In This Small Spot by Caren J. Werlinger

Author:Caren J. Werlinger
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781932859928
Publisher: Bywater Books
Published: 2013-02-11T23:00:00+00:00

It was nearly Thanksgiving before the choir was back at full voice. None of the senior nuns could remember such a devastating illness running through the entire community.

Mickey was one of the few to have come through it unscathed. “Physically, maybe,” she would have said. Sister Anselma had been the most critically ill. She had stayed in the infirmary for five days. After that first night, any time Mickey had come to bring her food or medicine, their eye contact had been brief and neutral, and Mickey honestly couldn’t tell how much Sister Anselma remembered.

As the infirmary emptied and the work load returned to normal, Mickey and Jessica resumed their classes with Sister Stephen and Sister Josephine. Mother Theodora asked to see both of them. Jessica had only been to Mother Theodora’s office once, during one of her visits to the abbey with her family when she was a candidate.

“Sister Mary David has told me how enormously helpful you both were,” Mother Theodora said once they were seated. She looked at Mickey. “And she told me how many night shifts you worked for the others.”

Mickey shook her head. “Everyone else got sick and tried to keep working, but they had to get some rest or I would have been on my own.” She shrugged. “So it was actually a selfish ploy on my part to make sure they didn’t bail out on me entirely.”

Mother Theodora smiled and said, “Well, I wish I had some way of expressing my gratitude to you both.”

“That’s not necessary, Mother,” Jessica said shyly. “Any of the other sisters would have done what we did.”

“Nevertheless, I am going to give you Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off – no obligations other than Mass. You may visit with family if they are coming, stay in bed, whatever you wish.”

“Thank you, Mother,” they both replied.

The juniors once again helped Sister Teresa decorate the Chapel for Advent and Christmas – “but it was easier when there were more of us,” Jessica lamented. They also reprised an Advent activity the abbey hadn’t participated in for years. They made small cards, one for each member of the community. On one side, painstakingly written in gold ink, was Quomodo Veniet? How will He come? On the reverse was a phrase, taken from Scripture, of how Christ might manifest himself in their meditations. Mickey’s was Solatium Nostrum, Our Solace. Mother Theodora’s was, appropriately, Pastor Nostrum, Our Shepherd.

“It’s kind of like a religious fortune cookie,” Sister Linus joked as she reached into the jar.

Mickey kept her card propped on the desk in her cell. She wasn’t sure she needed solace, but as she sat to write Danielle a Christmas card, she prayed that the Wilsons would find solace this Christmas. In the year since their surprise visit, Danielle had had two of the three lobes of her right lung removed and was undergoing a new round of chemotherapy and radiation for the spinal tumor. Mickey had kept Danielle’s prayer card on the board and she knew that many of the community kept the Wilsons in their prayers.

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