The rustle of skirts on a balmy afternoon

reminds her of Franciscan sisters clad in gray habits and blue veils; of her fourteen-year-old self, falling in love with those nuns, wanting to be one of those nuns, reading St. Therese of Lisieux' Story of a Soul and spending sleepless nights repeating the lines in the book that had caught fancy; of singing in a choir and feeling the peace that only youth and hymns of praise could give; of a four-page essay she had written for a Creative Writing class, on the first page of which her professor had scribbled the lines, "Bravo! I could have sworn you were a nun in your past life!"

And then, the humdrum drone of passing cars brings her back to the present, where her last memory of prayer is that of trying to remember when it was she had last prayed.

(photo)