After the war, Phillip Mountbatten married Princess Elizabeth, the oldest daughter of King George VI, who would one day inherit the throne. When Princess Elizabeth became the Queen of England, her husband, Prince Phillip, was promoted to the rank of a five-star admiral.

On that day in San Diego, Admiral Bulkeley turned to his old friend and quipped “Say, Prince, in World War II,  you and I were both navy lieutenants, we both married English women, and now you’re a five-star admiral and the best I could do was two stars. Where did I go wrong?”

Prince Philip grinned and fired back: “You married the wrong English woman! “

Admiral Bulkeley said nothing  but knew that the Prince was dead wrong.

Cecil Wood came to China from London, working his way up from a merchant seaman to a qualified Captain. In 1910, he bought into the South China Pilotage Association, and settled in Swatow as Lloyds of London’s Port Pilot for the British, American, and Japanese merchant ships as well as warships moving in and out of the tricky harbor of Swatow. Situated 200 miles north of Hong Kong, Swatow had once been the center of the opium trade, but at the turn of the century the port-city was famous for its embroidery.

Cecil’s wife, Emily, traveled by ship to Hong Kong, the nearest British Crown Colony, for the birth of their first child, a daughter. The large expatriate community in Swatow considered it one up to have their children born on British soil. In 1913 a severe storm with heavy seas delayed the ship which was to take Emily to Hong Kong for the birth of their second child. So, Cecil and Emily checked into the Astor House Hotel, the sole European hotel in Swatow and the closest resemblance to England available. Cecil assisted with the delivery, as no doctors were available. Heavy seas, foreign soil, and a lack of doctors were the circumstances surrounding her birth: the first set of many complex circumstances placed before the six-pound baby girl they called Alice.

While her father worked as the junior pilot for Lloyds, Alice lived on the small island of Masu, located at the mouth of Swatow harbor. The house, currently a hotel resort, was extremely large, with separate quarters for the 32 servants employed by Cecil Wood at the rate of $5.00 per servant per month. Alice had her own servant, known as “amah”, which is the Chinese term for nanny. Part of her upbringing in this privileged environment was her father’s nurturing of her love for the sea. She often rode out to the ships with him, and was by his side as he escorted the merchant ships and warships into and out of the harbor. Alice, now 82 years of age, recalls this period in her life. She squares her shoulders, closes her eyes, and breathes deeply. As she remembers the vigor in that salt water once more, her face breaks into a radiant smile.

Alice left the house on Masu for boarding school when she was six years old.. The Woods did not send their daughter back to England, as was the tradition for children of the British expatriate community: rather, she attended the Diocesan Girls School in Hong Kong, an Anglican-run organization that accepted not only European girls, but also Eurasian girls. In the 1920′s, Europeans, as well as expatriated Europeans, did not recognize children of mixed-blood as Europeans. Alice’s father was English and her maternal grandfather was German; however, her maternal grandmother, a nurse, was Japanese. Alice’s mother became a British subject upon her marriage, and her three children, for Alice had a brother and a sister, were acquainted with only their British relatives. However, somewhere the Wood children had Japanese relatives.

One day, during her middle school years at The Diocesan Girls School, Alice sat in class wearing her prescribed uniform and her long blonde curls tightly braided and pinned close to her head. The Anglican-run institution considered long blonde curls sinful, so Alice kept hers out of sight. On this day, the teacher passed out a form which the girls were required to complete. One question asked for her nationality, and Alice wrote “English.” The teacher, walking up and down the aisles and watching over her students, stopped by Alice’s desk and read what the young girl had written. She told Alice, “You are not English, but Eurasian.” Alice remembers her reaction to the teacher’s correction:

“To me there was no such country as Eurasia. I was a British subject. At that age, I was pretty cocky, and I was doing well in school. It came as a shock to me, and I knew I was going to face some difficulties. Instead of thinking less of myself, I was even more determined to be proud of my mixed blood.”

This determined pride placed Alice, two years later, in the Head Mistress’ office being scolded for behaving like a “poppy cock,” British slang for a snob. Alice had taken on some “high and mighty ways.” Her father, after hearing about this scolding, wrote his daughter this letter.

“…When you are being scolded, don’t put on an aggrieved or sulky look, that only makes teachers angry. Just listen politely and attentively to what is being said to you, whether you deserve it or not, for you are having an extra lesson for free…Educated gentlefolk do not hesitate to express sorrow, even if they themselves have done no harm nor caused any annoyance, whenever a possibility of having done so occurs.”

Alice deeply admired and respected her father, and his advice was well-received. She changed her ways, and in her last year at the Diocesan Girls School, she was appointed “Head Girl,” a job which entailed keeping the younger girls in line by looking after them and serving as a role model in the example set by her own behavior. “This was a responsibility,” Alice recalls, “that I took very seriously.”

The rhythm of her school days in Hong Kong was interrupted only once. When Alice was ten, the family went to Canada for one year to visit with Cecil’s brothers and their families in the Toronto area. Alice, her older sister, Edith, and her younger brother, Eric, attended day school for the year that the family lived in Canada. Unbeknown to the children, their parents intended to leave the three children in Canada where they could have a finer education in a less constrictive atmosphere while their parents returned to work in Swatow. However, when it came time for them to leave, they could not leave their young children behind, and the family returned to China together.

Upon her graduation from the Diocesan Girls School, Alice applied for entry into the University of Hong Kong, run by the British at that time. Hearing of her acceptance, Cecil wrote to his daughter:

13-1-30

My dear Alice,

Wonderful news this morning. The 13th is your lucky day. The Registrar of the University tells us you have qualified for Matriculation and may join the University without further examination.

God bless you, sweetheart, study hard, for the more honors you get the higher our hearts beat for you and the higher we can hold our heads.

I have asked for you to be entered as a member of the University and for Nip Sawyer to arrange for your board, lodging, and tuition.

Best wishes from mother and father

As Alice came to the end of her first year at university, troubles in the north of China were coming to a peak. Russia had gained control of the railway in Manchuria: the Chinese challenged this control, but that confrontation ended in defeat and humiliation for China. The Japanese military, which was the expansionist force in Japan, arranged a bomb explosion on the tracks of the Russian-held railway. This enabled the Japanese expansionists to gain popular support on the home front in Japan. The Japanese Kwantung Army then seized Mukden, the capitol of Manchuria, followed by a rapid spread-out resulting in the military occupation by Japan of Manchuria. Chiang Kai-shek’s policy was one of non-resistance: he opted to use China’s eternal advantage, her infinite room to retreat, presuming that the occupation of Manchuria would satisfy the Japanese. Alice graduated from the University of Hong Kong in 1934, the same year that Japan announced, in the historic Amau Doctrine, its intention to control all of China.

Alice hoped to attend law school after receiving her undergraduate degree; however, the uncertain atmosphere in China required that she return to her home. In Swatow she worked as the confidential secretary for the manager of Butterfield & Swire, a British shipping firm in Swatow. The political situation slowly deteriorated from 1934 to 1937, when a clash between the Japanese troops and the Chinese army near Peking launched an offensive by the Japanese in which sixty percent of the Chinese armed forces were lost. The Japanese now controlled territory as far south as Shanghai.

Alice’s mother, her sisters, her sister’s husband, and their two children had already evacuated Swatow and were living in Hong Kong due to what appeared to be the inevitable Japanese occupation of Swatow. Both Britain and The United States encouraged these departures rather than face an incident that involved some British or American nationals and thereby involve either of those countries in this Asian war. Cecil was now the senior Port Pilot for Lloyds of London as well as the local marine surveyor for the British Government. He had a firm resolve to attend to his responsibilities. Furthermore, during this period, people with Cecil’s experience in China were important to the British and American military representatives trying to extract information from the chaotic crisis surrounding them. Alice chose not to leave Swatow because of her responsibilities at the shipping firm where she worked. In the former Head Girl’s own words: “My father had taught me responsibility, and I had a job to do.”

Butterfield & Swire, where Alice worked, had their office building on the commercial side of Swatow harbor. The British and American expatriate community of Swatow resided on the town side of the harbor – a picturesque residential area to which the Wood family moved when Cecil was promoted to Senior Pilot. The majority of the residents had already been evacuated, at about the same time as Alice’s family relocated to Hong Kong. The few remaining residents painted American and British flags on their respective roofs to deter the Japanese bombers who were intermittently bombing Swatow. This was thier attempt to remind the Japanese pilots that the Americans and the British were not in this war. Employees used a small launch to take them across the harbor to work in the morning, and return them to their homes in the evening.

One day at work, while sitting at her desk, Alice looked out a large window which overlooked the harbor and saw the Japanese bombers approaching. There were nine of them, and as quickly as Alice spotted them, so did her colleagues. The only woman in the office, Alice quickly realized that all her colleagues were looking at her to see if she thought she could make it to the launch in time to get to the residential side of the harbor. Alice had not only been Head Girl, but also a sprinter at The Diocesan Girls School. Without a second thought, she said “Let’s go.” She and her colleagues ran out of the building and jumped into the small motor boat, which took off immediately, heading for a point mid-stream. One of the bombers, seeing them, swooped low and opened up its machine gun on the passengers. Everyone flattened on the small deck. No one was hurt.

In 1937, a United States Navy coastal gunboat, Sacramento, which cruised under the nickname “The Galloping Ghost of the China coast,” was patrolling the waters off the coast of China. The ship was often called into the troubled spots, rescuing the many American women and children who were being systematically evacuated as the Japanese continued their push southward. When Sacramento, and other American warships, were in the port of Swatow, they anchored in the harbor in front of Alice’s home.

Ensign John Bulkeley was the engineering officer on board Sacramento. On October 12 of that year a British warship, HMS Diana, was to set sail and return to England in a few days. HMS Diana’s officers invited Sacramento’s wardroom to a farewell reception, as well as some of the prominent British civilians living in Swatow. It was on this occasion that Ensign Bulkeley first spotted Alice as she made her way up the ladder to board HMS Diana. They were introduced on a formal receiving line, and, later in the wardroom, they talked at some length. Alice recollects that in conversation with his fellow officers, they deferred to his views. He stood out as a leader. She liked that in a man, and she left the ship that evening impressed by the young ensign.

The ship’s duties brought Sacramento in and out of Swatow over the course of the next year. A romance between Alice and John began that included a lot of tennis at the club when the ship was in, a lot of letters when the ship was out, and a trip to Hong Kong for Alice when the ship was there for an extended stay. Alice recalls that during their courtship they talked endlessly. The war around them dominated their conversation. However, Alice recalls that right from the start John seemed “very interested in me.” As Alice spoke those four words, she lifted her right hand and laid it close to her heart, suggesting an innocent bewilderment at his interest in her.

Intermittent bombings at more frequent intervals – both night and day – were a regular occurrence in Swatow all during their courtship. Whenever Sacramento was in Swatow harbor, John looked after Alice’s safety as best he could. He always arranged a special sampan, a small boat rowed by one oar, to stand by in the water near her office. He assured Alice that she could come to the American warship if she ever felt threatened. Alice never took him up on it. After one particularly forceful raid, John came ashore to check on Alice. She was out during the raid, and returned home by way of a back road so as to avoid the badly bombed main road. When the servant driving the rickshaw dropped Alice at her door, he took off into the country to hide, as had most of the other servants by this time.

Later that afternoon, Alice and John rode bicycles around Swatow, stopping to take pictures of the victims of that raid. They were not the only Westerners taking pictures to document the carnage, in hopes of support for the Chinese people from the West. Further inland, Nanjing, the capital of China, had already fallen into Japanese hands. In fact, from December through March of 1937, the year of Alice’s courtship with John, 340,000 innocent civilians in Nanjing were slaughtered by the Japanese. The Rev. John Magee recorded, on film, the gunning down of innocent civilians by machine gun, to the burying of other innocent civilians alive. More than 20,000 women of all ages, from 10 to 88 years old, were raped. The Tokyo Daily News, in December of 1937, reported a Japanese soldier who had won a contest by beheading 106 Chinese in one day. Before the Asian Holocaust ended, it had claimed 30 million victims.

By October of 1938, a year after they met, the young couple became engaged and began to plan their wedding at Saint Andrew’s Church in Hong Kong, which operated the Diocesan Girls School Alice attended as a young girl. Alice bought her wedding gown and veil, but the date for the wedding depended on Sacramento’s schedule, which was changing as regularly as the Japanese Navy was moving steadily down the coast of China toward Swatow. Cecil Wood liked the American officer a lot, and shared his daughter’s joys and frustrations with planning her wedding, but he was worried about his daughter. Alice also knew that there was certain amount of risk in what she was doing.

Alice remembered distinctly the letter she came across one day at work when she was going through some files at the office. The letter, signed by her boss who was the manager of Butterfield & Swire, was addressed to his boss. It stated that he intended to keep Alice on the job even though she was Eurasian and not pure English or pure Chinese. He clearly understood that the British company had an official policy that they not hire any Eurasians, but he was determined to keep her on the job.

This letter did not shock Alice. In fact. Alice had heard other stories which made it clear to her that it was not only the British who mistreated people of mixed blood. Stories came down to Swatow from Shanghai where some American Naval officers married “white Russians,” which was slang for Eurasian women.. Once the ships departed for home port, these women never heard from their lovers again.. They were left in Shanghai, deserted, literally, shanghaied for services in port.. As the story was told, one of these women took her own life. Alice knew, as did her father, that this romance carried a certain amount of risk. However, Alice hoped that, for her, things would be different.

As worried as Alice and her father were about this issue, the war increasingly became the dominant factor in the scenario. Just like the heavy seas that situated Alice’s birth in Swatow, the Sino-Japanese War changed all the plans that the young couple had been making for their wedding day.

In mid-October of 1938, Sacramento moved into Shanghai Harbor, and anchored near the American Standard Oil facility on the Whangpoo River. This facility was in the International Quarter of Shanghai, and the Japanese, who now had full military occupation of the city, respected this distinction, since they were not at war with those countries – yet. However, on the other streets of the city the Japanese sailors were a known threat to any woman who ventured out of the International Quarter. Chinese civilians living in Shanghai were being terrorized and tortured by the Japanese soldiers, and it was not unusual to see Chinese women raped and murdered. From reports, John knew that on October 12 Japanese troops made a landing just 30 miles north of Hong Kong. However, the British could not respond to the landing, even so close to their own territory, because they had no assurance of American support should war break out.

October 16 1938

Cable from John Bulkeley to Alice Wood

Intend to consummate plans first November if convenient to you. Shanghai or Hong Kong depending on the situation. Can you be ready. Love John

October 18 1938

Letter from John Bulkeley to Alice Wood

I have been following the movements of the Japs very closely at Swatow, and so far have been relieved that no actual landing has taken place. But I am very sure that there will be a landing…and when that landing comes, I don’t want you there. I think we (Sacramento) may be sent to Hong Kong in a hurry….it is sage to count on going ahead with our plans on the first of November. I have reserved a room – double beds too – at the Metropole Hotel..(in the International Quarter at Shanghai)..If you can, catch the first boat to Shanghai…and let me know by cable what ship you are coming on and I will try to meet it. In case I can’t, go immediately to the Metropole Hotel. It is opposite the American Consulate….If we should sail (from Shanghai) suddenly ourselves, I will be sure to cable you. And if you should be forced to leave Swatow by the Japs, you will always have this place waiting for you here.

October 19 1938

Cable from John Bulkeley to Alice Wood

Possibility sail to Hong Kong Wednesday. Desire to carry out original plans there. Letter follow. Love always, John.

October 20

Letter from John Bulkeley to Alice Wood

I have just found out that we are definitely going to stay in Shanghai till about 21 December. So, Darling, I will expect you up here whenever you can get here. If anything goes wrong and I am unable to meet you, you are to go directly to the Metropole Hotel. But I fully intend to meet you.

October 20

Cable from John Bulkeley to Alice Wood

Ship remain in Shanghai. Come as soon as convenient. Cable ship and date arrival. Reservation made for you at Metropole Hotel. Love John

Alice’s boss, Gordon Campbell, was also aware of the uncertainty of the future in Swatow, and gave Alice permission to quit work at the end of October. In this way, Alice was able to sail out of Swatow for Shanghai on the first available ship in early November. She recalls a tearful good-bye to her father, holding her one piece of luggage in which she had carefully packed her wedding gown and veil. But the 25-year-old woman had no idea how any of this was going to turn out.

John did meet Alice at the dock in Shanghai. He quickly escorted her to the safety of The Metropole Hotel, which stood opposite the American Consulate’s office. Upon entering their room with the double beds, Alice was overwhelmed with the aroma of several bouquets of yellow roses, which were, and always have been, her favorite. John explained to her that Captain Allen, the Commanding Officer of the Sacramento, offered to give Alice away at the ceremony in Shanghai, but they first had to complete certain paperwork to make the marriage legal.

As they set about this task on the city streets of occupied Shanghai, Alice and John soon became inundated with paperwork which had to be completed and stamped by several offices before they could get married. The Japanese soldiers who patrolled the sidewalks, streets, and buildings, made this task not only more difficult, but also increased their growing sense of urgency. The Sacramento was on a high alert, which meant John had the duty every other day. In layman’s terms, he had to spend 24 of every 48 hours physically on the ship and on watch.. Days slipped by and the paperwork allowing them to be married was still not complete.

On November 10, Cecil Wood sent a cable to his daughter in the room with double beds at The Metropole Hotel in the Japanese-occupied city of Shanghai. Alone at The Metropole, Alice read the cable. He was deeply concerned about her, and in no uncertain terms, he instructed her to return to Swatow if she was not already married. When John came in late that afternoon from the ship, he read the cable. The couple quickly left the hotel and dashed across the street to the American Consulate to see what, if anything, could be done.

One of the Consulate’s employees reviewed the paperwork the couple had completed, as well as that which remained to be done. The three of them looked at the calendar on the employee’s desk. The next day, Friday, was an official holiday, so all the offices would be closed. The weekend that followed was a three day weekend which meant that nothing could be done for four more days. John and Alice completely understood her father’s command, and they also understood each other. They requested an interview with the Judge Advocate at the American Consulate, and made their plea. Special Judge Nelson Lurton of the United States Court for China married John Bulkeley and Alice Wood on November 10, 1938. The couple immediately sent a cable to Alice’s father, to say that she was now Mrs. John D. Bulkeley.

John and his bride then rode on a launch down the Whangpoo River, which runs through Shanghai, to where the Sacramento was at anchor. Alice and John shared the launch with several young marines, and she recalls that there was an uneasy feeling on the small boat as it made its way down the river. The couple got off at the former Standard Oil dock in the International Quarter of the city. Standard Oil, as well as the other American and British companies, had already evacuated Shanghai. Sacramento was guarding the abandoned Standard Oil facilities which had recently been threatened by some Chinese Guerillas. The large homes which had once housed the executives’ families were empty. The residents had been evacuated, as it was felt to be only a matter of time before the Japanese would occupy this part of the city as well. The Whangpoo River was quiet, and eerily deserted. The couple boarded the ship at the dinner hour, so they went into the wardroom and ate with the ship’s officers. There was no champagne or cake, but John’s fellow officers took a few pictures.

After dinner, Ensign Bulkeley finally told his Alice that he had the duty that night. The groom would have to spend his wedding night on board the ship. Alice recalls that she was not upset about this development. Very little could surprise her at that point. She remembers being completely exhausted from her last few days in Shanghai, and she felt that nothing more could bother her, now that their marriage had finally been accomplished. However, night had already fallen on the Whangpoo River, so it was not safe for her to return to The Metropole Hotel. The officers of the wardroom knew of John’s situation when he boarded with Alice, and, together with John, they put a plan together. A plan which they dutifully carried out.

A few of the officers and John escorted Alice off Sacramento and walked her over to a large, abandoned house which was formerly the residence of the manager of Standard Oil in Shanghai. As they approached the house, Alice saw some marines who were patrolling the area. John and his fellow officers took her around to the back of the house, opened a door, and went down some stairs to the basement of the house. Alice remembers the room as being fairly clean, with cement floors, a small cot, one light, and a tiny washroom. The cot, Alice noted, had clean sheets on it. Someone had made preparations for her, but Alice recalls that “It looked kind of bleak and cold, and I shivered.” She also recalls that none of the officers were joking as they had done through dinner. In fact, everyone was very serious in their manner

Alice stood in the middle of the room wearing the suit she had been married in, holding her pocketbook. The other officers quietly filed out of the room and up the stairs. John, her husband of a few hours, was the last to leave.

“John gave me a great big hug, a kiss, and then his .45 caliber service pistol.” As he put the gun into her hand, he said “You may need this.”

Ensign Bulkeley shut the basement door behind him, and Alice stood there looking at the gun for a while. She had never held one in her hand, never mind fired a weapon, in her life. She put the gun under her pillow, her pocketbook beside the cot, and lay down to go to sleep.

“I could close my eyes and feel safe, knowing that John was out there to protect me. I was so happy to be his wife.”

The next morning a group of officers, including John, arrived at the basement and took Alice back to the ship for breakfast. Ensign Bulkeley had the day off, so the newlyweds rode the launch back up the Whangpoo River and returned to The Metropole Hotel, where they spent the next few days on their honeymoon.. Alice recalls standing with her husband at the window in their room and looking down on the city s below. It was a particularly busy street, with many groups of Japanese soldiers moving up and down it constantly. John had a BB gun in the room with him, and Alice recalls that he took great delight in hitting the Japanese soldiers in the backside with the air pistol, and then watching the soldiers look around to see who did it. Alice reflected on this memory for a moment, and then, with a mischievous smile, she added: “They never looked UP. I don’t know why.”

On a foggy morning just one month later, Alice watched Sacramento slip out of the harbor sailing for New York. The ship was badly in need of an overhaul, and so she was heading for the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In fact, the ship was in such bad shape, that the crew was taking bets on whether or not Sacramento would even make it to New York before her engines gave out. Alice was John’s wife, but she was not an American citizen. To get passage to the States, she would have to wait until John arrived in New York and then send for her. Once there, she could not apply for American citizenship until after she lived in the United States for three years.

After the ship departed, Alice traveled south to Hong Kong to stay with her sister. Through the grapevine in Hong Kong, Alice found out that within a week of their marriage, John had been told by his senior Admiral that he had made a terrible mistake in marrying her, a Eurasian of Japanese and German blood. He was warned that his career in the Navy was in jeopardy. Alice knew how much John loved the Navy and wanted to make it his career. They both knew that this war between Japan and China would soon extend into a war between Japan and The United States. Even worse for her mixed blood, the States might also be dragged into a war with Germany.

Sacramento would reach New York in six months, and in that amount of time Alice felt John could consider the situation for himself and make his mind. He could continue with the marriage and send for her, or let her to remain in China and have the marriage annulled. While Alice was in Hong Kong, waiting for word from John, her father wrote her the following letter:

Dear Alice,

…In the meantime, you should do all you can to fit yourself to meet whatever circumstances this outcome may be, whether good or bad. I do not know what provisions John has made for you. If it is sufficient, I do not think it is wise to seek salaried employment at present. It would be better were you to endeavor to raise your standard of education to fit you to that position you thought to assume and which may, despite the present impasse, some day be yours. And don’t think I have no sympathy. I am full of it, but it won’t help you any however much I talk about it.

If you can afford to do so, enroll at the University for any post-graduate course that would help John in his career and make a determined effort to get high grades. I advise this because for all you know the Naval Authorities may have set up observations on your movement to decide their action when your case comes up for a final consideration. It would be greatly in your favour if you were reported as a post-graduate student at the University, and not an underpaid typist at some petty little firm.

In the meanwhile, while preparing for the worst, refuse to believe that anything very bad will happen. Look on the bright side, keep cheerful, and work hard – damn hard.

With much love,

Your affectionate father

In May of 1939, six months after departing Shanghai, Sacramento arrived to her drydock in New York. John, the chief engineer of the ship that wasn’t supposed to make it to New York, promptly sent word to Alice in Hong Kong. She was to join him in New York as soon as possible. Alice made her arrangements to sail from Hong Kong for San Fransisco on board The President Cleveland. However, she had one more short sea journey to make before she left China. She knew she may never return again. never to return again. She wanted to visit her home one more time. She cabled her father of her desire, and he answered with the following letter.

May 24 1939

My dear Alice,
Your old room is ready for you and if I can’t put up with your cooking, you will jolly well have to put up with mine. I went off to see Captain Nilsen, the skipper of a Norwegian steamship, to try to arrange for a passage for you. He is a good sort. I had a very good time on board, and he will bring you up without charge. You may have to sleep on the deck if his cabins are booked, but otherwise you will be comfortable. The ship will arrive in Hong Kong on Saturday, and will sail for Swatow on or about the third. When you come up bring the best egg beater you can find in Hong Kong and also a smaller edition in a glass jar for making mayonnaise. The damn cook had broken all of our eggbeaters so I had to become an expert with three bamboos tied together. I am working with these sticks just as well as I can.

Make your arrangements with Captain Nilsen and don’t go near the ship’s agents and introduce yourself as my daughter. The old man still has his uses and one or two kicks left yet.

Still merry and bright.

Love to all,

Your father

In the spring of 1939 the Japanese occupied Manchuria, Peking, and Nanking, as far south as the Yangtse River. The majority of the Chinese people had fled inland to relative safety, as the Japanese bombed with the intent to invade and occupy the major treaty ports of Canton, Wenchow,
Ningteh, and Swatow. Cecil, who had previously worked with the Japanese in his role as the port pilot, felt sure that he would receive special treatment from the Japanese when they finally took over Swatow.

Alice vividly remembers her last week in Swatow with her father. “Shrapnel from the bombings often fell over our house and into the yard, but the house did escape a direct hit. Our servants had all fled to the interior of China, so my father and I had to fend for ourselves. On the day I was to leave Swatow, Father brought a bottle of champagne to the ship, and we had a toast to my future in America, and the hope that we would meet again. As the ship pulled away from the dock for the overnight trip to Hong Kong, to my great surprise, on the pier had gathered some of my old faithful servants. They must have heard of my departure through the grapevine and they let off a string of Chinese firecrackers. As the ship pulled away and the lone figure of my father on the pier began to fade, I saw us together at our home, looking over all the precious things we had enjoyed over the years, and wished I could have taken with me, but now lost forever, but most of all, my father.”

As the ship brought Alice out of that familiar harbor for the last time, her eyes rested on the Japanese warships which stood, menacingly, at its entrance. She stood on the deck of the ship, with her suitcase next to her. She took only one item from her family’s once elegant home before she left, which was a baby picture of herself. At their final good-bye, her father handed her a small parcel, which she tucked into her suitcase for safe-keeping. Her inheritance, however, lay in what this young woman tucked into her heart as she sailed out of Swatow harbor.

Three Years Later

In the spring of 1942 the American people needed a hero. The United States was at war in Europe and in Asia, and things were not going well. In the Atlantic, German submarines were extracting a hideous toll on allied shipping. In the Pacific, the U.S. Fleet suffered a devastating blow at Pearl Harbor. The United States was in retreat across the Pacific. A glimmer of hope came with the successful evacuation of General MacArthur, his wife and young son from Corrigidor, a fortress in Manila Bay where the last of American and Phillipino forces would eventually surrender to the Japanese. Lt. John Bulkeley commanded the only PT Boat Squadron in the Pacific. His boat, PT 41, carried the MacArthur family to the safety of an island airfield, from which the General and his family were flown to Australia. Four years later, the movie “They Were Expendable” told the story of this rescue to the American people in gripping detail. However, Bulkeley received his recognition far sooner than opening night of the movie. When the young lieutenant returned to New York City shortly after this assignment, he received a hero’s welcome from the city. The ticker-tape parade stretched fourteen blocks along Seventh Avenue.

“An estimated 250,000 cheering men and women, ten rows deep, lined both sides of Seventh Avenue, and tens of thousands more leaned out of building windows to watch and applaud. Army, Navy, and Marine Units, a score of military bands, and the 1,000 members of the Women’s Voluntary Service and the Red Cross marched along the fourteen block route. A huge white sign, held high, read “All New York Welcomes John D. Bulkeley.”

The New York Daily Mirror carried the story the next day. The picture on the front page featured Lt. Bulkeley in the back seat of the convertible, with Alice beside him. The script under the picture notes that is wife his “proudly smiling.” Alice had just become a citizen of The United States. Upon her arrival to New York, she moved in with her mother-in-law who lived in a four-room apartment in Long Island City. While she rode along Seventh Avenue, her mother-in-law was caring for her 20-month-old daughter and her one-month-old son, John, who had been born with cerebral palsy and other physical defects. Alice’s mother, sister, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew were interned in Camp Stanley in Hong Kong as British prisoners of the Japanese. Her younger brother Eric was in a prison camp in Osaka, Japan. Her father had been interned by the Japanese in Shanghai. She had received no mail from them. She was not even certain that they were still alive.

Alice spoke with a strong British accent, and her new American friends, knowing she was born in China, assumed she had a Chinese father and an English mother. Alice did not correct them. She had been dealing with her Eurasian blood since filling out that form in middle school. Her German blood would also be an issue, as the war with Germany which she and John had foreseen, was now underway. For the sake of her husband and her children, she did not reveal the German and Japanese blood in her to people outside her immediate family for many years. Japanese-Americans were being interned in camps in this country which had just granted her citizenship.

Alice also knew, as she sat in the convertible trying smile for the crowd, that her husband would shortly return to the Philippines and come face to face with the Japanese military himself. She thought she had lost John during her last pregnancy when he was reported missing in action. He later showed up in Australia. But Alice was no fool She clearly understood that her husband would soon be in grave danger again.

One year later, 1943, Alice received a letter from John Liley, a former colleague at Butterfield & Swire in Swatow, who had been interned with her father in Shanghai. John managed to escape, and Cecil asked John, that if he got out, he get word to Alice. John wrote that when the Japanese took over Swatow, they gave Cecil no special treatment as he had hoped. The Japanese first confined all of the 34 remaining Anglo – Americans in Swatow to their houses, and then locked them all up in the British Consulate. Eventually, the Japanese loaded them into the No. 3 hold of a filthy Japanese coaster and took them to Shanghai, where John and Cecil shared a room at the defunct Columbia Country Club. There was a terrible lack of food, with yams serving as the chief staple of their diet.

John Liley’s letter went on:
“Cecil remained surprisingly active for his years, though, I must say, his face revealed the fact that he seemed to be aging considerably, and I suspected that he did at times weep in the darkness. But this, Alice, in any case, is nothing of which to be ashamed. Talking with him reminded me of what someone once wrote about Lincoln – ‘It seemed in his later years as though the knuckles of sorrow had pushed his eyes deep into his sockets.’ He was full of principle, resolution, and fight. All he could learn of his wife and children is that they were in Hong Kong in the Stanley Gaol, and conditions were what one could expect from the Japanese. Your father spoke of you and John at considerable length. Your father and I followed John’s exploits and career over the San Francisco Radio. Needless to say he was more than a little pleased that you are sharing with John a very distinguished Naval career.”

Liley’s letter confirmed for Alice that her father heard about that parade on Seventh Avenue in New York City on the radio, sequestered in his room, interned in Shanghai. At the end of the war, the Wood’s relatives in Canada were able to sponsor her family in Hong Kong to Canada. However, no one was ever able to make contact with her father in Shanghai. Cecil Wood died in Shanghai on March 26, 1943.

The small parcel which her father gave to her upon her own departure from Swatow contained a set of five matching handkerchiefs, hand-embroidered in Swatow. Alice framed each one separately, and gave one to each of her five children. On the back of the frame is a copy of the letter which her father wrote and enclosed with the small parcel he gave his daughter on the last day that they were together.

June 3, 1939

My dear Alice,
It is an American custom to “root for your own home town.” Lest you should have shame for the place where you were born, these exquisite examples of an exquisite art will, I hope, enable you to bear yourself bravely against all contumely of ignorant people. When time shall have given you memories of the yesteryears, I am certain that not least among the gentlefolk whom you have known you will place Ah-Sim, Ah-Kah, Yeong-Kee and his boatmen. Therefore, should China and the Chinese people ever be disparaged in your hearing, tell what you yourself know of them, and take pride in rooting for the place where you were born. Display these handkerchiefs and defy anyplace, anywhere to produce needlework equal to them.

In America the people take you at your own valuation. So, boost yourself, boost your birthplace, boost your nationality and everything else that is yours. But value other people and what they boast of at 5 cents on the dollar.

Your affectionate Father

I interviewed Alice on a quiet Sunday afternoon in the home of her son, Peter, a Captain in the United States Navy. He and his wife, Carol, live in a home on the Lynnhaven River with their two children, Lauren and Chris. Alice visits them regularly from her home in Washington, D.C. Towards the end of my interview with her, I asked what advice she would give to a young woman today.

She looked down at her hands folded on her lap for a moment while she mentally composed her answer. Then, she raised one hand, with her fingers slightly parted, and gracefully swept the expanse of her son’s elegant living room in which she was seated.

“Things mean nothing. These things, I mean, like these – around us in this room. They can all be gone tomorrow. It is what we carry around inside of us that will get us through life.”

EPILOGUE

Admiral Bulkeley’s 55-year career reads like Pug Henry in The Winds of War – if there was a crisis, Bulkeley was there. Shortly after the ticker-tape parade, Bulkeley returned to his plywood-hulled PT boats in the Pacific, followed by duty in the Atlantic that included reconnoitering Utah Beach for the Normandy Invasion. Shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy, whom Bulkeley had personally recruited for PT boat duty, sent the Admiral to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to keep Castro in line. He is a legend in the United States Navy.

Bulkeley’s personal reputation was that of a man who never took himself too seriously. One day he was shopping on a Naval Base in San Diego, and a young Ensign recognized him, even though Bulkelely chose not to wear his name tag. The Ensign was in absolute awe of the legend standing before him, and mumbled out “Sir, you’ve been one of my heroes all my life!” He smiled, and replied, “Well, thank you, son. But then again, you haven’t lived a very long life!”

Shortly after his seventy-seventh birthday, in 1988, Bulkeley stood in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations with only a handful of guests. After serving in the Navy for 55 years, John D. Bulkeley was being “:frocked,” or promoted, to Vice Admiral, which is designated by the wearing of three silver stars. The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Carlisle Trost, pinned the first three-star epaulet on John Bulkeley’s shoulder, and Alice, his wife, pinned on the second epaulet. Then, the Admiral turned to his wife, whom, he declared, “has been my first mate and inspiration for fifty years.” He pinned on her a brooch of three stars centered with diamonds.

Perhaps the Admiral was remembering his meeting four years earlier with Prince Phillip and thinking, with, of course, all due respect to the Queen, ” I don’t think so.”

Several summers ago, one of my colleagues was involved in a terrible automobile accident. She was driving out of her quiet Kempsville neighborhood when an SUV slammed into the driver’s side of her Volkswagon Jetta. She survived, but her pelvis was broken, a rib was cracked, and her spine was fractured. That same summer, two weeks before her car accident, I was sexually assaulted. I had been sunbathing on of our Bayside beaches around noon on a Thursday, when a man jumped on my back. While holding me down with one hand planted on my shoulder, he sat on my back and masturbated. I survived, but inside I was broken, cracked, and fractured.

My colleague had a physical therapist who worked with her very other day. With the help of this therapist, she learned how to navigate around her house with a walker while her bones mended. I had a counselor who worked with me, too. She helped me navigate my way out of the trauma of sexual assault, with the goal that I would return to the woman I was before this happened to me. You see, for about a month after the assault, I could go no further than my own back yard. My house and yard were the only places I felt safe. When I did leave, I was right next to my husband, with my hand firmly planted in his. He was my walker.

And I couldn’t talk to anyone about what happened but my counselor and my husband. It was about six weeks after the assault that I drove the three hours north to where my son was working for the summer to tell just him about it, face to face. He quietly listened, saying nothing, but watching my face for every nuance of emotion it might reveal. When I finished, he had a few questions, one of which was how his father was handling this. By then I wanted to lighten the moment for my son, so I smiled and said that his father wants just five minutes alone with this guy. My attempt at humor failed. His eyes kept a steady gaze on mine, and he said “It would only take me three, Mom.”

I also remember sitting in church that summer, surrounded by people whom I trust – people who have helped my through some rough spots over the last fifteen years. If this man had beaten me up on the outside instead of on the inside, I would be in the hospital recovering from the wounds and these good, good people would be praying for my speedy recovery. But it does not work that way for the victims of sexual assault. My inability to talk was not related to any sense of shame; I was spared that. I could not talk about it because of the pain of sexual assault.

It was not like any other pain I’d known; pains I could point to and say “It hurts right here”. No. This pain felt like an iron-cored mass of heavy ooze slithering along my insides. Sometimes it enveloped my heart, and I could not feel things. Sometimes it lodged in mind for the day, and I could not think. And then, whenever I thought to talk about it, it lodged itself in my throat and I could not speak. I never knew when or where it would be next, nor how long before it would move one.

My colleague returned to work. Her physical therapy was done, her bones mended; she was back to her old self. I am just about back to my old self as well. But when I am in any public place, and suddenly find myself alone, my shoulders tighten up, and I start looking behind me. My hand reaches for my bag and the can of mace I always carry now. My counselor assured me that this fear will also diminish with time, and I believe her. She was right about everything else along this rocky path.

The man who did this to me needs counseling. I suggest that he gets it because as his perversion escalates, he loses control, and then he gets caught. Newspapers protect the victims of sexual assaults, but the paper has no problem printing the pictures of the perpetrators. The paper also puts their name right underneath their picture. Then, everyone knows his dirty secret. That’s when it’s his turn to start looking over his shoulder, for there are some folks that want just five minutes alone with him; there are others who only need three.

I go for a lot of walks. Upon reaching the end of my driveway, I make the decision whether to turn right or left. Right usually wins, as that leads to the beach, which is one of my favorite haunts and always pleases the Chesapeake Bay Retriever at my side. But some days something weighs heavy on my mind, and the only thing for it is some time away from my own problems. On those days, I turn left and follow in the footprints of Mrs. Adam Thorowgood.

In 1621, the Virginia Beach renown Englishman, Captain Thorowgood, arrived to these shores, worked off his indenture, and returned to his hometown in England – Grimston-King’s Lynn. He married Sarah Offley, whose father was a successful business man, returning a married man to Virginia in 1628. The young couple first lived in Hampton, then known as Kiqutan, where they started their family having three girls in three years.  While Sarah was having babies, her husband was establishing himself in the area. He was successful, being noted for enabling 105 English citizens to leave for Virginia as indentured servants as he himself had done as a younger man. For this he was given a patent for 5350 acres of land – what is now northern Virginia Beach.

Adam, Sarah and their three daughters – and a son (Adam) who was born when they left Kiquotan – lived in a wooden house, the  Grand Manor House, which was comprised of six rooms, a passage, a kitchen, and a cellar. It was here that the he and his wife raised their son and three daughters. When their son grew and  married, that young couple moved to a location which is about a twenty minute walk away from his parent’s homesite. This couple’s home is what we now know as the Adam Thoroughgood House.

When my brick and wooden  house was being built in 1955, the grading of the road bank revealed broken Indian and European artifacts. Floyd Painter, the area’s resident archeologist, heard about this and started snooping around as he was known to do. He recognized that many of the European objects were identical to those related to the earliest phase at Jamestown. The archeologist received some financial backing from the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences and started a salvage excavation of the site. With the help of two or three of his buddies, they recovered weapons, armor, tools, household hardware, both window and bottle glass, and Indian and European tobacco pipes; in short, all the necessities of life. The remains of the post-hole foundation and brick chimney, designated by Painter as the cellar of Captain Thorowgood’s Grand Manor House, measured 22 feet by about 9 feet wide. Floyd Painter’s excavation determined that Sarah and Adam had raised their family on the same plot of land where my husband and I, about 300 years later, raised ours.

Now, the Captain’s name is heard a lot in Virginia Beach, but being a navy wife myself, I am intrigued by Mrs. Adam Thorowgood.  In fact, Captain Thorowgood died in 1640, leaving Sarah to marry in 1641 the guy next door – a Captain John Gookin  – who owned pretty much all of what we now call Norfolk.  At the time widows were not widows for very long, as, for several good reasons, settlers were encouraged to have large families. But Captain Gookin died within a year after their marriage, the story being he got into some trouble with some native Americans around the Nansemond River. This time, Sarah did not remarry immediately: for four years she carried on, completing the brick house her first husband started   and running a tavern in the wooden house where she had raised her family.

You can read of Sarah’s activities in the Court Records from the time period  as her name is featured frequently.  Once she appeared in court because a man had been found dead in the pig pen behind her  house, and it had to be determined that he died of natural causes – which it was. The arrangements she made to have the brick house completed are also detailed in court records and serve to shed light on the two brick techniques used to complete the brick house.

But the most telling story  – in my humble opinion- about Sarah involved  Old Donation Church. Adam and Sarah served as  founders of the Old Donation Episcopal Church: the first service of this church was held on May 17^th  1637 in the Thorowgood’s wooden home. This group of settlers went on to build a brick church, which was completed in 1639.  Fifteen years later, 1654, in spite of much resistance from the parish members, Sarah allowed 45 Indians into the church to witness the baptism of the chief’s son. Sarah died three years later in August 1657. She would have been 48 years old. The baptismal font used for the chief’s son still stands in Old Donation Church today.

But back to my walk. As I make my way from my house – which stands where Sarah’s wooden house once stood,  to the brick house – I think about her life. I feel certain she walked the same terrain quite often as I am also certain her son and his wife settled in the brick house and Sarah stayed put – to run the tavern but, moreso, this place was where her roots were. This is what I would have done, for I know the meaning of roots – most especially when you leave home and set life up somewhere else, as Sarah did, and so many navy wives do.  And in my thoughts about Sarah, I know that when her son married and moved to his own place a twenty minute walk away, this displaced Englishwoman finally had family to go and visit – on a Sunday afternoon, perhaps. There is no doubt in my mind but that she would walk  over there to see how things were going for the young couple. She must have worried a lot about them because it could not have been very easy to keep a house going back then. She, of all people, would know about that.

So when I need to get away from my own problems, I retrace the path that I imagine she took to her son’s place, and I try to figure out what one of the first mothers in Virginia Beach worried about. Indians? A harvest that would be good enough? A very pregnant daughter-in-law? A seriously ill husband? No doctor? The weather? There is a saying in this area that if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes and it will change. Can you imagine trying to figure out the weather around here without The Weather Channel?

I imagine that Sarah would get to her son’s place and have a cup of tea, a chat with her son and daughter-in-law, and then make her way home again. She probably felt better for the walk, and her worries were not so large as when she left the Grand Manor House. Somehow, they’d all manage, as I, too, feel better able to manage my own problems when I arrive back to my  house after a walk.

Floyd Painter wrote a detailed article about his excavation of the Grand Manor House, which was printed in the Quarterly Bulletin of the Archeological Society of Virginia in March of 1959. Painter ends his scholarly article asking that this small spot of land, that has been a home site by his estimation since the last great Ice Age, would “always remain a home site, where men of the future may rest in security and comfort, amid family and friends.” There is no historical marker for Captain Thorowood’s home site on my front lawn, nor will there be as long as I have a pulse. There have always been, however, the markers of a home site. From big wheels to bicycles, skateboards to surfboards – all have been strewn across the front lawn and driveway, while from the shed in the back yard came the pounding beats of a young boy teaching himself to play the drums. The man of the house these days, a Captain Boland, putters away in the garage in his never-ending task of keeping the old place ship-shape. The Chessie stands guard over it all from the shade of the Crape Myrtle. The artifacts I come across each fall as I put my pansies in are  not only fragments of Sarah’s dishes and teacups but also the forgotten toys of two little boys- dirt-encrusted water pistols, GI Joes, a magic wand from a Christmas long ago, and the plastic wrapper of a whoopee cushion found in the furthest corner of the yard under a soggy pile of leaves.

Mr. Painter would be happy to walk around this ancient homesite now, for he would see that his wish has come true. House after house, street after street, he would see places just like mine, where folks continue to rest in security and comfort, amid family and friends. Sarah, I believe, would be astonished – and pleased – to see what became of what she and Adam started here in Virginia Beach.

I want to thank Old Donation Church,  and specifically Bob Perrine, for the extensive collection of  information they have researched and published on their website at http://1bob9.blogspot.com.  I f you want to read more about  Adam and Sarah, I suggest you check this website out.

My mother died at noon on the day before Mother’s Day. I had spent that Friday evening with her, arriving at the nursing home around six in the evening. She was sleeping, and hooked up to a ventilator across her face covering her nose. It was much later that it was explained to me that this machine was pushing oxygen into the ventilator which helped her to breath. The noise of her breathing was the only sound in the room; it was a steady sound. Around nine on that Friday night, the contents of the feeding bag overflowed onto her nightdress and the sheets. There was a foul smell to it. I called for the nurse, who explained that my mother’s stomach just couldn’t take it in anymore. I left the room for the moment it took for the nurse to remove my mother’s feeding bag.

I nestled my fourth finger into her right hand, securing her fingers around mine with my other hand. Her hand felt a little cold, but I could keep it warm. I watched her. It appeared to me that my mother would not give up till she was certain her job was done. I told her that we were all fine. That she had nothing to worry about. It’s done. You did it all. So well, too. Let go, Mom.

Someone told me just the other day that it is not so much in the letting go, but recognizing that it’s already gone.

I left around midnight, and returned early the next morning to the same sound. Around nine, my brothers and sisters started arriving, and by noon all seven of us were there. We gathered around her bed, and my brother Tom, his own mother’s doctor, removed the ventilator. I remember one last gasp for breath, and then her silence.

We recited the Our Father and three Hail Mary’s. We are Catholics.

I struggle with the resurrection. I do believe in what this man Jesus had to say: his message speaks to my heart. But when the story reaches the point about the empty tomb and the risen Lord, I smell fiction. It seems to me that the writers of this story made some stuff up. I can understand that they only wanted to help us by taking away the fear of death. But I often wonder if there is the need of a resurrection and the promise of an afterlife to dispel the fear of death. My mother told me, one day over lunch in the nursing home, that she was certain that when it was all over, you were just put back into the earth, and that was the end of things.

There was a geranium on the window sill of my mother’s room in the nursing home where she died. I took it with me when I left that Saturday around three to drive the six hours back to my home in Virginia. I could not leave empty handed. But I could not sleep that night,for I could still hear her labored breathing.

Then next morning my husband took our two sons to nine o’clock mass. I stayed home, as I knew I could not face anyone just yet. Besides, I had a lot to do. On Monday we were leaving early for drive to northern New Jersey for the wake that night and the funeral on Tuesday. I got the boys’ clothes together and packed, and then looked in my closet and realized I had no black. I had black and white stripes, but no black. Mom was always pleased when I had something new on that looked good on me. From a very early age, I had known that this gave her pleasure. I would go get something good and black for her funeral. Anyways, by then I thought it might be good to get out for a while.

There was a flower shop next to the first store that I went to. By now, it was around one in the afternoon. A little girl of about five emerged from the flower shop with her father. She wore an egg-shell blue dress that fell just below her knees and was softly gathered in the back with a string of lace. Her long, silky blonde hair hung down her back, and one hand was in her father’s while the other held a bouquet of flowers. She was having what looked like a serious conversation with her father about their next errand as they moved toward their car in the parking lot.

Then it hit me. My God, it’s Mother’s Day. I looked around and realized that the parking lot and sidewalk were full of men and children busily going about last minute shopping for their wives and their mothers. I took a deep breath, and kept walking.

There was nothing good and black there, so I returned to my car. As I drove to the next set of stores down the road about a mile or so, I thought perhaps I had lost it, and should not be out and about on my own. This was crazy. But no, I reasoned, I really had to do this. I had nothing to wear to my mother’s funeral. The next set of stores was also full of the same last minute shoppers, so I concentrated on the job at hand.

I spotted a black silk suit. I picked out my size in a jacket, blouse, and skirt, and walked toward the dressing room. The saleslady spotted me, and as it was an expensive suit, I guess she thought she could help me or should help me or ..maybe I looked as bad as I felt, and she was suspicious. I don’t know. I put the suit on to see if it fit. The saleslady asked if everything was ok., so I opened the door to show her that I was ok. She looked at me, and then she said “ And of course, you can tuck the blouse in, too, you know.”

I had not taken the time to do that, I just wanted to see if it fit. It did, so I told her I would take it.

After I paid for it, I watched as she put a plastic bag over the suit so I could carry it home on a hangar. At the cash register, she had been trying to make some small talk with me, but I was not responding. As she handed the hangar to me, she tried one more time. She said it was a lovely suit, and asked if it was a special gift for Mother’s Day. I managed a smile, and said no – no special occasion. I remarked that it was a shame she had to work on Mother’s Day, and she replied that when she got off work that evening at five, her husband would pick her up and then their children would have dinner ready for all of them. She was smiling by then at just the thought of it. I told to have a great evening, and walked out to my car.

Then the thought occurred to me that what I had just done was a good thing. I could have said it was for my mother’s funeral, but then I may have ruined her Mother’s Day. No need for that. And then I realized that it was my mother who had taught me how to do that. What I’d just done. A good thing.

That geranium has presided in my dining room window since 1998. I tend it regularly with great care. Why are we mothers so concerned with the growing of flowers? Why do sweet little girls in egg-shell blue dresses bring bouquets to them every Mother’s Day? Could it possibly be that each spring, as the cold dirt of the earth is warmed by the spring sun, the flowers inch their way up and out for a breath of air? And could it possibly be that it is the world of our mothers in those flowers, their world that slipped into the grave with them, which comes back in those vivid blossoms for a few precious weeks of spring to remind us once again that we are here to do good things?

Could it possibly be there never is an end to things, Mom?

I had been teaching English as a Second language at the community college for four years when my husband was transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where we were to be stationed for two years. The last day of class was a beautiful spring day, and my students had many questions about what courses they were supposed to take in the fall semester if they passed all their final exams. Using the blackboard, I went step-by-step through the sequence of classes, writing the title of each course they were required to take next. These students knew that I taught two courses; the writing course they had just completed, and the reading course for the next level up – the one to which they would be advancing. They asked if I would again be teaching that reading course in the fall.

I lied and said yes. I had practiced telling this lie the night before, in front of my bathroom mirror, just in case they asked. I feared that I could not tell my students that I was leaving without choking up. Although I was looking forward to the experience of living in Guantanamo Bay, the saying of good-bye to my students, and the community college student body that I had grown so fond of, was far too difficult for me. So I lied, and said I would see them in the fall.

They filed out of the classroom, with See you next year coming from every other one. Finally, no one was left in the room but one young man from Japan. Yoshi was about 19 years old, slim, short, shiny black hair, gold wire-rimmed glasses, and immaculate clothes. He stood by his desk in the room that was now still and quiet. He walked with purpose to where I was standing by the teacher’s desk until he was standing directly in front of me. Yoshi proceeded to scan my face, but with a softness in his jet black eyes. Then, with the same softness in his voice as I saw in his eyes, he said “You are not coming back.”

An enormous knot lodged in my throat, and all I could manage was one nod of my head in agreement. Yoshi raised his chin, straightened his back, placed his arms squarely at his sides, and paused for one moment in front of me. Then, he gracefully bent forward, lowering himself in a bow of farewell to his teacher. Before I could recover, he had walked out of the room.

I am thinking about this moment from so long ago on another beautiful spring day as I sit and watch another set of students who will file out of the classroom upon finishing the writing of their final exam. Benjamin is not here for his final exam, but I will remember him as vividly as I have Yoshi over all these years. He was tall, unusual for a male student from Taiwan, and slim almost to the point of skinny. His hair was cropped, and stood up on end just a bit – dashing, and showing a sense of style unusual among my male Asian students. Benjamin certainly had style: he also had beautiful hands with long, slender fingers. Over the course of the semester, I had come to look forward to in-class writing assignments so I could watch Benjamin write. He began by scribbling a word or two, and then flat-out dropped his pencil onto the surface of his desk. He then closed his eyes three-quarters of the way, and seemed to think about what he was trying to say. At this point, both his hands were raised out over the desk, moving in unison with his thoughts. Benjamin was shaping his ideas with his long, graceful fingers. After a few moments, he picked up his pencil, wrote down two or three lines of words, dropped the pencil back onto the desk, closing his eyes, raising his hands again.

I have found that my Asian students have a tendency to think in pictures. It stands to reason, as their first language is not communicated in letters but in characters, which are actually pictures. Yong, a Chinese physicist who works as a researcher for NASA, gave me perhaps my best confirmation of this theory. I was under contract working one-on-one with Yong because Yong’s colleagues had trouble understanding his speech. “He mumbles. Perhaps he is not confident. He does not move his lips when he talks. For an audience , he can start out speaking clearly, but then when he gets engrossed in the material he is presenting, he slips back to this mumbling.” Further down on the initial assessment form, his supervisor noted that Yong was the top scientist in the world in his field, remote sensing, and that he has great potential. But he mumbles.

His supervisor was right. Yong’s lips did not move when he spoke, but most especially his upper lip which he kept glued to his top front teeth. I explained and demonstrated to Yong that consonants are made by holding the tongue or lip against a certain part of the mouth. By using a mirror, he could compare his own lip movement with mine. As he watched himself speak, I told him that it was impressive that he could manage to enunciate most consonants with his upper lip glued to his front teeth. However, I went on to explain that vowel sounds are quite different. Vowel sounds are made by configuring your tongue a certain way in the empty space of your mouth, and then shaping your lips in one of three ways to make the sound come out right. It is similar to how sound comes out of a musical instrument in that the sound omitted depends a lot on the physical shape of the hole – as in a trumpet, a guitar, or a flute.

My Chinese physicist caught on very quickly. However, the fixing of it was something else. Over the course of the next few weeks we studied the sixteen distinct English vowels sounds listing each one under one of these three lip shapes.

We had been working for several weeks when Yong had to cancel our session due to his attending an international conference for physicists. At the start of the next lesson I asked him about the conference, and he launched into a detailed analysis of the different presentation styles of scientists from different countries. His analysis

matched research I was familiar with on this same topic, and I drew the visuals for three distinct rhetorical styles. English follows a straight line. I had drawn a straight vertical line through three boxes representing the introduction, which includes a clear thesis statement, the body, which traditionally includes three strong examples, and the conclusion, which usually offers a plan of action or some wisdom gained. Then I drew the Asian rhetorical pattern, a small dot around which is a continuous tight line of enlarging concentric circles. The thesis – or idea – is represented by the dot, but the thesis/idea itself is never addressed directly by the writer. Rather, one goes round and round it. Yong nodded in agreement, and remarked that this often leads to miscommunication with non-Asian cultures, and that miscommunication leads to confrontation, and confrontation is something that is very hard for Asians…which is why they communicate in circles rather than direct, straight lines.

I picked up my pencil and next to the three-box English rhetorical pattern, I drew another one. I suggested to Yong that with the English pattern, and so in the English-speaking mind, there can be two legitimate arguments on the same issue, yet each one reaches a different answer. People may then agree to disagree.

“Ah”, he said. “But Susan, this is the problem. In English you think there are two answers. In this approach” and he pointed to the continuous circle around the dot, “we know that there is only one answer….just different ways to look at it.”

Then he took my pencil from my hand and divided the Asian circle into six pieces, as if it were a pie. He then put a dot into each piece of pie. He drew a line to show that the dot in each piece of pie represented a person looking at the one answer from a different point of view. I am ashamed to say that I had been working with these rhetorical patterns with students for close to 15 years, but I had never thought of this in this way.

I was lost in thought about this when I realized that it was the end of the examination period, and all my students were turning in their papers. I walked back to my office to grade their essays. My office walls are covered with tokens of remembrance and appreciation which my students have given me over the years. Many of my students come from cultures which require the giving of a gift to their teacher when the class ends. Centered over my desk that day was one empty hook. A few months ago, around mid-February , I arrived to my office to find a traditional Chinese knot laying on my desk. Next to it was a yellow sticky on which was written Benjamin. The custom was to do this gift-giving at the close of the semester, so I was a bit surprised.

After class the next day, I asked Benjamin about the knot, for I knew each one had its own significance. We were both looking ahead as we walked down the hall talking, and Benjamin replied that the knot would bring me wealth. I did not expect this at all; I turned toward him and he instantly sensed my being puzzled. “No, not that kind of wealth. The other kind.” We smiled at each other in silent acknowledgement.

Later that week, I hung the knot Benjamin had given me in my office, centering it over my desk. The next time Benjamin was in my office for some help with a paper he was writing, he saw where I had placed the knot he had given to me. After we had finished going over his paper, I asked if he could tell me some more about the knot. He first explained that the stones were jade, as jade turns bad luck into good luck. The larger piece was harmony. The second in the string was bliss, or fu in Chinese. The third was thriving with exuberance, or chun in Chinese. The pattern in which they were strung together represented the idea of welfare. As he explained this to me, he wrote the Chinese characters next to each of the English words. When he finished, we were both silent. We sat that way for a while, considering harmony, bliss, and thriving exuberance woven together by welfare.

It was towards the end of the semester that he came into my office, visibly upset. He had failed an exam, and he feared he may be dropped from the program. On top of this, his girlfriend who was in Taiwan was having difficulties, and he was concerned about her. He thought, because of all of this, he would have to return to Taiwan, but maybe he’d come back. We sat there and read each other’s faces in silence. We both knew he was leaving, and we both knew he was not coming back. But neither of us spoke of it, for there was that other kind of knot in each of our throats. I stood up and took the Chinese knot off its hook and put it into his hands. Benjamin, this will bring you wealth. Then he walked out of my office.

In trying to explain something both to you and to myself, I unconsciously set out to follow the traditional rhetorical pattern of some one who speaks English as their first language as I set out with three examples of Asian male students. In fact, my working title was Three Asian Men. But I skipped the formal introduction and I failed to include any thesis statement anywhere. I wrote but I was not certain exactly what I was writing about. I felt to be writing around something. And now, I can offer no conclusion, no plan of action, no advice, no wisdom gained. I realize that I am somewhere along the line of concentric circles around that dot, the only answer, which is to just say goodbye.

My mother, Bessie McLaughlin O’Dea, had one sister Eva, and Eva had one daughter, Sheila.  My mother raised her family in New Jersey, but Eva married and settled in her hometown, Limestone,  which allowed  her daughter,  Sheila,  to grow up just down the road from her grandparent’s potato farm.  Sheila wrote the following letter to my sister Anna  upon being asked what her memories were of our grandmother, Susan Dorsey McLaughlin, who was born on May 4  in 1884.

Dear Anna,

The last time you wrote you said you would like more information about Gram – Susan Dorsey McLaughlin. I have been gathering my thoughts and memories of her. I knew and called her ‘Big Mama”. That is probably because I was under her care from when I was a baby. My mother had a hard time being a mother at that time and I recall quiet talk about her “breakdown.”Anyway, Big Mama was not big…she was statuesque with perfect posture, head held high and back ramrod straight. Later in life she had back problems like my mother and me. We called the “McLaughlin back.”   She was generous with love and attention, and she embraced her homemaker skills with zeal and dedication. Her house was always squeaky clean – spring and fall cleaning big time.  My mother was very unhappy that she did the same thing for the church, washing floors on hands and knees!

I have many, many cherished memories of her: coming home from the harvest and putting our feet in the warm oven and eating freshly baked donuts; she always called me “dear;” I was elated to have her permission to pick sweet peas my grandfather planted every year for her. Her porch, the “veranda”, had a blue ceiling just like the sky and one piece of furniture was a large rocker painted white with wallpaper flowers cut and pasted on the back. She also called her porch the “davenport” or the “piazza”, this being my favorite as I felt transported.  Her kitchen was to be admired – she had a 25 gallon ceramic flour bin – she baked constantly….one day for bread, another for donuts, and another for cakes and cookies; I knew that as a young wife she fed a crew of 40 men three meals a day!

She was a neatly dressed woman. She wore Sears housedresses, always an apron starched and adorned with her brooch of the day. She wore corsets with many ties and snaps that she had made in Canada. She loved jewelry and hats and wore each whenever she went out.  Every once in a while my grandmother would say “Get dressed up. We’re driving to Canada to visit our relatives.”  I did not know, nor did my mother, of any Canadian relatives, but I happily went along for the ride. My mother thought it was funny that I was the only one invited on these treks.   Before marrying , my grandmother taught school in a one-room schoolhouse. In her later years she would come to visit our back yard in the summer after Sunday mass. My father had two pitchers of orange juice, one plain for her – she abhorred liquor- and one spiked with vodka. Got forbid she’d get the wrong one, my mother said.

We spent many hours on the lawn in the summer preparing vegetables from the garden; shelling peas, snapping green beans. Quiet conversation and stories abounded. I liked going to my grandmother’s house for an overnight because she would let me stay in “the rose boudoir”. This was a small room with pale pink flower wallpaper, a bed covered in pink taffeta and crocheted coverlet. The vanity had mirrors and a small stool.  I wonder where my grandmother got this worldly streak –  the piazza and rose boudoir. Was it that she traveled to Florida several times by train?

She kept a pantry. In it were jars full of apples for pies, homemade mincemeat and preserved garden vegetables. The pantry also included two prizes: homemade crabapple jelly and green tomato pickles.  I cannot imagine the time it took to make each of them. So very much work.  She always had the latest utility – an ironing press to iron sheets and pillowcases and towels and linens. She and Papa had one of the first tv’s in town, though she turned it off when beer commercials came on….”Damn shits (Schlitz) beer”  she’d say.

We had a lot of family dinners at her house – she’d open the doors to the fancy living room for the occasion! I found a diary she once started- she wrote emotionally about the suffrage movement and  she detailed trips to Florida by train!

The women I knew who were  friends with my grandmother had lovely, tea-party names such as Viola, Vina, Phoebe, Dolly, Eva, Bessie, Gladys, Jen, Hazel, Elizabeth, and so one.  Phoebe was a relative who was almost emaciated-looking; yet, like other women of her time, she was gracious, strong, and enduring. She owned and managed a successful dress shop in Fort Fairfield.  The bridge parties were a big deal to both my grandmother and my mother. Being in a small rural town, one had to make an effort to socialize. People often lived far apart and could not get outside easily in the winter. So the isolation motivated them to get together the other three seasons. There were card table linens for tea and goodies. I think this was seen as more important than the game where they ignored the rules and bid like this: 3 spades, 1 heart, 2 clubs, 4 hearts, 2 spades, and so on.

Freddie Philbrook lived across the street from my grandmother.  He was a pig and potato farmer who had a round, ruddy face with that real Irishman look – and smile he did most of the time. Three or four times a year he would walk across the street down the long gravel highway to my grandparent’s house to visit my grandfather. Freddie called him “Romey”. He marched up the steps in his farmer overalls and muddy manured boots. He was greeted like royalty and immediately escorted into the formal living room where he was seated on the blue velvet couch.  My grandfather would ask Gram to pour two glasses of whiskey “neat”. But sometime he would chide her with saying “Ye watered it, Susie.” Freddie and Papa would visit a long time talking about potatoes, this and last year’s crop, other farmers and their crops. I have no idea how this relationship developed. Freddie was known to be a somewhat unsavory character. Rumor had it that Freddie smuggled at least two wives from Canada in empty potato barrels. What happened to the ones that were replaced was unknown. Some speculated that they lay at the bottom of the manure pile! I do know they liked and respected one another very much.

Well, Anna, these are only a few memories I have of her. I loved her greatly – she was my model for independence, beauty, and g race.  Gram was a woman of quiet yet diligent faith. She fulfilled all her Catholic duties, had a crucifix over her bed and holy water in a dispenser by the door. She said the rosary every night as did my mother. She lived to attend my wedding in July 1964 – wore her fox stole with a beautiful lace dress. Once when stopped by the local police for going through a stop sign, she said “Young man, I know I stopped because I put it in second gear!”

Her demise was long and painful. It exacted heavy toll on my Mom and Dad. And I don’t think my mother was ever the same again. “Eva dear” I hear her in my musings.

Lots of love, hope you are all well.

Sheila

Susan Dorsey McLaughlin with her daughters, Eva and Bessie.

Thank you, Sheila, for allowing this beautiful letter be a part of Arboretum for all our family to enjoy. Sheila Mooney is a  published writer and accomplished artist. You can visit her website at swmooney.com

There is no place I would rather be on Easter Morning than the Naval Academy Chapel for nine o’clock Mass. The splendor of the ceremony itself moves me to doubt my doubts and surrender to the mystery of my faith. But I must confess, I spend as much time surveying the people around me as I do the priests on the altar. The chapel overflows with Midshipmen alongside their parents, brothers, sisters, and sweethearts who have traveled to Annapolis for the Easter holiday. The midshipmen, who at a young age chose a course most of their peers would not, renew within me great hope for our country as their generation comes of age and takes the helm. Mass stirs my soul, the mids my heart.

However, I also think of my own students at the community college where I teach English as a Second Language. At first glance, one may see no similarities between midshipmen and the immigrants and refugees in my classroom. My students, at a young age, chose a course that left all that was known in hope of
finding something better. But first, they must learn a new language, a new culture, a new set of values. And they must make new friends, for here all they have is each other. My readers can surely see that there are more similarities than differences between the midshipmen and my ESL students.

But one student, Daniel, was heavy on my mind last Easter as I sat in Sleepy Hollow and my eyes followed the priests making their way down the center aisle. Daniel had fled the violence of his Dinka village in southern Sudan, walking through sub-Saharan heat and jungle, losing friends and brothers along the way to wild animal attacks, starvation, dehydration, and the guns of their enemies. The Red Cross provided the young refugees with food and shelter upon their arrival in Kenya, and to make a long story short, arranged to have the children, mostly boys, sponsored and settled through out the United States. This is how Daniel came to be in my classroom at Tidewater Community College.

In my composition class, Daniel could write letter-perfect essays about his native Dinka traditions, but when writing about the world around him now, he simply could not write coherently. He explained this to me one day in my office; “Dinka is clear to me. This place is not clear to me yet.” I worried a lot about Daniel; as his teacher, I saw that this lack of clarity was affecting his grades and could hold this determined student back. These thoughts of him led me to abandon the celebration of Mass to ponder the walls of the chapel, as I have done so often before. Two-thirds of the rectangular blocks have been painted a creamy white, while the remaining third are a soft camel color. One would expect there to be a symmetrical pattern

between white blocks and the camel-colored ones; everything else on the grounds of the Academy is in good symmetrical order. So I return regularly and study the walls, certain there is no pattern yet hopefully looking for one. The chapel walls bewilder me. My only guess is that so many grads who return to the chapel are moved to ask their God why they are still here, and their shipmate is not, just as Daniel may wonder about himself and his own lost brothers. Perhaps the lack of a pattern on the Chapel walls is intentional as it serves to address the mystery of how God works; this is as far as I ever get.

Last Easter morning, Daniel’s dilemma was heavy on my mind, and those randomly placed camel- colored blocks stared back at me from each of the four walls. I recalled having read somewhere that the human experience on this planet is similar to that of a dog in a library. The answers to all of our questions are right in front of us, but we just can’t read at that level yet. From my pondering of Daniel’s situation in my culture, I understood that Daniel was in my library, trying to make sense of it all, but he can’t read this place. Not
yet. I, too, am like a dog in a library. Every Easter, I return to the Naval Academy Chapel to experience the hope amid the young brigade and the faith reflected in the ancient ceremony of Mass. This enables me to doubt my own doubts and to hope that one day I will understand the pattern on those walls and be given the answers to all my questions. But I am not able to read at that level. Not yet.

Anna, my oldest sister, was twenty on the day I was born. With twenty years between us, clearly we are from different generations. But our two lives have magically crisscrossed right from the gitgo. In fact, at every major intersection of life, Anna and I have been standing on the same corner. In preparing my remarks for today, I gave this a lot of thought – and the extraordinary place Anna holds in my heart. I found three reasons for this, which is what I would like to share with you today.

The first reason I am so fond of Anna is that at an early age she taught me an invaluable lesson. Anna taught me integrity. When I was a sophomore in high school, in 1970, Anna was my American History teacher. For the final exam, we were given a broad statement regarding democracy and required to substantiate it in a 500 word essay.

The day came for Miss O’Dea to return the final exams. I can still remember her coming into the room with a look of anger on her face. She proceeded to severely scold the class for not answering the question. She went through the quote, paraphrasing the question for her students, making it very clear what her expectations were and how we had so miserably failed her. Then she ended this scolding by announcing that one student, and only one, had managed to answer the question, and that this student would now come to the front of the room and read her essay to the class.

“Susan O’Dea, come up here please.”

I had been thinking, as she worked through the paraphrase and delineated what her expectations were, that I had done that. But never did I dream that she would single me out as the one who had answered the question right for I was not by any means the brightest student in that class. I had no choice but to get on up there and read my essay, which I did. It was really not until later that I fully understood what an enormous decision that had been for my sister. She knew what my classmates would think – my being her sister. She knew what some of her colleagues might think – my being her little sister. She even knew what her principal might think – my being her sister whom the principal had suspended for three days earlier that same spring. But Anna did it anyway because it was the right thing to do. I wrote a good essay. I still have it! And what Anna did, – that’s integrity.

Anna was engaged several times before she met the right guy. I watched Anna go thru some very hard times as did a lot of you sitting here today. When she was in the throws of planning her wedding to Mr. Right, David Morris, I myself was in the first stages of breaking my own engagement to a Mr. Wrong but I had not yet shared this with my family. I was sitting in the dining room at Mill Street when Anna arrived to the house full of bridal wedding talk. I was to be her maid of honor and she needed to set the date, and I was being wishy washy about if I was going to be around. My Mr. Wrong was in Ireland and I was headed over there but I was not sure about what was going to happen next. I think Anna sensed all of this because on that day, my sister pinned me down.

Susie, Dave and I want to get married next summer, so you just tell me when you will be able to be here. July?

Maybe, I said.

Maybe…..well what date in July. Early July? Late July?

I dunno.

Well, Susie. Do you think you can be here July 26? Would that be good for you?

I looked at her. Maybe.

Susie. I am not getting married without you there. I want my sister, I want you there with me.

I realized then, it finally got thru my thick self-centered twenty year old head, that my sister was planning the most important day in her life around my schedule. Looking at her, standing there in the dining room with that determined look on her face, I could see that I meant a great deal to her. Anna loved me.

Anna, I said, I will be at your wedding on July 26^th. I promise you. I will be here.

It is a very good thing that I was, too. For at Anna’s wedding I met my Mr. Right. The spring before Anna was married I had broken the engagement to Mr. Wrong, surrendering myself to being a spinster for the rest of my life. But on July 26^th I caught Anna’s bouquet, and my now-husband of 32 years caught the garter, and eleven months later, to the day, we were married.

July 26^th is a day that Anna and I have shared over the years. The joy. The love. The wonder of finding our very own Mr. Rights.

My Mr. Right was in the United States Navy. About t en years later we were living in Virginia Beach, Va. We had had one son, Brian, who was three years old, and I was pregnant with the next one, who turned out to be Brendan. The baby was due on June 15, and my husband’s ship was to be pierside/home for the month of June, so we were all set. Then in May he was told the ship had to go out for two weeks in June and my due date was right in the middle of those two weeks. What was I going to do with Brian, who was all of three year s old, while I went to the hospital to have the second baby? My mother at that time was 72 years old. Brian would simply exhaust her, so that was not on. SO I started making phone calls, but everyone was just too busy. Then I called Anna and told her my sad story. She quietly listened and when I was finished she said –

Ooh, Susie, when can I come?

When can I come? I teared up when she said that, just as I do today in telling you this story. SO – the third and last thing I have to tell you about my sister Anna, and I think everyone in this room knows this already,

ANNA SHOWS UP.

She shows up for birthdays in cards and gifts that year after year appear in your mailbox. She shows up for baby showers with beautiful gifts lovingly made by her own hands. She shows up for every wedding all decked-out in a new dress with a big smile on her face. She shows up for graduations and makes your child feel like the most remarkable person in the whole world. She shows up for your anniversary when everyone else in the whole world seems to have forgotten it. Anna shows up.

So why am so fond of Anna? She taught me about integrity. Through Anna, I met my own Mr. Right. And throughout my life, she has shown up not only for me but for my family.

But in ending with this thought of showing up, I would be wrong not to thank each and every one of you who has shown up today for my sister Anna at this wonderful surprise birthday party. You all know Anna, so I do not have to put into words what your presence here today means to my sister.

Thank you.

Picture courtesy of Maggie Morris:  Anna was presented with a  Memory Book into which 100 of her friends and family contibuted. The picture shows Anna that night, sitting up at her dining room table until midnight, reading her Memory Book.

]]> http://shestories.com/2012/04/19/anna-morris/feed/ 0 shestories anna http://shestories.com/2012/04/15/second-chances/ http://shestories.com/2012/04/15/second-chances/#comments Sun, 15 Apr 2012 01:35:44 +0000 shestories http://shestories.wordpress.com/?p=188 ]]> When I was twenty-one, I needed a second chance. I had been living overseas for several years, after having left my own country towards the end of the sixties. I was walking along a country road on a wet day in the southwest of England and mulling over my situation. My student visa, and student life, had long come to an end; the only jobs available to me were waiting on tables or mucking out stables. I was hungry, too – not only for something more nutritious than tea and toast, but also for a job more fulfilling than mucking out stables. I walked and thought, and thought and walked, as leaving would be difficult, but finally I decided to return to the USA. I did not come into this country through Ellis Island; I entered at JFK. And no Statue of Liberty looked down on me in welcome; I walked into my own mother’s arms.

Now, some thirty years later, I have the fulfilling job teaching English as a Second Language. In my classroom, I look out on a collection of faces from around the world, many of whom are here looking for a second chance. Juan was one such student. He was also perhaps one of the hardest working students I have ever had in my classroom.

Juan’s plan was to complete a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, but first he had to pass TOEFL, the standardized Test of English as a Foreign Language. Just as our own seniors in high school struggle for an SAT score to get into the college of their choice, international students struggle for a TOEFL score that will get them admitted to a US college. Juan’s TOEFL score, upon his arrival, fell far short of the required score, but after seven weeks of applying himself to the task at hand, he far surpassed the score he needed. However, he could not afford tuition at any local college. He did some research and discovered that he could study computer science at a technical school and have an associate’s degree in two years. And, most importantly, Juan could afford this.

But this was where his trouble started. Due to the new INS regulations, Juan’s student visa could not be transferred from the college where he studied English to the technical school until the technical school had admitted him. There was much paperwork involved before he could be admitted, as well as many questions between INS, the technical school, and the college. All institutions of higher education are struggling to understand and comply with the new regulations. While this paper chase was being run, Juan was terrified that the INS would declare him “out of status.” The INS limits how much time students can remain in the United States without attending classes. In waiting for his transfer to be completed, he might overrun this limit. In this case, he would be deported back to Columbia.

I saw him several times on campus with papers to be signed, duplicated, and faxed. But what I really remember is the sense of anxiety on this Juan’s face. Here was an honest, hard-working young man so close to his second chance, but terrified that he might not make it through the paper chase.

Unfortunately, this war on terrorism requires us to be more careful with whom we let into our country and our classrooms. The previous lenient policy for international students has already been changed, and I understand the necessity for that. However, in the process of implementing those changes, we must ensure that we do not let young men and woman like Juan slip away from us. He got his second chance, and this is to our advantage as much as it is to his. The energy of this country relies on the steady flow of people such as him to fuel not only the engine of our economy but also the integrity of our democracy.

It is nine o’clock on Sunday morning, and I am not at Mass. For over twenty years every Sunday  morning I made my way to a small chapel about fifteen minutes from my house. It is not a large congregation – only about 750 members – and we know each other by name.  I always sat toward the back on the left amongst the people I have fondly over the years called my community.  My youngest son, on the ride home from church one Sunday, announced that church was a lot like Cheers because at church “everyone knows my name”.

My friends at church, my community, have been there for me in the darkest of times and the brightest of times.  I have also tried to be there for them, but my efforts pale in the face of what some of them have done for me over the years.  They are an inspiring group of people. I often sat in the back looking at their backs pondering their faith and how it has brought them through all they have witnessed in their lifetimes. This gave me strength on those Sundays I sat there wondering how I was ever going to make it to next Sunday.

Raised in a Catholic home and educated in Catholic schools, I am  familiar with both the examination of  conscience and the calling to a vocation. We were to  be aware when God called upon you….to do whatever He asked. This was always a mystery to me:  how was  I to  know God’s voice?  But the Catholic faith is riddled with mysteries, and as I have written before on Shestories, sometimes these mysteries rise up and slap me in the face, and it is at that moment that  I have fallen to my knees in belief.

Lately, I have logged on every morning and read about the Catholic leadership’s tolerance of convicted pedaphiles wearing the roman collar and their sexual abuse of children. I have read of the legalistic quibbling by the Catholic leadership -  the same sort of quibbling, noted The Economist, “which greatly angered an itinerant preacher in Palestine two millennia ago.”  I have read of the victims’ lives tormented by alcohol abuse, drug abuse, years of therapy, years of serious depression. I have read about  little deaf boys  locked in closets in Wisconsin with priests who told them they were asked by God to teach the little boy about sex, and here we go now…….. Little Deaf Boys.

It was when I read that account that I started to hear this voice, at first just a mumbling, in the corners of my mind.  In time, I  realized I could not be deaf to this voice as it was very persistent. As I read more, the voice became clearer, more pronounced. I started to open my heart to this voice and found I was being asked to go somewhere that, at first, I was very afraid to go. I was told not to be afraid. It would not be a life without faith; in fact, it would be a life with a faith that will envelope my heart.

But to get there, I must leave the Catholic Church. I must leave my chapel. For when I am in the presence of priests, I do not have  – and I have tried very hard-  but I  cannot have – a spiritual experience because  I am  so angry.  When the priest walked down the center aisle at our chapel last Sunday, Easter Sunday, I wanted to call out to him to turn around and go back to his rectory.  I visualized chasing him out of the church, out of the parking lot, running after him down the road,  just like that itinerant  preacher who chased  them all out of the temple.  They are an abomination.

To be honest,  I am still  frightened where this journey will take me, but I must. I must break away from the Catholic Church and trust in this voice- this voice that has steadfastly assured me that just in this act itself, the first Sunday I do not go to Mass,  I will come to understand  that my faith in Him has never been stronger.

Trinity

April 25, 2010

Three: the father, the son, the holy ghost. In my reflections on my relationship with God, I have spent a lot of time thinking about who God is. Who is this voice that is speaking to me? This week, I have found myself drawn to the Trinity, and I have come to understand how these three aspects of God  - each in their own way – lay their hands on my life.

The father.  He is our creator, but he is not a micro-manager, for he gave us free will.  He could insist on calling all the shots, but he does not, for he trusts in our inherent goodness. After all, he made us, so He knows perfectly well what we are made of. He has counted every hair on your head is one of the most comforting lines in the Bible. He loves us deeply, as we love our own children, but he knows he must let us make our choices, as all parents know of their children.  He was disturbed when his creations thought him a vengeful father, one to be appeased through the sacrifice of his own creations. So he sent his son, knowing how we feel about our own sons. And his own son’s life was sacrificed, so we might understand our forgiving father. When the people crucified him, he-and his son- forgave them all. This is an amazing story.

And sometimes I pray to the father for guidance in using this free will he has given me, just as I would call upon my parents for guidance in making difficult decisions. And when a situation is out of my control, as are so many, I put it – in faith- I put it into his hands. ..as we all hope our children would bring their insurmountable problems home to  us.

The son.  He became one of us and he devoted his life to teach us about his father. He taught us about loving our neighbor. He taught us about including outsiders. He taught us about prayer. He taught us about forgiveness, humility, compassion,  patience, and service to the least of our brothers and sisters.   There are many stories reflecting these qualities which have been told and retold for two thousand years now.  His life is part of that amazing story, but I find myself drawn to reading about him from a woman’s perspective through the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

And sometimes I pray to Jesus when I am challenged by this world of humanity as I believe he will understand my plight since he walked around here with us. This is why God had his son made flesh – to give us this credible path to him. God understood this. Without the life of Jesus, I would wonder if God could ever understand me. But I know he can, for he watched his own son wrestle with his own humanity. When you watch your child wrestle with something, you doubly wrestle with it yourself.

The Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost. Some say this one scares them; this  one gives me the most comfort, for I have felt him descend upon me. When I do not have the strength to carry on, and then I am lifted up   – it is the Holy Ghost. When I want to give up and go home, but I carry on – this is the Holy Ghost. When I witness an act of kindness between other people in the course of my day, and I see so many, the Holy Ghost is present, directing my vision and my full comprehension  and appreciation of the act.  When I am presented with the chance to do some good, and am able to do it, it is the Holy Ghost standing by my side.  When I walked around my garden on this wet Sunday morning and I felt the presence of the spirit, this was the Holy Ghost. We are quite close, me and this ghost.

So that is the Trinity. When I began this venture of faith, I thought – I was afraid – that I was alone. Now there are four of us, and I find that I am in very good hands.

May 2 2010

Our Father

Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum si þin nama gehalgod tobecume þin rice gewurþe þin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us to dæg and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele soþlice.

When I was studying the history of the English language,  Dr.Holiskey put this on the screen and asked  the class if we could figure out what we were looking at.  It turned out to be the Our Father as it looked 450 – 1100.  Then she showed us the same prayer from 1384. The first sound in the third word, which sort of looks like pat, is a P but is pronounced th. (pat is that) (pi is thy).

Oure fadir þat art in heuenes halwid be þi name;

þi reume or kyngdom come to be.

Be þi wille don in herþe as it is doun in heuene.

yeue to us today oure eche dayes bred.

And foryeue to us oure dettis þat is oure synnys as we foryeuen to oure dettouris þat is to men þat han synned in us.

And lede us not into temptacion but delyuere us from euyl.

Clearly, it is starting to look like the prayer known so well by so many today. However, this morning is not a reflection on the history of the English language but an attempt to grasp what these words mean in that they have been repeatedly called upon by our ancestors in times of joy and times of sorrow for nearly two thousand years.

Our Father who art in heaven

In my previous reflection on the Trinity, I came to understand the role of the father through my own experience as a parent. My own father is in heaven, and I pray to him  often. When I am missing him in my life, the first six words of this prayer on a Sunday morning  could  bring tears to my eyes, for I was wishing that he were still here with me, fantasizing that when I arrived home after Mass I could call him up and have a chat. How divine that would be! This is evidence of the enormous love all children have for their fathers and helps me to understand the love that is also within me for God the Father in the Trinity.

Hallowed be thy name

To hallow means to make something sacred. Synonyms for sacred are holy, blessed, consecrated, revered, sacrosanct. We only know God the Father by this one name  -Father. My father was also Mr. O’Dea to some, Arthur to others, Dad to some of his  children, Pop to others, and he was Judge to yet others.  But the only name I have for this part of the Trinity is God, the Father. “ Father”  is sacred. I have witnessed a father’s love in the relationship that my sons have with my husband, and it is a beautiful thing to see. My sons revere their father.  I must spend more time thinking about God the Father and his role in my life. God the Father  has been there for me, just as my own father is there for me when I call upon his memory. I have yet to  fully recognize His role – His love-  in my life. Funny, but isn’t this the way with all fathers?

Thy kingdom come

Thy will be done

On earth as it is in heaven

Fathers have visions. Mine did.  He worked at it  every day to make his visions (he had a couple) a reality. His kingdom was his children; his family. We are God’s children; we are his kingdom.  We can make his vision a reality -for this father who loves us – by doing his will. That is the hard part. We do not always want to do what our fathers tell us to do.

Give us this day our daily bread

For some in this world, for some who have whispered this prayer, – I can only imagine – this is a real plea for food. For others, it is a call for the thin wafer received in communion with your congregation.  God gives us the bread of life which feeds our souls. Our daily bread is not always  in the form of a wafer; this bread comes in the myriad of  ways that the spirit chooses to descend upon us. However, Jesus did ask us to break bread in memory of Him; this can also be done in a myriad of meaningful ways. A Tuesday morning women’s prayer group I was invited to attend next week breaks bread in communion. I am looking forward to this. If truth be told, I miss communion.

And forgive us our trespasses

As we forgive those who trespass against us

This word seems to have seen the most revision in the two versions of this prayer that I started with. Gyltas and gyltendum (guilt) were used in 450,  while dettouris and synned (debtors/sin) took their place around 1384. These are all in the same “semantic field” – another thing my gifted professor taught me about.

To trespass is to intrude. I try not to intrude. I endeavor to enable those I love to reach their dreams. I am a mother and my friends are mothers. I have volumes of evidence that a mother is the most forgiving person on the face of this earth. One of my favorite writers, John McPhee, wrote a beautiful essay about his mother called Silk Parachute. No matter how he mistreated her as a child, disappointed her as a boy, misled her as teen, used her as an adolescent, in other words – no matter how hard he whacked his mother in his treatment of her over his tumultuous years of growing up, she floated back down to him, moving gracefully toward him, always surrounding him in her love like a beautiful soft white silk parachute.  Forgive me when I do intrude, and you are already forgiven for any intrusion into my life.  I know it is out of love for me. I know. I am a mother.

And lead us not into temptation

But deliver us from evil

Devils and Evil. There are devils out there.  This prayer ends in a plea to help me see the devils coming, to help me to deny their empty promises, to help me  keep on the high ground…but not so high, dear God, my dear Father, my own dear father,  that I cannot see others struggling, understand their struggles, and not so high that my hand cannot reach them  - touch them – and hold them-  to help them. I never want to be on such high ground as that.

Amen.

Jesus

May 9, 2010

I have reflected on the Trinity and God the Father.  Today I want to think about Jesus, the Son of God, God made Flesh, our Good Shepherd.  It is the life Jesus led, what he said, and what he did  that speak to me.  Treat others the way you want to be treated.  Let someone in this crowd who has not sinned throw the first stone.  Forgive them for they know not what they do.  

He told us to treat the people around you the way you yourself want to be treated. This can be hard because I want people to have all the time in the world for what I care about, which means I have to give others all the time in the world for what they care about. This can get complicated, never mind exhausting. So I think the answer to this conundrum starts with me and my expectations of others. I must not expect so much of others, for it is in giving that we receive. We have the perfect give to give – the gift of time.   A good friend  from my chapel  with whom I  shared what I  am going through suggested that  I call so-and-so from my chapel, as so-and-so is a theologian, and maybe she could help me. I called her, we met at Starbucks soon after and  we talked for at least an  hour. She had time for me. She listened. She helped. Now, she is a friend.  Isn’t this exactly what Jesus meant?  I try to do this with my sons when they call me with their litanies of struggles – as all mothers do- and not expect any thing in return. ( Oooooh — that is hard, especially on  Mother’s day, as it is today. )  I try to do this at work when my desk is covered with tasks to do and a student or colleague knocks on my door and obviously needs to talk.  I try.

Let someone in this crowd who has not sinned throw the first stone. This is thorny as I have recently indicted every single cleric in the RC church for the way they have treated victims of abuse and they way they have covered up for each other.   I did not throw a stone at them: I buried them under boulders of granite.  I know myself; I can take it for a long time, but if it goes on, I get mad.  And it isn’t pretty. But then I think of Jesus and the hissy fit he threw at the Temple when all the vendors were there selling their stuff. He threw them out. Anger is appropriate at times….and sooner or later I calm down, as I hope I will so I can return to Mass. But this will take time…and that voice has given me this gift of time!

Forgive them for they know not what they do.  Parents say this to themselves a lot. Children, when growing up, do not know what they do.  As I move through life I think more and more about how I treated my parents, or I should say, mistreated my parents, when I was growing up and not understanding the effect of what I did – and worse, what I did not do. When I was a freshman in college, my mother came to pick me up one Friday afternoon, as I wanted to go home for the weekend.  She was parked at the door of my dorm, Seton Hall, which was also the exact spot where she first met my father.  That scene must have held so many memories for her, of which at the time I was oblivious. I was way over my head in my own relationship at the time. Anyway, when I got into the car, I saw my mother had no teeth. She had a scarf over her head and she had draped the scarf over her mouth so no one would see.  But I did, and I asked her about it. She explained that she was getting false teeth and they would not be ready till next week, so she would look like this till then. She placed the scarf over her mouth again, put the car in gear, and we drove away. On the ride home, about an hour, I said little as I was completely buried in my own set of problems and concerns.  I wanted silence, but Mom wanted something else. When we got  home, she made a terse remark that I could have chatted a bit  more, that I could  have shown more compassion for  her situation. I was stunned. I had no idea she needed me like that, but I realized that  I should have known that. Forgive them for they know not what they do. I try not to make demands on my children, and I try to say nothing when they forget, for I do not want them to ever feel the pain that I feel when I remember that day in the car with my mother.  What I would give to have that one afternoon back with her!

This takes me to the end of this reflection on Jesus.  For if he were here with me now, wouldn’t he console me?  Jesus had a mother, too. He annoyed her terribly when he ran off at 12 to be about his father’s work.   Perhaps he only understood the depths of her pain long after she watched him carry that cross.  Perhaps.  And so this is what my Jesus is. The part of God, the Trinity, that as human flesh knows our pains and our burdens. He tells us to forgive ourselves and he washes away our tears. He showed us that we all sin, as no stones were thrown. He tells us to try again and again and again to treat others the way you want to be treated.    And if others fail to do this for you, forgive them for they know not what they do.

The Holy Spirit

May 15

The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost. Today I want to reflect on the final part of the Trinity.  When I studied linguistics, I learned about semantic fields.  In the same semantic field as ghost, I find phantom,  spirit, ghoul , specter,   poltergeist, and  banshee. The last is one of my favorites, as it comes from Gaelic folklore,  and  it is the spirit of a woman who appears, wailing, to signal that somebody in the household is going to die.  This strays far from my understanding of the Holy Ghost. Spirit, as in Holy Spirit, however, comes much closer to the mark, for in spirit’s semantic field I find an astonishing list of words including:   will, strength of mind, force, fortitude, moral fiber, determination, chutzpah, heart, and mettle, strength, courage, character, and, last but not least,  guts.

My, oh my!  No wonder I have felt this spirit move so powerfully through me when I have called upon God for some assistance.  Look what he is made of!  Sometimes  this power descends upon me when I have not asked something of it, but it is expecting something of me.  As I grow older it is harder to deny, for it has evolved into  a two way street. I call on the spirit and the spirit is there for me, and when that same spirit calls on me, I will be there for the spirit. This is not always easy.

Guts. Literally, my guts are my insides, my essential parts. Figuratively, my guts is my backbone, my moral fiber – my soul.  I like to think I have some guts. When I am facing a difficult decision, I call upon the Holy Ghost to guide me.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I was spending the better part of a summer’s day in a place called Castle Hackett. There was no castle there, so yes, as you may have already guessed, I was in Ireland. The whole of  Ireland at one time was a forest.  However, now there are very few trees there  as somewhere in her history they were all cut down by an Englishman, Cromwell, I believe.  But once in a while in her countryside, you come across trees, and maybe it is just me, but I always feel a sacred presence when I am among the trees in Ireland. This is due entirely to that day in Castle Hackett, for that was the first time I was with trees in Ireland. It was just a moment, but the breeze was blowing- gently, but blowing –  through the  leaves in the trees, and it seemed to be talking to me and telling me that  I was – just for a moment, folks, – I was where this Holy Spirit calls home – I was in heaven.

Van Morrison sings a song about walking under the magnetized leaves in the forest. In this song he talks about two truths: what we believe and what lies hidden in our hearts. He sings about a village on the mountain top, too small to be a town. When I hear this song, I am transported back to Castle Hackett. For there are two truths: there is what we believe, that we are to forgive (Forgive them for they know not what they do. ) and there is what lies hidden in our hearts (I will never forgive so and so for such and such.  Somewhere in the breeze I trust that I will find the  will, strength of mind, force, fortitude, moral fiber, determination, chutzpah, heart, and mettle, strength, courage, character, and, last but not least,  guts – to forgive.

When I first began this journey, a friend suggested I talk to another friend, whom I met at Starbucks over coffee, and after talking with me – and really listening to me – she suggested a couple of books, one being Practicing Catholic by  James Carroll.  As it turned out, Mr. Carroll was once a priest, a Paulist.  He spent his first year studying at the same Paulist Novitiate in northern New Jersey where my father had also studied to be a priest around 1930.  My father left at the close of his first year there,  while Mr. Carroll went on to complete his studies in Washington D.C.  This was during the 1960s; Mr. Carroll did not leave the priesthood until 1975. He is now married, has two children, and he is a writer.

I found his story compelling. For the first time, I understood why my father chose to be a Paulist. I now understand why my father  would lecture us every evening over dinner during the sixties on the writings of Teilhard de Chardin.  I was only 10 in 1964, and although I did not understand all that was changing in the Catholic Church, I knew Vatican II was big. After reading Carroll, I now understand why Vatican II was embraced so by my father.  In Vatican II the church was given back to the people, and perhaps the clearest manifestation of that is that the Mass was to be said in the language of the people, which for me would be English. I know the power of language; so does Mr. Carroll.

This is perhaps why the final chapter in his book is called a Writer’s Faith.   Like me, he had also thought of seeking another religion, but in his journey he realized that Catholicism is his syntax. Ditto on that.  He quoted another writer who said “Art begins in a wound” and he realized that in order to order the chaos he saw around himself, he created his own form and structure, through meter, rhyme, and the epiphanies of mental freedom. I hope it is not too bold for me to say that I have felt these same little epiphanies as I sat here on Sunday mornings and reflected on the Trinity in terms I could understand through my own experiences as a woman, a wife, a mother, and a friend.

Carroll talks of a friend whose infant son died from suffocation in his crib, and the local monsignor would not allow the child’s funeral to be in a catholic church because the father had left his first wife and remarried.  Carroll asks if our God is one who wants only to obeyed. Is our God one who knows nothing of human suffering?  In whose name, a child can be abandoned?

IN WHOSE NAME, INDEED.

No.  And with this thought Carroll moves from being a submitter to authority to being a possessor of it.  Simultaneously, though, he states that  he could not condemn that monsignor without condemning something of himself because we are all sinners.  We all seek forgiveness.  “This truth will set you free. First, it will break your heart, but the truth is what counts. “

And what the genius knows is that there is no genius.  Aren’t most of us uneasy  around people who think they  have all the answers? Classical symbols, like my beloved Trinity, were invented over time.  We accept them due to their meaning. The Trinity itself , which Carroll uses as an example,  affirms that community is fundamental to being.

COMMUNITY – HOW I HAVE MISSED MY COMMUNITY

Human beings invent symbols that instinctively respond to that innermost life in all of us.  This mystery we call God and this mystery continually recalls  us to the limits of ourselves and lays bare our guilt…and yet, YET,  bids us approach, and enfolds us in ultimate love. In this, Carroll tells us,  is the meaning of God’s existence.

In the Catholic imagination, he goes on, our syntax is the stuff of life. Water is in our baptism, bread and wine is in our Mass,  oil is in our anointing of the sick, sex is in matrimony,  words are in absolution, and touch in the hands of confirmation. If Catholicism is my syntax, these are my parts of speech.

Carroll tells the interesting story of  Michelangelo’s work in the Sistine Chapel On one wall is the Creation, but on the other is The Last Judgment.  When the Pope who commissioned The Last Judgment first saw the painting, he fell to his knees and said “Lord, charge me not with my sins when Thou shalt come on the day of Judgment.” Michelangelo makes very clear that the Lord will do just that.  He was on to them way back in 1534. Carroll tells us that as Jews were rounded up in 1943 under the silent pope, the then Grand Inquisitor, Caraffa, demanded that The Last Judgment be removed from the walls of the chapel.  Conscious stricken Paul III overruled him, but he did require that the genitals of naked figures be covered up, creating  what is now called “the underpants painters”. They are fooling no one but themselves here. The Last Judgment stands in its rightful place.

As I walked beside Mr. Carroll on his journey, I wondered where he was leading me. Often I wanted to peek at the last page but I did not. When I finally got there, I heard this. That to be a member of this community is to stand openly in need of forgiveness, which is why every Mass begins with a penitential prayer.  Here we are invited to put this burden down. That the church is sinful is why we can feel at home in it. We, like Michelangelo,  must seize every opportunity to demand its purification. Its reform….and forgiveness is the condition of change. Our church must evolve. Our church must change.  And we must take responsibility for this vision.

I finished his book midweek, and I was able to go to Mass with my husband on Saturday evening. When I arrived, I was stunned to realize that it was the vigil of the Pentecost, and that my friend, the Holy Spirit, was being celebrated.  Pentecost is the feast of language and language is WORDS.  “In the beginning was the word, and the word was God.”  Carroll explains that God is language. God is tongues. God is words afire.  The Tower of Babel  –  the word itself so close to Bible, as Mr. Carroll astutely points out.

Through language we create meaning, for it is through language that strangers, speaking strangely, discover each other as friends. Words are the tools of the writer, but words are not the purpose of writing.  The purpose of writing is meaning. And meaning, (What does it mean, Mrs. Boland?), that is where I find my God.

A Paulist Retreat

May 30, 2010

Since Easter morning, I have been on a journey that required the reexamination of my faith. Leaving the small chapel I had attended for the past twenty years, I was holding back my tears. It would be a while before I could return to that close-knit community because, quite simply, I could not stomach priests.  I indicted every one of them for the despicable behavour of the catholic clergy.  I did not know where this reexamination would lead me, but there was a voice coming from deep within me that I trusted as my guide.

I am a catholic. My mother, raised on a potato farm that straddled the border between Maine and Canada, was Catholic, but she had little regard for priests and nuns. People who grow up on farms are, by nature, pragmatic. But my mother’s disregard for clergy interested me, as  before my father met my mother, he had spent a year or two studying to be a priest at a Paulist novitiate located in northwest New Jersey. Dad always wore a scapula around his neck and over his bed hung a cross of highly polished black wood – but without the figure of Christ on it.  My parents, married in 1933, had five children in the first ten years of marriage, and then in 1954 I came along.  My father was in his sixties during the sixties, the decade I came of age.  On so many of those nights, Dad prevailed at the dinner table lecturing on Teilhard de Chardin.  I was too young to understand what he was talking about, but it was very clear to me that my father saw a new age rising. He was quite excited about it, too. He even bought a pair of bell bottoms for himself. Mom listened to him at times, but tuned out when she felt like it. Mom was good at that. Pragmatic.

When I began this reexamination of my faith, I was also pragmatic and methodical. I sought the advice of a friend, who suggested I look at three books, suggesting one might help me. Of the three, I decided that Practicing Catholic, by James Carroll, best suited my needs.  James Carroll is ten years older than me. His book details his personal journey of faith, in which he was a priest for ten years before leaving  in 1975. He is now married with children and writes for a living. But here’s the thing. In 1965 James Carroll was studying at the same Paulist novitiate where my father had studied in 1930. Carroll explains his choice to be a Paulist was based on the premise that this order was founded to be a two way highway between the American catholic experience and Rome. We Americans are different from others; from my own work with so many other cultures, I know this to be a fact. The Paulists saw this early on, and realized its significance in the Catholic church.  This small piece of knowledge about the Paulists gave me tremendous insight on my father, and why he would have chosen the Paulists, and why, when he left, he went to law school. And why he was so excited during Vatican II, delivering homilies over dinner about Teilhard, and buying bell bottoms.

Carroll also made clear why m y father left. Growing up, I was only told that he could not have friends there, so he left.  Carroll explained that  at Oak Ridge, seminarians were not allowed to cross the threshold of another seminarian’s  door, as the hierarchy were so afraid of the young men falling in love with each other.  The young men were constantly observed for behavour that showed too much fondness  toward another seminarian. When Dad left, it was with three others. They pooled their funds, bought a car, and drove to California and back together. Friends. Community.

So, I googled Oak Ridge Novitiate discovering  that it now runs retreats organized  by Paulist priests.   I called and left a message as I had decided that my reexamination of faith would come full circle by retreating to this place where my father had studied. It seemed perfect. Maybe when I left, I would even be done.  Healed, so to speak.

You know, I have heard it said that if you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans.

It was early on a Sunday morning that my phone rang. It was a youngish sounding man on the phone, with a thick New Jersey accent.  He explained that Oak Ridge was no longer in the business of retreats. In fact, Oak Ridge had been sold to the State of New Jersey, all 1175 acres, for 12 million dollars. New Jersey  was to put the land under its Green Acres initiative which serves as a  refuge for unspoiled pristine acreage in New Jersey . But this young man went on to tell me more.   He had served as the property manager of Oak Ridge, and was the only one left there. He was in the process of cleaning out the houses, loading the furniture onto trucks, and sending the stuff off to other Paulist destinations still in service. He explained that when my father was there , he had lived in the one wooden framed structure that had come with the property in 1923 when it had served as a hunting lodge for some wealthy philanthropist who then donated it – lock stock and barrel – to the Paulists.

Oak Ridge stayed like that till 1961, when vocations were streaming in and new buildings were built.  But then vocations started to slack off, and then, he said, “ the pedophile stuff hit”, and soon, with so few vocations, they went into the retreat business.  He was bitter that the decision to sell the place had been made by one man who had consulted no one else.  He read off to me the list of priests buried in the Oak Ridge cemetery who had also served as veterans. He was heading down there after our phone call to put flags on their graves as it was Memorial Day weekend.  This young priest had spent the better part of Saturday packing up a truck with the last of the stuff from the main house.  That stuff, he told me , was headed up to Lake George, where there is another Paulist retreat house. He gave me the number, and suggested I try there.

He was sad to have to tell me this. I could sense that he loved that place, Oak Ridge. There was a pause, and then he continued.  He told me that there has to be change. He said, in his thick New Jersey accent, “Mrs. Boland, they gotta ordain women. BRING IT ON! They gotta let guys like me get married. And, Mrs. Boland, I am not goin’ back to sayin’ the Mass in Latin; I don’t care WHO tells me to. I’m not goin’ back. We gotta move forward.”

I have given his words a great deal of thought and I realize that I must move forward, too. The answer is not in going back to Oak Ridge, as sentimental as that journey could have been.  The answer is in my going to Mass.  The answer is in my lifting my voice at Mass in English. The answer is in my holding my husband’s hand as we recite the Our Father, even though we have been told we cannot do this anymore.  The answer is in claiming my faith to be of the people, for we are the church. And the answer is also in forgiveness, which I must find in my heart.  I had indicted every one of them only to find out that  I was wrong.  For it was when I heard this young priest’s voice in Oak Ridge  that I heard the future of my faith.