Sister Rose
The Lady in the Woods was not my first attempt at writing a full-length novel. I grew up attending catholic schools from first grade up through my freshman year of college. I wish I could say there were more positive memories regarding my catholic upbringing than there actually were, and that the nuns who taught me for the better part of twelve years were kind and nurturing…but I cannot. There was one nun, however, that I will never forget.
Sister Rose, my seventh-grade science teacher, played an important role in my early life. She was soft spoken, intuitive and motherly. Bless Me Father, the manuscript I put aside to write The Lady in the Woods, touched on the relationship we shared. I wasn’t ready to write our story, but I am now.
Sister Rose was a healer. She liked bugs, salamanders, worms, frogs…all the damp little creatures that lived around ponds. She loved nature. The convent she lived in was beside our schoolhouse and anytime Sister Rose needed a “volunteer” to help clean one of her many aquariums or to capture crickets (which is no easy task) or find more specimens for her terrariums, I was chosen. My strict Italian father didn’t like me staying after school but if Sister Rose asked, well then, I was golden. After all, she represented the church, right? Even he couldn’t refuse her.
Sister Rose was no fool. She had to have known my home life was challenging. There were no “feelings” teachers or guidance counselors available to us back then, but I will never forget what Sister Rose did for me. She got my hands in the dirt. She taught me about the various fauna along the pathway to the convent and in doing so, instilled a love of nature in me. It felt wonderful, working the earth. And therapeutic.
Like I said, Sister Rose was no fool.
When I was about to swipe away a spider web in the garden once, she stopped me. “Look at what a spider can do,” she explained. “It’s a miracle.” She called many things “miracles,” I recall. Bird nests, chrysalises, ant hills…and she was correct.
But did she know that she was also a miracle? She was a kind, loving woman who knew I needed grounding. The love of nature she instilled in me is something I have carried with me throughout my life. For the hour or two I spent with her after school a few times a month, I was in heaven. And it didn’t look like the heaven painted on the ceiling of our church.
