Abbess Paracleta rushed the engine and charged onto the thruway, soaring past slower vehicles. We presented her a bag of buckeye nuts from Ohio. Her face was powdered with a heavy hand, and her lips had all but disappeared. She wore the same black habit as we did, but hers was thick wool. She was tall and thick, with jowls and square shoulders. She stood waiting on the platform, arms crossed like we should have been sorry, should have done something to prevent the train’s delay. Abbess Paracleta came for us from Helena in her flat-bed truck. Three days and two nights we spent on a west-bound train, our legs kinked up in economy seats. If you focused on one blade, the operation appeared slower than if you considered them as a unit. The windmills stood lean and spare, untethered telephone poles with spinning blades. We were asked to help the Helena diocese convert a defunct rug store into a makeshift chapel.īefore we moved west, we watched videos of these turbines on the rectory’s pale, cubic computer. Land of low rents and a new wind farm: ninety towering turbines stuck in the ground on either side of the highway, gathering the gales. Population: 146 before we moved there, an even 150 after we moved in. A freckle of a town in central Montana, split down the middle by I-191. We had asked for a new parish, a new diocese we were sent to Judith Gap. You can decide, whenever you like, that what you feel is no kind of love. Here is something we have learned time and again: you do not have to devote yourself to what you thought you’d enjoy. We drank cold water and decided we would wait a while to skate again. That was the only way to move.Īfter, we iced our knees in the kitchen. Our hands went wide and our eyes low, and we one by one learned to move with care. But we kept trying until we could make it from wall to wall. We bled through our thermals, but we kept on, and our feet made heat in the leather of the skates and our mouths went dry with effort. For stability we groped the walls still we came down on our palms and knees.
It was hard to lift one foot and then the other. We’d soar, we thought, across the carpet. We cast off our habits and veils, and in our long underwear went to the basement. He had gone to bed, but we were eager to extend the day. The skates were not our own: heavy, knob-toed, stiff-heeled treasures discovered in the attic of Tim Gary’s home.
Our first night in Judith Gap, we learned to roller-skate.
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