Trip Down Memory Lane...

         

My Mother in Law visited us from Missouri so she could see the baby for a few days. She says that she came to see me too, but we all know the truth. Baby trumps Momma. Poor woman had no clue what she was in for when she gleefully accepted the invitation to visit my parents. We of course, forced shared a little bit of history with her and took a little drive down memory lane. She got to see where I was born, my grade school, family church, old house, high school...where I got my first kiss. Nah, not really! I think what I was most excited about showing her was my high school. Good 'ol Mount Saint Mary. Aka.; The Mount, MSM, Mount

Its not that high school was the most exciting and fascinating time for me. I was your typical awkward teenager trying to figure out who the heck I was and just stumbled along with all the other pimple faced weirdos. MSM was a very small high school, and my graduating class was only 86. Yep, I said 86. The school was so small that when the entire campus attended mass, we walked across the street to Sacred Heart and easily fit inside the neighborhood church.

Almost everyone who went there had known most of their classmates since grade school because almost everyone migrated there from either Saint James, Sacred Heart, or Saint Philip Neri. Since almost all went to those schools from kindergarten to 8th grade and then moved to MSM, there wasn't a lot of revamping yourself. No sudden first day of freshman year walking in with your cascading long hair blowing in the wind as everyone exclaimed, "Who's that new girl?!?" Nope...it was just same 'ol same 'ol for 12 very long, long years.

What I loved most about the school grounds was how they were centered around nature almost like you would find at a monastery campus. There were lots and lots of trees. When we ate lunch, everyone took lunch outside on pretty days and ate on the grass. Right outside the school's formal entrance is a beautiful garden with a grotto. Anyone could sit in there and talk, meditate, relax, whatever. Of course, being a Catholic school, there were the required Mary the Immaculate statues and the Stations of the Cross. But you know, even if you weren't Catholic, you'd still liked the grotto for its simple peacefulness.

Did you know (I'm sure you didn't) that The Mount was established as a school before the state of Oklahoma was even a state? It started out as an all girls school and turned co-ed in 1950. For shame! Interesting fact, my grandmother (father's side) went to MSM when it was an all girls boarding school. To tell you the truth, I'm kinda proud to have that kind of history with the school.

So hopefully, you won't just look at the pictures of a big old building and think, "this is all she's got?" Hopefully, you'll look beyond the structure and see that inside that big stack of bricks is a community that helped to establish who I am today.