In our home, as I suppose in 70% of Mallorcan families during the 20th century, we had a nun aunt. Ours was my grandfather's sister. I had always called her “the nun aunt”, but she had a civil name: Magdalena Bernat Gomila, and she was from the congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (forgive the pomposity of the name).
She was like a kind of second mother to us. She loved us with that fierce intensity that those who have no children love the children in the family, and her visits were like a big celebration.
We knew she had arrived (I'm talking about that time when doors in village houses were never locked, and you simply opened the door and went in) when we suddenly heard that contralto voice with which she made scares everywhere and infected the air with that effervescence. We had no doubt, absolutely no doubt, that being with us made her happy.
She joyfully received any small event of ours (learning to swim, passing an exam, getting a job, a new car… everything was fantastic if it came from us), she made no effort to hide that my mother was her favorite niece (it couldn't be otherwise: I am convinced that she was, by far, the person who loved her most and paid her the most attention) and she had that rough sense of humor of people from a certain time: she would recall anecdotes or statements that nowadays make you blush, attitudes that in no way would pass the filter of political correctness and which I will not repeat so as not to give you a wrong impression: she was a very good person, and she spoke like people of those years with those experiences.
As with age I return to the women who have preceded me, to the grandmothers, to the aunts, to these humble and small existences that accompanied my childhood, I understand them more and more, and I regret more and more not having made better use of my time, not having listened to them more. Because I loved the nun aunt very much, but she became a little tiresome to me, and little by little, although I always loved her, I drifted away from her.
I remember she had tested me (she did it with all her cousins, and must have found me the most receptive) and first in a subtle way and then, as I got older, without much preamble, she insisted (as she had previously suggested to my mother) that I consider becoming a nun. The community was aging, they needed new blood and I would be an excellent asset to the congregation: according to her, because I was smart, I would become superior, and besides, I could go on missions and have great adventures.
Now you may think that was very out of place, but let me tell you about a conversation I overheard her having, and you will surely understand it better:
Talking to my mother about the vocations crisis, she reached a devastating conclusion: she said she was very sorry, but it was normal that it was so difficult to have young nuns: you no longer had to profess to study. And at that moment I understood that she had been a restless girl with a desire to learn, and this privilege was denied to her because of her sex and social status: village girls were destined to marry and serve the old and the children who came along. If a girl wanted to study and travel, the only way out was to become a nun.
The price of the aunt's freedom was the slavery of my godmother, her sister-in-law, who took care of the elderly at a time when there were no bed rails, no diapers, no day centers, an era when social services were the neighbors from the street and clothes were washed by hand. My godmother did not know how to get angry with the society that imposed this role on her, and she always reproached the nun aunt for everything she had saved at her expense. A victim of the heteropatriarchy, my godmother questioned who was getting away with it, not the structure that subjected her, and I am sorry to speak of the nun aunt's option without remembering my godmother.
I must confess that I had started this article with the nun aunt because I wanted to tell you about a phrase she said about tourism many years ago, when we were not yet as we are now, and which was prescient.
But then, her memory has grown larger and larger, it has led me where she wanted, and then the godmother has popped up, also demanding her space: finally I have ended up writing a small tribute to these women who have made it possible for us to live as we do now, without being aware of the role they have played in everything we have achieved.
Because I have been able to study, and I have married when and to whom I wanted, and now I dedicate myself to writing. And all this has been thanks to them.
I will talk another day about that phrase from my aunt, today I wanted a place for these women, our grandmothers who were so enslaved, the aunts who freed themselves, and all that we owe them, to both.
