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.

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• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  “Our dark sides are compatible,” I told him one night as we flew with Jimi’s guitar, far from the dancers we could hear in the distance practicing in the gym, far from the school, from pain, high on smoke, sitting on the floor of his dorm room. “Hmmmmmm,” he answered. “True as horses running across mesas, breathing clouds.” “Perfect,” I answered. And then we laughed. Though he was born in a hogan and didn’t speak English until he was sent to a Catholic boarding school, and I was born in a city speaking English, we fit. My father’s tribal language was a secret used by his relatives, who didn’t like my mother because she came from a poor family. My father’s relatives and ancestors were tribal leaders, beauty queens, and artists. My mother’s relatives were musicians and storytellers and didn’t like to hold nine-to-five jobs. My parents were from enemy tribes, which set up a conflict in my blood. Herbie’s spirit gleamed and spun and called to me to climb higher and higher. We flew, and all the weight of fear and doubt fell away. Georgette was in love with Clarence, Herbie’s cousin from the other side of the Navajo reservation. Clarence was one of those shy-eyed Navajo men with big eyelashes and a tight, tapered back. He lived for rodeo, for horses, bulls, and girls. Georgette’s moods fluctuated according to her sightings of Clarence. He was her sole focus and the reason for her beauty tricks. “So did Clarence ask you to marry him today?” I joked. Georgette glared at me. “That Mexican girl better go back where she came from, is all I can say,” she snapped. She was talking about Lupita. “You mean the opera singer,” I answered. Lupita wanted to be an opera singer, went the rumor, but the idea of any of us becoming an opera singer seemed preposterous. It was wildly possible, just not likely. Most of us girls would most likely move home, have babies, and do art at the kitchen table. Partying in the ditch the previous weekend, Lupita hadn’t looked like an opera singer; she was one of us. I could still hear her laugh as we ran through the dark from the dorm police. It was a trained laugh—and for a moment I could imagine her as an opera singer, far away from here, on a stage where her talent and shine could amount to something. She was half Mexican, and her father was from a tribe in Oregon I had never heard of until I came here to school. The word was, this school was her last chance. Herbie told me that Clarence had made a bet he could have Lupita within a week. She would be easy. All the boys were watching to see what would happen and were placing bets. “Did you place a bet?” I asked Herbie. “No way,” he answered.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Oh, but the spring was shouting through Paris! It was in the hearts and the eyes of the people. The very dray-horses jangled their bells more loudly because of the spring in their drivers. The debauched old taxis tooted their horns and spun round the corners as though on a race track. Even such glacial things as the diamonds in the Rue de la Paix, were kindled to fire as the sun pierced their facets right through to their entrails; while the sapphires glowed as those African nights had glowed in the garden at Orotava. Was it likely that Stephen could finish her book—she who had Paris in springtime with Mary? Was it likely that Mary could urge her to do so—she who had Paris in springtime with Stephen? There was so much to see, so much to show Mary, so many new things to discover together. And now Stephen felt grateful to Jonathan Brockett who had gone to such pains to teach her her Paris. Idle she was, let it not be denied, idle and happy and utterly carefree. A lover, who, like many another before her, was under the spell of the loved one’s existence. She would wake in the mornings to find Mary beside her, and all through the day she would keep beside Mary, and at night they would lie in each other’s arms—God alone knows who shall dare judge of such matters; in any case Stephen was too much bewitched to be troubled just then by hair-splitting problems. Life had become a new revelation. The most mundane things were invested with glory; shopping with Mary who needed quite a number of dresses. And then there was food that was eaten together—the careful perusal of wine-card and menu. They would lunch or have dinner at Lapérouse; surely still the most epicurean restaurant in the whole of an epicurean city. So humble it looks with its modest entrance on the Quai des Grands Augustins; so humble that a stranger might well pass it by unnoticed, but not so Stephen, who had been there with Brockett. Mary loved Prunier’s in the Rue Duphot, because of its galaxy of sea-monsters. A whole counter there was of incredible creatures—Oursins, black armoured and covered with prickles; Bigorneaux; serpent-like Anguilles Fumées; and many other exciting things that Stephen mistrusted for English stomachs. They would sit at their own particular table, one of the tables upstairs by the window, for the manager came very quickly to know them and would smile and bow grandly: ‘Bon jour, mesdames.’ When they left, the attendant who kept the flower-basket would give Mary a neat little bouquet of roses: ‘Au revoir, mesdames. Merci bien—à bientôt!’ For every one had pretty manners at Prunier’s.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  He was amazed at such tender caresses and answered, all confounded, 'Madam, you are well met.' Thereupon, taking him by the hand, she carried him up into her saloon and thence, without saying another word to him, she brought him into her chamber, which was all redolent of roses and orange flowers and other perfumes. Here he saw a very fine bed, hung round with curtains, and store of dresses upon the pegs and other very goodly and rich gear, after the usance of those parts; by reason whereof, like a freshman as he was, he firmly believed her to be no less than a great lady. She made him sit with her on a chest that stood at the foot of the bed and bespoke him thus, 'Andreuccio, I am very certain thou marvellest at these caresses that I bestow on thee and at my tears, as he may well do who knoweth me not and hath maybe never heard speak of me; but I have that to tell thee which is like to amaze thee yet more, namely, that I am thy sister; and I tell thee that, since God hath vouchsafed me to look upon one of my brothers, (though fain would I see you all,) before my death, henceforth I shall not die disconsolate; and as perchance thou has never heard of this, I will tell it thee. Pietro, my father and thine, as I doubt not thou knowest, abode long in Palermo and there for his good humour and pleasant composition was and yet is greatly beloved of those who knew him; but, among all his lovers, my mother, who was a lady of gentle birth and then a widow, was she who most affected him, insomuch that, laying aside the fear of her father and brethren, as well as the care of her own honour, she became so private with him that I was born thereof and grew up as thou seest me. Presently, having occasion to depart Palermo and return to Perugia, he left me a little maid with my mother nor ever after, for all that I could hear, remembered him of me or her; whereof, were he not my father, I should blame him sore, having regard to the ingratitude shown by him to my mother (to say nothing of the love it behoved him bear me, as his daughter, born of no serving-wench nor woman of mean extraction) who had, moved by very faithful love, without anywise knowing who he might be, committed into his hands her possessions and herself no less. But what [skilleth it]? Things ill done and long time passed are easier blamed than mended; algates, so it was.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Our discourse today has taken place within very broad limits. But by the time we assemble after our siesta on Sunday afternoon at our new abode, you will have had more time for reflection, and I have therefore decided, since it will be all the more interesting if we restrict the subject-matter of our stories to a single aspect of the many facets of Fortune, that our theme should be the following: People who by dint of their own efforts have achieved an object they greatly desired or recovered a thing previously lost. Let each of us, therefore, think of something useful, or at least amusing, to say to the company on this topic, due allowance being made for Dioneo’s privilege.’ The queen’s speech met with general approval, and her proposal was unanimously adopted. She then summoned her steward, and having explained where he should place the tables for that evening, instructed him fully concerning his duties for the remainder of her reign. This done, she rose to her feet, her companions followed her example, and she gave them leave to amuse themselves in whatever way they pleased. And so the ladies made their way with the three young men to a miniature garden, where they whiled away their time agreeably before supper. They then had supper, in the course of which there was much laughter and merriment, and when they had risen from table, at the queen’s request Emilia began to dance whilst Pampinea sang the following song, the others joining in the chorus: ‘If’twere not I, what woman would sing, Who am content in everything? ‘Come, Love, the cause of all my joy, Of all my hope and happiness, Come let us sing together: Not of love’s sighs and agony But only of its jocundness And its clear-burning ardour In which I revel, joyfully, As if thou wert a god to me. ‘Love, the first day I felt thy fire Thou sett’st before mine eyes a youth Of such accomplishment Whose able strength and keen desire And bravery could none, in truth, Find any complement. With thee I sing, Lord Love, of this, So much in him lies all my bliss. ‘And this my greatest pleasure is: That he loves me with equal fire, Cupid, all thanks to thee; Within this world I have my bliss And I may in the next, entire, I love so faithfully, If God who sees us from above Will grant this boon upon our love.’ When this song was finished, they sang a number of others, dances many dances and played several tunes. But eventually the queen decided it was time for them to go to bed, and they all retired to their respective rooms, carrying torches to light them on their way. For the next two days, they attended to those matters about which the queen had spoken earlier, and looked forward eagerly to Sunday. Here ends the Second Day of the Decameron

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  When he finished talking, and it was time to leave the Center for lunch or dinner, there was always a hand for me to grab as we headed back through the streets of Cambridge to the house on Putnam Avenue where everyone at the Center gathered for meals. We called that house Sacred Heart Hall. While dinner was being prepared, some of the adults would gather in the parlor room upstairs, where sofas and comfortable chairs were scattered around a coffee table. The women wore lipstick and pretty dresses, and the men smoked cigarettes as they sipped iced drinks and talked about what they did during “the war.” Their peals of laughter floated toward me as I’d sit at the top of the stairs with my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands. I didn’t understand much of what they said, but I was mesmerized. [image file=Image00013.jpg] Father and Catherine with me (lower left), Mariam, and another Center child, on the lawn of Sacred Heart Hall, November 1950. Sometimes Leonard joined me. Together we’d sit in silence, absorbed in the adults’ revelry and awaiting the clang of the bell that signaled dinner was ready. Then, holding hands, we’d sprint down the stairs and into the refectory. That’s what everyone called the makeshift dining room, where three long picnic tables were set up with folding chairs. We sat anywhere we wanted, adults and children side by side. I needed a stack of books underneath me, and still my chin barely came over the top of the table. But there was always a friendly “aunt” or “uncle” ready to help cut my food. If the weather was hot, we’d have our dessert sitting on the miniature rectangle of lawn between Sacred Heart Hall and the white picket fence that bordered the sidewalk. Father himself would often bring it to me. “What kind of ice cream would you like, dear?” he’d ask. “Strawberry, please, Father,” I’d say. Always strawberry, and always “please” and “thank you,” as I took the bowl with both hands. I’d let the ice cream melt in the summer’s heat, then slurp down the liquid—careful not to spill any on my white summer dress. [image file=Image00014.jpg] The grownup women as I remembered them before they discarded their “worldly” clothes. It was around this time that the women at the Center stopped wearing their colorful clothes. Floral patterned dresses, royal-blue jackets, and cinched waist suits were replaced by long black skirts and white blouses covered by a black jacket. Instead of a pocketbook, my mother now carried a small black fabric satchel. Her shoes were lace-up—no longer the heels and open-toed shoes she used to wear. The men wore identical black suits and white shirts, except when they were working and had to wear overalls. Even my own clothes changed. Now I wore the same kind of blouse and jumper as the other little girls. But I was unfazed by the new wardrobe.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Before long Little Sisters spilled into the corridor, trying to keep the rule of silence as they mumbled soft oohs and aahs . Suddenly the door opened and in walked Sister Catherine. “Merry Christmas, Little Sisters,” she said. “What has Baby Jesus brought you?” Her entry somehow signaled that it was all right to talk, and the corridor erupted into pandemonium, with Little Sisters in pajamas pulling toys and games out of stockings and sharing their bounty with one another. Mariam came to my cubicle door. “What did Baby Jesus bring you?” she asked. I looked at her in astonishment. She really thinks it was Baby Jesus? She’s almost thirteen years old . But seeing the excitement in her eyes, I could tell she believed it with all her heart. I had hardly finished opening my stocking when Sister Catherine stood in the doorway of my cubicle. With her was Sister Elizabeth Ann. It was the first time since we had moved nearly a year earlier that my mother was allowed to enter our corridor. “Anastasia, show Sister Elizabeth Ann what Baby Jesus brought you,” Sister Catherine said to me, and together we examined my presents—watercolor paints and a book of pictures to go with them, an origami set, a yo-yo, and a little porcelain bird. When Sister Elizabeth Ann visited Mary Catherine in her cubicle, she snuggled next to her on the bed and showed her how to make her Mexican beans jump. The best part of the day was yet to come when, after second breakfast, we had a community meeting in the front room, sharing our presents with our parents for several hours. It was well after lunchtime when the dreaded bell sounded that indicated the end of our family time together. I grabbed my woolen coat and headed for the door on my way back to St. Ann’s House to play with my new games and toys. As I turned to exit the front door of St. Therese’s House, I ran into Sister Catherine. She was in a cheerful mood as she leaned down and kissed me. “Happy feast day, my goddaughter,” she said quietly. “Did you have a lovely time at the community meeting?” “Oh, yes, Sister Catherine,” I replied, feeling in that moment that she really did love me. As I paused, reveling in the fact that she had singled me out for special treatment, she reached up to a shelf and took down her hat and pinned it to her hair, the telltale sign she was leaving the property. In an instant, I realized that Sister Catherine was going home to her family in Waltham for Christmas dinner. We left St. Therese’s House together, she to get into her car to drive home, and I to walk back to St. Ann’s House. As the afternoon turned to dusk, I watched the sun, a giant orange-red ball of fire, while it slowly drifted toward the horizon in the southwest sky.

• 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 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 Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation (2016)

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation 30 prison. In terms of the plot, Joseph has gone from the status of a privileged son, to a slave, to a prisoner. He has reached the low point of his life. ‹But here, the plot makes a decisive turn for the better, and significantly, this positive movement starts with dreams. Having gained a reputation for interpreting dreams, Joseph is summoned to the pharaoh, who has been having troubling dreams. Joseph warns that the dreams foretell poor harvests in the coming years. He advises the pharaoh to appoint overseers to set aside surplus grain during the years of good harvests to ensure a sufficient supply in When Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery and convince their father that he has been killed, their deception initially works, but they will be victims of concealments yet to come. Lecture 4—Jacob, Joseph, and Reconciliation 31 the hard years that will follow. The pharaoh appoints Joseph as the overseer of the grain supply—a remarkable rise from the status of prisoner to royal official. The Brothers’ Return ‹When the famine foretold by the pharaoh’s dreams finally arrives, Egypt is well supplied with grain, but elsewhere, food is running out; in Canaan, where Joseph’s family lived, the situation is desperate. To prevent starvation, his brothers travel to Egypt to buy grain. When they approach Joseph to make their request, they don’t recognize him because he’s dressed like an Egyptian official. Joseph takes advantage of this unintended disguise to find out whether his brothers have changed at all. ‹Joseph tests his brothers in various ways, but things reach a crisis point when it appears that the youngest brother, Benjamin, will have to suffer for a crime he didn’t commit. Then, one of the other brothers steps forward and says that he will serve Benjamin’s punishment. At that, Joseph can no longer hide his feelings; he reveals that he is not an Egyptian official but their brother. By concealing his identity, he learns that the brothers are ready to sacrifice their own well-being for the well-being of another. ‹We see again the movement from conflict to reconciliation, and the movement is completed when Joseph has the brothers bring their father, Jacob, to Egypt. Joseph uses his position to help the family settle in Egypt, where they find refuge from the famine. The story ends with a kind of symmetry: In the beginning, Joseph came to Egypt as a victim and a slave owing to his brothers’ jealousy. In the end, he invites the brothers to join him in Egypt, which is now their place of safety and hope. Suggested Reading Borgman, Genesis: The Story We Haven’t Heard. Westermann, Joseph.