Travels with My Harp by O'Hara Mary;

Author:O'Hara, Mary;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shepheard-Walwyn
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Stanbrook

DON’T TALK TO ME about packing. Even the anticipation of it, trying to decide what to put in and what to leave behind, wearies me; I generally end up taking more than is necessary and leaving some essential things behind. In packing for Stanbrook I was spared all this. I’d been sent a list – not unlike the boarding-school list of my childhood. So it was just a question of ticking off the various items: one black dress, two pairs of black shoes, long black stockings, and so on. For laundry purposes each person was allotted a number, and mine, which was number five, had to be stitched on all my belongings. This took some time.

Neither my sister Joan nor my brother Dermot knew then about my decision. I felt that they would not have understood. In Dublin, apart from my father, Sister Angela and Mother Ambrose at Sion Hill were the only ones I confided in. The last thing I wanted was publicity; and so the fewer who knew the better. Those who did know about my plans accepted my decision, though I suspected that some of them did so with reluctance. Up to this time my father was staying in lodgings in Dublin. Thinking it would be better for him to have a place of his own after I had gone away, the two of us moved into a flat out in Monkstown on the outskirts of Dublin. It was from there that I left for Stanbrook.

Some days before I travelled to England, I telephoned my good friend, Seán Óg Ó’Tuama (whose claisceadal music sessions I’d been attending on and off since my return from Australia), to see if he would give me a lift to the airport. I could have got a taxi, but I wanted to see Seán Óg and tell him what I was doing. When he arrived and saw the trunk full of black clothes, he was puzzled. ‘Where on earth are you going?’ he asked. When I told him, he was stunned. He and my father saw me off at Dublin airport and I left Ireland, as I thought then, forever. I wasn’t to meet Seán Óg again or hear from him, until one day twelve years later he turned up unexpectedly at Stanbrook to see me.

As the plane took off over the Irish Sea towards England, I settled back in my seat and thought to myself that this was to be my last plane journey. It was the first step of a spiritual journey for which I had been consciously preparing for over four years. I felt a deep peace.

I stayed overnight in the Manchester area to attend to some family business and was joined the next day by my father on the final lap of my journey. They were expecting me at the monastery by late afternoon, but whatever happened en route I did not reach Stanbrook until about 9pm, after Compline (i.e., Night Prayer which my father insisted on

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