Old habits die hard
August 30, 2013
By Pat Detmer
Recently I had my nails done for the first time ever, but because of a Midwestern grade school background that included lots of nuns, it was most likely a one-time event.
I’ve long been a devotee of what I call “Nun Nails”: short, clean and unadorned, like those of my Catholic grade school teachers. My schoolmates and I had innocent crushes on the young parish priests, but the nuns were regarded with an anxious mixture of fear, respect, fascination, fear and fear.
My holier-than-thou friends and I spent lots of time hanging around the church campus. Every Saturday we’d ride our bikes to the rectory where we would spend all morning folding the Sunday bulletins, and after school on Monday we would be there again, tasked with opening the Sunday collection envelopes and marking the weekly tithe in a massive leather-bound book that weighed almost as much as my Catholic guilt.
Some of the tidy black numbers listed there went back to the 1800s. We used a fountain pen for this vital task. No pencils, no white out, no messing up allowed. Only the very best students and biggest suck-ups were conscripted for the important job of caretaking the ledger, but I’ll admit that we snickered at the measly buck fifty that the richest people in town bestowed upon the church week after week.
I liked the way that these good deeds made me feel, and the sparseness and simplicity of the nun’s and priest’s lives appealed to me as well: poverty, chastity and obedience, three squares a day, and no need to stand in front of the closet wondering what to wear.
So this explains my unpolished nails (and my penchant for comfortable shoes) and leads me to a confession, something that Catholics are particularly good at: I wanted to be a nun. My best friend went to the novitiate right out of grade school, and as far as I know is still a nun today. And I … well I went a different route, not as pious, not as poor, not as simple, but the nails are still the same.
You can reach Pat Detmer — who probably would have taken the name “Sister Fabian Luxorius” because they were both saints and she knew she could get away with it — at patdetmer@aol.com. Learn more about Pat at www.patdetmer.com.
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