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An Unlikely Friendship

A quick note of apology was supposed to be the end of the encounter

by Albert DiBartolomeo

    When the telephone rang that spring evening in 1994, I was in my basement, making a jewelry box out of pear wood and listening to Puccini. "It's for you," my wife called.

    "Who is it?" I preferred not to be disturbed during those precious moments of self-indulgence.

    "A Sister, Maria Corona."

    I remembered the most recent commentary I had written for the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Uh-oh."

    The essay had referred to the use of corporal punishment by the nuns of my childhood, and I had used the term "seraphic Frankenstein monster" to describe a fifth-grade Sister we kids called Bulldog.

    "Could you tell her I'm not in?" I asked my wife.

    "I will not. Besides, I already said you were."

    My teeth grinding, I uttered a tentative hello. In a friendly voice, the Sister introduced herself and said she was calling from Immaculata, a suburb of Philadelphia. Then she got down to business.

    "Your commentary was well-written," she said, "but you've done a big disservice to sisters. We already suffer from stereotyping, and your article only furthers that."

    "You've taken it too seriously," I said in defense. "Much of it was meant to be humorous."

    "Oh, I saw the humor. It's the public that concerns me."

    "Well, you could always write a letter to the editor." I suggested.

    "I already have."

    "Oh."

    "Now who was Bulldog?"

    The direct question instantly catapulted me back to St. Gabriel Elementary School, where, in the presence of blue-robed nuns, the notion of evading the truth vanished.

    Reluctantly I revealed Bulldog's identity.

    "I knew her." the Sister told me.

    "She's buried out here. She was much nicer than you say. I'm sure if you thought about it more, you'd agree with me."

    "I'm sure I would." Ashamed of myself for having poked fun at the no-longer-anonymous dead, I was now so uncomfortable that I just wanted to get off the phone. I told the Sister that I appreciated her call but that I had to grade a stack of papers.

    "Are you a teacher?"

    "Yes." I told her that I taught English at a nearby university.

    "I was an English teacher too. I've been retired for some time - I'm nearly 79 - but still do teaching."

    "Is that so?" I said no more. We soon hung up.

 Beginning to Fray.

    That, I thought, would be the end of Sister Maria Corona. But days later I received a letter from her. Writing in a tiny cursive that forced me to read slowly, she reminded me that Sisters were normal women who devoted themselves to God and to doing good.

    As a boy, I had experienced their kindness. My family was poor, and, knowing this, parish nuns would periodically summon me to the convent after school. I would stand just inside the vestibule, feeling like an intruder in that serene and dustless place, while a Sister retrieved a box of food she had assembled for me.

    I returned a letter to Sister Maria Corona explaining my motives for writing the commentary and apologizing, without fully meaning it, for any ill feelings the essay had caused. I sent the letter, certain that my association with the Sister had ended.

    I received another letter. However, I let it languish in my pole of unanswered mail. In addition to teaching, I had writing to do, books to read, house repairs to make and my wooden boxes to build during that quiet eye in the more blustery winds of my life. Some weeks later those winds became cyclonic.

    In June my stepfather became ill, and over the following months I wrote several newspaper commentaries about experience. After each essay was published, Sister would write, telling me that my stepfather was in her prayers, as was I. I hoped her prayers worked, since I didn't say too many of my own.

    My frame of mind then was not much inclined to letter writing, especially to a person who had entered my life as a critic. But I began to answer Sister's letters, more of politeness than interest.

    My stepfather died in October, and the eulogy I wrote was published in the newspaper. Several days later I received a card from Sister along with a pamphlet titled "Dealing With Grief." I didn't feel that I needed the pamphlet. Like my stepfather, I had been taught to be stoical, to absorb the blows that life dealt by "acting like a man." But as Christmas approached, I began to fray.

 Compassionate Friend.

    Despair I had known before, the usual gloomy day or two, but now it mushroomed and began to dominate all my hours. I went to bed with it and rose with it, and it clung to me during the listless days.

    At the same time, I felt angry. My stepfather's illness and death, it appeared, had reawakened the hurt caused by the premature death of my natural father. Now their deaths became mixed up together, and so my anguish was doubled.

    During this difficult time I wrote a long letter to Sister Maria in which I found myself explaining my state of mind. I speculated about a midlife crisis. I revealed more than I had to anyone but my closest loved ones and dearest friends.

    I received a letter from her:

    Your beautiful, if poignant, letter touched me deeply. Life holds more valleys than hilltops it seems - yet both have their pain and their promise. It will be my daily prayer that you will soon find peace.

    About your dark thoughts, you do realize that is part of the human condition - something we all share. I will always be glad to hear from you, and invite you to come out for a visit any time.

    I was not eager to visit. I was afraid that, next to our easy and sincere written exchanges, a face-to-face meeting would be awkward and strained. So I always found reasons for putting it off.

    Nevertheless I recognized compassion when I saw it. Sister wrote:

    I have had periods of emotional turmoil, too, at times quite bad. Perhaps that is why I empathize with your feelings.

    I like the definition of a friend: one to whom you can pour it all out - wheat and chaff together - knowing that he /she will listen, take out that which is important and throw the rest away. It would be so good to meet and really cement this friendship that I think was a gift from God.

Midnight Boxes.

    I didn't know about divine presents, but I had begun to care about the nun's welfare, as she seemed to care about mine. We appeared sometimes to be in coincident states, although it was her body, not mind, that gave her trouble. She wrote me several letters from the hospital where she was being treated for, as she put it, "another heart scare." She also sent the rosary she had been using in the hospital. I had not prayed the rosary since the sixth grade, but I was touched that she parted with that particular one.

    While Sister Maria recuperated, I began to suffer insomnia. The nights seemed endless, the clock frozen between three and four in the morning. I tried to read. I watched television. I paced the quiet house or sat still in my study, listening to the groaning of the dead tree in our neighbor's yard as it moved with the wind. I even made wooden boxes - all in an effort to tire myself enough to sleep. But sleep refused to come.

    After the third or fourth night like that in a row, I took the rosary from my bureau, and I prayed. I hung it around my neck when I worked on my midnight boxes, and I carried it in my pocket when I left the house.

    The rosary helped, but my bloodshot and circled eyes told me that I needed professional attention. I made the necessary call.

    After I told Sister Maria of my decision, she wrote:

    I'm happy to hear that you're going to enter therapy. Don't be afraid of medication. It helped me over the humps. Each letter you send reveals a loss of fear in opening up to someone who, even a Sister stranger, has you on her mind often and in her prayers always. Yesterday I learned I may need a new knee. This getting old is definitely not for sissies!

    She was far from that. I admired her for her courage and spirit in the face of her physical troubles. Life dealt out its knocks, she believed, but it was ultimately good. Sister Maria suffered with grace. I could not help but be impressed.

    In the spring, soon after my depression began to lift, I decided that I wanted to meet this woman.

    "Your letter was a joy to my heart," she replied. "I look forward to our meeting. My bionic knee is doing well."　

Below the Surface.

    After more than a year of corresponding, I met Sister Maria on a Tuesday in mid-August at Villa Maria by the Sea in Stone Harbor, N.J., the vacation home for her order, Sisters Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. "So, we meet at last." Sister Maria Corona said, smiling broadly.

    "Yes." I said, taking her outstretched hand. In the other she hold a cane. She wore bifocals, and a rim of steel-gray hair peeked from beneath her veil. She looked younger than I had expected. Her bright eyes were intelligent, kind and welcoming. They glinted with humor too. After we exchanged pleasantries, she suggested that we walk to the ocean.

    Sister Maria held on to my arm now and then to keep herself steady. I offered her my hand when we stepped from the curb.

    Soon we stood gazing at the sun worshipers and children bobbing and squealing in the swells and the in-rushing surf. I smiled at the sight.

    "Look at it," she said, gesturing to what she called the "majestic mystery" of the sea， "It's all surface to our eyes now. But beneath it are great depths and life of all kinds. That's what people are when we first meet them. But we only have to go below the surface a bit to see one another's hearts."

    I nodded. "Our letters."

    "Yes."

    When she first began to write, Sister must have intuited that I was troubled and lost, adrift on seas I could only pretend to navigate. I was grateful that she had thrown me a line with her letters.

    When we returned to Villa Maria and sat facing the ocean, I gave her a small gift I had made during those anguished days of my depression - a box of tiger - strip maple with a lid of figured walnut. In it I had placed an ample supply of postage stamps. I wanted her to keep writing. I needed to hear from my friend.

    "It's beautiful," she said, "a very thoughtful present. Thank you so much."

    She held the box in her lap as we talked into the lengthening afternoon. As the hours slid by, I came to know Sister ever better. She shared her memories of a trip in a banana boat to Peru, where she had done missionary work. She told of her work at 13 schools during her teaching career.

    I soon recognized that she and the other women who had chosen the convent over a more conventional life were far more complex than I had allowed myself to believe. What Sister Maria gave me that day was a moment of insight, a gift far greater than the wooden box I had brought her.

    As she walked me to the door, we passed the chapel, now nearly full with nuns who had gathered for evening prayers. We embraced as we said good-bye.

    Outside the sun was still bright. Before I had gone ten steps, the voices from the chapel lifted in song. I paused and allowed the sweet, angelic voices to wash over me.

    Although her infirmities have since caused her to live in a nursing home at the age of 83, Sister Maria Corona is clear of head. She still teaches part time. She continues to write, and like sunshine and salt breezes on a summer's day by the sea, her words still nourish my soul.
 

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