Almost every alum was breathless as she opened the door after climbing to the fourth floor, the long, narrow fourth story on the front of the building overlooking the Fox River.
Our freshman homeroom nun, who also watched over us in our dorm, hated germs, so she froze them to death. The casement windows were open full tilt at night, regardless of the weather. We sometimes figured that she must have had an electric blanket behind the hanging white sheets of her alcove. Those winter nights when the wind whipped around from the north and came in sideways through the east windows were her favorites. She especially liked it if there was still some snow on the floor in the morning, assuring us that no freshman in her dorm had ever frozen to death.
I went over to those windows. I remembered winter nights that were sapphire blue with nearby sparkling diamond stars that seemed, sometimes, to notice me.
The stiff white sheets on my little iron bed had made me shiver through my flannel pj’s and the edge of the rough, colorless woolen blanket scratched my neck. When I moved, just to relax, I had to warm up another whole patch of the icy sheets. I had delicious dreams in that cold bed, asleep and awake — dreams of the prairie far away, waiting for me to get home in the warm, green Springtime.
Our nun’s bedside light showed like a dim candle through the sheets of her alcove. I heard the pages of her book turn. That was often the last sound I heard at night. I wondered if she read books like the one she gave to me, An Imitation of Christ, or if she read some that were confiscated from me, like Gone With the Wind and Rebecca.
That was my high school, Mount Saint Mary Academy on the Fox River in St. Charles, Illinois, the school I thought I wanted to leave, which many of us alumni visited just before it was demolished to make way for a condo community.
I ended up staying there for all four years. My freshman yearbook autograph pages were filled with goodbyes because I’d told everyone I was not coming back. But, that summer, when vacation was winding down, I told Mother I had changed my mind. With all its short-comings, it was the right place for me.
