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Bridget Mary Meehan enjoying her favorite soft ice cream at McDonald's
(Note: I was an Immaculate Heart of Mary Sister- Immaculata, PA. in 1995 I transferred to Sisters for Christian Community) |
In her former life, she was a
nun. Now, she’s an outlaw. More importantly, she has loved and will always love
ice cream.
She’s the eternal optimist. My
father and uncle, her only siblings, are quintessential pessimists. They try
their best to bring down my aunt at any possible chance.
“Dear Heart.” Uh-oh. That
phrase is a red flag. Except, of course, Aunt Mary never really gets mad or
annoyed- at least not enough to admit it.
The full-length sundress twirls
through the kitchen. She doesn’t cook, just prepares. She sets out her father’s
dinner then goes about dropping his pills into the opaque medicine box. Sixteen
for each day… six after breakfast, three after lunch, three after dinner, and
three before bedtime. She hums as she works.
Her car is small… a regular
piece of shit, nicknamed by my father, the Jap Trap. The soothing sounds of the
spiritual soul plays softly on her radio. It’s literally torture. Danny and I
roll our eyes a hundred times over. We look over at her and giggle. She has to
sit on a pillow to see over the steering wheel.
A heretic, really. She’s
committed crimes against the Catholic faith with her social justice programs
and community outreach projects. She’s an imposter. The impersonator of
priests.
She backed into a wall once
while parking on an empty street in Ireland. Afterwards, my best friend and I
convinced her to drink with us. One Guinness later, she bid us adieu but not
before leaving us twenty euros and sashaying out of the dingy pub with a
crooked smile. At the door, she spun around and gave us a mischievous wink. We
nodded knowingly and turned back to our Bulmers at the bar.
Her diet consists of power
bars, diet coke, and McDonald’s frozen yogurt. She’ll walk for miles to get
Mickey D’s frozen yogurt.
There are stuffed bears along
the aisles. Her parishioners are smiling and waving me over. Dreading more
social interaction, I slink over and nod as they all tell me, “your aunt is a
saint.” I smile obligingly.
She was excommunicated the day
I graduated from very same high school she attended two decades earlier. The
ceremony was held in the National Shrine and she sat patiently, beatifically in
the fourth row. I can’t imagine how she felt sitting within the very building
at the heart of her faith and the enemy to her cause.
Dick, her friend, came to
Thanksgiving a few years ago. His dyed black hair, his gray beard, and white
soul patch were a real sight to see. He smiled longingly at my aunt as my Uncle
Pat mimicked the look behind him. Aunt Mary never noticed and denied the crush.
“He’s a dear, sweet man. You know, his wife died three years ago. She had an
amazing soul.”
I splash-kicked water into her
face, accidentally, of course. She had already given up on keeping her hair
dry. Danny, my younger brother, laughs and cries, “Let’s play cops and
robbers!” We scream “Not it!,” and rush to opposite sides of the pool as my
aunt wades out towards us.
She’s a dancing fool. Every
wedding, every wake, all parties… She’ll dance by herself or whoever she finds.
She doesn’t care. The Irish jigs really get her going.
She is short, about 4’9. Her
platinum blonde bob frames a pair of soft blue eyes. She wears long, flowing
dresses, chunky sandals, and an oversized floppy hat during the summer. In
colder weather, she opts for bulky sweaters and tights under long skirts and
wool dresses.
We packed up the whole family one Friday and drove up to
Pittsburgh. We made a weekend of the ordination. That Saturday and a few
loopholes later, my aunt was ordained a woman priest in the Roman Catholic
Church. We took her out to dinner and my dad bought her roses.
I set up her Facebook for her. She bought me a Starbucks card for
it and offered twenty days worth of praise for my social networking skills. She
updates about ten times a day with articles or Bible verses that inspire her.
Giddy with her technological abilities, she posts videos of my grandfather
playing trumpet every week.
When I was eight, she made me
teach her moves from my Irish dancing class. We’d spend hours perfecting the
reels, hops, and lead backs on the cool, tiled floor of the darkened basement.
They knew the regulars at McDonald’s. (They were regulars at
McDonald’s). Laura was a nice little old lady. We saw her at 6 pm every time we
visited until one day, we didn’t see her. Intercessions went up to God and we
dedicated our mealtime prayers to Laura. Aunt Mary bought an extra cone for old
time’s sake.
Her voice is soft but her laugh is shrill. What’s worse is that
she can’t carry a tune to save her life. She’s utterly hopeless. But still, she
insists on singing.
She swims every day she can. My grandfather plays the trumpet for
her on the sidelines in his baseball cap and baggy Hawaiian shirt as she
splices through the water in their cheerful pool. The chestnut tree casts a
shadow the length of the pool but she reapplies her SPF 75 four times every
hour.
When we were younger, we’d play all sorts of games. Cinderella
involved a pair of tattered old heels and many attempts to jam it onto all of
our feet. For awhile, when I was very young, Mother Eagle was my favorite game.
We’d race around the yard to protect and feed our baby birds. We’d coax our
sometimes-willing beautiful black, brown, and white mutt, Belle, into a nest of
pool tubes, old towels, and flower petals as we threw sticks and wiffle balls
to her. Belle just lay down and sighed. She was a good sport, though.
The first time she drank, my aunt was 18 and at the convent. The
nuns were watching some godawful John Wayne movie. She thought the cheap wine
would taste like ice cream. By the next morning, she realized that she had been
sorely mistaken, as she nursed her killer hangover.
Belle knew two words: “walk” and “McDonalds.” Aunt Mary was
relentless in providing her already bulging frame with juicy double
cheeseburgers. Whenever my dad and mom would grumble about it, she would reply:
“Well, she likes them. And she wants them. I can’t help that she expects them
now.”
She introduced Danny and me to Starbucks. Enough said.
She’d rather speak to me than my father who jumps down her throat
every time they talk about this. She doesn’t want to put her father, my
grandfather, in a nursing home. She just couldn’t. I understand
When Danny was younger, she’d trick him into holding her ice cream
cone as she licked up the drips. Danny watched, dumbfounded, perplexed, as his
cone was gingerly handed back to him, half eaten.
She cried once… on the phone. The next day, I had convinced my
father to fly down to Florida with me to see him one last time. He recovered
that time but I know the cycle will continue. When we arrived, haggard and
wide-eyed, she hugged me, held me for a minute and refused to let go. I waited
awkwardly, but patiently.
Turquoise, teal, navy, seafoam, robin’s egg, periwinkle, royal…
Blue is her signature color. Occasionally, some green and purple pop out like a
black squirrel.
She wears necklaces with bejeweled and rhinestone crosses the size
of a fist. They rest above her pale breastbone.
She loves the Beatles.
She prayed fervently when her favorite president died… the
Irish-American one. One wall in the basement is devoted to him: it bears a
framed portrait of a young Jack Kennedy. A wooden crucifix is placed tenderly
above it.
Years ago, she attended a St. Patrick’s Day dinner with Grandpa.
She was invited to the White House by her idol. That night, my grandfather was
kissed by an angel (Roma Downey) and she met and laughed with her feminist
partner in crime, Hilary Rodham Clinton. I can guarantee from that framed
picture in her bedroom that they laughed a little too hysterically for me.
The stock market arguments waft into the dining room where I’m
trying to read. They never agree but my dad and aunt will spend hours
nitpicking stock and bond choices the other has made. Afterwards, they stand a
little closer and smile more.
After our near-death experience
on the Irish Sea, we lost our appetites (and our lunch). I was squeezed in
between my grandmother and mom, both stridently vomiting into the bags that the
sailor had passed out earlier. When my father asked if they’d ever experienced
such bad turbulence, the sailor answered that he’d been on a boat ride like
this… but never with passengers. He promptly ran to the side of the ship and
puked into the gray water. I looked over at my brother, nestled comfortably
beside my aunt and grandfather. He glanced up from his Gameboy at all the
hung-over college kids struggling a few rows in front of him and smirked. He went
right back to playing his game. My grandfather was panicking and my aunt calmed
him by swiftly pulling out about ten rosaries and handing them to all the
passengers near her. My dad looked over and rolled his eyes. He had taken the
incapacitated sailor’s job of passing out bags to the sick. He was currently
instructing one aforementioned college kid to open his unconscious friend’s
mouth so that she wouldn’t choke to death on her own vomit. My aunt settled in,
crossed herself, and started the rosary. Her little voice chirped, rattling off
the Apostle’s Creed, Our Father, and the first three Hail Mary’s. Each word got
louder and several strangers joined in. My aunt offered a few words of solace…
something about dying together. My father whipped around, nostrils flaring.
“Shut up, Mary! We’re not going to die! I’m not dying without Pat!” A
Midwestern woman who my aunt had befriended was appalled and spoke up, “You
can’t speak that way to a nun!” My dad glared at the lady and yelled, “I can
say whatever I want to her… She’s my Goddamn sister!,” before storming out of
the little cabin into the miserable rain. My aunt turned to the lady and
smiled, oblivious to my father’s recent outburst; she said, “Oh no. Now, I’m a
priest.” Three hours later, we arrived at the dirty port and stumbled onto dry
land. My aunt said her goodbyes to her newfound friends and exchanged contact
information. She walked over to the van and slid back the door. “They were
lovely people. Sean, do you think we could stop at a McDonald’s? I could really
go for some frozen yogurt.”
