Month: June 2013

https://widgetworld3.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/the-calling/
When she didn’t feel like reading ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales’ Sr. Assumpta would tell us holy stories, mostly about the baby Jesus and how smart and wonderful he was. He seemed like a nice lad though I always felt sorry for him being an only child. When I was small a family with only two children was hardly worth the effort. God it makes me laugh when I think of the nonsense that went on in my young mind. The baby Jesus.
I often wondered if he started small, with his miracles. You know, before he did a big one in public.
Did he practice them in his bedroom or out the back yard where no one could see?
And if he did, what was his first miracle?
Maybe he fixed the strap of his sandal or magicked jam on his bread?
Would God have let him – put jam on his bread – or would he have been too holy for jam?
Feck.
I’ve slobbered my tea. If anyone saw me sitting here laughing to myself they’d have me committed.
Poor baby Jesus.
Married to Sr Assumpta, a shilling short of a pound.
God bless the mark.
Herself and The Calling.
She said it could happen overnight. The Calling. To join the nuns.
She said we could go to bed every night for years with no problem.
But one fine night, when we least expected it we could have a dream and wake up with a burning desire to serve Our Lord.
Once that happened there was no turning back.
No matter what we’d do or where we’d go, there’d be no avoiding it. Once you got the calling you had to answer and the only way to answer was to become a nun. And just in case we had any doubts about it she told us that’s exactly what happened to her.
“Sweet Jesus!” thought I.
“Is it as swift and as brutal as that? The Calling?”

I had visions of waking up one morning at the ripe old age of six, dressed in a habit from head to toe, cross and all, and that would be the end of me. I’d have to leave home and head to the convent with nothing to do but pray all day. No running, no skipping, no nothing. Just praying.
I was rattled.
I went home from school that evening in a state of shock, punctuated by terror. Over the next few days I got quieter and quieter around the house, not a natural state for a six-year-old. If truth be known I was frantically praying that the Good Lord would pass me over and choose another girl to be a nun. My communion beads were nearly worn out from the exertion. They were under my pillow every night and in my schoolbag or my pocket every day.
I’d even hatched a plan.
I’d offer another in my place instead. Mary Theresa Hynes was the obvious choice.
It crossed my mind that she might not want to be a nun either, but I reasoned she had only herself to blame for the nomination. She always made it known she had all the mysteries of the rosary down pat and she was only the same age as me. Indeed she was ahead of us all at school, in everything. She was the pick of the crop as it were and God would hardly have to train her at all. She looked nunny too. Always had the top button of her shirt done, just like Sister Assumpta and she wore a silver Saint Christopher medal from Knock that she got when she was on a pilgrimage with her Mother.
I didn’t even know where Knock was.

Mary Theresa had done serious praying. Rumour had it she had a luminous rosary she used at home in bed at night. It glowed in the dark so she could practice her mysteries.
Oh yes, God already had a good grip on Mary Theresa with all her knowledge of the rosary and her goodness. She never put a foot wrong.
But that could be a problem in itself. There would be no effort involved on God’s behalf. What if God liked a challenge?
That merited some thought.
God never did things the easy way.
I mean, he could have just magicked us all to have sense and love him, but instead he sent Jesus down to earth to convert us. That was much harder because we were all pretty useless at the time. We were kissing golden calves and sacrificing things all over the place. There was a new religion for every day of the week and some of them were only excuses to do all sorts of sinful stuff. The Romans were great at it. When they weren’t killing and raping left, right and centre, they were lying on couches eating grapes until they nearly burst. And they had heaps of slaves – dozens of little pagans grabbed from their beds at night and sold like tea, or flour.
T’was terrible.
But what does God do to change our ways?
Instead of putting the fear of God into us by appearing himself, he goes and sends Jesus to ask us nicely. You’d have to admire his courage, not God’s – Jesus’ courage. No offence to God but Jesus was the one that ended up crucified. That must have hurt big time. He was tortured too with the lashes and the crown of thorns.
If someone did that to my brothers or even to Kate, there’d be skin and hair flying that’s for sure. Once I got Peteen Flynn straight between the two eyes with my pencil case when he knocked our Jo Jo over coming home from school. I broke the lid clean off it and Peteen ran down the road roaring like a cut cat. Served him right. Our Jo Jo was only half his size and doing no harm at all.

A person would be half afraid to cast aspersions at God in case they got hit by a bolt of lightening or something, but in fairness, poor Jesus came out badly at the end of it all.
Even God must see that.
Dying was handy for Jesus because he was going home to his angels and stuff.
At the same time, it’s kind of mean that he got there by being tortured and killed and poor Jesus took an awful pounding before he died.
I think that if daddy was around at the time it might have gone easier for Jesus.
Daddy told me that there’s more than one way to skin a cat. That means there’s a few ways of doing the same thing. Like with Jesus.
Could they not have just crucified him, or just tortured him a little bit, to give him a break? Or even better, couldn’t he have died of a heart attack after the first torture? Then he wouldn’t have had too much pain, he’d have got home to heaven and everyone would have felt sorry for him dying anyway?
Or maybe God could have given him a Panadol before the torture so it wouldn’t hurt so much?

I was most definitely a challenge.

A person shouldn’t be thinking things like that about God. If they do, they should definitely make up for it by being good. I wasn’t.
Mother was always threatening me with death for talking during Mass.
Then there was the time I drew a moustache on the statue of St. Francis of Assisi that she had in the spare room. I even coloured in the bald spot on the top of his head.
In my defence, my intentions were honourable. I thought it’d make him look more like Jesus, with the beard and all. And the long hair was sure to keep his head warm.
I still copped a belt across the arse, despite my tearful explanations.
I was no saint.
Feck.
As for my age. Six years old was the perfect age. Didn’t God love young ones? That was an unmistakable fact.
“Suffer little children to come unto me” was his catch-cry. Everyone knew that. He said it so often they put to music and we had to sing it at mass.
“Suffer little children to come unto me
For theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.
Suffer little children to come unto me
For theirs is the kingdom of the Lord”.

And they did. The little children came from everywhere. We had a picture of them over the blackboard at school to prove it. There was Jesus in the middle, all dressed in white and he surrounded by children. Half of them were black babies and the other half had the arse falling out of their trousers.
I fitted right in.

I might not have been black but I was young and there were patches on the knees and elbows of every stitch of clothes I wore.
As for suffering, there was room for little else in my life at that moment. Tortured was my middle name.
Oh yes, all the boxes were ticked for me.
I hadn’t a hope.
Some fine morning I would wake up, a nun.
I was ruined.
Shite.
To put the tin hat on it, Sr Assumpta, the curse of hell on her, said The Calling came at night. Jesus! Wasn’t that worse than being told the bogeyman was coming for you? In point of fact a bogeyman would have been sweet relief. I was going to be inflicted with a veritable swarm of auld wrinkly nuns, in the flesh no less, most likely from the Poor Clare’s down the road, smack in the middle of the night. And nuns don’t make noise, I’m a witness to that. They can be up on top of you in the blink of an eye, battering dents into your head with their holy ring, before a body knew they were coming. Being nuns God would probably tell them that the third step up our stairs and the one just before the landing were the creaky ones. They’d be prepared. Mother or daddy would never hear them coming. If they did it wouldn’t matter anyway because God was calling the shots. The nuns could haul me away without as much as a ‘by your leave’.
I wasn’t having any of that.

I tried not to think about God for a couple of hours while I hatched a plan, just so he wouldn’t know about it. I wasn’t sure if that would work, him being God and all, but I thought it was worth a shot.
It came to me like a bolt from the blue.
I decided sleep was for the weak so I resolved never to close an eye again. That way The Calling wouldn’t get me.
I put that plan into action straight away. That night and for the rest of the week I wouldn’t go to bed until I was threatened with a walloping. When I did I moved as far away from Kate as possible in the bed so the heat out of her wouldn’t make me drowsy. If I felt any hint of tiredness I’d hop back out and stand on the lino in my bare feet until I was nearly frozen to the floor.
I soon found out that the human body is completely useless.
Inevitably, and despite my best efforts to avoid it, sleep always came and when it did, the nightmares began. I’d scream the house down as I ran from the nuns in my dreams, until Mother came in and calmed me. That left me with no energy for the day. But I kept persisting, every single night and so it continued for four days, the lack of sleep, the broken sleep and the nightmares bringing another host of problems down on my head. By the end of the week I was half-dead with it all.

I forgot my four times tables at school and had to stand in the corner.
Worse still, I didn’t get to clean the blackboard. You don’t get a shot at it if you missed your tables. I was ‘it’ for the whole lunch hour doing ‘chasey’ because I didn’t have the energy for a good run. When I got home I left my copybook on the kitchen table and Jo-Jo sucked the corner off it. His mouth ended up all red too, from the dye, and Mother roared at me. Then Mother Enda took the head off me with a clout for letting him near my homework.
My life was going to hell in a hand basket.
Finally, Mother noticed something was up. She took her sweet time. A blind person could have seen that I was driven to distraction. In fairness though, Jo Jo was teething all that week so maybe she was a bit tired. Anyway one night she checked in on me about an hour after we were all supposed to be asleep, and where was I? Down on my knees praying, in the cold, in the dark, by the bed I shared with my sister, Catherine.
Kate.
I had to spill the beans. I told her about the Calling.
All Mother all did was laugh.
I thought it entirely an inappropriate reaction, given the circumstances. It seemed to me that the gravity of the situation was entirely lost on her. But I didn’t say so. No one ever gave lip to Mother. If they did, they’d be very sorry.
“Is that all it is, you oinseach?” she said.
“Is that all that’s bothering you? Mother of God and I worried you were sickening for something or your mind had gone soft.”
Then she took me close, looked into my eyes and said,
“You’re only an infant, Joanie. Why would God want you at this stage of your life? Sur’ you can hardly collect the eggs without breaking one and believe you me, souls are far more delicate. The Lord will find a use for you when you’re good and ready.”
“Mammy, are you sure?” I snorted between tears.
“Of course peteen. I wouldn’t let you off to a convent in a month of Sundays. God knows that so he wouldn’t ask you to go. Now into bed, good girl and don’t believe everything that’s told you.”
And she tucked me in.
I’d say I was asleep before she left the room and that was the best night’s sleep I got in a week.
The following day I thought about what she said. I was glad she offered to stand between the religious life and me. Daddy always said she could take on the Pope when she got mad.
She’d probably scare God too if he tried to make her change her mind.
I was safe.
‘Twas a relief and a disappointment at the same time.
I was pleased to be off the hook but to think I might not have been up for consideration at all was a little unfair.
I let that notion go, very fast.
There was no point in tempting fate. God could well change his mind.
I put down the rosary beads and from then on they only saw the light of day at Sunday Mass. Besides, Mammy always said ‘too much of anything is good for nothing’.