Almost seven years ago, I wrote a post on Ricochet titled The Other Woman. It told the story of a tiny, feisty nun, a Sister of Charity who–I believe–eclipsed, and had more influence upon the late Mr. Right than almost all other women in my late husband’s life (this includes me, his wife of almost 40 years, as well as the mother of his children, and his own mother). I do believe she had more influence on him even than E.J. Kritz, his USMC Drill Sergeant, and that’s not nothing.
She was Sister Mary Janet Ryan.
In a comment on that same post, I listed what might be referred to as “Sister Janet’s Rules.” Not as many of them as there are of Gibbs’ Rules, or even of Jordan Peterson’s (both of which came after), it’s true, but still…
Here’s the comment, and together with it, Sister Janet’s rules. I’ve reordered them to suit this latest post, but I haven’t altered the wording at all:
It was my great privilege and pleasure, once we got our schedules sorted out, to have lunch today, and to spend a few hours afterwards, with Mary Janet Ryan, SC.
Accompanying me to what my granddaughter has dubbed “The Castle of Nuns” were Mr. She, my stepdaughter, and our granddaughter.
Sister Janet has not lost a beat in the several years since I’ve seen her. I’m not sure if she’s the oldest nun at the mother house, but there’s no doubt about who’s in charge. Watching her boss Mr. Right around, and watching him acquiesce like the eighth-grader in her English class he once was, is absolutely charming.
Herewith, a distillation of the wit and wisdom of Sister Janet, now in her 99th year:
Race Relations–she told the story of how she and her sister nuns, in the summers when they weren’t teaching school in Pittsburgh, would travel to the South (usually around New Orleans) and teach in all-black colleges during the time of segregation. Our Sister Janet simply refused to have anything to do with any of that, and insisted in sitting in the back of the bus, behind the dividing “Coloreds” sign. She was regularly chastised for this, by the drivers and the other passengers, but pretended to be deaf. (She is now extremely deaf, so this is, as she pointed out herself, quite funny). One day, though, she had had enough, and in the faces of a particularly annoying couple who were telling her that she was required, by the government to sit in the front of the bus, she shouted (her word) at them, “I DISOBEY THE GOVERNMENT!” walked to the back of the bus, and sat down there again. She did this for years. No one ever laid a finger on her.
Humor–first, a joke involving Freddie the Frog and Sam the Clam. There aren’t enough subtleties in the English language to do the length and complexity of it justice, so I’ll go straight to the punch line, which is delivered by Freddie the Frog to St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, and goes “I left my harp in Sam Clam’s Disco.”
Family–Sister Janet was one of ten children, seven girls and three boys, who grew up in Pittsburgh’s East End. One brother was a policeman. Another brother was in the 28th Signal Corps in WWII, and, while marching towards the Battle of the Bulge one day, fortuitously came across his sister, an Army Corps Nurse, somewhere in France. They broke ranks and embraced, to the amusement of everyone, but were never able to convince anyone else that they were actually related. It was all put down to “young soldier sees pretty nurse and can’t help himself.” Both survived the war.
Her Storied Career–a brief review of the decades she spent teaching in the Pittsburgh Catholic school system, the 25 following years she spent teaching and serving as the chair of the Seton Hill College History Department, and the fourteen years she spent as an advocate in the Westmoreland County Court System (“I really, really, loved that”), where she was the despair of the district attorney for her propensity for describing people she had no time for as “badasses,” and, apparently, worse. This is a 98-year old nun we’re talking about here.
Finding the Meaning of Life–“Listen. Listen. Listen. And what inspires you. Find your inspiration and follow it. And don’t waste any time with”–pulls a disapproving nun face, and makes gestures with both hands that indicate dicey and dodgy activities (that would be Sister Janet). “And ABC. Always Be Careful. And love God.”
But the best, for me, came at the end. After yet more time spent between Mr. Right and Sister Janet in the mutual admiration society that they both find so rewarding, and after being told by her for the thousandth time how “talented” my husband is, she looked directly at me and said “He used that talent to get you.” Impeccably timed comedic pause. Then, “He used his brains to get you.” Another pause. Finally, “He wasn’t about to let you go.”
Then, she gave, what passes for, in such a little person, a huge belly laugh, and gave me a hug.
And suddenly I felt what I’m sure all those little children in St. John the Evangelist School felt, on the South Side of Pittsburgh in 1950, when they thought, “I have pleased this tiny and devoted Roman Catholic Nun. She approves of me.” It felt good.
I must be doing something right.
**The photo is of two of my favorite people, kindred spirits both, separated in age by 90 years, but by not a hairs’ breadth in intelligence, wit, imagination, and spirit.
Sister Mary Janet Ryan, Sister of Charity, died on September 15, 2017, at the age of 99.
A beautiful, brave lady.
As was the woman who inspired this post, seamstress Rosa Parks who, sixty-eight years ago today, on December 1, 1955, refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, AL, to a white man, was arrested for it, and started a movement which changed the world.
You must never be fearful about what you are doing, when it is right–Rosa Parks
