Photographs of the Dawning of Self

Last evening I riffled through a box of old photographs that date back to the early twentieth century. There were great-grandparents, Grandma Ready and O’Mara, Mom and Dad, my brother and his family, friends, as well as myself. Among those photographs I found some from early 1967 that show me during the first few months after I left the convent as well as one from the month before I left and a couple from a year later. Today, I’d like to share these with you.

         Here’s Sister Innocence in November 1966—a month and a half before I left the convent. I was teaching high school students in the Mount Academy and this is one of the Asian students. I had weighed 118 pounds from the time I was in grade school. But during those final months of 1966, I lost about 15 pounds and was the thinnest I’d been since fifth grade.

         Wearing the clothes of my pregnant sister-in-law, I left the convent on Christmas Eve, 1966. The following two photographs show me two days later at a party she and my brother gave for the family. In the one below I’m standing next to my cousin-in-law. I’m not sure what article of clothing I’m holding.

         In this second photograph I think I’m examining a half-slip my brother and his wife gave me as a Christmas gift. As I’ve said in earlier postings about this time, I did a lot of acting for a few weeks. Acting surprised. Acting happy. Acting interested. Longing always to be home with my mom and dad in their house where I didn’t need to act.

         In Dayton, where I got my first post-convent joy, I first lived at the Loretto Guild where I met four women who befriended me. In the early spring of 1967, the five of us moved to a house near Dayton University. My sister-in-law was due any day and so would soon be needing her spring and summer wardrobe.

         With the encouragement of my new friends, I bought myself dresses and shoes to wear to work. They were excited for me and wanted to take photographs showing “Sister Innocence” in her new finery. Below are pictures of me in one dress after another. These were taken outside the two-story home we’d rented. It was on a residential street where many students lived.

         On my face you see smiles that are real. I was no longer acting. I’d settled into life beyond the convent. Friends enriched my life. I enjoyed my work as an editor at Pflaum Publishing. I was going to movies, concerts, plays, dances. I had a library card. I traveled successfully on the city buses. I knew where to shop. I was being invited to the homes of co-workers to meet their families, play with their children, and enjoy tasty home-cooked meals. 

         I was taking a class on the novels of Charles Dickens and George Eliot at the University and writing papers that were garnering good grades. This was proof, I thought, that my mind was working well and that I hadn’t lost my ability to craft sentences. In a word, I was happy.

         That summer I traveled home to visit my family. This is a photo of me at Lake Jacoma in Blue Springs, Missouri. My family and I did some fishing there and then sat on the grass to enjoy a picnic with some of Mom’s famous potato salad. I note in looking at all these photographs that none of them show me in shorts. It took many years before I bared my legs by wearing pants that came above my knees.

         Finally, here is a winter 1967 photograph of me at my brother’s home in Independence. My hair is different; my smile is different; my whole demeanor has changed. This is what time and good friends and loving family can do for someone who has been deep into the abyss of depression and has—by some great grace—decided to live.

         Last night, while viewing these photographs that show in their own way a resurrection, I thought of Robin Williams. My heart aches for his pain and for the forlorn darkness of mind and heart and spirit in which he must have been living. May he now know the truth of himself and know, too, the meaning and worth of his life and the joy he brought to so many of us. May he know that he was and is a gift from and to the Universe. Peace.

One Mighty Fine Woman

In an April posting, I related the conversation I’d had with Dad before moving to Dayton. He’d advised me to take circuitous routes to my first post-convent job, but I didn’t listen to him and took the same route each day.

         The men sitting on cardboard and huddled in doorways got used to seeing me each morning. One by one, they began to approach me or to speak to me from their hidey-holes.

         They didn’t “hit on” me, as Dad had feared. They simply asked for money. I always gave them whatever change or dollar bills I had. I’d been taught that we could come upon Jesus unawares and not recognize him. In my mind, these men were Jesus. I couldn’t say no.

            One day Bill, the vice-president who’d hired me, glanced over his shoulder as he pulled open the door to the dimly lit stairs leading up to the publishing firm. He saw me handing money to a man sitting on the sidewalk, his back against a wall.

         “Thank you, Ma’am,” the drifter said and smiled. A serene smile over the gaps of missing teeth. Surely Jesus.           

           I walked on to where Bill waited.

         “Dee, don’t give these guys money,” he said.

         “They might be Jesus.”

         “What?”

         I explained. He shook his head. “If you have to give them something, tell them you’ll buy breakfast for them. Ten to one they won’t take you up on it. They’re looking for booze money.”

           As he spoke, I looked through the plate-glass window of the cafe next door where customers, seated in the Naugahyde-clad booths lining the wall and at the counter, were wolfing down food. I could easily envision Jesus and I eating there. Bill’s suggestion made ultimate sense.

         And so in the year I worked at Pflaum, I ate breakfast with several of those men who inhabited the sidewalks, their heads drooping between tented knees. As we ate, they shared their life stories with me. Most were simply down on their luck.

            One had a different definition of woman from what I’d learned in the convent Scholasticate or as a Girl Scout.

         On the spring day he and I met, I wore a new dress. Short-sleeved. Bright yellow splotched with white daisies. A narrow belt.

           I was standing across from the office, waiting for the light to change. A man in soiled clothing lurched toward me. His face sported whiskers and dirt. His straggly blond hair hung lank against his hunched shoulders. This is Jesus I thought.

            I started to dig for coins.

            “Ma’am, you’re one mighty fine woman,” he mumbled.

            Startled, I dropped the coins, which clattered to the sidewalk, some rolling off the curb and into the gutter. I quickly stooped to pick them up, my thoughts scrambled. He’s talking about my figure. This dress is too clingy. My body’s not hidden in black serge. He can see the outline of my bosom. I covered it with my purse.

            “Did ya hear what I told ya? One damn fine woman,” he slurred.

            “Thank you.”

            “Real perky.”

            “Thank you.”

            The light changed. I started across. He followed.

            “One damn fine figure of a woman.”

            “Thank you.” I was walking faster.

            “I’m tellin’ ya the truth, Ma’am. One mighty fine figure.”

            “Thank you.”

            I wanted to run, but this was Jesus. He might smell like whiskey, but who says Jesus has to be a teetotaler? He was the most famous brewer of all time. Witness Cana. Who says he has to wear newly laundered clothes? This was Jesus.

            Turning toward him, I said, “How’d you like some breakfast?”

         Now he was the startled one. Then a grin spread across his grimy face.          

          We shared a meal, and I discovered that Jesus, called Hank on that day in Dayton, was a man of philosophical bent. He had just gotten lost in the cracks.

         And I?

         I was one mighty fine figure of a woman.

         Damn fine.

All photographs from Wikipedia.

Pflaum Co-Workers and Office Space

In my last three postings, I shared with you how I got a post-convent job in Dayton, Ohio. Today, I want to introduce you to my three co-workers, who helped me find my bearings in this new world.

         As I explained last week, I met Bob, my future boss, on Sunday, January 25, 1967, when he and his three young children picked me up at the Dayton Airport and drove me to my new “digs” at the Loretto Guild. Bob was the managing editor of Our Little Messenger.

         Most first and second graders in Catholic schools throughout the United States read this weekly publication each Friday. It was a four-page, 8 ½ x 11-inch, full-color weekly that always contained stories and features about animals, inventions, Catholic feast days, fun activities, and other things that might enthrall young children.

         Many children in the public grade schools got The Weekly Reader, which those of you who grew up in the United States may remember. The Catholic schools got the “messengers.” The Pflaum Publishing staff produced three of these a week: Grades 1-2, Our Little Messenger; Grades 3 through 5, Young Catholic Messenger; Grade 6 through 8, Junior Catholic Messenger. Each messenger had its own staff. The staff of Our Little Messenger consisted of Bob, Brian, Alice, and me. Each of us was responsible for one messenger page each week.

         These three co-workers taught me how to write captivating children’s stories that contained an element of surprise. They also taught me how to edit and introduced me to a book I’d never before encountered—The Chicago Manual of Style—which I learned was the “bible” of the publishing industry.

         As a senior editor, Alice had been in publishing the longest of my co-workers. She was my first real teacher in the art of line and copyediting. Alice spoke with surety about how young children learned and deeply appreciated their sense of wonder. A gifted writer, she completed her work within hours and then set to researching topics for future use in the messenger.

         Brian, a black-haired Irishman who spoke with a lilt, liked to tell stories. Thus, he kept me from thinking about my own inner anxieties. Getting to the core of a page topic took Brian at least two days each week because he saw so many details and possibilities. His slow pace helped me become patient with my own learning during those first weeks in the job. The truth is that Brian helped me relax.

         Bob was new to publishing and came to it as a writer who’d already had a well-received book published for young people aged 10 to 14. He had an abiding interest in all aspects of nature, and at our weekly meetings to discuss the next issue, he’d come up with intriguing topics—the song of whales, the antennae of insects, the butterfly’s return to San Juan Capistrano, the wing feathers of raptors.

         The four of us worked in a long rectangle of a room. On one long side were windows, one per office. The other long side was an empty wall, which stood as the right-hand side of the aisle that passed each of our left-hand offices.  Jutting out from the window wall were three partitions that divided the space into our four offices, each of which contained a desk, chair and file cabinet. At each of the short ends of the rectangle were doors.

         Alice occupied the first office; I, the second; Brian the third; and Bob the fourth. His was the largest space as he needed a table on which we could lay out the weekly stories and illustrations and assess each issue before its printing. During these sessions, he taught me about layout and design.

         These three co-workers set me on a career path as an editor and curriculum developer. They truly changed my life.

Note: One of the summer messengers is now for sale on e-Bay. As of Thursday, May 1, you can see it by clicking here.

Photographs from Wikipedia.

         

Rediscovering the Art of Discourse

Thirty days after I left the convent, I began to work at Pflaum Publishing. The day before, I’d flown from Kansas City to Dayton. Looking back I realize that the normal reaction to the possibility of a new job might be both anxiety and eagerness. But all I can remember is feeling passive and emotionless. I remember also that my parents had mixed feelings about my taking the job. On one hand, I’d have work and could then support myself and evolve a life. On the other, I was emotionally stunted.

         Both Dad and Mom worried about my well-being. After all, I would be living nearly six hundred miles away where they couldn’t watch over me. Yet they’d always wanted their children to be independent. As I was growing up, they both often said to me, “Dolores, you can do anything you set your mind to.” They always believed in me.

         But they’d never seen me in the state I was in when I left the convent. During the following thirty days, I had, however, improved somewhat, and as I started to climb out of a deep abyss of unease, I was able to relate again. The “acting normal” became almost second nature and by mid-January, I could engage in conversation with my relatives and talk with salesclerks when Mom and I went to a store together. But always it was an effort to do so and I relapsed into silence when I was with only my Mom or Dad.

         Growing up, I’d found that talking with others was both interesting and enlightening. Yet, not only was I mute when I left the convent, I also lacked any spark of interest in others. I was encased in ice. 

          Fortunately, during those thirty days between leaving and starting my first post-convent job, I decided, subconsciously I suspect, to reenter the human race. I relearned the ebb and flow of conversation. The give and take of it.

         I mention this because on Sunday, January 25, 1967, my future boss—Bob—and his three children, who ranged in age from four to eight, met me at the Dayton Airport. It surprises me still that those children, in their fifties now and living in Spain, Texas, and Kansas, still remember picking me up and what we talked about on the drive from the airport to the Loretto Guild where I was to live for the next five months.

         And what did we talk about?

         Baseball.

         I inherited my love of baseball from Dad. Every summer evening while I was growing up, he, my brother, and I would sit on the front stoop and listen to the radio broadcast of the Kansas City Blues, which was a Triple A minor-league Yankee farm team. I’d followed baseball until I was twenty-two and entered the convent. I’d known all the names, positions and teams of the American League, and the changing stats for the Blues and the Yankees. I was a true fan.

Joe Kuhel was the Blues' manager in the early fifties.

         Of course, in the convent we didn’t listen to the radio or read the newspaper, so I was nine years out of date, but Bob’s adult children have told me more than once how fascinated they were that a “nun” knew so much about how to play the game and about the players from the forties and fifties.

         And that, truly, is the first conversation I had after leaving the convent in which I was, for a space of time, myself at my best. Not acting or playing a role, but simply enjoying the exchange of facts and childhood dreams and ideas with other human beings.

         Children have always had the gift of calling forth from me the essence of who I am.

Photographs from Wikipedia. 

The Loretto Guild and Dad's Advice

Back in May 2011 when I began this on-line memoir, I posted willy-nilly whatever came to mind when I sat down at the computer. However, you, the readers, seem to like the varied series I did later. And the truth is that I enjoy writing an interlocking series.

         So last Thursday I began a new one: my entrance into the world beyond the convent and my beginning, unwittingly, an editing career. This week I’m refashioning a June 7, 2011, posting I did about where I lived and my dad’s advice for working in the big city of Dayton, Ohio.

         The office of Pflaum Publishers there occupied a brick building in a rundown section of town—lots of bars; vacate buildings; men down on their luck. Several blocks away, at 217 North Ludlow Street, stood the Loretto Guild, a residence run by the Dominican Sisters for single workingwomen. The building occupied an entire block in downtown Dayton. 

         Each tenant at the Guild rented a narrow room with a twin bed, a dresser with three drawers, a straight-backed chair, a nightstand with a lamp, a sink, and a closet. We used communal toilet and shower stalls and had both cafeteria and curfew. For about five months, I found myself right at home there—the convent with amenities.

           During my two interview days in Dayton in late December 1966, the managing editor had taken me on a tour of the city. He’d pointed out the Loretto and its nearness to the publishing company. If hired, I’d exit the brick building, turn left, walk to the corner, turn right, cross the street, walk down five blocks, wait for the light, cross the street, turn left, pass a café, and open the door to the publishing house. An easy daily route.

            Before I departed for Ohio to start my new job, Dad gave me some considered advice. “Dolores,” he said, “tell me approximately where the place you live will be in relation to where you’ll work.” My dad respected blueprints and maps, so I drew him one with both the living quarters and the workplace clearly labeled.

            “How are you getting to work?” Dad asked.          

            “I’ll walk.”

            “Tell me your route.”

            I walked it off on the map.

            “No. That’s not good. I want you to go a different way each day.”

            “What do you mean, Dad?”

             “One day, turn right instead of left. It’ll be longer but safer,” Dad said, using his index finger to show me the proposed route on the map. “The next day, turn right but walk beyond the corner, up a block or two. Then turn right and walk to the office. You'll be coming from a different direction.” His finger follows that route. “Some days I want you to walk down six or seven blocks and then come back up to the office. Change your route each day.”

            “Why would I do that?”

            “Honey, all sorts of men are lurking out there. They’ll know your route if you take the same one each day."

            “Yes . . .?”

            “They prey on women,” he said.

            “Dad, who’d want to prey on me?”

            “Believe me, Dolores, they’ll prey on anyone.”

            Despite my listlessness and lack of humor at the time, I almost said, "Thanks, Dad, for that vote of confidence!"                                  And also, despite his concern and care for me, I didn’t take his advice. No circuitous routes. Dad was right though. I did meet men. But no one “hit on” me. That’s the phrase I learned from a women I worked with: men “hit on” her.

            The truth is I’m not sure I’d recognize a “hit” if it happened. Some things just don’t occur to me. It’s often only later—hours, days, weeks, years—that the match sparks and I say, “Oh, that’s what that was all about.”  So if someone “hit” on me those long ago years, it went way over my head. 

All photographs from Wikipedia except for the Loretto Guild, which is from the Dayton Library Postcard Collection.