Dedicated to God (11 page)

When I looked at the clock, it was five o’clock. I had a half-hour walk home. I got home and Mom said, “Where were you?” I said, “I went to church!” Well, she didn’t believe me, of course. I’m not going to spend two hours in church!

From that day on, I went to church after school and I developed a deep relationship with our Lord and I felt Him calling me to Himself. We went to a Catholic school and I knew the sisters were always called “the brides of Christ,” and so I wanted to let Him know I would give my life totally to Him. I didn’t know what that was called; I was only twelve years old. We didn’t talk too much about the terms, just that they were the brides of Christ. I promised our Lord I would be a sister. I promised Him that I would be a virgin and never drink or smoke. I just would give Him my whole self, totally.

After this experience, I told Mom I wanted to go to the convent. I went home and told Mom, “Mom, I’d like to be a sister.” She said, “Well, you can think about that.” She thought I would change my mind. Mom would always say, “You’ll change your mind. You’ll change your mind.” The funny thing, too, she said, “You’ll always have to wear a dress.” I said, “That doesn’t matter. That’s a habit, that’s not a dress.” I wasn’t one to wear dresses. I was very active, did all kinds of things. I wasn’t one to sit around. The other thing she would say was, “You’re going to have to get up at five every morning.” Now that was a real stickler because I like to sleep in. But I said, “That doesn’t matter,” because I just thought it doesn’t matter what I have to give up. I didn’t think so much about giving up; I just knew that I was going to be His and that was more on my mind. And it’s good she did put this other stuff on me. It made me think, “It will all take care of itself.”

There must have been something prior to that because when I think back, in fourth grade the principal gave me a nun doll. She called me to the office, and I was scared to death because I didn’t know what she was calling me to the principal’s office for. The thing was—she wanted to give me this nun doll. She must have seen something in me, but I never formulated it. I always admired the sisters but I never formulated my view that I can consciously remember.

After a few years, in eighth grade, I said, “Mom, I would really like to enter the convent.” So she said, “Well, you can do what you want.” I wanted to
enter right after eighth grade, and I did. I was very interested in the cloistered life but my mother was totally against that. She said, “You can write to different orders.” I got a book that had the different orders and I wrote to all kinds and got all kinds of mail back. On one of them, she noticed a Carmelite order on the return address. “Not there,” she said. She didn’t have any use for cloistered life, and so I had to put all of those aside. I didn’t know anything about Poor Clares at that stage. I didn’t know they existed.

Mom wanted to make sure I knew what I wanted. There was no doubt in my mind, but she didn’t know that. And looking at it from her perspective, that’s a little different than looking at it from my perspective, but Mom never believed in the cloistered life. “God never wanted anybody to live a life like that,” she thought. And down the road in my story there is that point when I told her I was entering the cloistered life and she just couldn’t see that God would call anyone to that life. Teaching, yes; you’re serving people. That’s fine. But to live in the cloister, no; she couldn’t see that at all.

I had an older brother, but I left home first so that was an adjustment for Mom, more than I think I could ever realize at that time because I was just a child.

My dad, he had no problem understanding. Not the cloister—he didn’t particularly care for that either—but he never voiced his opinion because he felt that your life is yours; you do what you want with it. The active life, he liked that. He was quite proud of it.

My mom didn’t stand in the way because she always felt that, too—our life was our own, and you have to make of your life what you think God is calling you to. So she never stood in the way, except, being young, she wouldn’t allow me to enter the cloister. But for active religious life, she wouldn’t stand in the way. And so I entered. And I remembered when she said goodbye, I knew it was harder for her than it was for me and I can understand that. I have the vocation. She doesn’t. My brothers and sisters would always say, “She kept on setting a place for you to come home.” It was very hard for her to adjust because I was the first that left home and I think when the first one leaves home that’s always the hardest on parents. And I think part of it, too, is we won’t be getting married and having grandchildren for them; I kind of think that might have been behind my mom’s mind. She never mentioned anything like that, but I think that might have been something that she probably would have considered. I think Mom said later she didn’t want to build it up in me so much that if I decided this wasn’t my life, that
I would feel uncomfortable saying that; I think that was her whole idea, you know, “You’re always welcome to come home.” And that was a good thing for Mom, on her part. I said, “I’m not coming home,” but I always appreciated her saying that. And I would tell her, “It’s always nice to know that, but don’t count on it because I’m really solid in this vocation. I have no qualms. No way am I going to leave.”

Of course, I was not the typical type to go into a convent. I only found this out years later: The relatives had a bet on me, whether I would make it or not! They didn’t tell me that until my solemn vows, my perpetual vows. They said, “You know, we lost our bet.” Whatever they bet, they gave to Mom and Dad.

When I was a kid, I was very active, the daredevil type, and into a lot of things. Most of my friends were boys, growing up, because they did things like build forts and ride stock cars—all kinds of things that I liked to do. I wasn’t one to sit around and play with dolls. That’s probably why the relatives didn’t think I would make it. But Mom had us go over to the relatives’ house and stay there for a week so we were used to back and forth; we weren’t always home. That was another wisdom that she had, that we could be independent. Later, it was something that I desired; I was just very eager to learn the customs and the way of life in the convent.

We didn’t just sit around when we were at my aunt’s farm. I would go out with the boys and take turn with the boys riding the pigs to see who could stay on this big pig the longest. We would put the food in a pail and when the pig would put its head down—these were huge pigs, huge sows—then we’d put a rope over the neck and we’d jump on. The other one timed how long you stayed on because this pig would try to buck you off. And then, of course, when you’re bucked off you have to get out right away because you’d get mauled to death. My grandpa had a bull. When we were kids we’d watch Toro on
The Lone Ranger
. So I thought I’d try that sometime. I got out there with a bull and I was just fascinated because it worked just like it said on television. He would make his feet like that and the smoke would come up from the dirt in the yard. It would be just like TV. He’d charge at me, and I’d step aside. Then he’d get on the other side and charge. I had a great time. My sister Mickey came and I said, “You try it.” Mick got out there and got scared, and the bull almost got her. Of course, she told Grandpa and that ended my fun.

My dad was a prankster, too. He sometimes would tell us the things he would do. He worked until nine o’clock because when you first start a
business you have the long hours of work. When Dad came home we always wanted to spend time with him, so we pretended, “Mom, I’m hungry.” So then she’d say, “Come out and get something to eat.” We just wanted to be with Dad a little bit, and he’d get into telling stories of what he did as a kid. And Mom said, “Frank, don’t tell them that; they’re going to do it.” But none of the pranks were mean; they would just be innocent. One time, when he was at my aunt’s restaurant, he said, “Oh, Fran, let me wait on the next customer.” She said, “You can’t wait on people. You don’t know how to do that.” He said, “Let me just try.” He put on the apron. A couple sat down. She said, “I’ll tell you what to do. You give them a menu, and then you … ” She didn’t want to lose her business. He went to the table, and of course he was a card. He gave them a menu, and then the lady asked, “Do you have frog legs?” And Dad said, “No, ma’am, that’s just the way I walk.” He’s just a joker like that. It ran in the family. Us kids—three girls and three boys—enjoyed life. Cindy was born later, after I entered the convent. But the five of us were kind of close, within a year apart, all the way down. There’s the song that was real popular with the line “creeping like a nun.” Whenever that was on the radio, my brother blared that real loud, and he said, “That’s you, that’s you!” I just teased him back. We could tease about it. I don’t know that they really took me too seriously until I entered. They just said, “What’s the matter with you?”

Just after eighth grade, I entered the convent, the aspirancy. I went to Mass every day from that experience on, and I said the rosary every day. And I looked at religious orders, whenever I saw a sister with a different type of habit. At that time they were all wearing a habit that was distinct to their order so you could distinguish and tell when a sister from a different order came to Mass at your church. I noticed that there was a sister of Saint Agnes and I had never seen that type of sister, and so I went up to her and I asked her if she would be kind to send me some information on their order. And she did. Different ones that I met in church would send things, too. I think that’s where I found most of the brochures. I was very taken with the Sisters of Saint Agnes. They were beautiful—their brochures and everything—and I had the sense that’s the one that God wanted me to join. They had exposition of the Blessed Sacrament a lot, and that’s what I liked. So I think that was the drawing card. In brochures, it said they were a very prayerful community. That’s what drew me. I applied and I entered right after eighth grade. It was August of 1968 when I entered their community.

When I entered the aspirancy, I just loved it. We lived at the convent, and we would take a bus to the parochial high school, a Catholic high school in Fond du Lac. We lived a religious life for those four years. After those four years, you went to the next stage, the postulancy. I just told Mom and Dad to take my money out of my banking account and put it in theirs. Other nuns say, “I found this so hard to give up.” I didn’t. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even think about those things, like my bike; anybody that wanted my belongings could help themselves.

My family was always very eager to have me home and show me stuff. My brother got his license and he bought a car. I didn’t even get in the house and he said, “I want to show you this car,” and of course he wanted to drive me around. I said, “You think we should say hello to Mom first?” The joy of having me home was always there.

When I was on home visit from the aspirature for the summers, my mom said, “You have to date.” I said, “I don’t care. I can date. I don’t mind.” Whenever I went on a date I would say, “I am going to be a sister so it’s just a friendship.” I would think that was only fair to that other person. It would be kind of hard because sometimes I would come for home visit and my sisters’ boyfriends would come to the house and they would want me to come out with them. We joked, so it was like, “Have her come along.” Sometimes I would, and sometimes I would say, “You two go.”

I always felt comfortable with boys. In high school, when I was home we would go bowling. I wasn’t much for just sitting around. Sometimes they would just want to sit around and drink. I remember thinking, “This is just so boring.” Then they gave me a drink. I don’t like the smell of the stuff, let alone the taste, so I would say, “Oh, look at those stars. Isn’t that something?” Then I would pour it in their drink. They didn’t know they had a little bit more. I didn’t get into drinking or anything. Being serious and expressing love to a date? No, because I loved our Lord and my love was for Him. We were just going out to have fun and we were good friends that way, but there was nothing serious because I had my mind made up.

Mom was really interested in one boy having an interest in me, so she’d invite him up to the cottage. Fine. He was a very nice person. He did ask me to go out. I said, “I have to pray my holy hour first,” so he would meet me over at church. One night, he wanted to give me his ring. I said, “Oh, yeah, I’ll take your ring.” He was quite surprised. Then I took it and I put it by the altar. I said, “Everything I get, I give to Jesus.” He went up and he snatched
it, and he didn’t ask again. He knew where I was at. I said, “I told you at the beginning that I’m not interested in dating in a serious way, like steady, because I’m not for marriage. That isn’t where my calling is. We go out, that’s fine. But if you give me your ring, I give it to Jesus.”

The last year of aspirancy, our aspirancy closed so I was home that last year and went to a public school. Mom said, “You can go to the Catholic school,” but I said, “That’s a lot of money.” I wanted my money to go back into the convent, so I just went to a regular high school for my senior year. I could adjust. I didn’t have any trouble with that. When the aspirancy closed, I always considered myself still in the convent. We would go once a month; it was a nonresidency aspirancy for the few of us that were in this program, but it was no problem for me because I had my prayer life. I went to Mass every day, I had a holy hour every day, and I kept the schedule that whole high school year.

We were a close family, a very, very close family and we did a lot together as a family, played together a lot when we were little and even when we were older. We were always very close.

Both Mom and Dad were very easy to talk to. If there were little difficulties, Mom would sit down and talk it out with us. I think that was a very good thing, growing up, that you handled your own problems. She’d sit down and say, “What was the problem here?” And then we had to figure out: What was it? And then you could work it through. You didn’t blame the others; you just worked it out yourself. And there was that give and take. We didn’t really fight that much, but if there was a disagreement, well, “You work it out. Don’t come running to Mom. You work it out.” We’d work it out together, and then we’d be friends again. We never held grudges that long. Half the time you forgot about it and you kept going on with life.