Due to dwindling numbers, when the convent closed where my friend had once been a nun, she invited two nuns, both of them nearing 80, to live with her until they found convents able to take them in.

After a few years I still found myself thinking about convents closing, with fewer and fewer young women joining cloisters. Finally my curiosity prevailed and I called the closest convent of cloistered nuns. In our first call I spent two hours talking with the Mother Superior, Sister Mary Raymond. Over the next two years, she almost
always answered my endless questions via email. We met frequently for marathon visits, when she spoke to me of her calling while I amused her as she watched me stubbornly wrestle the ancient and heavy hand-held Speed Graphic.