The Easter Story

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by Karen

Every year as we gather for Easter dinner we take the opportunity to reminisce about how my grandparents shipped my mother off to “the Nunnery” for being bad when she was 15.

Betty, my mother, was a bit of a firecracker you see.

She jumped out of her bedroom window in the middle of the night, smoked cigarettes and generally carried on in a manner unbecoming to a teenage girl in the 1950’s.

Betty wasn’t thrilled about being shipped to the nunnery, if she was going to be shipped somewhere she had a preference for the Ontario Ladies College in Whitby which, instead of nuns, offered horseback riding.

But the nunnery pleased her parents to no end.

Finally their ill behaved daughter was going to get the guidance she needed, and they were going to get the alone time they required to plan a well executed swingers party.

It was during this time at the nunnery that my mother learned discipline, obedience and the ability to choke down whatever food was put in front of her. That was the rule, made by God and delivered by the nuns. You eat everything put in front of you - non negotiable, even for liver.

Despite the harsh conditions, my mother looks back on her time in the nun-run school with fondness; the etiquette she learned, the friends she made and the imposing stone building getting smaller and smaller behind them as they ran away to buy their first pair of high heeled shoes.

Everything went along fine and dandy for everyone until the day Betty declared she loved the nunnery and she might just like to become one. A nun.

If this were a movie, the next scene would involve a family sedan comically skidding to a halt at the nunnery and a teenage girl and her suitcase being thrown into the back of the car. Car speeds away with clouds of dust behind it.

Betty didn’t become a nun. Her parents saved her just in time to ensure she would continue to be an uncontrollable firecracker.

Not that there's anything wrong with being a nun, but that personal path is more suited to a girl whose first instinct isn't to sneak out of the nunnery to buy her first pair of high heels.

But the experience did affect her. In fact the whole thing was so traumatic for her she banned me from wearing black until I was in grade 10. It reminded her of the nunnery uniforms.

This was also non negotiable, with Betty being slightly less forgiving than God.

Because I wasn’t allowed to wear black, black is now my favourite colour. I need it in clothing and decorating and shoes and purses. And it all stemmed from being banned from black for the first 15 years of my life.

I’m pretty sure my grandparents had no idea that sending my mother to a nunnery in 1950 would have any effect on their unborn granddaughter’s lifelong colour choices. But that’s exactly what happened.

In a twist of fate, Betty's own personal colour choices would lead you to believe her parents sent her away to a circus as opposed to an old building filled with nuns.

Unless it is bright, bold, and busy Betty banishes it.

Would you like to save this stuff?

We'll email you this post, so you can refer to it later.

It sort of puts my eyebrows in a squinch to think that something I’m doing at this very moment could randomly impact people generations from now.

When you think about, it’s freaky.

It is now time for a 5 minute intermission. Refresh your coffee. Eat a hotdog.

THERE'S MORE TO BETTY'S EASTER STORY

When last we met a few seconds ago, I told you all that I knew about my mother Betty's 3 month stay with a gaggle of Catholic nuns when she was 15.

My mother, Betty has always been interested in fashion & style. When she was 16, just after returning home from the nunnery, she opened her own clothing store. She cleverly set up shop right in her own bedroom and ordered all the sample dresses in her size.

Then she wore all the dresses because she loved them and closed her store, because it was a spectacularly poor business plan.

When she was in the nunnery, her ability to express her style was limited to a selection of demure barrettes. You'll never guess what happened. She fashion snapped.

In 1950, during Betty's holy weeks at the nunnery, she somehow got ahold of a potato.

Betty then put that potato behind her ear as she hid in her bedroom and plunged a needle and thread through her earlobe.

The basic method was to put a potato behind your earlobe, so when you finally worked up the lunacy to stab yourself, there was something in between your earlobe and your arteries.

Pierced ears were 2 things at that time:

The absolute CUTTING edge of fashion
An indicator of moral corruption

Betty was already morally corrupt by 1950 standards (smoking, climbing out windows) so there was NO reason not to further corrupt herself in the name of style and fashion.

On this particular day, in 1950, these morally corrupt ears were also infected.

Betty's ear swelled up to the size of a circus monkey, the nuns found out, her parents were called.

She stole a potato. From a nun. From a lot of nuns.

She'd have to be devious to do that. And it definitely shows premeditation. Betty must have snuck into the convent kitchen and searched until she found the potatoes, chose the perfect sized one and shoved it somewhere to hide until she got back to her room.

I then picture 15 year old Betty in her school uniform. There would be no hiding spot in that uniform that a potato could look inconspicuous & even fewer places it wouldn't look startling.

While relaying this story to me tonight, Betty wondered aloud why she wouldn't have used an ice cube.

I wondered that too.

That's what I used when I infected my own ear after piercing it with a needle. Betty never found out about my infected ear though. Not until I told her last night.

Which explains why Betty got sent away to boarding school for being bad but I didn't.

I was sneakier.

Wishing you … a Good Freaky Friday and a Happy Easter.