Today was Mother's Day, something Lynn didn't realize until we were sitting in church and the very young children's choir sang "This is the way we clap our hands [stamp our feet, shout hooray!] 'cause we love Mom!" "Happy Mother's Day," she whispered, pretty good I guess for a restless and slightly self-absorbed 17-year-old who still goes to church with me. Last Thursday I'd planned to go to the township board meeting but when Lynn asked if we could watch Friends together I did not hesitate to redirect. How many more times will that invitation be extended?

This afternoon I went on my customary Mother's Day pilgrimage. Holy Cross Cemetery on Derry Street has served the Catholic community in Harrisburg for many years. I've often used it for exercise walking, noticing all the familiar names on the headstones I passed -- the grandparents and, increasingly, the parents of the people I grew up with. On one such walk I came upon a corner occupied by several dozen graves of the Sisters of Mercy. It's like a small garden set apart from the rest. There's a statue of the Virgin surrounded by some azalea bushes. The grave markers are all flat stones and include the deceased's religious name along with her former last name. One individual of fond memory in that spot is Sister Mary Rita Hackett, 1892-1968, who as the seventh grade teacher at Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament School in 1960 admonished us frequently not to sit around like bumps on a log. 

And Sister Mary Kilian Dunn, 1920-1968, is there as well. She was my tenth grade English teacher and among the first to encourage my writing. (I mean she really took it seriously, asked me what I meant to do with such-and-such a piece, didn;t just give it a once-over and say, oh that's very nice dear.) As dean of girls two years later she called me into her office to talk to me about my direction in life, which she deduced from my mediocre grades (for someone with such a "fine potential") and my failure by January of senior year to apply to any colleges might be a bit fuzzy. As I recall, I was not very responsive to her that day. I was cold, aloof, my behavior bordering on the rude. Looking back now, I can see that she knew something about me, but wasn't quite sure what it was she knew. My rejection of her very sincere hand of friendship was my attempt to keep her from finding out. It was, I think, the last conversation I had with her. I wish I'd handled it differently.

Sister Kilian is among the youngest of the women there, and one of the last burials. Most of the rest of Holy Cross was occupied by then. In the early 1970s the Sisters of Mercy started using a spot in the new Catholic cemetery far out of town where new developments and a new parish had sprung up. There are never any decorations on the sisters' graves. Even Sister Kilian, who came from a large Harrisburg family, has few surviving nieces and nephews.

When people reminisce about the greatness that Catholic schools built through the twentieth century, they rarely mention that nearly all of that was achieved on the virtually unpaid labor of these very dedicated women. Others, too many of them, remember "sister school" as a place of harsh discipline where their individuality was trampled. These people delight in rude jokes about nuns.

I know that Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of Saint Mary's is a romantic fantasy, and Cheech and Chong's Sister Mary Elephant is a savage parody skewed the other way. I remember something in the middle -- sincere women who had flaws just like the rest of us but did the best they could. On Mother's Day I lay flowers on their bare graves, and I speak a word of blessing for all they gave me. It's the least I can do.

I continue to climb out of my depression. I've been keeping a chart of my symptoms, rating each day on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the full sun Pollyanna attitude in which I can't remember what it feels like to be depressed (rarely achieved) and 5 being the state where I can't remember what it's like to be a 1 or a 2 (also rarely experienced). 3 is where you know you're depressed but you're ignoring it. I'd like to live mostly in that neighborhood of 2, which carries depression like a seldom used credit card. It stays in your wallet. The tip of it catches your eye every time you go for change or your debit card. It would be the one easist to pluck out of its slot. I think I can safely say that tonight I am at 2 -- my DepressoCard has no balance.