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Summer
Three nuns join a writing workshop because they believe the soul is a white page waiting
to be filled with the knowledge and truth this aging world needs to know at this point in
our history. One nun, the one with her brown hair tucked tightly behind her pale ears,
always clears her dry throat and takes a delicate sip from her Evian water bottle, before
she'll read from her latest revision, a mystery about a nervous astrologer who loses his
way in the desert and discovers a suitcase of dry priestly bones in the sand.
The other nun, the one who always leaves an extra button on her blouse unbuttoned is a
prolific storyteller of vignettes about a man and a woman named Gabriel and Mary, a
couple who spend their days making love and bologna sandwiches and arguing about one
of two questions: why are we here and what if this swirling mystery holds no meaning?
On the last day of class, it's raining and we all know the afternoon traffic going home
will be horrendous and we want nothing more than the class to be over with when the
shy nun, the one who wears her unrevealing sweaters buttoned and has never spoken,
raises her hand and asks if she can read to us from her story. As she arranges her pages,
she says quietly, this is a true story. It's about a soft world hidden under this one. Her
voice is gentle and as she reads about that sky, those clouds, these trees, his face,
I watch as the summer when I was six unfolds before me and how I'd wait on my knees
in a field of cool grass, watching for the angels who'd play ball together in the dark
never bothering to count their homeruns under the falling stars. |
