Waiting…

In some…well most aspects, Maryville had more in common with a state prison than a boarding school.  All mail going out or coming in was read and censored before being mailed or received.  Parental visits were only allowed every other Sunday between 12:00 to 4:00 or 1:00 to 4:00… I don’t exactly remember which time slot it was.  If parents came out on a different Sunday from the one which they had been allotted, the children were not allowed to see their parents.  Maryville could get away with this because most of us were wards of the Catholic Church; our parental rights had been surrendered. I remember the Sunday I learned I was no longer under my Mother’s responsibility, but a ward of the Catholic Church...  My Mother was visiting and she was complaining about Maryville and I said to her “why don’t you take us out of here”, and she said “I can’t” and I said “why can’t you … you are my Mother” and she said “I have surrendered my rights to you” and I said “you are no longer my Mother, why did you do that”?! And she said “yes I am still your Mother but I cannot take you out of Maryville without their permission”.  I asked her again “why did you do that?” and she said “because I can no longer afford to pay to keep you at Maryville, it is too expensive”. I just looked at her - I was so angry and devastated and also very frightened. My status in this world had been decided by a billing matter.

So, every other Sunday parents were allowed to visit.  It’s not that they did, they were allowed to.  Who was going to show up on any particular Sunday was anyone’s guess.  The kids were informed their parents had arrived through a public address system which was piped into every hall room.  Every other Sunday two girls would volunteer to sit near the PA system and listen for the announcement of whose parents had arrived – one would listen for the names and the other was the runner.  I always volunteered to be one of the two. In some ways it was boring and monotonous to sit there for hours listening, hoping and praying I would hear my Mother had arrived.  Being close to that speaker and being the first to hear anything gave me a sense of control that I so badly craved.  Sometimes she visited, but often, she didn’t.  Sometimes, she would arrive so late we could only visit for a few minutes. The nuns lived their life by a schedule, and they were not about to make an exception for anyone in the outside world.  If you had 3 minutes left in your visitation window, you received 3 minutes… that was it.   This whole process was torture – needing and loving someone so much as I did my Mother and yet having no control to get or give the love I needed and deserved…and in my 5 years at Maryville I ended up enduring this Sunday ritual roughly 162 times.