A New Chapter

I have stepped over that line where the sand meets the first blades of windswept grass, where tiny flowers begin to emerge from rocky soil only a few hundred feet beyond. A new land of exploration awaits me.

Gone from home for three months to the day, I traveled and sought closure to the "once upon a times" of my life. After a wonderful retreat, I assisted Sister Mary Louise to settle into her new dwelling with her Community. She now enters her own desert sojourn, forced into a retirement she does not want. I left Hays ill and needed to spent extra time getting well which blessed each of us in our own way. Then I set my sights on the home I left thirty years ago and began the next leg of my driving adventure.

The exterior of the farmhouse had not been kept up; one could no longer tell the once beautiful shake shingle siding had been a deep hunter green. The pump from which we once drew the best spring water anyone ever tasted emerged from copious vegetative overgrowth along with the steps leading up to it. The barn where we housed our cattle and horses, along with the milk house in which I raised rabbits no longer existed. Now there were only echoes in my memory of days spent playing in the haymow, the feel of mice playing at my feet in the wheat bin, and the sound of the beckoning church bells on a Sunday morning where I sat high up in the silo where no one could disturb my time alone with God as a child. I hoped to walk the path to the pasture, climb the hill to the woods, and spend time at the edge of the hay field where 'mitten lake,' a pond shaped like a mitten laid. Here we collected pussy willows every spring and some of us ice skated in the winter. No one was home and I needed not to trespass so I collected my memories and made them sufficient. My heart filled with joy when I noticed a small metal barn built where my playhouse, a playhouse where I had often played hostess, teacher, church, and postmaster (mistress?), once stood and about a half dozen sheep in the adjoining pen. My father promised me a sheep -- I love sheep -- but the divorce foiled that hope. Now there were lovely sheep living where I once played. I am happy.

Not much seems to have changed in the dual little villages a mile apart from each other with the public schools K-12 standing at the midpoint curve. Here and there a building houses a different business than before but the bank and the hardware, centers of the community's economic and social fabric, remain. I went to visit the elderly matriarch of the hardware family now widowed and disabled. I went to school with her children and have fond memories of being left in her care while my parents were away on a fireman's vacation trip to the Thousand Islands, Canada. You didn't need a passport in those days. It started out as a nostalgic courtesy visit encouraged by her grandson at the hardware, but turned into so much more. She turned out to be God's instrument of grace for the healing I was searching for. A few compassionate words spoken by this wizened woman sage and all the years of sadness, pain, and shame fell away. Towards the end of an hour of warm, wonderful conversation, she spotted the simple silver ring on my left hand and asked if there was a husband somewhere. I told her 'no' and explained that although I was not a member of a canonical community, I was married to Christ and lived a simple and celibate life.

I had been to Mass that morning before visiting Marion. It was the Feast of All Saints and the church parish was thirty miles away from where I grew up. St. Mary's.... it was where I was baptized and where I had heard God's first call to me at age two.... and I said 'yes.' Its cemetery is where my paternal grandparents are buried. I stood  in the small round chamber that once housed the baptismal font but now a vesting area on the left when one enters the gathering space. It was here that that sacred moment had happened during my sister's baptism. Now I stood praying, remembering, humbled by God's grace and sorrowful for so much sin between then and now. God is both merciful and just. He loves me and He had made it plain through a tremendous conversion experience that I belong to Him. I continue to make reparation while being called at the same time to the joys following God's will for my life.

After visiting "home" and my baptismal home, I turned to the next phase of my journey. The easy part was over. The rest of the trip would be difficult, emotional, full of uncertainties, a time to confront the rest of my demons.

First I met my grandchildren...three precious souls: Colin, Catie, and Christine. This was a joy to obtain a glimpse of who they are as small people and to let them get a tiny inclination of who their grandmother is. I spent a week caught between the wonder of their young lives and the hostility directed toward me by their father who has quit believing in God. I struggled with being placed in the middle of marital unhappiness that can not be resolved without fresh conversion and the love of Christ.

Later, I spent a week with my cousins in Pennsylvania. I had not seen them since childhood but had such fond memories. Here, at last, was true and welcoming family. Through them I was able to meet another cousin whom I had never met but only corresponded with. The first words out of her mouth were, "you look like a (one of us)." Family...here it was at long last. I may never have the opportunity to experience it again but it is now a part of my psyche forever.

I drove on down to my father's house in Florida. Here was the other main purpose of this hiatus. Dad, 91, is slowly dying of renal failure after colon cancer and living with a colostomy and episodic blood clot issues stemming from radiation therapy. He goes for dialysis three times a week. It was important to spend quality time together knowing we will most likely never see each other again. It was two months of rocky ups and downs suffering dad's dementia, verbal abuses, and his literal dislike for me. He sees me as my mother, his wife told me. Somewhere in his own journey he allowed his love for his high school sweetheart turn to hate. I am his only living child...and I bear the brunt of all that anger, hatred, and even his fear of death. However, we managed our birthdays, Thanksgiving, and the twelve days of Christmas together; when I left, there was no unfinished business.

Much needed R&R was provided by two weeks in West Palm Beach. My youngest son met me there and I became reaquainted with his father and became friends with his father's wife. A very lovely time in a very lovely place. The Holy Name of Jesus parish became my second parish home.

At last the moment came to begin the long journey home. I gave my middle son, whom I have not seen since he was 12, a last opportunity to see me when I passed by. He chose not to. Another chapter is closed; I kept my promise and sent him his baby book and other artifacts.  I came full circle...literally. I drove across Kansas, through Missouri, north through Illinois and Chicago up to Fond du Lac WI. I then headed around the great lakes into Indiana, Ohio, and on home to New York. From there I went south to Pennsylvania and ultimately Florida. The journey home from Florida took me straight across the south  into Louisiana, north to Shreveport and on over into Texas. At Plano, north of Dallas I picked up I-35 north and drove through Oklahoma, back into Wichita Kansas where I stopped to see Father Gile at Newman University. Afterward a three hour drive brought me north to I-70 and west to Hays...home. 16 states, 9,000 miles, and the end of the last chapter in book two of the trilogy of my life's story.

Closure....at long last.