A few people asked me to post this:
I learned many valuable things while at Our Lady of Angels:
---I learned to chew gum without moving my mouth.
---I learned that some staircases only go up, and some only go down.
---I learned that, if eaten with ketchup, mustard and pickle relish, a hot dog fulfills all a person’s daily nutritional needs.
---I learned you could get out of study hall if you volunteered to pray a rosary in chapel.
---I learned the proper form in volleyball:
if the ball is hit in your direction, immediately jerk to attention, cover your head with both arms, and duck.
---I learned that if you sew the neckline seams together, a bathrobe can be really hard to wear.
---I learned that, at the end of a long school day, you could wave good by to the nuns from a school bus window, and, AT THE SAME TIME, fan away the evidence of a lit cigarette.
Those bits of wisdom have saved me many times; and here is more:
---I learned to question and not to be deterred. In the book Catholic Girls’ Guide, written by a priest, I read that women shouldn’t study math---it’s too hard for their little heads.
I thought, what a wit! and went on, not just to study math but also to teach it---at the middle-school and high-school levels, and now to college students.
---I learned to value myself as a person and as a woman, by observing our admirable nuns as real PEOPLE and by succumbing to education at their hands.
---And I learned to value others, by getting to know, and working beside, you, my sisters and classmates.
I learned, and continue to learn, what a real friend is, and how to love even the flaws, how to love past my own flaws.
---I learned that God is always present, and so I can, and still do, pray: any time, any place---at home, at the supermarket, while driving, at work.
---From my days at Our Lady of Angels, I grasped somehow a sense of the sacred, and how to integrate it into my life, asking myself questions like,
what does God want from me, at this time and place?
I learned how to deepen and grow, day by day, though I can hardly say just how this happened.
I’m just grateful that it did.
All these things, I learned and lived by.
I treasure these memories of that brief time, and the wisdom imparted to me,
which so beautifully prepared me for my life up to now and steadies me, readies me, for my life yet to be experienced.
For I have learned that the best is yet to come.
And I look forward to sharing it with you!
(Nancy Ernst Conrad and I had long talks on the way to the school bus. I was always the questioning one - probably still am - but I must have absorbed some of those long-ago conversations. Also, thanks to my good friend, Connie Wolfer, who helped me put this into shape as I threw out most of the items in my fridge after our surprise visit from Hurrican Ike. - Mary)
