In our family, if anything was going somewhat amiss and suddenly got straightened out, my mother used to say “That’s Elsa watching over us.”

So who, you might ask, was Elsa? She was my maternal grandfather’s cousin, and this is her story…

My great-grandmother’s sister married a wonderful man named August (yes, this was the German side of the family). They lived in North Carolina, and one of the things August was very good at was business. Although not a millionaire, he was considered prosperous and what people used to call a “good provider.” Together, he and my great-aunt had two daughters; Elsa was the eldest and Margaret was her younger sister.

The only thing August wasn’t was Catholic, but because his wife was, naturally he agreed to raise the girls in the faith of their mother. That was all well and good until Elsa, who had reached the age when most girls at that time were thinking of marriage, announced that she wished instead to enter religious life. August, who had other plans for his daughter, put his foot down, as they say, and refused to give his permission for that to happen. What he decided to do instead, in order to get what he thought was “this silly notion” out of Elsa’s head, was to send his wife and two daughters on the Grand Tour of Europe. It was early in the 20th century and this was the sort of thing families of means did; August was convinced that once his daughter got a taste of a more glamorous life outside of North Carolina, she would see sense and agree that her father’s idea was best.

And so, the three of them set off. Where they went and what they did initially no one ever said, because the most important part of this story took place in Speyer, Germany. Now, whether Elsa’s mother knew what was going to happen there, or perhaps even helped facilitate it also doesn’t come down in family lore. What we do know is that at one point, in the dead of night, Elsa left her mother and sister, went to the door of the Dominican Convent in the city and knocked loudly. When one of the sisters answered and asked her what she could possibly want at that time of night, Elsa answered simply, “To come in.”

And so, despite his best efforts, August’s daughter Elsa remained at the convent in Speyer for the next 20 years and became Sister Belina. Elsa, as the family would always refer to her, did eventually return to the United States; in the 1920s and ‘30s Dominican Sisters from Speyer came to this country to work in hospitals and other institutions in the Western states. Sister Belina was part of that group and eventually became Mother Belina.

In life, Elsa always had special prayers for her family in the United States. And, according to my mother, she is still watching over us all.