Grown-Up Catholic School Girls

This weekend, I had the opportunity to travel to Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School in Washington, DC, for a gathering of alumnae of Wheeling's Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy. In May 2008, the Mount graduated its final class, closing its doors after 160 years of educating young women. The 2009 and 2010 alumnae celebrations were still held on campus in Wheeling, but now that the property has been sold, we have to find a new home. Fortunately, our sister school in Washington was kind enough to welcome us.

It was a bittersweet visit. Roaming the halls of someone else's school, no matter how very like your own it may be, is not at all the same as roaming the halls of a place that holds so many memories, as the Mount does for me. Still, sitting in chapel with the other alumnae, singing hymns while Sister Joanne played the organ, held a kind of joy.

I look forward to future visits to Georgetown and am grateful to have been able to chat with the sisters and see the campus that I may now call home, as the mother superior there has said.