A task done well can be a prayer
A young nun peels beets in the convent garden. The basket was huge and most likely there were other baskets of beets waiting to be peeled. Evidently she has just begun as her hands are not stained with beet juice.
She didn’t look up at me, or acknowledge me in anyway. Perhaps it was forbidden for her to speak or maybe she was concentrating on her task. She was very young, maybe 20 at the most. I wondered if she were happy. Had she chosen this life freely, or had she felt that it was a way to escape the horrors of life under the dictator Ceausescu?
The nuns wore a cute little pillbox hat instead of a wimple. Some of their hair showed. Different from the Roman Catholic nuns of my school days when their heads were swathed in starched cotton and not a speck of hair showed.
I love this photo and I entered it several times in photo contests. I never won anything, and now I see that my fascination with this picture was more a fascination with the girl and her circumstances. Maybe the story is all in my head. When I look at this photo, even 20 years after, I wonder about this young woman and I hope she is happy.