January, 1968 San Francisco, California Life started the night we met. Everything before this was merely preparation for what was yet to come. It was a Saturday evening and I'd gone to a local pub just down the street from St. Catherine's Convent. I'd been living in a private dormitory at the convent for a couple of years, studying education at the small elite women's college a block away—and was just two weeks from becoming a St. Catherine's postulant and beginning my life of poverty, chastity and obedience. The San Francisco pub wasn't a place I frequented often, but that January night I needed the noise, the distraction, as much as I wanted the beer that I would drink only until it got me past the unexpected tension I felt that night.
After all, I had prayers and then Mass with the sisters early the next morning, followed by religious study.
At a little table some distance from the shiny mahogany wood bar, I sipped my beer, watched merrymakers and ...
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