hearing a call to be a nun

Tis true, lots of nuns are bitching awesome. . . . but the more awesome they are, the harder it is for me to accept that they continue to buy into the Catholic Church which most def does not treat them as equals of men.

My godmother was my aunt-the-nun, my Aunt Jody. She took her final vows, entered the convent, the day after my baptism. Jody was seventeen!  As a kid, when I had dreams about my parents dying, which most kids sometimes have, my nightmare was not that my parents died but that I'd have to move into ao convent to live with my godmother. My godfather had been my grandpa -- just for convenience. Grandma, Grandpa and Jody had traveled to Chicago with newborn me and my mom to go to Jody's nun ceremony and they worked my baptism in since the relatives were in Chicago, which is where I grew up with my folks.  It was just easy to have grandpa be the godfather.

In my recutting nightmare, my folks died (which did not bother me all that much, I had a sucky childhood), and I reasoned that if my folks were gone, my geezer gramps would be dead too so that meant my aunt-the-nun, my godmother would have to raise me, right?

Sometimes I fantasized that life in a convent with a bunch of nuns might be kinda cool. All the nuns at school seemed to like kids. And, in my sexist upbringing, I assumed all women loved and doted on kids . S sometimes I fantasized that I would be beloved by all the nuns, and pampered and spoiled. That dream was pleasant.

But the nightmare dream was that I got drafted into the nunnery and had to become a nun at age 7 or 8 or whenever my folks bought the farm.  I definitely did not want to be a nun. Being devoted to god all my life did not, at all, speak to me, but my biggest resistance was trivial:  I imagined all nuns had all their hair cut off under their headdresses or veils or whatever you call them.

At my Catholic grade school, the particular order of nuns wore big boxy white frames around their faces, with a black veil draped off that white box:  it was a headdress.  My aunt the nun's order had simple black veils, with a white headband framing her face, but nightmares are nightmares. In my my-parents-are-dead dread, I lived in Jody's convent but all the nuns wore those boxy headddresses and underneath, they al have shorn heads. Scalped, shaven, no hair.

I lived in dread of short hair throughout my childhood. My mom was constantly tricking me into hair cuts. My dream was to grow my hair down to my waist but mom's drive was to keep my hair short and easy to care for. She would take me to the beauty parlor and promise that it was just for a shampoo and set, no cutting, but then when she had me in the chair, she would coo and cajole and, what a slimey thing to do, mom would say "Honey, I already paid for a haircut, I didn't remember you didn't want a cut, it's too late now, you have to let this nice lady cut your hair".  I was catatonically shy as a kid and mom knew it. No way I was going to pitch a fit in a beauty parlor, no way I would embarass myself in front of the beautician. So I would submit to the haircut, seething but hiding it.

Actually, I liked lots of nuns.  I stayed after school every day from grade second through grade 8 to help Sister Mary David clean the alter -- this was her special duty -- and lay out the vestments for the priests the next day. I considered this a great privilege. I loved that work. The church would be empty, except for me and Sister Mary David, and the floor was marble so it was cool even when it was warm outside.  I loved pushing the wide dust mop up and down the whole altar, which was huge at our gigantic post WWII booming Catholic parish.

In those days, if a kid had a 'vocation', if a kid thought she had a call to be a nun -- this was also true for boys with a call to the priesthood and, of course, boys got much more positive attention for such a all -- the whole parish would actually pray at Sunday mass for my vocation.

My mom told me that her mother had given one of her kids to god so mom was going to give god one of her kids.   Me.  I used to think, whenever she said that and she said it many times "Why do you want to give me away?" And I wondered "Why me?" She's got four sons and just the one daughter, why not give away one of the extra boys?" But I did not voice such thoughts. Mom would have considered that sassing. And sacriligious.  Back then, I was unaware of misogyny.  I had no idea my mom did not really like girls, that she much preferred children with penises. Boys.  But, geez, I was blind and clueless.  I had no idea my mom hated me. I knew but I didn't know. She was always pissed off at me and then she came up with that masterstroke of giving me away to God, which put a lot of pressure on me to be good.

I felt intensely pressured to be good all the time and to be slavishly devoted to her.  I was, truly, her slave.  My first priority