"SISTER CARISTA"


Hardworking,
humble,
earnest
and
kind,
a cheerful peasant woman
in her middle years
from Germany,
Sister Carista was nun in charge
of the vegetable cellar
at St. Vincent's Orphanage.

Her back ever bent in labor,
the children often saw her
tending to barrels of sauerkraut,
the pungent odor of which,
filled their nostrils,
as they crossed her cellar
on their way to meals
on rainy days.

In very broken English,
she showed her orphan help
how to clean and pare
the vegetables and fruit
that arrived from donors
to her cellar door.

When in the nearly daily task
of making sauerkraut,
more cabbage need be shred,
she'd motion to a boy and say:
"Turn vonce agin das vwheel!"
Turn vonce agin das vwheel!"

But the words most often heard:
"Zee zoo. Zee zoo", meaning "See so",
caused her to be known
among the boys
as Zee Zoo.

Whether working in the cellar
or
in the vegetable garden
or
on the entrance grounds,
she always found an interlude
in the afternoon
to visit with her Eucharistic Lord.

And children passing by
the chapel door,
often found her
rapt in fervent prayer.

Kneeling,
with hands outstretched
and
eyes fixed on the tabernacle,
her face shone
like a mystic from of old.

And now in summer,
I was back in Columbus
to visit my old home.
Twelve years had passed
since last I stepped
through her cellar door.

Overjoyed to see me,
her face was beaming.
With hands from produce dirty,
she brought her hand
beneath her habit
to shake my own.

Her hand,
firm,
heavy,
leathery and calloused,
seemed a man's.

Her personality,
simple,
sincere,
and
direct,
I believed
I had looked
into the eyes of a saint.

December 7, 2000