31 Creative Intersections remained a skeptic. My first husband was a Mormon; we were married in a Church of the Nazarene. That marriage was an utter failure that ended in divorce; it would have been a lifelong commitment had I been married in the Catholic Church or if we had children, which we did not. My second husband was Jewish and I converted to Judaism at age 28. I was more interested in Jewish philosophy and culture than most of the religious tenets. When I converted I learned that there are only two dogmas in Judaism: there is one god and there is justice; the rest is commentary. If a married couple can’t have children, divorce is an option, even encouraged. I could live with that. When I say I am an atheist, it’s not that I don’t believe there is a god. I believe no one knows anything and that our brains are too puny to understand what life is all about. Whatever animates the universe is incomprehensible. The god most people describe in their religious beliefs seems paltry to me. When I am grateful, I say “Thank you, God.” I discussed all of this with Sister Rita, who was the closest person to a saint I have ever met. Sister Rita stated gently many times, “God loves you, Elaine.” Sister Rita used to vacation with her brothers each summer in Ventnor, at the New Jersey seashore. It was the custom that they all gather at Pat’s house before taking the hour-long ride to the shore together. I got to meet her wonderful family. All of her brothers were tall, ruggedly handsome gray-haired guys who could have been on the cover of Gentleman’s Quarterly had they not been dressed as priests. When one saw me for the first time, he laughed, as he gave me a warm hug, “I thought you would be big!” I am 5'3" tall. Sister Rita hovered near 6’ and her brothers towered over us. On one trip to Pat’s, Sister Rita informed me that she would never see me again. She would move into St. Catherine’s Hall, a retirement home for nuns in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, much further away than the place in Philadelphia. St. Catherine’s, it turns out, is next door to an art school I had attended, Tyler School of Fine Art, part of Temple University. I knew exactly where it was. I told Sister Rita I would visit her there and if she wanted to drive to Pat’s I would be glad to be her chauffeur in perpetuity. By this time, my second husband had died and I was dating Abe, a dentist. My mother had broken her hip and I was caring for her in my home. Abe, my mom, and I began taking trips to see Sister Rita. Abe went to the Italian Market in South Philadelphia to buy crates of oranges we could take to the nuns, who welcomed us with enthusiasm each time we visited. Those frail retired nuns were so happy to have guests, they gathered around us and invited us to have lunch with them. They had spent their entire lives serving others and now many of them were in declining health with no children to visit them. Sister Rita had a lovely, sunny room to herself; she decorated it with plants and flowers. During one visit, she presented me with the lovely picture she had embroidered, two cardinals, male and female, on a branch of apple blossoms. She was very ill and declining rapidly, so I knew it had to be difficult for her to create. I struggled to keep tears from springing to my eyes. Her difficulty walking when we first met had worsened; her legs and feet began to cause increasingly complicated problems. She was in terrible pain and asked me why God was doing this to her and why He was taking so long to welcome her. I wondered, too. When her suffering was over, her funeral was crowded with nuns, priests, and many lay people whose lives Sister Rita had touched. She was clearly loved and respected. Her saintliness was palpable. I shall never, ever forget her. When Elaine Sooy Goodman was young, she wanted to be a painter, a teacher, and a writer. Eventually, she became all three. Her career has been preposterous. She owned a home-based graphic design business for 22 years, exhibited her artwork throughout the East Coast, curated numerous art exhibits, taught art courses at Gloucester County College, and ran the art gallery there for two years. At age 60, she became a certified police instructor and taught more than 5,000 criminal justice personnel about mental illness and how to deal with crisis situations. She was invited by the U.S. Department of Justice Council on State Governments to help create national standards for police education on mental illness. A lifelong interest in African art led her to write the biography of the founder of the National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC. Beyond her visual art, Goodman draws inspiration from the extraordinary people and moments that have shaped her life, capturing these encounters in both paint and prose.
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