nonfiction Pennwriters Contest. [I won second prize.]

Spence, my husband, for living with me through all the revisions.

Loretta, my beloved friend and guardian angel.