Women's House
A Day in the Life... in the Catholic Women's House
by Jenny Kohler
Monday morning my alarm wakes me up at 7am; Monday and Tuesday I sleep in – on Wednesday and Friday I have 5am adoration, and on Thursdays I work at 5am. Sheila and Emily are at Mass and Gwen is finishing getting herself ready. I trudge down to the basement in my slippers and robe to shower up. It took me a month of living in the house before I used the shower (Don’t worry – I bathed instead). However, by October I had less time to spend being picky. So, now I shower in the basement.
When I’m done with my shower Gwen’s in the kitchen pouring her coffee into her travel mug. She usually leaves the house at 7:30 for Trinity High School where she works. Gwen is the “Mother Superior” of the house, having graduated from the Catholic Studies Grad Program the spring before.
At 8am I’m in the kitchen drinking my coffee and eating my toast. I have Catholic Social Thought with Dr. Kennedy at 8:15, but he usually shows up a couple minutes late (which I count on). Dr. Kennedy always makes class interesting by telling stories about situations in real life that help illustrate social teachings of the church. The best part is that many of these stories involve his children, which I particularly enjoy because it shows that even a Professor of Catholic Studies doesn’t have a perfect family.
After class I go back to my house to do some odds and ends before my next class. Sheila is home and we end up talking for a bit, but then get down to some homework. We both have a 10:55 class; I have Fr. Keating’s Catholic English Writers. So I trudge over there in the snow to learn about the life of J.R.R. Tolkien. I have never met anyone who has not loved a Fr. Keating class. He’s also the chaplain for the Catholic Studies Houses, and we have dinner with him every other Wednesday night. Unfortunately, that doesn’t earn me any extra points in his class.
After class I go back home and make a sandwich. Nobody is around. Emily is in the education program, so she spends most of the day in Minneapolis and doesn’t get home until 4 or 5pm. So, I work on some more homework – reading a Joyce Little article for Woman and Man. I love reading her because she explains why modern society has such a difficult time understanding Catholic Teaching, and then she explains the reasoning behind those teachings.
At 2pm I have adoration with my boyfriend, Daniel. I bring my journal and Bible for my hour with God. I love the monstrance in Sitzmann Chapel because it glorifies God and He seems to be sitting in heaven. Afterwards Dan and I go for a little walk along the river. It’s beautiful outside, everything covered in snow. But soon it’s back to the house to get some homework done. I decide to read on our extremely comfortable couch and promptly fall asleep.
I wake up around 4:45 and drive over to Nativity for Mass. When I get home Sheila and Emily have been putting their resources together to make dinner. At our house we have a list of communal foods, such as butter, eggs and flour, which everyone pays for. But because we have such odd schedules, we have to buy whatever else we want to eat. The only scheduled communal dinners are with Fr. Keating and the invitation dinners we have once a month. At those dinners, we invite a professor and his or her family over for dinner along with some other people to foster Catholic community. I’ve never hosted dinners before, so it has been a great experience – although I’m always nervous for them.
Well, on Monday nights, since everyone happens to be home that night, we began fixing larger dinners for everyone in the house to enjoy. Tonight it’s noodles with marinara sauce and canned corn! (We’re in college.) At 5:45 Emily has to leave to expose Jesus in the Koch Chapel, so we put dinner on hold until she gets back. Gwen gets home a bit after six and begins to make her own special Mediterranean dinner. She got really good at cooking for herself after spending a year in Rome and continues to do so. Emily comes home around 6:20 and we all eat and talk about our day. Gwen has some hilarious stories about her students and we discuss the philosophy behind Trinity (the school).
Sheila has adoration at 7pm, and Emily goes upstairs to do homework. Gwen and I sit at the dinning room table and discuss Brideshead Revisited, a book that Gwen has read many times and one that I am writing on for class. We talk for at least an hour because there is so much to say.
Around 9pm everyone congregates around the coffee table for night prayer, which we have as a house Monday through Thursday night. Sheila has just come back from a walk with her new boyfriend and we tease her a bit. Finally we start night prayer – I lead and Gwen reads. Afterwards we all sit and talk for a while longer. Sheila has a meeting for Students for Human Life at 9:30, so she heads out. I get ready for bed, and by the time I’m done Emily’s in bed and Gwen’s in her room grading. I do some random things in my room before I crawl into bed. The end of another day.
