My mother the nun

It's true she was a bride of Christ -- just don't ask for details of the marriage.

By Theresa Rusho

May 10, 2000 | Two weeks after my arrival at Wellesley, I called my mother in tears. "This place is a convent," I said in nearly hysterical sobs.

I could hear the sound of a crinkling potato chip bag and my mother surfing television channels. "It is not a convent," Mom said. "Spare me."

As I listened to my mother chew Ruffles and complain about the leaky roof, I stopped crying. Nothing quite sucked the air out of an argument like your mother trumping you with her former marriage to Christ.

As Mom would proudly tell you, she was a rebel girl in the '50s: She lit up a cigarette on her way to Most Holy Rosary High School every morning and cheated on her Latin final and the Math Regents' exam. She had no plans beyond graduation, which led the nuns to ask her if she had considered a vocation with the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Seeing Jesus as something of a rebel himself, Mom raised the possibility with her parents.

"Over my dead body," her own mother responded. (Although she was a devout Roman Catholic, my grandmother expected to meet her future son-in-law on this earth, in her lifetime.) The foreboding edict was all my wild and crazy mom needed to become a bride of Christ.

During her first few years as Sister M. Magdalaine, my mother taught at Catholic elementary schools in Scranton and Altoona, Pa. In 1961, she arrived at St. Ephrem's in Brooklyn, N.Y., where her floor-length wool habit transformed New York into a city of guaranteed seats on the subway, immediate help with heavy packages and constant, undying respect.

Although my mom stood in line for 11 hours to view Robert Kennedy's casket at St. Patrick's Cathedral, and had a younger brother who was eligible for the draft, her veil tended to separate her and her fellow sisters from the turbulence of those years.

When Pope John XXIII recognized this detachment, he convened the Vatican II Council. Continued under Pope Paul VI, Vatican II ended centuries-old traditions like the Latin liturgy and meat-free Fridays in an effort to make the church more accessible to the general public. With the elimination of the rule that required nuns to wear habits at all times, my mother found herself subject, like every other New Yorker, to leering and groping while she stood on the subway.

"It was like I had a foot in both worlds," Mom explains.

In the years following Vatican II, many nuns would find that they could not live with such conflicting conditions and ask to be released from their perpetual vows. In 1969, during the summer that astronauts landed on the moon and flower children landed in Woodstock, N.Y., my mother concluded her 14-year act of rebellion by returning home.

As a child, I used to listen to my mother tell this story and watch in fascination as jaws dropped -- usually around the word "convent." The swallowing reflex usually disappeared after "14 years." Neighbors, co-workers and bank tellers focused their attention on my mother with an intensity usually reserved for car crashes.

Yet while the slightest mention of Mom's former life sent most people reeling, I thought her cheery recollections of the nunnery sounded as benign and uninspired as a taped tour of Epcot Center. I mean, what about hair shirts? The hiding of convicts? What about Agnes of God?

My earliest inquiries into the untold story of Mom 'n' Jesus were met with a blank stare. "What else is there to know?" she said. "I taught school."

And wore a wimple.

"Oh, and I attended Marywood College for eight summers to earn my bachelor's degree," Mom said. "And then every September, I went back to teaching school."

I thought I'd finally hit pay dirt when my grandmother died and I discovered a shoe box of 30 or so letters from my mother to her parents (or, rather, according to the return addresses, from Sister M. Magdalaine to her parents) under a stack of 10-year-old TV Guides.

"The lilacs outside my window have come into bloom, a welcome sight every morning," the first one read. After reading two more pages of similar Hallmarkian dreck, I noticed it had been written in 1958, while Mom was still a relative newcomer in the novitiate phase. I dug deeper in the pile.

"The school year is winding down. My students are a joy, and I will miss them tremendously," Sister M. Magdalaine exclaimed. Jesus, my mother really did love Christ.

I showed the box to my mother. "How very holy," I said.

"Oh, they read everything we sent. We had to watch what we wrote," Mom said, sorting through her mother's clothes.

"Like in jail?" I asked enthusiastically. "Times of war?"

Mom rolled her eyes and left the room. I saved a TV Guide with a cover story on "Alf" and tossed the letters.

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