I entered her presence when we both worked at a grocery store. She was tall for a girl, model’s face and figure; with a delightful manner and voice. She was a beautiful person inside and out. She always seemed to “be up.” I never saw her angry, even when a certain aggressive stock boy had her pinned against the wall in the back of the store – she laughed at him. She went to a private girl’s school. One of her friends from that school worked with her at the store.
It was in the middle of the great middle class prosperity of 1947-1973. It was also in the last days of American innocence. Before JFK was shot. Before Vietnam. Before street riots. Before Watergate.
The fabled 1950s-1960s teen culture was in full force. Rock-n-roll was the music. The King and Chuck Berry were alive and singing. Some of us were active participants; others were witnesses. “West Side Story” could be seen. James Bond would soon be launched.
Our grocery store was full of characters. One manager smoked truly AWFUL cigars. You could always tell he’d been there by the floating foul cloud of smoke. Another manager was more excitable, especially when customers accumulated in lines at registers. It sometimes seemed he had a heart attack once a month – out a few days, then back again.
Most of the adults worked around the fringes – in the meat department and produce. the meat men were “not feeling any pain!!!’ We definitely had characters among the flying knives of the produce department. One was the store’s union steward. If you were stocking a shelf, he had a habit of coming up behind you and “checking your oil.” But you couldn’t get mad at him, because he was this maybe 5 foot tall Jewish Leprechaun, with a big grin on his face.
Even though it was a serious, low-profit margin business, we had a general sense of good humor. Part of it had to be the owner. He was a “rich” man, but lived in the community like a normal person. You were teated with respect until you proved you didn’t deserve it. Which probably explains why when he died, it seemed like half the community turned out for his memorial. You stood in the longest, slowest moving line I was ever in for a few words with his widow and kids, two of whom had worked at the store.
Above all this, SHE floated along. Always friendly with a smile. Beautiful without really trying all that hard to be so, efficiently doing her cashier’s job. Reportedly, her boyfriend also worked at the store for a while. One day, I accused them of ‘holding hands’ in a meat bag. She laughed that off too.
One day, a few of us made a pilgrimage to her house. the bolder guy in the group took a peak at a hanging bathing suit near her closet. He eagerly informed us it was a size “X.”
Then one day – She was gone. I was told her lifetime ambition was to be a nun. Some 30 years later I was informed by a person who knew her that she still was a nun. One of my regrets is that I did not pursue finding out more about her.
I”m sure most of us with more earthly thinking thought the same thing: what a waste. How cruel that a woman of this beauty, grace, and maturity was to be cloistered off. It didn’t seem to be “fair.” Why would the community be denied being able to interact with her more?
So, she became a reverse “Maria,” of whom the convent’s nuns worried “How do you solve a problem like Maria?, and “How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?” Our nun certainly wasn’t a “problem<“. but she was a “moonbeam.”
One, if fortunate, will meet memorable people. SHE was one of those, even though only in limited circumstances at a grocery store. Character gets demonstrated in many ways. SHE was one person with a sacred dream who actually followed through on it – committing herself to a life of service to others.
With Justice For All 