Sister Serendipity

With August comes the birthday month for three women who have become a bit like sisters for me.  Biological sisters to one another, these three grew up on a farm in Iowa in a devoted Catholic family.  After high school, two of them entered the Sisters of St. Francis in Dubuque, and their eventual ministries took them to various places.  The third left home to train with an airline and ended up in New York, where she met her husband and started a family.  Whatever her reasons for leaving Iowa, she seems to have found her niche with her family on Long Island.

My first introduction to the Hosch sisters was Margie, Sister Margie, the middle of these three.  I met Margie in 2010 when I attended a women's retreat that she had developed and was leading in South Carolina.  As time went on, she and I started giving retreats together and became friends.  Next into my arena came Ann, the outlier in New York, who with Margie visited me at a condo I once owned at Sunset Beach.  Ann and I connected easily and enjoyed the commonality of adult children and young grandchildren.  A year or so later, I ventured with Margie to Iowa, where I met Joan, Sister Joan, and where we were joined by Ann and her husband Sal for a few days of fun, touring the area a little and playing Hand and Foot a lot.  Joan and I had quick immersion to each other during unexpected waiting time for Ann and Sal at the airport in Dubuque.

It's a bit of understatement to say these sisters are different from one another.  They don't really look alike, except for a quick smile or twinkle of an eye here and there.  Their personalities are distinctive, as well.

Joan, the eldest, is thoughtful and practical and an avid fan of sports and horses.  Her ministry was in education before she retired to Mount St. Francis, where for some years following her retirement she delighted the Sisters and staff with treats she made in her Sweet Shoppe.  Joan is comfortable behind the scenes.

Margie can be practical, too, but she leans more toward the imaginative and intuitive.  Poetry sometimes spills from her with the ease of one who might be giving a weather report.  Full of energy and vision, she resisted retiring from her ministry in South Carolina, but has now moved to Mount St. Francis, where she enjoys proximity to Joan but continues to adjust to diminished independence.

Ann struck me right off with her sense of humor.  We spent the first morning of her visit laughing almost nonstop at anecdotes from their growing up and various goings-on with her New York family and her son's law office, which she continues to manage.  It is not only Ann who has the sense of humor.  They all can be pretty funny.  And they are not without other similarities, primarily their basic values of reverence and care for life - and especially for one another.

Unlike these three, I grew up on a  farm in North Carolina in a Baptist family that could typically be found at the little country church nearby whenever the doors were open.  Prior to 2010, I had never known a Catholic personally, except one of my hall mates in my freshman year in college.  Who could have imagined a sisterhood with Ann, Margie, and Joan Hosch?   How does this happen?

Nothing we can plan or foresee, this connection seems a matter of openness to serendipitous moments and people, and trust in how these may evolve.  All of us are connected to our biological siblings by blood and, if we are lucky, also by spirit, that elusive inner part of us that we have difficulty explaining but are somehow able to recognize when it is touched or moved.  Often with our families, we take on baggage that gets in the way of connecting on a deeper level.  With the Hosch sisters, I recognized early on a kindredness of spirit that began and continues with simple openness and care.  We respect both our similarities and our differences and are somehow able to stay connected across the miles with limited contact.

For me, it is blessing that with their birthday month, I can be part of what these three remarkable women hold in common.  Here's wishing each of my serendipitous sisters a joyous birthday celebration:  Margie on the 10th,  Ann on the 13th, and Joan on the 20th!

The Blessing of Brothers

 The highlight of Friday was a visit from my brothers and sister-in-law.  Donley and Phyllis traveled to Warrenton from their home in Greenville by way of Tarboro, where they picked up Ed at his recently claimed home at The Albemarle, regretfully not including also his wife Dolly who is unable to travel.  The three graced my home with their presence for a few hours of sharing a meal and catching up.  It had been a while since we had been able to do this, making the occasion all the more precious.

These two brothers, along with a third, were ahead of me by several years in my Joyner family - 19, 13, and 7 years, to be exact.  With my dad, these salt-of-the-earth men, although different in multiple ways, have been of one mind and heart as models of male strength tempered with softness for my entire life.  We lost my oldest brother when in the prime of his life at age 49, his heart declined to bounce back following a serious surgery..

My brothers have always been a source of awe and fascination for me, starting with their names.  William Alvin, named for our dad and our mother’s then deceased brother, grew up as W. A., but when he entered the professional world, he became known as Bill, though always W. A. to his birth family.  Charles Edwin - the jury’s still out on the origin of his name - was Ed growing up, except to our mother who always called him Edwin.  Official documents identify him as Charles E., causing a mite of confusion from time to time.  Charles Joyner?  Who is he?  Joseph Donley, named for our maternal grandfather and our dad, was called Donley.  As an adult, he began introducing himself as J. D. because, for one thing, he became weary of spelling his name for folks who thought his name was Donald (or was it Donkey?😊)  Official papers list him as Joseph D.  Like Charles, who is Joseph Joyner?  What were our parents thinking?

Interestingly, my name was never an issue.  Named for our mother’s two sisters and called by the double name of Mary Catherine from the day of my birth and possibly before, I have never dared change or drop any part of what I am called, although sometimes I am simply MC.  Like my parents, I never wanted to slight one of my aunts, both of whom I adored and both of whom were additional mother figures and inspirations for me, one a teacher and one a nurse.  Some of us may play with our names and have others play with them as time goes on, others not.  Either way, we are who we are - “a rose by any other name …”.

My brothers’ names are only part of their intrigue for me.  As noted, I think I may have been somewhat in awe of them all my life.  W. A. was serving in the Army and stationed in Germany in the aftermath of World War II when I was born, and the first few months of my life are well documented with photos which were sent to introduce this soldier to his baby sister.  Upon his return home, he soon married Wilba  Rae, who remained a treasured part of our family until her death three years ago.  I became an aunt at age six to their daughter Anne and three years later to their son Al.  W. A. was always attentive to me but naturally more engaged with the family he was starting.  In one sense, his children have seemed more my generation than he, but I never doubted his care for me.

Ed, I am told, at age 13 when I was born, eagerly took on caring for me and with such adeptness that my mother did not hesitate to go shopping or meet friends - or whatever - and leave me in his charge.  Brushing hair, ironing dresses, and pushing me in a stroller on the dirt path to our home were second nature to him then; and as the years have passed his fondness for children has been clearly demonstrated with the little ones in our family and among his friends.  When Ed left home to fulfill his draft into the Marines, it was a dreary day in our household.  I remember the dark cloud.  I had little understanding of it all, but I knew enough to feel sad.   After his return, he got on with his own adult life but I never felt excluded.  Being a junior bridesmaid in his and Dolly’s wedding when I was eight years old was a high point of my childhood.  When his daughter Donna came along, I was quite the experienced 12-year-old aunt.  Natured much like my dad, Ed reminds me of him.

Donley, the closest to my age, taught me to arch the ball when shooting a basketball, drove me frequently to play Putt-Putt, taught me to chip a golf ball in the front yard, and spent a frustrating Sunday afternoon on a back street in Rocky Mount attempting to teach me to parallel park.  There were a few times when we scuffled and his advantage was such that my aunt next door could hear me screaming for relief.  He took a turn with the Navy before going to college, and we ended up at East Carolina (then College) together for one year, his senior and my freshman.  It worked well for him that I could type his lesson plans for student teaching and it was to my benefit that he was close by as I adjusted to life away from home.  I remember a little irritation on my part when, after college, he took a job with the state highway department. I thought he would have been an excellent coach.  He is.  We closed the gap of years a little with our weddings, as he married Phyllis just three weeks before I married Jimmy.  Their son Brian is a year ahead of our oldest, Karen.  Donley has many traits that remind me of my mother, so he and Ed together help to keep the spirit of my parents alive for me, in addition to their own unique gifts.

The “catching up” that I anticipated in the visit on Friday went far beyond the news of the last several months.  Sitting at my table after a soup and sandwich lunch, we easily but surprisingly moved into some territory that had never crossed my radar before and some that predated me.  Interestingly, most of it was humorous in retrospect.  Whether it was humorous in the moment is questionable, some of it unquestionably not.

Now and then in this reminiscing, both Ed and Donley made a point of addressing me directly to make certain I understood that I was considered special from the day I was born.  There may have been occasions when they were at innocent odds with each other but never with me, they noted.  I think I have always known that.  When folks hear that I was the end of the line in my family behind three significantly older brothers, they often assume - and verbalize - that I must have been “spoiled.” Honestly, never in the past or even now looking back upon it, does “spoiled” seem to fit the care I received in my family. That I was considered special, I will endorse, with much gratitude.

My hope is that Ed and Donley - and W. A. from another realm - can know their own specialness and the blessing they are to this baby sister.  There has never been a “rose” of a brother that could have “smelled” sweeter than any one of my three.  I hope they can know the blessing they are not only to me but also to the world.