Indeed, there were plenty of friends and family and probably others, had we sought them, who would have given us a place to stay. In fact some did. We spent the first night or two at the home of two friends I'd known for years. I can't remember for sure how many days we were there, because some of that time rather blurs together into one amorphous entity.

There are two strong recollections of that time with them, in our disorientation of being just newly out of our monastery. One is that we found ourselves praying the Divine Office with a totally new sense of clinging to it, with almost the sort of desperation with which a swimmer in trouble must cling to a life preserver. Of course we were clinging to the Lord; he put us in this particular situation. To do his will, we'd given up an awful lot of security and comfort, and you bet we were clinging to him. Like little baby opossums clinging to their mama's fur. But the Divine Office was concrete. One held the books used to pray the Opus Dei. One said aloud the words of the prayers, words that I had now been praying many times a day for about three years and which Mother had been praying for nearly forty years. One prayed at specific times and in a specific method and with a specific mind-set and heart-set.

The other strong memory is how very gracious and care-taking in myriad ways, our two friends were of us. They'd actually gone out and bought a set of bunk beds and made a lovely room, so we'd have a comfortable and peaceful place. They loved us.

They also loaned us their camping gear, including a tent and sleeping bags and some extra blankets. How glad we were for those extra blankets on the few nights that the temperature dipped into the thirties! But we were headed south and not all March nights dip into the thirties, so we were not truly homeless, just "between homes". Though we would, in just a few days, arrive at Mother's sister's and though we would one day leave there to arrive in Tennessee (sort of via North Carolina, I think...), we later realized that we were homeless and between homes, from the time we left one monastery until we were again living in one.

So here we were, camping down the east coast. I'd tent-camped across country with nursing school friends over twenty years earlier, but I worried that Mother, who'd grown up on the 1940s streets of Queens, wouldn't know a campfire from a leaky tent (which leakiness did occur on a subsequent night). However, Mother got a great campfire going on her very first attempt on that first evening, and we cooked what must have been a passable meal, since, although I don't remember what it was, it also didn't kill us!

Mother had said that during the time we were at her sister's place in Florida, we would continue our monastic horarium (schedule), and lifestyle as closely as could be done outside of a monastery, but that we would not wear our habits. The reason for that was to avoid all of the attention that would be given us, all the invitations to breakfast after daily Mass, dinner with various folks in their generosity. In the monastery we would not be accepting such social invitations, so she did not want us to do so now either. A vocation, like a marriage, can be gradually eroded into mediocrity and then die, if not taken care of.

Since we were going to be rather "incognito" (in secular clothes rather than our habits), and since Mother hadn't been aware of clothing styles since prior to 1956, when she entered the monastery, I asked permission to pick out our skirt-and-blouse outfits when we went to the Salvation Army Thrift Store. I didn't add that I'd only been out of the world for a few years compared to her decades and so I could better pick out clothes that would preserve us from that dowdy-nuns-look. These clothes we folded carefully into a plastic garment bag and tied it to the top of the burgundy 1984 station wagon, since it wouldn't be needed until we reached Florida. (And since inside the station wagon was full of camping gear.)

As we camped our way southward the weather lost its nip and became balmy and the insects began to nip. Here we were. Mother Veronica, who had entered a monastery in 1956, had been sent as superior of five other sisters thirty years later to found a daughter house, which they did and which had a self-supporting business running in the black just a year after start-up. Myself, who had entered the newly founded monastery 3 years earlier, having given up all the aspects of a lovely life and nursing vocation to do so. Here we were, with all of the proper permissions, to be away from the monastery for a period, to seek a simpler monastic life.

For 40 years Mother had lived an ascetic, plain, un-noticeable life inside monastery walls. She'd missed (and not missed) the Elvis and the Beatles and Disneyland and Woodstock and Viet Nam and anything else you may recall from 1956 to 1992! Typical in her monastic life in 1956 was a bedroom (cell) about four and a half feet wide by five or six feet long with a mattress that was stuffed with straw. That was not the case by 1992, but the life was/is still ascetic and without all of the amenities and accouterments that are nowadays necessary luxuries or luxurious necessities.

From 40 years of that to, in about a week's time, our destination. Mother's sister had given us the address and directions and said she and her husband would be out front to greet us. Neither of us knew where Marco Island was. Or how posh—there were no campgrounds there! Neither of us knew that the "little apartment" Mother's sister and brother-in-law had so nonchalantly offered us for the next six months was the penthouse apartment on the fifteenth floor of the fanciest condo on the island, on the beach!

And indeed they were out front to greet us as they had promised. As we sort of limped in.

Somewhere around Savanna, there had been a terrible storm with lots of lightning and rain and thunder. (A storm seems so much CLOSER when enjoyed from inside a tent!) The lightening had not hurt us but (unbeknownst to us) the rain had turned our plastic garment bag of Salvation Army Thrift Shop non-dowdy-nun outfits on top of the station wagon, into very wet compacted layers. And then the subsequent days of southerner and southerner heat had brought to life little bits of mold that, in that dark, moist, warmly incubated plastic garment bag had grown into great and warring colonies, each vying to make the longest and widest and fuzziest splotches all over the non-dowdy clothing. Those mold colonies had such diverse lives of their own by this time, they all but cheered and handed out moldy cigars as we pulled into the driveway.

But they would not have been heard. Because somewhere just south of Richmond, we'd seen a Catholic Church, and in our excitement at having found Mass so early in the day, we'd taken a sharp right turn into the parking lot and that's where the muffler quit trying any more and finished falling off. So we limped and varooomed into the parking spot pointed out to us by Mother's brother-in-law as her sister smiled bravely on. (What could she do, the two siblings look so much alike that surely she couldn't have gotten away with pretending not to know us.)

As we stepped out of the poor old burgundy 1984 station wagon with no more muffler and moldy stuff cheering bawdily on top, I did feel the ground tremble. At first I thought ‘earthquake', but then I realized that it was not all of the ground shaking, but just the parking spot. Apparently on Marco Island there had never been a vehicle this olde and mouldy...and loud.

So here we were. Mother's sister and brother-in-law spent the next few days, before they left for New York, pampering us and feeding us and laundering us and showing us where to find the church, grocery store, library, and whatever else we might need for the next six months. At the end of that time, October 1st, we'd need to be gone so that one of Mother's nieces, a soon-to-be-honeymooner, could have her honeymoon without two nuns in residence!

In the meantime, we would live in total culture shock. In the monastery, collation (supper) would normally be a simple meal of applesauce and lettuce leaves with oil and vinegar dressing or cream of wheat and bread with margarine. Here, we looked out through ceiling-to-floor wall of glass into our "front yard", which was beach and sea. Everywhere were folks in designer-everythings. Young people owned their own Hobie-Cat pontoon sailboats. Visitors found it normal to pay $60 for a short para-sail ride (which did look tantalizingly fun). In the monastery we'd lived in the mountains with forest all around us. Here, the sea in myriad shades of blue and brown and green stretched forever, outlined by creamy sand, and one could not help but tremble, that the vastly different beauties between mountain and sea were the gift of one Hand.

We continued our same lifestyle as closely as could be done. We prayed Vigils on the little balcony overlooking the sleeping Gulf. We prayed Lauds each morning as the sea awoke and a group of five or six adult and juvenile pelicans might fly past us at eye level. We went to Mass at the local parish church. Incognito.

You recall, I had received Mother's permission to select our secular outfits, which we would wear to church and out in public. We'd cleaned and ironed this Salvation Army Thrift Store wardrobe and attired in them, without make-up, but with hair neatly and modestly arranged (Mother has beautiful curly, wavy hair that naturally falls into a style that looks beauty-parlor-done), we were off to Mass early each morning. Parish daily Mass felt different from Mass in the monastery. It was faster, spoken more quickly, with more motion somehow. But we adapted ourselves to it so as not to seem different. Said hi to the other daily Mass-goers and didn't stay to chat or otherwise socialize. Glad that our incognito was working.

One such morning we were leaving church after Mass and one of the ladies just ahead of us held the door open for us to go ahead of her. We thanked her with big smiles and she said, "You're welcome, Sisters." That stopped us dead in our tracks for a moment. Then we hurried after the lady and Mother asked, "Did you call us ‘Sisters'?" to which the lady said, "Yes, Sister." "You've never seen us in our habits!" I exclaimed, "how did you know?" The kind lady smiled a bit and hesitated. I followed her eyes as she glanced us over. "The clothes?" I asked in disbelief. She nodded apologetically. "What?" I asked her. "Gee, Sister, they're just so..." "Dowdy?" I finished for her, and she nodded. So much for incognito.

We went through each day, able to have mass and able to pray the Divine Office and do our spiritual reading and our lectio divina, (a form of contemplative prayer). We were able to keep our meals simple, as in the monastery. But we did not have the other half of "ora et labora", our manual labor. Manual labor is part of our monastic life. It meets specific spiritual needs as well as psychological and physical needs. But here we had no manual labor. We even walked about the grounds of the condo, hoping to find something that needed done, but there were companies hired to do this yard work we were coveting.

The best substitute we could devise (and no doubt many a yardworker would covet it), was a long sweaty jog on the beach, followed by a swim in the ocean, followed by a rinse and then some laps in the pool.

One time we made the mistake of following up that routine with a minute in the spa next to the pool. Neither of us had ever experienced a spa before (It looked like a cross between a tiny pool and a giant sink.), so Mother said we could see what it was like. In we stepped and down we sat on the little underwater ledge-like seat and turned the dial for one minute, after which time it would quit or beep or something, we figured.

No sooner had we started than a lady joined us in the swirling water. (It had felt weird enough to be sitting in this giant bubbling sink thing with Mother, but now with a perfect stranger also, I was about to bolt.) But the one minute buzzer sounded and we rose to leave, resetting the timer for the lady. We walked about thirty feet from the spa toward the doorway of the building, and Mother began scratching. "Whew, the mosquitoes have already chewed up my ankles," she said, scratching frantically as we walked in and to the back elevator. It was awaiting us and moments later we stepped off. Mother had become almost unrecognizable. Her eyes were so swollen they bulged, her mouth so swollen that her lips were thrice normal size. She was covered with the hugest hives I'd ever seen and these coalesced into one immense "swollen-ness" right before my eyes.

I wasted valuable time helping her out of her swimsuit and beach cover-up and into the shower, hoping to wash off her skin whatever she was having an allergic reaction to. Hoping she'd still be conscious and upright when I returned, I fled to the phone and called a dear man who lived a few floors down. I told him there wasn't time to await an ambulance and I didn't know the way to the nearest emergency room. I also told him that I expected Mother to be unconscious or in cardiac arrest any moment, if she weren't already. He said he'd take the elevator up to our floor. I flew back to the shower, relieved to see Mother still alive, though she was the color of a lobster just out of the pot, and every inch of her skin was one big hive. This despite the Benedryl I'd given her and the cool water from the shower.

Typical Mother: "I feel just fine, Angela, no need to worry."

Wrapping a towel around her and a bathrobe over that, I steered Mother to the elevator, disobedient to her, "There's no need to go to the hospital, Angela; we're not going." She leaned her back against the wall between the elevators just as the doors opened and repeated, "I feel just fine," as she seemed to just melt and begin sliding down the wall.

Thank God our friend was there to help me walk her into the elevator, and drive us fast to the ER. Thank God the ER staff did everything right. There were some additionally tense minutes when her heart rhythm concerned them. And they told us, what I already knew only too well, that a few moments more would have proved a few moments too late.

A few hours later, just a little bit before we'd normally be rising for Vigils, we'd gotten back. Mother had begrudgingly agreed to go to bed on the sofa, where I could keep an eye on her for a while longer, as nurses are wont to do. As I studied her face for any indication of increased edema (swelling), I asked, "Is there anything I can get you, Mother, before you sleep?"

"Well, this whole episode does seem to have given me an appetite," she admitted sheepishly.

"Sure, what would you like, a bit of that chocolate ice cream?"

"A large dish," she indicated, smiling a bit more sheepishly than before. "And three scrambled eggs wouldn't be too much."

I nodded.

"But then just two or three pieces of toast."

I nodded

"With a bit of jelly maybe, and some of that nice orange juice."

I nodded.

"And I think there were some of those potatoes left from dinner?"

"Yes, Mother," I answered. "Anything else, a little chocolate syrup on the ice cream?"

"Yes, Dear Heart," she replied fondly, "but not too much now; I don't want to overdo it."