SISTER MARY WHITE
CONSIDER CHARACTER BEFORE WRITING YOUR MEMOIR
CHARACTER is a vital part of writing a memoir. Aspects of memoir are taken from fiction such as setting, character, dialogue, plotting and a few others. Before writing a memoir, consider who will be your main character. Who else is important for your story?
In my last BLOG in DECEMBER, I used a piece Rich had written about the man who became his AA sponsor when he moved from St. Louis to Rochester, New York in the early 1990s. Rich used dialogue, character description, and setting to tell a compelling story about his sponsor.
This led me to think about people who have influenced my own life and I recalled Sister Mary White at the Dominican Reflection Center in Woodway, Washington. The nuns had established a Center for Creativity and she offered me a job teaching writing there and helping with special events. First I wrote this piece as a memoir sketch, but then the monthly meeting of Union Poets came around, and I decided to try the story as a poem (see below). I think it is important to “play” with writing, to have fun with what you are trying to say. I liked the poem best so have included it here.
SHE TAUGHT ME HOW TO MAKE STEW
Sister Mary White taught me to make stew,
A conglomerate of meat, vegetables, soup and spices,
Add some bouillon and stir the mix to conjure a delicious meal on a gray, cold, winter’s evening.
Our family lived near Sister Mary in a small town called Woodway, Washington, an area heavy with mansions perched north of Seattle on the ridge above Puget Sound where most boat traffic headed North passed below.
Sister Mary belonged to a small order of Catholic nuns who inhabited a mansion originally built for visiting Boeing executives.
The three-story red-brick building offered spectacular views of the water below and the Olympic Mountains on the horizon where sunsets flooded the sky with amazing colors.
Lushly landscaped acreage offered a variety of rhododendron bushes, and several types of firs rising 20 plus feet as their branches of deep green needles brushed against one another.
The nuns found joy in inhabiting this magnificent place, a joy that resulted in a Center for Creativity, and when asked to share my passion for writing and join their dream, I jumped on the chance. My contributions were memoir and poetry, taught to local residents from Edmonds to Everett alongside a few homeless women the nuns tucked into our classes as a reminder of our blessings.
In time, we added weekend events to include yoga, forms of meditation, lunches with live music and moments to stroll the landscaped grounds and trails in solitude and contemplation.
So often I would enter the large home to find Sister Mary sending out delicious smells from the generous kitchen that occupied half of the first floor.
She dressed casually in donated clothing. Her thin gray hair formed a simple cap on her head. Like her clothing, her stews blended bits and pieces, often leftovers and scraps, but always with the cooking essentials of olive oil, onion and garlic.
On top of this base, she added pieces of beef or other available meats, vegetables, carrots or celery, zucchini bits, maybe cucumbers and potatoes. Spices like thyme, rosemary, dill weed, soups like French onion and consommé joined the mix that simmered quietly for hours and arrived at the nuns’ dinner table in the basement of the mansion, often accompanied by homemade bread. The nuns appeared to always cook for themselves.
Sister Mary also supervised a large vegetable garden out at the edge of the great lawn overlooking the cliff above Puget Sound. Like any great cook, she knew that fresh ingredients make the difference.
Until one late winter morning the whirring noise of helicopters woke us to find a large part of the bank at the DRC had crumpled and fallen onto the train tracks below. The garden, a crown jewel at the DRC was never rebuilt while I lived in the neighborhood.
Eventually I had to confess to Sister Mary that I was Protestant, not Catholic. In fact, I even pushed the boundaries of Protestantism, attending churches like Unity and eventually moving down to Yelm to become a student at Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment.
My husband, Rich, then bravely came forward to confess his struggles with Catholicism since he became a recovering alcoholic.
Sister Mary embraced our friendship, took our religious struggles in stride. She assured us simply by being who she was that the God she loved could make room for everyone. There were no requirements except to be ourselves. Just so, we could share our skills with the homeless as well as those who lived in the area. We could honor our bodies with yoga and show up for the Solstice meditations and days of contemplation, regardless of how we saw God. We could write and share our stories and learn from each other without critique, just acknowledgement of our life experiences.
Sister Mary taught me to make stew stirred with wisdom. Being with her deepened my understanding of a God that embraced the beauty of nature, the many beings that live on the earth and most of all, to send out love for all that God has created on this earth.
P.S. It seems to me this experiment turned out to be some combination of memoir and poetry! Try your hand at character. Feel free to send to me at the gmail listed here.