This is something I wrote that is closely connected to one of those old red phone boxes and their importance in our lives all those years ago.
SISTER
I can't remember the events leading up to my sister deciding that she wanted to be a nun, but I was very very young at the time so she wasn't likely to have consulted with me on the subject. I do remember the trip to the airport that day she flew over to England and left us. She was only a teenager herself but this was something she had always wanted to do.
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She wasn't away on the foreign missions to Africa, Mam said. She was in Weymouth, where ever that was. May as well have been Africa for all I knew. After a few weeks I remember on a Sunday night us all trooping down our street and then another until we came to a big red telephone box. We all tried to cram in the big heavy door but those things aren't made for more than six people at a time.
Dad picked up the big heavy black plastic handle on a metal string and held it to the side of his head. He shushed us to be quiet as he listened to it. He was sure it was working and we just stood around with my Dad checking his watch every minute and walking up and down. Then it made a ringing noise and Mam picked it up before Dad got back into the box and she started to talk all excited.
It seemed like only seconds from the thing was ringing until it was silent again and we were walking back up that other street and then ours to come home. Mam didn't say very much as we walked back in the darkness but her eye must have got a draft in that big red phone box because her eyes were watering.
Dad broke the news to us when we were all safely sitting on the sofa at home. Our Mary wasn't called Mary any more. She was now called Sister Dorrithea. What a daft name I thought but I said nothing cause my Dad had caught that same draft Mam had in her eye.
Dangerous places those red phone boxes.
By Gerry Temple
copyright March 2008
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