- 12th Annual Young Alumni Essay Contest
- Schaal Prize: “Ad Mensam," Rebecca Hammock ’17, ’19M.A.
- 2nd Place: “Once More Among Wolves," Nicholas Deason ’15
- 2nd Place: "The Absence of Silence," Ben Testani ’20
- Honorable Mention: “Forecast," Chris Parker ’22
- Honorable Mention: “The Sacred Cat Rug," Jacqueline Cassidy ’15, ’16MSM
- Honorable Mention: “A Pronouncement," Erik Carlson ’16
- Honorable Mention: “The Glory," Mary-Kate Corry ’16
I lay in bed, exhausted but wide awake. Outside my window, a tree swayed lightly and the sky gradually darkened. I could hear noises echoing through the house as my thoughts raced. How can I do this? What am I doing here? What will I do tomorrow? And the next day? And the next?
It was the end of August 2019, and my first night in my new bed at the Houston Catholic Worker. I had just graduated and was beginning a year of service at a house of hospitality for immigrants called Casa Juan Diego. I thought of myself as a brave person, but despite that, I felt wrapped in a blanket of fear. For the entire summer before I left for Houston, my response when someone asked me about my impending move was a tightening in my throat as I fought back tears.
Though my persistent panic could land on a number of reasons to be nervous, language was my primary stressor. I knew that Spanish would be the predominant language for all conversations between and with guests, and I was fresh off my sole semester of a beginning Spanish class. I felt awkward and vulnerable when I tried to say even the most basic of phrases. As I look back now, the Spanish words that I slowly added to my vocabulary intermingle with memories of that year.
Saber . . . azúcar . . . ya . . .
We are celebrating the 18th birthday of a girl who is already the mother of two children, who has already left her home country of Honduras to wind up on our doorstep in Houston. I watch as she blows out the candles and feel short of breath when I consider all that she knows that I do not.
Arriba . . . abajo . . . cansada . . .
I spend much of the day on my feet, often with a baby or a suitcase or a 40-lb bag of beans in my arms. I climb and descend the stairs to the bedrooms and storage rooms of the 2nd floor on repeat. I begin to sleep deeply in the bed with the tree view each night.
Entonces . . . preguntar . . . por supuesto . . .
A young mother from Cuba sees the lovely white crib that I just gave to another mother and asks for one for her own child. I tell her that we only had that one. Jokingly and in my broken Spanish, I suggest that we could pray for another and demonstrate: “Por favor, Dios . . . una cuna!” I have never prayed a prayer so basic and blunt, and I feel a little foolish. That same afternoon, the doorbell rings and I open it to find the same lovely white crib, unassembled, lying on the ground without a person in sight. A mark of how much I have learned this year: I am not surprised, just pleased and amused by how fitting it is to have no instructions with which to assemble this gift.
Reglas . . . pensar . . . pesado . . .
I find myself saying “no” more often than I am saying “yes.” No, we can’t help with rent. No, we don’t have space in the house. No, I don’t understand what you just said to me.
No, I can’t.
No, I shouldn’t.
No, I just don’t want to.
Eventually, the year was over. It passed, and it was followed by other years. These had their own lessons to bring. A year as an assistant teacher at an affluent school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan made me feel haunted by ghosts. On busy city corners, I would think that I saw one of the women I had met at Casa Juan Diego. Once it was an 18-year-old girl from Guatemala, another time a mother of three from El Salvador. I would look closer, then shake my head clear. To find one of them strolling down Fifth Ave. felt akin to bumping into them on Mars. Still, there was something of that house I couldn’t shake. I grappled with how to square the radical voluntary poverty of the Worker with my workaday life.
That question followed me over the next three years, which took me out of the country and then back to Houston to teach at a local Montessori school. Though I spent far less time at Casa Juan Diego than before, a Saturday afternoon in that house made me feel tethered to reality. Each request for food at the door, arrival of a new guest, or peal of laughter from the crowded dining room carried a reminder that the world plays host to both incredible struggle and abundant joy, even if my daily life doesn’t usually bring me into contact with either extreme.
And then, after all those years, I find myself back in the same bed. In the final days of August 2024, I lie in bed as the tree outside does its dance and the sky gradually deepens. I am spending the night at Casa Juan Diego, covering for a Catholic Worker who is traveling. A new girl had arrived earlier that day to begin a year of service. Fresh out of college and bearing my same name, she seemed scared and she seemed brave. Talking to her, I can’t help but feel that I’m talking to myself. I lie in bed that night and feel questions swirling around me. Am I the same person? How can I feel so different? Why did I come here? Why did I leave? What would Dorothy think of me? What do I think of myself?
I have never traveled in a time machine, but I think it would feel like this. I imagine myself face-to-face with the girl who lay there five years before. I still feel like a bundle of questions in motion, but there are some things I know that she does not. I know that questions, even those unanswered, are conduits of wisdom. I know that it (whatever it is) will both pass and remain a part of me. I know that it’s possible to have courage even when your eyes are filled with tears.
Meg Spesia’s essay was one of five honorable mentions in this magazine’s 12th annual Young Alumni Essay Contest. Spesia is from Houston, TX.