From Ninety to Zero

I Can Do This

Nine. One. Eight. Two. Seven. Three, I counted, head swiveling from side to side.

The doors along the hallway of my wing in St Gertrude’s Monastery are numbered from one through five down one side and six through nine on the other. Each door has a “Welcome, Jane!” “Welcome Chris!” or “Welcome Teri!” note pinned to a small piece of cork-board mounted chest high, though no one was about when Sister Theresa, the nun who runs the Artists in Residence Program, showed me to my room on the fifth floor.

“We don’t lock the doors here,” Sister Theresa told me. “It isn’t necessary.” The doors were wide open, but no one was sitting in the upholstered rocking chairs in any of them. The wing appeared uninhabited.

“Oh,” I responded. “Really? You don’t need to?” Having just come from Uganda where we locked doors and suitcases, hid our cell phones, and my purse had a steel cable in the strap to foil would-be thieves and pickpockets, I was in the habit of being careful.

The sound of our footsteps bounced off the walls ahead of and behind us. Sister Theresa told me that I would likely be the only resident artist while I’m here. Since I’m an extrovert who flirts with introversion, especially when I’m writing, I thought, I can work here. Yes, this will do nicely.

But while the isolation didn’t bother me, this morning I realized that the pace of life here may. It’s like going abruptly from ninety miles an hour to zero. A few weeks ago, in Uganda, every minute was choreographed. St. Gertrude’s is the opposite. I suppose I’ll get used to it, but it will take practice.

My room was at the end of the hall facing the expansive Camas Prairie. I gazed out the window appreciatively as Sister Theresa said, “This entire floor has been totally redone.” It looked as if I might be the first one to stay in my room. I took in the small sitting room with its writing desk, the single bed in my room with a large closet and chest of drawers, the attached bathroom, and was grateful. It was perfect.

That evening after supper with the sisters and others, a light meal of soup and sandwiches, I wrote until my eyes were sandy with sleep. When I laid down it was dark, after ten-thirty, but I didn’t set my alarm. There was nowhere I had to be this morning except the dining room and that wasn’t even mandatory. I awoke in plenty of time.

The morning’s sun was bright with a few rain clouds scuttling across the sky. I opened my windows to hear nattering songbirds, smell the pines, and feel the fresh breeze. As I lay on the narrow bed, I considered that there will be twenty-nine more days here just like this one. That’s a long time, I thought, and then, this is Day One.

Holy moly. I  need to adjust my internal clock.

This morning I wrote in my journal, “I’m not here to write. I’m here to think. Writing is thinking slowed down. I need to slow down. Way down.”

Life is lived more slowly here. Most of the women and men here are older than I. Some of them use walkers: St. Gertrude’s takes care of their own until death. Several of the sisters I’ve met have been here for years, one since 1961. In 1961 my family and I were getting ready to move to Uganda. I was four. It’s hard to think of being in one geographical location for that many years. My wanderlust wouldn’t tolerate it. I operate best going places at ninety miles per hour (or believe I do). What if I don’t? I guess I’m about to find out.

The people I’ve met so far are curious and friendly. “You’re the writer?” they ask. I am, I say.

The Residence Program exists not only to provide opportunity for writers and other artists to create, but also, I’ve been told for us to provide the St. Gertrude’s community with stimulating and (hopefully) interesting conversations and views. So I am on my best, most winsome behavior.

That’s my job while I'm here. That and in a few days, I’ll start washing dishes once a day for my keep and deliver some sort of presentation on my work before I leave. It’s a small price to pay in exchange for my room and board in this venerable old building on the edge of the Camas Prairie.

The original Monastery building reminds me of the high school building where mine was the last class to study there in the early seventies before it was deemed impossible to retrofit for earthquakes and condemned. The Monastery has similar lofty ceilings, plaster walls, wooden moldings, and baseboards about nine inches high. But while my old high school was torn down, the Monastery’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places and still very much here.

Unfamiliar with Catholic ritual, I was seated by an amiable sister who helped me through responsive readings during Evening Praise and raised the height of my stool in the little choir loft seats. Afterward we ate family style in the big dining room. And talked. Apparently, that doesn’t always happen.

At breakfast this morning I met Sister Claudia Rae. When the man sitting on my left, here for a retreat, asked her, “We get to talk at breakfast today?” she said, “Yes, it’s Community Day.”

Apparently, there are meals they eat in silence and meals they don’t. Community Day is what they call the meetings they hold three times a year to go over Monastery budgets, programs, and business. Today they could talk. My tablemates liked to talk.

“My name is Meinrad,” the chaplain across the table told me. “Meinrad, like ‘fine lad’.” I don’t think I’ll forget that.

He lived at a Monastery in Jerome, but the sisters brought him north to St. Gertrude’s. He appeared to be in his eighties and wore a jaunty cap. He ate his breakfast quickly and then scraped his chair back across the floor, excusing himself. He had, he said, people to visit.

It seems there are a lot of things I'll need to remember here. Like leaving my door unlocked. I forgot this morning and when I got back to my room with words, sentences, and paragraphs dancing in my head the door wouldn’t open. The only set of keys that open it hang downstairs on the first floor in Sister Placida’s office, way on the other side of the Monastery. I’ll try to remember that but at least I know where the key is now.

But more than that, I need to remember to live in the moment, take my eyes off the future. I need to slow my thinking and actions. Adjust my internal clock. I need to learn rules that aren’t written down anywhere but that everyone seems to know. But you know, I have twenty-nine more days to learn all that. And think. And write. Slowly.

Deep breath, Teri. You can do this. Yikes.