I really came to enjoy the job of monastery laundress and was rather sorry when I had to move on and learn another job, that of server at dinner (the midday meal, and biggest meal of the day).
Having lived on my own for many years, and not being fond of cooking just for myself, I frequently took pleasure in eating alone in restaurants all through my secular life, a pleasure I had actually begun to enjoy when in college. By nature a loner, I've always liked taking my time with a meal, reading a book or writing in my journal as I did so, and not having to make conversation; however, I was not always averse to eating with one or two very good friends with whom conversation was effortless and even, at times, completely unnecessary. Once I entered the monastery, solitary meals became a thing of the past except on "Our Wednesdays" -- a sort of vacation day from regular monastic life, when meals are "pick-up" and may be eaten outdoors or in the recreation room, as long as silence is still kept. Otherwise, meals are communal, in the refectory; there is no conversation, but one listens to the reader. The one thing I had a real problem with was the actual length of the meal, which was a decidedly unleisurely 15-20 minutes.
As quickly as those 15-20 minutes passed, they seemed downright luxurious compared with the few minutes in which the weekly server must eat in order to carry out her duties. But I'm jumping ahead of myself. Let's go back and start with the server's pre-dinner duties.
As dinner server of the week, I leave the chapel the very second Midday Prayer is over and make a bee-line for the kitchen. There, I set up the tall, 4-tiered rolling cart on which the sisters will scrape and stack their cafeteria trays and dishes at the end of the meal. I fill with hot water the deep, compartmentalized tray in which they will place their dirty silverware, and set it on the cart along with a large rubber tub for disposing paper napkins and food scraps (since religious are bound by the vow of poverty to eat everything on their plates, there's usually little waste). All that done, I set the readied cart by the swinging door to the refectory, ready to be rolled out as soon as the meal ends. Meanwhile, the cook sister has put all the food platters on a smaller, two-tiered cart; when she is done, I take the cart into the refectory and arrange the platters in order on the tables: proteins first, followed by starches, vegetables, then salads on one table; on the second table, breads, dessert, fruits, water pitchers, and milk jugs (fruit juices are in a nearby refrigerator). Serving utensils having already been set out on the tables that morning, I put them with the appropriate platters, leave the lids on the hot foods, and set the emptied cart by the wall.
It's time now for me to take off my apron, get my food, and eat. But, knowing I don't have a lot of time, I'm careful not to "load up" my tray. As I eat, the sisters come randomly in and form two lines on either side of the room. When everyone is in, one of the other novices, or a postulant, goes out to ring the Angelus bell; I stop shoveling food into my face and stand up as the reader begins the Angelus. When she finishes, I go to the serving tables, remove the lids from all the hot platters and place them on the carts. That done, I say, "Sister, ask for a blessing." The reader says the blessing, then all the sisters file to the serving tables to obtain their food while I resume shoveling my own into my face.
Only four or five minutes later, while everyone is eating and listening to the reader, I put my tray on the serving cart, don my apron again, and clear the serving tables -- very quietly, which is not easy to do when dealing with large platters, cymbal-like metal lids, and big, clattery spoons. Everything goes back on the small cart. For some reason, the cart always looks twice as loaded going out as it did coming in, much the way a suitcase always seems smaller when packing at the end of a trip than it did when packing for the trip. Nevertheless, I try to clear as quickly as possible, because I know the most time-consuming and nerve-wracking part of the job is coming up. As I push the cart out of the refectory toward the kitchen, I pray that none of the big metal lids will slide off and clatter to the floor, startling all the sisters and momentarily drowning out the reader.
Now for the putting away of the leftovers. I have never mastered the knack of finding the right-sized containers for this task. More often than not, I discover too late that the container I've chosen is too small and I have to find another. While I search for ideal containers and put the leftovers in the huge walk-in refrigerator, I listen with one ear for the reader's voice giving the end-of-meal blessing, which tells me I had better put it in high gear -- because two or three minutes later, sisters on dishwashing duty will be coming into the kitchen; if I have not scraped all the serving platters and pots and pans and put them on the counters to be washed, the sisters will stand waiting in their canvas aprons, unconsciously making me even more clumsy and nervous. I say "unconsciously," because they actually sympathize and don't want to hurry me. They've all been there.
You've probably surmised by now that I didn't exactly relish being dinner server. Fortunately, the job was reassigned weekly. Unfortunately, there were only two other novices besides myself at the time. The jobs of laundress, dinner server, refectorian (a fancy name for refectory janitor) and supper cook, were rotated among the three of us. "Cooking" supper is very simple, as that meal usually consists of one hot dish -- a canned vegetable, or canned tapioca, or canned rice pudding, simply heated up; eggs already boiled that morning and waiting in the fridge, yogurt, and bread with jelly and/or peanut butter; so that job isn't at all bad. But whenever it was my turn to be dinner server, I prayed fervently that God would send us more vocations that hopefully stayed long enough to become novices, which would make the duty of server come around less often for us all.
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