We lived out in the country on 20 acres near Eugene. During the last, heated weeks of August my mother, sister and I sewed on name tags and checked off items from the list the boarding school provided: white blouses, white socks, sensible shoes, plastic soap dishes, stationery. By Labor Day we'd packed trunks and suitcases with sweaters and mittens and wool caps. My sister and I spent our last days of freedom barefoot, feeling home-sick although we hadn't left yet, and filled with a terrible excitement.
Most of the students attended The Academy on a day basis; but there were about 20 of us who were "boarder girls." We lived in the convent with the nuns. Except for Christmas and summer, the Academy was my home from the time I was 11 until I graduated from high school.
Our time was scheduled from the moment we woke to the ringing of a bell, until we laid our heads on our pillows to the call of "lights out." We sewed and sang, practiced the piano and peeled potatoes. We went to Mass and school and wrote home to our parents. We studied Latin and what to do with linen napkins.
I can't say it was an unhappy time. But there were moments when we yearned for any kind of change to the daily pattern the nuns had fashioned from the "idle-hands-are-the-devil's-workshop" school of thought. A number of events could shift our schedules into mild chaos. The coal furnace could break down. There could be a flu or impetigo epidemic. The pope could die. The arrival of a new girl could cause jockeying of the pecking order. Or it could snow. . . .
Snow, to me, was then and is now one of the redeeming pleasures of being alive on this planet. .
Until I went to the Academy I had little experience with snow. Our Oregon farm was on the western edge of the broad Willamette Valley, tucked against the foothills of the coastal range. The winters were mild and rainy. Snow was a rare, brief and timid event.
In Coeur d'Alene the seasons were more distinct. When I arrived back at school, the weather still was dry and hot. By the middle of September the leaves had turned. In October came the first frosts, the brilliant leaves fell, and it was open season for snow.
The snow I remember in that Northern Idaho panhandle was remarkable. It came in torrents and swells. It billowed and banked. The whirling, falling flakes made me dizzy. I can remember wondering if it was proper to pray for snow, to pray for it to stick. I did pray. I think even the nuns did. A good snow could change everything, raise spirits and inject some adventure into our lives.
When the first flakes began to stick and then to stay and start piling up, the mood of the entire convent changed. What was the weather report? Where were those mittens? Voices were filled with urgency, excitement and humor. When it snowed, it was easier to catch a nun running on the stairs.
A good snow held delicious possibilities, the best, of course, being that the day school would be forced to close. We'd have free time. We'd make snow ice cream and build snow forts. We'd hoard caches of the rock salt that was thrown on the walks. We'd make snow angels by falling down backward in the snow and moving our arms and legs up and down. At night, we'd sled.
A good snow meant a rush to the furnace room where the sleds were stored. A few girls had their own sleds, but most were used on a first-come basis. We waxed the sled runners with bits of candles. We replaced and retied the steering ropes. One of the advantages of being an "old girl" was that you knew where the sleds were kept, how to apply the wax and where to get rope.
The street cater-cornered to the Academy was on a hill. As the snow began to pack and ice, a city street crew would put sawhorses on the top and bottom of the hill to prevent cars from using it. I can remember sledding there during the daytime, but I remember the night sledding the best.
The nuns came with us! Their habits were floor-length, and they wore veils with bonnets that stuck out from the sides of their faces like a horse's blinders. To keep themselves warm from the chill, they garbed themselves with an assortment of black shawls and capes and scarves. I still can feel my humiliation as we walked en masse to the sledding hill. The "boarder girls" would walk ahead, followed by a group of muffled, flapping black creatures.
At first, our sledding was subdued. A few of the braver girls, me usually included, would put their sleds down and try the first run. It was a good hill with two sizable lumps that helped to boost the sled's speed, and - if you were going fast enough - cause your sled to fly for a second or two and make your stomach feel like jelly.
Once the hill was tested, a nun generally would offer to put one of the younger girls on her lap and take her for a ride down. Soon, everyone would be sledding, including the nuns. A really good run produced shrieks of abandoned joy. Nuns and girls careened down the hill and trudged back up. Laughter rolled over the snow. Noses numbed, and cheeks glowed. There was a feeling of camaraderie, of relaxed rules. We threw snowballs at the nuns, and they threw back. It wasn't until I was a grown mother myself that I realized that some of those nun "mothers" were no more than 10 years older than myself. But at the time their behavior was a wonderful break from the ordinary.
I can remember racing my sled down that hill so fast that I couldn't breathe. With my chin just inches from the gleaming snow, I could only glimpse at the blur of surface that sped me to the bottom.
The street lights didn't extend to the foot of the hill. Pausing to catch my breath, in the mid-darkness I could feel the silence of the snow. I felt peace and freedom.
Soon the fingers inside our mittens would begin to ache, and the younger girls would complain. The nuns would make a head count, find lost hats and assign the older girls to round up the sleds. Then we would trundle back to The Academy.
In the kitchen was an old Irish nun, Sister Charles Marie. She would have cocoa waiting for us. We would stamp the snow from our boots and bang the encrusted snow from our mittens and go into the huge kitchen.
Later, I would go to sleep, smelling the smell of wool things steaming on radiators. And I would pray for snow.
See Mary's art works, at Astoria Visual Arts Assn.