This story is about two of my siblings and me. Elevin years ago in 2015 my brother John and his wife JoAnn joined my wife Jan and me at a Condo in the Tampa Bay area along the gulf coast of Florida. We enjoyed the best ever February weather and also the presence of our sister Margaret, who came from Denver Colorado.
Margaret was number three of our six Smith siblings, behind John and me. We were just enough older than Lawrence, Rose Anne, and Mary Jo that we enjoyed a special closeness; seeing the world from a similar point of view as we grew up in the fifties, and experiencing that era from a common perspective. Even now, a half-century later, we three are much the same… in temperament, if not life experiences.
Margaret was widowed the previous summer; John lost his first wife about ten years ago and married JoAnn three years ago; Jan and I passed our fifty-fourth-year marriage milestone that fall. The three of us have followed different paths in life, but here we were together in Florida.
Early one Monday morning John and I delivered two weekend guests, his daughter Marge and my daughter Linda, to the Tampa airport to fly back to Chicago. Margaret had enjoyed being with the girls and asked to join our trip to the airport. After we said our farewells to the girls, John, Margaret, and I returned to my car and went in search of a restaurant for breakfast. As we drove along the streets of Tampa, we suddenly sensed the same thing, and knew we were sharing the same memory. Margaret expressed it first; this was the first time just the three of us were traveling together in a car since that long-ago September morning in 1955!
The memory of that morning was as vivid as if it had happened yesterday; John and I were going to transport Margaret from our farm home in western Illinois. She would not be returning for a long time, so it was a morning of tears that were hard to hide and emotions hard for us to express. Margaret was on her way to South Bend, Indiana, to join an order of Holy Cross Sisters at St. Mary’s College, across the highway from the Notre Dame campus. Her first return visit home was six years away, although she would have several hours of visiting privileges each month wherever she was stationed.
John and I were attending the University of Illinois, so the family had experienced our absence, but we returned every holiday and each summer. Margaret had graduated from high school in May; she had kept her own counsel, although Mom knew that she was considering the calling of this vocation. Her final decision came late; her class of fellow novitiates had already arrived at St. Mary’s, so Margaret would be the last one in.
Mom had an aunt, Sister Francis Marie, or Aunt Fannie as we all called her, who was in the order and extremely delighted to know that Margaret was joining. But that September Saturday morning we could feel only the sense of finality and loss with Margaret’s departure. John and I had returned to school two weeks earlier but had come home this weekend specifically to accompany Margaret as she moved to her new life at St. Mary’s.
John and I maneuvered her modest-sized steamer trunk into the back of our old Oldsmobile, securing it in place with a rope since the car’s trunk lid could not close entirely. We would travel most of the day to Michigan City, Indiana, where Aunt Fannie was stationed, and stay there that night. Aunt Fannie had arranged transportation and would accompany Margaret to the convent at St. Mary’s College the next day, so John and I would say our goodbyes Sunday morning and return to school in Champaign. This is all background to that moment of departure Saturday morning.
Mom has prepared sandwiches for our lunch, and we intend to reach Aunt Fannie’s in time for supper. We stand by the car parked on the front yard grass beside the gravel road. The sky is that special shade of blue only on display in early September. A warm gentle wind blows from the south, rubbing the dry corn leaves together in the field across the road to create the soft background music of the farm’s good-bye.
Our family circle of Mom and Dad and six children feels like it is dissolving this morning. No one rehearses these moments; the words and tears and touches that join us together one last time before we melt apart are gentle and brief. Dad gives Margaret a handshake and then a hug, and turns toward the house, so we don’t see him cry; that’s OK. I have a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes, not from saying good-bye but from witnessing the pain of farewells by Lawrence and Rose Anne and Mary Jo. There are no memorable speeches or profound words uttered; just hugs and tears that we are not accustomed to. Margaret turns to Mom last, and they cling together for several moments; there is only love and pain mixed together in a last embrace that makes for one of those images frozen in time to be deposited deep into a part of each one’s memory where such things last forever.
There are the usual admonitions to write whenever possible, and the reassurances between Mom and Margaret that they will. Margaret slowly but deliberately climbs into the back seat; John sits behind the wheel, and I take the passenger seat beside him. John takes a deep breath and starts the car; Mom calls out for us to drive carefully, and Margaret waves her last good-bye as we roll slowly onto the gravel road to start the journey to her new life. I still remember the feelings of finality and sadness that enveloped us that morning 60 years ago. I’m sure we carried on brief conversations as we traveled, but I don’t remember them. They are buried too deep to retrieve.
Margaret left the Holy Cross Order in the late sixties – she was one of the many people inspired by changes in the church initiated by Vatican II… unfortunately the order was not changing fast enough to suit her or a lot of her fellow nuns. She took a teaching job, got married, and raised a family; living in Wisconsin, California, and finally Colorado. John and I finished school, got jobs, married and raised families as well. We’ve enjoyed countless visits and many moments together over the ensuing years, but always surrounded by families.
So here we were, 60 years later, under circumstances we would never have imagined in 1955, driving down a street in Tampa, Florida, enjoying a serendipitous moment of life… just the three of us riding together in a car once again.
