When I was 16, a defecting nun came to stay with us.
She was young and full of verve and vigor. She had been running the church-y teenager hang out spot, and she was loud and fun and fair. She wore jeans and maybe even swore once in a while. I liked her, but didn’t understand then how a nun could act like that. Free.
And since my brother was long gone, his red-wall papered bedroom occasionally hosted a person like her in spiritual crisis. One lady loved birds, and was kind and gentle. She was leaving her husband.
And one was Annie. Leaving the church1
The night before she arrived, we discussed the state of my brother’s old room. There were perhaps 4-5 twin mattresses piled up on top of each other, removed from other locations in the house and stored as if they were chin-height tall bed.
“Will she sleep on top of all of those?”
“Yes, what else will we do with them?” Our house had little storage space, and the mattresses came with the rental we’d been in for over a decade. My mom said we couldn’t toss them because they weren’t ours.
“Let’s put a pea under the bottom mattress, you know, to see if she’s a princess!2” I suggested. My mother giggled, and we lodged a dry chickpea or some such thing between the bottom two.
Later I heard, Annie kind of got the joke, and kind of didn’t. She found out about the pea under the mattress, but not because she woke up black and blue like in the fairy tale. She knew because my mom told her with a glimmer in our eyes about our chickpea caper.
I’m not sure she felt the loving fun at that moment: or the absurdity of the situation of a nun seeking solace in a house with a single mom and her wild teenage daughter citing fairy tales.
Probably not. I think she was having a tough go of it. I sincerely hope she didn’t feel mocked. That was not the thing happening.
Annie’s rent was teaching me how to sculpt a head out of clay. We did at the coffee table in the living room. She was a good teacher, and I got very good results fast. I still have her sculpting tools today. She left them with me.
Annie asked me, “are you an artist?” to which I said something like “I guess.” What else would I say? I’d been making art and writing poetry since I was a toddler and was known to be talented. I won awards and was often hired to do sign painting and original t-shirts and things like that. But the label “artist” wasn’t yet formed in my head.
“Well, artists MUST make work, you know,” she continued. “They make art because they HAVE to.“
Fast forward to today, and I hope Annie found some peace and kept her natural vigor and verve. And her creativity. I’m glad she stayed with us, and that our house was a safe space for spiritual institutionalists, and full of fairy tale whimsy too. That was my mom’s doing.
And I’m grateful for her lesson. Finally getting the full implications of it, and the common sense of doing what you must.
Sense and Sensibilities
These days I wake up with writing and art, titles, and creations in my veins. I feel I MUST act on them for peace and happiness. That I must make things, even if word & image digital scrawls on this blog.
And I’m realizing, as I’m also navigating a spiritual transition, that I’m simply returning to an earlier self who simply made things without much ado. And I didn’t do these thing in the service of others’ businesses and endeavors3, but purely because I must.
Funny how a question from 40 years ago can get answered today. Ever happened to you?
Funnier still how I woke up with two posts inside my heart, and another sculpture ready to roll in my minds eye.
Time to get to work.
FOOTNOTES & SUB-SUBTEXT 😉
- This was my recollection of events and context. It is quite possible she went back to the church. I never saw her again after this tale. ↩︎
- Princess and the Pea fairy tale. ↩︎
- my business runs on creativity. ↩︎
