Joy

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 265 of 299 · 20 per page

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  On impulse, I blurted out the question I’d been pondering for months. “Sister Elizabeth Ann,” I whispered, “do you think it would be possible for me to meet my grandparents?” Her eyes lit up and her demeanor, normally reserved, switched into a take-charge mode. “Of course, dear,” she said, in a low voice. “I’ll call them right away.” Without a moment’s hesitation, she walked to the porter’s desk and picked up the telephone. I watched from the refectory as she began a conversation, which continued for about ten minutes. She knows the number by heart , I noted. When she hung up, she motioned for me to join her and spoke in a hushed tone. “We’ve been invited to have lunch with your grandparents at their home tomorrow. Don’t say a word to anyone about it.” I was elated but, at the same time, apprehensive. In bed that night, a torrent of questions kept me awake for hours. Has Sister Elizabeth Ann told Sister Catherine what we’re doing? What do my grandparents look like? How old are they? I hope they’ll be happy to see us. At eleven o’clock the next morning, Sister Elizabeth Ann (her traveling hat pinned on her head) and I headed out of the driveway for the forty-five-minute ride to Cambridge, the first time I could remember taking a trip alone with her. It was a unique opportunity to talk to her, uninhibited by the presence of any authority figures—to share my anxiety about leaving the Center, and to ask her questions about the outside world. But at seventeen, I didn’t know how to confide in her. It had been Sister Maria Crucis, not she, who’d played the role of mother for the last eight years. I was tongue-tied, scarcely knowing how to engage her in casual conversation. Sister Elizabeth Ann, on the other hand, seemed uncharacteristically excited, which helped to ease my nervousness as she told me about her family, both in Cambridge and in Maryland and Virginia, relatives whom she promised I would meet one day. I reveled in her happiness and managed to slip in a few questions. “Do you think my grandparents will be happy to see us?” I asked. “They are dying to see you, dahling,” she replied. “Do they live in the same house you grew up in?” “The very same one.” That provided a bonus, the opportunity to see where my mother had once lived. As we wended our way through Cambridge, I was astonished to realize how close my grandparents lived to our original home behind the red fence. My mother made a right turn from Broadway onto Ellery Street and stopped in front of a large three-family house with the number 54 on the door. “Here we are,” she said. “This is my home.” My home—I loved the sound of those words. But as we exited the car, a wave of embarrassment overcame me.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  In an act of Catholic kindness, the prioress of one of the splinter groups of Big Sisters admitted Betty into their convent on her deathbed, fulfilling a request she had been making for years—that she be allowed to rejoin the Center. She was buried in the Center’s cemetery, and the stone on her grave is inscribed: Sister Mary Elizabeth. After I had been living for several years in New York City, I reconnected with Charles Forgeron (formerly Brother Sebastian). He was single and often in need of an escort in his active social life and for several years in a row, we attended an annual ball at the Pierre Hotel. Sadly, he, too, died young, of a heart attack at the age of sixty-three. Over the next couple of decades, the bond with the “uncles” and “aunts” of my youth remained as warm as when I was a child. They rejoiced in my marriage and shared in the joy of the two children that followed. A year before my children were born, my husband’s ex-wife died. I pondered the fact that my husband was now a widower, and in the eyes of the Catholic Church I was free to be married as a Catholic. But I let the idea percolate without acting upon it until I was closing in on my fiftieth birthday. My sister Peggy had organized the annual “Center Children” reunion. It was to be held on August 15, the day before my birthday. I told my husband that I would like to have our marriage receive a Catholic blessing by Abbot Gabriel, and he was all in favor of that. The abbot had been one of the Big Brothers who became ordained as a priest after the Center reconciled with the Catholic Church and subsequently was elected abbot when the community joined the Benedictine order. To me he remained one of my favorite “uncles.” When I reached out to the abbot and let him know of my wish, his response, not surprisingly, was one of elation. He promised a very quiet affair, as I requested—nothing that would get the attention of the rest of the large crowd that would be arriving for the picnic, and he reassured me that we would go off premises to the small Catholic church in the center of town. My dearest friend, Alexandra Trower, agreed to be my witness, and the only other attendants were my parents. [image file=Image00041.jpg] What I had not anticipated was the abbot’s decision to turn a requested “Catholic blessing” into a full Catholic wedding, concelebrated by one of the other priests from the abbey. I was on the verge of giggles when, during the ceremony, the abbot asked the question that is part of the Catholic wedding ceremony, “Are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God?” I was about to be fifty and my husband was fifty-nine. I answered in the affirmative; I’m not sure my husband did.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  In the center of the table was a platter heaped with seafood delicacies—shrimp, lobster, and oysters—none of which I’d ever had before, all of which were scrumptious. The second course was lobster bisque, served from a soup terrine that matched the china plates and soup bowls. The main course was roast beef with mashed potatoes, homemade gravy, and peas. As we ate, my mother and grandmother kept up a torrent of conversation about the family—aunts and uncles, nephews, nieces, and cousins in Maryland and Virginia and in nearby towns in Massachusetts. I found my relatives’ names both foreign and fascinating—Bernice, Budgie, Charlotte, LaVerne. No one seemed to be named for a saint. Grandma asked about Jim, as she referred to my father, and about my siblings—how old they were and what we were studying in school. My brain was running out of room for all the information about my newfound family, but I didn’t want it to stop. Through it all, Grandpa hardly spoke a word as he kept bringing his handkerchief to his eyes to stem the stream of tears. It was like the parable of the Prodigal Son, I thought. Sister Elizabeth Ann hadn’t spoken to them in years, yet they had prepared the most elaborate and elegant meal I’d ever had. She was back now, and the past didn’t seem to matter. After lunch, my mother showed me around the apartment. I was impressed with how big it was. “This was my first bedroom,” she said, gesturing into a room with a delicate-flowered wallpaper and a light green bedspread. “I stayed here until my Aunt Bernice got married. Then I moved into her bedroom here,” and she walked a few steps down the hallway. A baby doll lay on the bed and my mother explained. “That was my doll Sally, the only doll I ever cared for.” I reveled in this opportunity to uncover a small fragment of my mother’s past. Here in her own home, she felt no obligation to abide by the rule forbidding any mention of the life she led before the Center. As we came back into the kitchen, I started to help Grandpa with the dishes. “No dirty work for my granddaughter,” he said. I laughed. “Grandpa, I do the dishes all the time. Let me help. You wash, and I’ll dry.” And for the first time since our arrival, he stopped crying, and we chatted quietly in the kitchen. When it came time to leave, we hugged and kissed, and Grandpa began to weep again. My mother, holding his hands in hers, said, “You must come up to visit in Still River so you can meet the rest of your grandchildren.” “We will come,” they promised as we closed the door and headed down the stairs and back to Still River. I was sworn to secrecy about the meeting that day.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I was deliberately ignorant of the array of drugs that were popular among students and young working professionals—Quaaludes, LSD, glue, and a cornucopia of drugs I learned about when I saw the movie of the late 1960s, “Valley of the Dolls.” The fear of losing control in a world I was still learning to navigate tempered any curiosity I might have had about experimenting with these drugs. I confided only in my English girlfriend, who in turn told me he’d tried to rape her on one occasion when he offered her a ride home. It was comforting to share the nightmare with someone who understood—we were now kindred victims of barbarism. But this remained our secret—I did not share it even with my family for over four decades. 61 Martha’s Vineyard 1971 T he midsummer sun broke from behind the towering plumes of white puffy clouds and flooded us with late-afternoon warmth, its light suffusing the deck in a hazy glow that invited us to bask. Clad in a pink bikini, I sat with my parents on the deck of the summer cottage on Martha’s Vineyard they had been offered for the weekend. Each of us was nursing a refreshing gin and tonic as we gazed out over the rolling dunes to the ocean beyond. My three sisters had headed out on a bike ride, and my brother was surf casting in an ill-fated attempt to surprise us with dinner. This was summer at its best—a family gathering in an idyllic setting. A casual observer looking upon this family by the sea might have thought the Walsh clan was on its annual August vacation, a long-married husband and wife bringing together the young adult siblings before a time they, too, would get married and have children of their own, creating the next generation of Walshes. But this get-together was hardly a yearly tradition. For us, it was the first time in more than seventeen years that we seven Walshes were together as a family under the same roof. It was our first family vacation, and the sheer newness of it was exhilarating. My father seemed particularly elated, like a king who is proud of what he has wrought in his kingdom. His joy was a family reunited, made complete only a couple of months earlier when the last two of his daughters left the Center and moved into the family home in Cambridge. “What a beautiful day,” my father said. “Beautiful” and “delicious” seemed to be his two favorite words. They expressed his constant state of mind these days—happy. “And how wonderful to have the whole family together.” “Cathy seems so much happier,” I responded, referring to my sister Mary Catherine, who had been a particular source of worry to him.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  In the center of the table was a platter heaped with seafood delicacies—shrimp, lobster, and oysters—none of which I’d ever had before, all of which were scrumptious. The second course was lobster bisque, served from a soup terrine that matched the china plates and soup bowls. The main course was roast beef with mashed potatoes, homemade gravy, and peas. As we ate, my mother and grandmother kept up a torrent of conversation about the family—aunts and uncles, nephews, nieces, and cousins in Maryland and Virginia and in nearby towns in Massachusetts. I found my relatives’ names both foreign and fascinating—Bernice, Budgie, Charlotte, LaVerne. No one seemed to be named for a saint. Grandma asked about Jim, as she referred to my father, and about my siblings—how old they were and what we were studying in school. My brain was running out of room for all the information about my newfound family, but I didn’t want it to stop. Through it all, Grandpa hardly spoke a word as he kept bringing his handkerchief to his eyes to stem the stream of tears. It was like the parable of the Prodigal Son, I thought. Sister Elizabeth Ann hadn’t spoken to them in years, yet they had prepared the most elaborate and elegant meal I’d ever had. She was back now, and the past didn’t seem to matter. After lunch, my mother showed me around the apartment. I was impressed with how big it was. “This was my first bedroom,” she said, gesturing into a room with a delicate-flowered wallpaper and a light green bedspread. “I stayed here until my Aunt Bernice got married. Then I moved into her bedroom here,” and she walked a few steps down the hallway. A baby doll lay on the bed and my mother explained. “That was my doll Sally, the only doll I ever cared for.” I reveled in this opportunity to uncover a small fragment of my mother’s past. Here in her own home, she felt no obligation to abide by the rule forbidding any mention of the life she led before the Center. As we came back into the kitchen, I started to help Grandpa with the dishes. “No dirty work for my granddaughter,” he said. I laughed. “Grandpa, I do the dishes all the time. Let me help. You wash, and I’ll dry.” And for the first time since our arrival, he stopped crying, and we chatted quietly in the kitchen. When it came time to leave, we hugged and kissed, and Grandpa began to weep again. My mother, holding his hands in hers, said, “You must come up to visit in Still River so you can meet the rest of your grandchildren.” “We will come,” they promised as we closed the door and headed down the stairs and back to Still River. I was sworn to secrecy about the meeting that day.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  That discovery gave me back the control I had lost when we were taken away from our parents.” The family was made whole when twenty-year-old Margaret Mary left the Center three months later. Peggy—that’s what she became the moment she rejoined the family, a name we had jokingly whispered as her nickname for years at the Center. By far the most easygoing, happy-go-lucky of the five of us, she harbored not a grudge in the world about her years as a nun. Tall and lithesome, she started almost immediately to take dancing lessons—a far cry from her prior routine of selling books and cooking meals for a community of one hundred. Now a couple of months later, as the seven of us ate steamed lobsters, corn on the cob, and fresh tomatoes, we extended our glasses as our dad poured the wine. It was as though we’d been a family uninterrupted by years of separation. The past was behind us, the future held promise—we were together once again. 62 Back to Normal 1971–1974 T hat fall, my parents bought a four-bedroom house in the Boston suburb of Watertown—a cottage kind of house with border gardens and a back lawn that was perfect for family picnics. To me, that purchase was evidence that my parents were now part of the American middle class—a giant step from the world of celibacy, communal living, and religious zealotry. It didn’t take long for their home to become the gathering place for many of the Center children, young adults by then, who had been flooding out of Still River for the past six months. Saturday nights at Jim and Betsy’s were an open invitation to them, providing an opportunity for conviviality and good food. My mother would spend the afternoon cooking a meal to rival any at the Center—roast beef with mounds of mashed potatoes or a giant bowl of pasta with salad and garlic bread, always topped off with a glorious chocolate cake or strawberry shortcake or angel food cake. Cooking for throngs of people was second nature to her after her years at the Center. The oval dining room table could comfortably seat ten, but we’d nearly always be cramming fourteen or more. The longer the evening went, the more boisterous the conversations became—often ending in jovial arguments about the finer points of English or Latin grammar. Jolly was the way to describe the household, and my parents seemed in their element creating the atmosphere of a home away from home for anyone who had been part of the Center. For me, the world was there for the grabbing, and I became an avid traveler. My English girlfriend had returned to London and I made several trips exploring England. That fall, my best friend Susan and I traveled together, choosing out of the mainstream places behind the Iron Curtain—Budapest and Dubrovnik—and then on to Athens and the Greek islands. A year later, I visited Australia.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  were also moments of hilarity. After one particular whirlwind business trip, I regaled my husband with the tale of how I’d headed off to the airplane lavatory to drive a two-inch needle into my backside as the airplane was going through a particularly rough patch of weather because the hour had struck for my next hormone injection. After three years of emotional ups and downs, science and religion, in the form of doctors and prayers, collaborated in producing a successful pregnancy. I worked until two days before my delivery when, at the age of forty-five, I gave birth to our healthy twins, Caroline and Jim. You can stop climbing the corporate ladder, I told myself during my three months’ maternity leave, and I really tried. Now ten-day trips were crammed into four so that I could be home before (I hoped) the children had time to realize I was gone. I found a way to work from home a day or two each week and for a while it worked. But the corporate world is ruthless, and opportunities passed up can prove fatal to one’s career. The tireless work was rewarding. But I was fully aware of the downside—I was not seeing enough of my children. My husband brought the reality home to me when we were on a late summer vacation. “This isn’t a vacation for you,” he said. “I’m at the beach with the children [now five years old] and you’re on conference calls.” He was right. I lay awake for much of the night thinking of his words and when I awoke to the sun pouring into our bedroom, it was with a new energy.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  “What a beautiful day,” my father said. “Beautiful” and “delicious” seemed to be his two favorite words. They expressed his constant state of mind these days —happy. “And how wonderful to have the whole family together.” “Cathy seems so much happier,” I responded, referring to my sister Mary Catherine, who had been a particular source of worry to him. Fraught with health problems from the time she was in her teens, she was now twenty-one and, until she left the Center, she had often been confined to bed and frequently in the hospital with ailments that seemed hard to diagnose. It was a few months before this family vacation that my father and I had driven up to Still River to visit with her. She had seemed dispirited, but Sister Teresa, the superior, had tried to make light of her condition, saying that all she needed was for spring to arrive. “Once she gets out in the fresh air and working in the garden, she’ll be good as gold,” she said. But when my father responded by saying, “I think Mary Catherine could use a little vacation. I’d like to take her home with us for a while,” there was no objection. I stood in silence, not believing what I was hearing. Allow one of the Big Sisters to take a vacation with her family? Never had it been done before. No sooner had Mary Catherine stepped foot into the family apartment than she set herself to work in the kitchen, preparing dinner. As she hovered over the stove in her black nun’s habit, I sat at the kitchen table, staring at her from behind, in awe of what I was witnessing. She burst into song as she worked, not a hymn, but a secular melody, exercising a freedom not allowed in the atmosphere of silence that prevailed at the Center. Her gentle soprano voice trilled throughout the apartment. She’s never going back. I thought, smiling. She’s here forever. Within days, she had discarded her nun’s habit for worldly attire, admittedly more demure than the thigh-hugging miniskirts I wore. “I want to be a nurse,” she declared at dinner one evening. “I’ve always wanted to be one.” She spoke with confidence—the frail, shy child was suddenly bursting out of her cocoon. “Let’s go to Mount Auburn Hospital,” I responded. “They have a nursing school, and I’m sure you can get in.”

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  As much as I loved our tea parties, it was the Sunday morning community meeting that I lived for, counting down the days as the week wore on. Then for two blissful hours, it was family time, unrestricted by rules or oversight by the Angels. “How is my little princess?” Brother James Aloysius would greet me and each of my three younger sisters. Taking my father’s hand one Sunday morning, I felt something was different. I looked at his fingers: His wedding ring was gone. “Where’s your ring?” I asked. He grew silent and paused as he did when he was thinking. Then pointing to his chest, he said softly, “It’s right here, safe and sound in my scapular.” Everyone at the Center, adults and children, wore a scapular, a Catholic tradition. A simple square of sackcloth that had been blessed by a priest, the scapular was worn next to the skin. Father had told us again and again that if you died with your scapular on, you would never go to hell. I saw that my mother’s ring was gone as well. “Is yours in your scapular, too?” I asked her. “I gave my diamond ring to the Little Infant of Prague,” she replied, referring to the statue of the Child Jesus that had been a gift to the Center in its heyday. What she didn’t tell me was that she had turned over her simple gold wedding band to Sister Catherine as requested. Apparently, my father had chosen not to obey. I found an excuse to go to the front room and stood in front of the statue of the Infant of Prague, looking up at the crown on His head. There were sparkles in the crown, but I couldn’t tell what they were. All I knew was that somewhere in that elegant crown was my mother’s ring. One person at the Center continued to wear a wedding band—Sister Catherine. From my earliest memories, I knew she had a husband, Hank, and two children, Nancy and Joey. Hank had never come to visit the Center, neither in Cambridge nor in Still River, but Nancy, who was a few years younger than my mother, had joined the community briefly while we were still in Cambridge, taking the name of Sister Nancy Marie. Before we moved to Still River, Sister Catherine, after spending the day at the Center, returned each evening to the house she and her husband owned in Waltham. After the married couples were coerced into taking vows of celibacy (shortly after the separation of children from their parents), some chose to live separately, with the single men and women, while a few, including my parents, continued to live together under the same roof. My father sought out Sister Catherine, telling her that he hoped that the families could be reunited when we moved to Still River, and she gave him assurances that it would happen. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  path by the front of St. Ann’s House, heedless of the possible consequences but reassured with the knowledge that Sister Catherine had already left to be home with her family. He saw me, stopped, and his eyes lit up. Without giving him an opportunity to say a word, I spoke as fast as I could, well aware of the danger I was courting. “This is the day Grandma died,” I said. “I remembered her at First Breakfast. I wanted you to know that.” His expression spoke to me before his words, which were soft and tender, and uttered as though he was amazed. “How wonderful of you to remember, my little princess.” I dared not stay a second longer. I blew him a kiss and then turned and ran back down the walkway in a state of euphoria. I 24 Surprises, Good and Bad 1958 t was a snowy afternoon in February, only weeks after we’d moved from Cambridge, when Sister Catherine showed up unexpectedly in the Little Sisters’ corridor. She had a surprise for us, she said, and with that she unboxed twenty life-sized baby dolls, selecting one for each of us so that they matched our own hair and eye color. They were dressed identically in a white blouse and blue jumper, the same as our own uniform. “Now, dears,” she said in a serious voice, “you must promise me that you will keep this a secret. You mustn’t breathe a word of it to Father. He doesn’t understand little girls the way I do.” I got the picture—Father didn’t want us to have dolls because they were worldly. But I also pondered Sister Catherine’s words—that she understood little girls. I wanted to believe her, and I wanted to think of her in a motherly way. She was now the only person at the Center who could dispense love and I craved it from her. But those moments were fleeting and her love always felt conditional, as though a temporary reward for obedience to her. Bedtime stories, banished in Cambridge by Sister Matilda, after we were separated from our parents, were re-instituted by Sister Catherine. In addition, she took to reading to us during dinnertime several evenings a week. My favorite book was Fabiola, which had the subtitle, The Church of the Catacombs. A nineteenth-century novel by the English Catholic cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, it was a tale of conversion and martyrdom, the latter generally depicted in gruesome detail. The heroine was an elegant and brilliant young woman named

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  Haitians love the food from our island, but they judge gluttony. I suspect this rises out of the poverty for which Haiti is too often and too narrowly known. When you are overweight in a Haitian family, your body is a family concern. Everyone—siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, cousins—has an opinion, judgment, or piece of counsel. They mean well. We love hard and that love is inescapable. My family has been inordinately preoccupied with my body since I was thirteen years old. My mother, who stayed home to raise my brothers and me, did not teach me how to cook, and I had little interest in being taught. I just enjoyed watching her prepare our meals from the periphery of the kitchen—the efficiency with which she pursued the task always impressed me. Her brow furrowed in concentration. She could hold a conversation, but when something demanded her attention, she hushed and it was like the whole world fell away from her. She did not enjoy sharing the kitchen space and did not want help. She always wore latex gloves, like a doctor—to avoid contamination, she said. She was known to add a drop of Clorox to the water when washing meat or fruit or vegetables. She washed a dish or cutting board or bowl immediately after it had been used. Save for the aromas wafting from the gas stove, you would never know my mother was cooking. Throughout my childhood, my mother prepared a bewildering combination of foods—American dishes from the Betty Crocker Cookbook or The Joy of Cooking one night, and a Haitian meal the next. The dishes I remember, the ones I love most, are Haitian—legumes, fried plantains, red rice, black rice; griyo, or pork marinated in blood orange and roasted with shallots; Haitian macaroni and cheese—everything served with sauce (a tomato-based sauce with thyme, peppers, and onions) and spicy pickled vegetables, everything made from scratch. This was how my mother demonstrated her affection. My mother didn’t believe in processed foods or fast food, so I have never eaten many foods people take for granted—TV dinners, Chef Boyardee, Kraft Mac & Cheese. She was ahead of her time. Her stance infuriated my brothers and me because our American friends got to eat magical foods like sugary breakfast cereals, and snack on Cheetos and Chips Ahoy and Little Debbie Snack Cakes. “Fruit is a snack,” my mom would tell us. I vowed, when I grew up, to decorate my home with clear glass bowls filled with M&M’s and she laughed. The older we got, the laxer my mom became. By the time my youngest brother arrived, junk food had breached the perimeter of our home, though in the moderation entirely characteristic of my parents.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  M 6 A Family of the Heart 1951–1952 y earliest memories are filled with the sounds of laughter. Though I was only three years old, I knew each of the more than sixty adults at the Center by name. We were family. Three times a day we gathered for meals. We prayed together in the morning at Mass and in the evening at Benediction. The men and women of the Center became an array of “uncles and aunts,” with someone ready at any time of the day to play games with me, read to me, or take me for a walk. My favorite “aunt” was Betty Sullivan, a soft-spoken woman with gentle brown eyes and shoulder-length dark hair much like my mother’s. When my parents attended the frequent evening lectures at the Center, she would come to our apartment and babysit. Sunday mornings were made extra special when she’d take me to the banks of the Charles River where I’d pick daffodils or buttercups. Most mornings after breakfast, I’d put my hand in hers, and we’d make the ten-minute trip along the streets of Cambridge to the Center. I knew the route by heart. As we walked, I’d skip around Betty, grabbing first her right hand and then her left as I circled her, while she seemed to glide along the sidewalk like a guardian angel before delivering me safely into the hubbub at the Center. The Center was a four-story gray building at the junction of Bow and Arrow Streets, fronted with floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows that faced both St. Paul’s Church and Harvard’s renowned Adams House. The ground floor consisted of one long rectangular room, its stucco walls painted a dull white and

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  In an act of Catholic kindness, the prioress of one of the splinter groups of Big Sisters admitted Betty into their convent on her deathbed, fulfilling a request she had been making for years—that she be allowed to rejoin the Center. She was buried in the Center’s cemetery, and the stone on her grave is inscribed: Sister Mary Elizabeth. After I had been living for several years in New York City, I reconnected with Charles Forgeron (formerly Brother Sebastian). He was single and often in need of an escort in his active social life and for several years in a row, we attended an annual ball at the Pierre Hotel. Sadly, he, too, died young, of a heart attack at the age of sixty-three. Over the next couple of decades, the bond with the “uncles” and “aunts” of my youth remained as warm as when I was a child. They rejoiced in my marriage and shared in the joy of the two children that followed. A year before my children were born, my husband’s ex-wife died. I pondered the fact that my husband was now a widower, and in the eyes of the Catholic Church I was free to be married as a Catholic. But I let the idea percolate without acting upon it until I was closing in on my fiftieth birthday. My sister Peggy had organized the annual “Center Children” reunion. It was to be held on August 15, the day before my birthday. I told my husband that I would like to have our marriage receive a Catholic blessing by Abbot Gabriel, and he was all in favor of that. The abbot had been one of the Big Brothers who became ordained as a priest after the Center reconciled with the Catholic Church and subsequently was elected abbot when the community joined the Benedictine order. To me he remained one of my favorite “uncles.” When I reached out to the abbot and let him know of my wish, his response, not surprisingly, was one of elation. He promised a very quiet affair, as I requested—nothing that would get the attention of the rest of the large crowd that would be arriving for the picnic, and he reassured me that we would go off premises to the small Catholic church in the center of town. My dearest friend, Alexandra Trower, agreed to be my witness, and the only other attendants were my parents. [image file=Image00041.jpg] What I had not anticipated was the abbot’s decision to turn a requested “Catholic blessing” into a full Catholic wedding, concelebrated by one of the other priests from the abbey. I was on the verge of giggles when, during the ceremony, the abbot asked the question that is part of the Catholic wedding ceremony, “Are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God?” I was about to be fifty and my husband was fifty-nine. I answered in the affirmative; I’m not sure my husband did.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  T 61 Martha’s Vineyard 1971 he midsummer sun broke from behind the towering plumes of white puffy clouds and flooded us with late-afternoon warmth, its light suffusing the deck in a hazy glow that invited us to bask. Clad in a pink bikini, I sat with my parents on the deck of the summer cottage on Martha’s Vineyard they had been offered for the weekend. Each of us was nursing a refreshing gin and tonic as we gazed out over the rolling dunes to the ocean beyond. My three sisters had headed out on a bike ride, and my brother was surf casting in an ill-fated attempt to surprise us with dinner. This was summer at its best—a family gathering in an idyllic setting. A casual observer looking upon this family by the sea might have thought the Walsh clan was on its annual August vacation, a long-married husband and wife bringing together the young adult siblings before a time they, too, would get married and have children of their own, creating the next generation of Walshes. But this get-together was hardly a yearly tradition. For us, it was the first time in more than seventeen years that we seven Walshes were together as a family under the same roof. It was our first family vacation, and the sheer newness of it was exhilarating. My father seemed particularly elated, like a king who is proud of what he has wrought in his kingdom. His joy was a family reunited, made complete only a couple of months earlier when the last two of his daughters left the Center and moved into the family home in Cambridge.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  Until I started gaining weight, I had a healthy attitude toward food. My mother is not a woman with a passion for cooking, but she harbors an intense passion for her family. Throughout my childhood, she prepared healthy, well-rounded meals for us, which we ate together at the dinner table. There were no rushed dinners sitting in front of the television or standing at the kitchen counter. We kids eagerly talked about our latest school projects, like a suspension bridge made out of balsa wood or a baking soda volcano. We shared our accomplishments, like a good report card—which was of course the expectation—or a goal scored in a soccer match. My brothers and I bickered toward the end of dinner, usually over who would do the dishes. My parents, Haitian immigrants, talked about things we only half understood, like the American neighbors or my father’s latest construction project. We talked about the goings-on of the world. We talked about what we wanted for ourselves. I took it for granted that this is what all families did—come together and become an island unto themselves, the kitchen table the sun around which we revolved. The food my mother cooked for us was good, but it was secondary to the way we invested in being so connected to one another. My parents always made it seem like my brothers and I were terribly interesting, asking us thoughtful questions about our childish musings, urging us to be our best selves. If we were slighted, they were offended on our behalf. When we had some small moment of glory, they reveled in it. I fell asleep most nights flush with the joy of knowing I belonged to these people and they belonged to me. Even as I became more and more withdrawn, my family remained strong, connected in these intimate, indelible ways. I have no doubt that my parents noticed the change in me. They would continue to notice, to worry over me, for the next twenty years and longer. But they didn’t know how to talk to me and I didn’t let them in. When they tried, I deflected, refusing to take the lifelines they offered me. The longer I kept my secret, the more attached I became to keeping my truth to myself, the more I nurtured my silence. 15The only way I know of moving through the world is as a Haitian American, a Haitian daughter. A Haitian daughter is a good girl. She is respectful, studious, hardworking. She never forgets the importance of her heritage. We are part of the first free black nation in the Western Hemisphere, my brothers and I were often told. No matter how far we have fallen, when it matters most, we rise.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Urbane and cultivated, my parents spoke of how they wanted to visit the great cathedrals of Europe, a mark of their steadfastness to Catholicism. [image file=Image00034.jpg] Mother and Dad’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with their five children: (L to R) me, Peggy, David, Cathy, Ronnie. The anniversary party was a worldly affair—my mother wore a floor-length blue gown, her hair swept up in an elegant chignon at the back of her head, while my dad was dapper in his own fashion. The house was jammed with friends both from the Center and beyond, all there to celebrate a marriage that had been forced into hiding for so many years. The seven of us Walshes posed for pictures as a family—there had been nothing like this before in our lives. It was a far cry from life only two years earlier. And after the cake and the pictures were done, the five of us children presented our parents with an all-expense-paid three-week trip to England, Germany, France, and Italy. It was the start of a thirty-year adventure that saw them visit and revisit the great Catholic sites of Europe. After the guests had left the anniversary party and the cameras had stopped clicking, my parents sat together on the couch. The atmosphere was quiet, and as I plopped myself into an upholstered wing chair next to them, all of us still in our festive attire, it seemed a good moment to talk to them about the Center and to hear from them how it had unfolded, a subject that had been on my mind for the last few years but which I had been reluctant to discuss. They spoke softly and without rancor of how their faith mattered to them, how they truly believed in the dogma of “No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church.” If that meant being scorned by the world and the Church they loved, they were prepared to accept that burden. They may have been excommunicated in the eyes of the world, they said, but in their own eyes they were the true Catholics. They told me that they had no problem living a communal life, studying together and eating meals as a community, and even going out on the road to sell books. What they were not prepared for, however, was the rupturing of their family and the loss of their role as parents. My father likened the ever-tightening grip on their lives to a snowball. “First it was small,” he said. “Each new rule seemed insignificant on its own, but before long, it had become monumental, and we felt trapped.” My mother’s voice became emotional when she spoke of the separation of the families. “It was the most awful day of my life. Brother Henry, in his cold, haughty manner, told us that all the children three years of age and older would no longer live with their parents but would be under the supervision of Sister Matilda.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  You can quit and go somewhere else, or you can prove them wrong. In all cases, I chose the latter, and never with regret. Around my fortieth birthday, my husband and I were having dinner in Manhattan and I let the words spill out without premeditation. It was almost as though I were being led by my guardian angel. “I don’t want to have a successful career at the risk of not having any children.” He was silent. It was an odd moment, because in our five years of marriage we had managed to elude a serious discussion about having children of our own. His three children, by now attending college or having graduated, were the focus of his energy, and I played my part as a supportive stepmother. He seemed content; I was not. But it was only a matter of days before he jumped on board and for the next four years we moved heaven and earth, engaging the most renowned specialists to bring to fruition what had been my, and now became our, dream. It wasn’t without its moments of grief with unsuccessful attempts at pregnancy. But there were also moments of hilarity. After one particular whirlwind business trip, I regaled my husband with the tale of how I’d headed off to the airplane lavatory to drive a two-inch needle into my backside as the airplane was going through a particularly rough patch of weather because the hour had struck for my next hormone injection. After three years of emotional ups and downs, science and religion, in the form of doctors and prayers, collaborated in producing a successful pregnancy. I worked until two days before my delivery when, at the age of forty-five, I gave birth to our healthy twins, Caroline and Jim. You can stop climbing the corporate ladder , I told myself during my three months’ maternity leave, and I really tried. Now ten-day trips were crammed into four so that I could be home before (I hoped) the children had time to realize I was gone. I found a way to work from home a day or two each week and for a while it worked. But the corporate world is ruthless, and opportunities passed up can prove fatal to one’s career. The tireless work was rewarding. But I was fully aware of the downside—I was not seeing enough of my children. My husband brought the reality home to me when we were on a late summer vacation. “This isn’t a vacation for you,” he said. “I’m at the beach with the children [now five years old] and you’re on conference calls.” He was right. I lay awake for much of the night thinking of his words and when I awoke to the sun pouring into our bedroom, it was with a new energy. [image file=Image00037.jpg] “Darling,” I said, “on Tuesday morning when I get back into the office, I’m going to quit.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  But that did nothing to diminish my enjoyment on skit nights, when the community, adults and children, gathered at the Center several evenings a week after dinner to be entertained as the adults performed, donning as costumes the worldly clothes they had forsaken. Oblivious to the black wit of their parodies of well-known lyrics, I memorized the words in their many spoofs, including two from Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore . “The Captain’s Song” I am the Captain of the Queen’s Navee, And a right good captain too. I’m very, very good, but be it understood That at heart I’m a great big Jew. Chorus: He’s very, very good but be it understood that at heart he’s a great big Jew. “The First Lord’s Song” I polished brass for her Majesty to win the title of nobility. But England isn’t what she used to be; she sold out to the Jews financially. If Buttercup would marry me, we could both live on her pocketbook quite happily. It would be a couple of decades before I came to learn the true words. 7 The Noose Tightens 1953 I had an enormous appetite for asking questions. “What does that word mean?” was my constant refrain as I’d hover around the adults who chatted among themselves on matters far beyond my comprehension. When one of them would offer to take me for a walk, the questions bursting inside my head would spill out in a torrent. “Why are buttercups yellow?” “Why does the moon change its shape?” “What city were you born in?” “What do the cedars of Lebanon look like?” “Can you speak Italian?” “French?” “Russian?” Not a day passed that I didn’t glean a smidgeon of knowledge from the ever-ready “uncles” and “aunts” in my life. But those resources started to become restricted, as Father and Catherine Clarke imposed regulations on the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary that increasingly bordered on monastic and religious discipline. One of the first was an edict by Father prohibiting members of the community from discussing their past lives—what they did in the world before joining the Center. He referred to this rule in code, calling it PL (past life) and I felt it in a personal way. No longer could I listen with rapture to the adults’ stories that brought the outside world into my imagination—about their time in the war in Germany, Japan, the South Pacific, and Africa; how Fakhri had crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a boat and saw the Statue of Liberty when he reached America; how others came to America from Lebanon and Spain and Italy. “What did you do in the war?” had been my favorite question to ask. I thought that everyone in the Center had been “in the war.” “How did you get out of the Navy?” I’d asked my father over and over, knowing the silly answer he’d give me.

• From Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation (2016)

  Lecture 33—Freedom and the Law in Paul’s Letters 223 faith no longer require the supervision of the law because love itself includes an element of restraint. If you love someone, you restrain your own impulses and do what is needed for the well-being of the other. Freedom ‹Galatians 3:28 is one of the most famous verses in the letter. Here, Paul says that in Christ, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, nor is there male and female.” And now that these dividing lines are gone, everyone is free, as Paul put it, to live as a slave out of love. ‹In Galatians 5:1, Paul writes, “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Then, a few verses later, he insists that freedom cannot be self-serving. In verse 13, he says that people are free to become slaves to one another. They are liberated in order to serve. ‹Surprisingly, Paul is advocating a pattern of life that is not based on Jewish law, yet he finds it consistent with Jewish law in its deepest sense. Life in the new community does not follow traditional Jewish patterns, because it does not include being circumcised and keeping kosher. Yet Paul points out that the heart of Jewish law is to love your neighbor as yourself. That is what the message of Jesus moves people to do: It frees them to live out their love in service to others. ‹For the Galatians, this would have been a paradigm shift. In the standard patterns of Greek culture, freedom and slavery were opposite categories. Yet in this letter, Paul brings the categories together. ●He says that the true signs of slavery are giving in to the forces that destroy community, and the real threat to freedom comes from such things as immorality, jealousy, and anger. Those traits do not express freedom. Instead, they show that people are held captive by their own desires. ●For Paul, true freedom is expressed in love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness, all of which promote community. That is the fruit of God’s Spirit, which frees people for love and service to others. For Paul, that illustrates what it means to live by faith.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  of an escort in his active social life and for several years in a row, we attended an annual ball at the Pierre Hotel. Sadly, he, too, died young, of a heart attack at the age of sixty-three. Over the next couple of decades, the bond with the “uncles” and “aunts” of my youth remained as warm as when I was a child. They rejoiced in my marriage and shared in the joy of the two children that followed. A year before my children were born, my husband’s ex-wife died. I pondered the fact that my husband was now a widower, and in the eyes of the Catholic Church I was free to be married as a Catholic. But I let the idea percolate without acting upon it until I was closing in on my fiftieth birthday. My sister Peggy had organized the annual “Center Children” reunion. It was to be held on August 15, the day before my birthday. I told my husband that I would like to have our marriage receive a Catholic blessing by Abbot Gabriel, and he was all in favor of that. The abbot had been one of the Big Brothers who became ordained as a priest after the Center reconciled with the Catholic Church and subsequently was elected abbot when the community joined the Benedictine order. To me he remained one of my favorite “uncles.” When I reached out to the abbot and let him know of my wish, his response, not surprisingly, was one of elation. He promised a very quiet affair, as I requested—nothing that would get the attention of the rest of the large crowd that would be arriving for the picnic, and he reassured me that we would go off premises to the small Catholic church in the center of town. My dearest friend, Alexandra Trower, agreed to be my witness, and the only other attendants were my parents.