Through the Narrow Gate: A Nun’s Story. Karen Armstrong
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all the good things of life and embrace an asceticism that they could only see as impoverishing. However, they had made up their minds to let me enter the convent and were determined to see it through with as good a grace as they could.
They had driven me down from our home in Birmingham that morning to see me off at Kings Cross. It was our last time together as a family, and our knowledge of this filled the car. Outside on the highway the traffic swooshed past with heartless speed. I looked out the window, mechanically counting the bridges. Lindsey, huddled at the other end of the back seat, as far away from me as possible, stared with deliberate nonchalance out the window. She had been horrified when my mother told her. “How ghastly! I can’t think of anything worse,” and she had refused to talk to me about it at all. It’s almost as though she thinks a religious vocation is infectious, I thought wryly, looking at her averted head.
“All right in the back, there?” my father asked with forced heartiness. A useless question but an attempt to communicate.
“Yes, thanks,” we chorused obediently. There was silence except for the engine’s purring.
“Daddy,” said Lindsey peevishly, “do you think we could have the window shut? My hair’s blowing all over the place—and so is Karen’s.”
“You girls!” my father sounded at the end of his tether. “What the hell does it matter what your hair looks like? Nobody’s looking at you at the moment, are they? Why has every bloody hair got to be in place the whole bloody time! Nobody notices. You’re fanatical about your hair—both of you! Yet you never think of cleaning your shoes. People notice dirty shoes far more than untidy hair, let me tell you!”
We let the outburst go. It was one of his favorite hobby-horses. But he wasn’t really angry about our hair or our shoes. He was angry with God for taking his daughter.
“Would anyone like a piece of candy?” my mother asked soothingly. It was strange hearing her be the peacemaker. Usually it was she who got irritated and my father who calmed her down.
It was odd, I thought, how she felt the need to fill us up with glucose while we were on a journey. Anyone would think we were climbing Mount Everest. But it had always been the same, one of those odd quirks of family life that would be closed to me forever after today. It was the sort of thing you probably quite forgot. In a few years perhaps all my life at home would seem unreal.
“We’ll just be in time to have lunch somewhere nice,” my mother said cheerfully.
We made pleased noises. I felt too excited to eat anything at the moment, but this was another ritual that would have to be gone through. The Last Meal.
“I wonder what the food’s like in there?” mused my father gloomily. The in there was delivered in a dropped intonation as though it meant a prison.
“Terrible, I should think,” said Lindsey grumpily. She was still feeling sore about her hair and my father’s attack. “It’ll be just like school food. You remember, Karen, the nuns always said they ate the same food as us. Imagine school food every day of your life!”
Gloom filled the car. It was not the moment, I knew, to hold forth on the unimportance of physical comforts. At the moment the issue of food seemed trivial. It would be like the fairy godmother urging Cinderella to sit down to a sensible supper before she set off for the ball, a distraction from the real issue.
“But I’m sure you must have nice food sometimes, Karen,” my mother was saying. “I wonder if you’ll have turkey and plum pudding on Christmas Day.”
“Mmm,” I murmured vaguely. How did I know? These random speculations were serving to impress on all of us the barrier that was so soon to divide us from one another.
“I wonder what you’ll be doing this time tomorrow,” my mother went on, desperate to keep up the conversation at all costs. Silence was much too difficult to handle.
“Unpacking, I expect,” I suggested cooperatively. “General settling in. And then perhaps we get down to normal duties. Mother Katherine said that postulants spend most of the time doing housework.”
“Good God!” said my father, “do they realize how bad you are at housework? You’re always dropping things and you never seem to see the dirt. I don’t expect they’ll keep you long,” he added facetiously, but he sounded suddenly hopeful. Somehow I knew that he would actually be angry if the Order sent me home like an unwelcome parcel. But, “You probably won’t stand that for long,” he added quite cheerfully.
“Oh, it won’t be too bad,” I added firmly.
There was silence once more. Then my father cleared his throat. I knew he was trying to say something important.
“Look!” he said awkwardly, swerving dangerously round a truck. “You mustn’t be ashamed if you decide that the life isn’t for you. Don’t feel, will you, that anyone will think any the less of you if you don’t stick it out. It’ll be hard to admit that you’ve made a mistake. But if you find that you have, we’ll still be proud of you—even more proud of you, if you see what I mean.”
Lindsey shuddered as though some indecency had been spoken. The air hummed with embarrassment. As a family we just did not say that kind of thing to one another. Reserve characterized our conversations entirely. We chatted endlessly about trivia but left the big things unsaid. My father, I knew, had said something important, but none of us knew how to cope with it. How sad it all is, I thought. Each of us is locked away from the others. And now we’ll never learn to talk deeply. So many things will never be said. Because now it’s too late.
“Candy?” asked my mother again, and this time we all accepted, filling the void with the business of unwrapping and sucking.
And now here we were at Kings Cross, still smiling cheerfully, more anxious than ever not to mar these very last moments with tearfulness and grief. Five more minutes. We ought to say something memorable, something to mark the occasion as a momentous one. I should speak this time; my father had done his bit. He was glancing round the station, trying to focus his attention on something that would distract him from what was really happening. What could I say to them? “Thank you for all you have done for me"? “I’ll be thinking of you and praying for you always"? It sounded so glib and meaningless, though I meant it all.
“Well,” my mother said brightly, “the train’s going to leave on time. That’s perfect. We’ll just have time to get to the theatre.”
They were all going to a matinee performance of The Sound of Music. We had the record at home. Those pretty nuns, that irrepressible postulant, the wise superior. A good choice in many ways. The religious life cut down to fit the limitations of the stage—cozy, comprehensible, and painless. I knew that the real thing wasn’t going to be like that. The nuns I was joining in a couple of hours must smile at it. Of course it would be different.
“Got your suitcase?” asked my father helplessly, though he had put it on the rack with his own hands.
“Yes!” I said heartily. “There it is.”
“What time do you get there?” asked Lindsey, making a huge effort. She still looked at me, lost in a dream of horror.
“Four-fifteen,” I replied, though we had been through all this hundreds of times already. “I’ll be there in time for tea.”
We looked at one another.
Silence.
“I do hope you enjoy it,” I said. “The Sound of Music, I mean. You’ll have to tell me all about it when you write.”
God, couldn’t I think of anything better than that?
We gazed at one another for five long seconds. The smiles never once faltered. If only we could get this all over with, I thought sadly. It’ll be so much easier for them once I’ve really gone. I couldn’t bear what I was doing to them. In a way their cheerful bravery was a reproach. If only they’d behaved a little less impeccably so that I could feel a bit cross with them. But that