Helena

Helena hears what you mean, not what you say.

The thing you notice first about Helena is not the rosary, though the rosary is always there. Before she wore it as part of her habit. Today, she wears it in her heart.

She listens attentively the way someone listens when they genuinely believe what you are telling them might be the most important thing said to

them today. It usually isn't. She gives it that weight anyway. This is a particular kind of Czech, ex-nun wisdom that presents itself, on the surface, as something simpler than it is.

She is in her early fifties, formerly Sister Helena, formerly of a convent in Tampa, Florida, currently of this life in all its unexpected abundance. Her English is heartfelt and approximate. She means "I gave" and says "I give." She means "we went" and says "we go." The tenses drift, and the warmth does not. People follow her meaning the way you follow a song in a language you do not speak – something comes through regardless.

Hans has become Helene’s significate other. She has become his world.

He saw her clearly from the beginning, when she walked into a NYC restaurant where he was the manager which is the right starting place for a marriage. Together they took Booties for Poopies – her small-footwear business, born from Frank's leftover industrial trash-bag material, championed by Sophie (Frank’s canine) as its glorious face – into something with distribution, manufacturing, and an expanding logic all its own.

Helena has always looked after whoever gets left behind. She does not think of it as a mission. She thinks of what you do.

She never stopped being a sister. Just the location, her outfit and focus have changed. Yuh.

Her people are whoever needs a person. The downtrodden, the overlooked, the slightly confused. Helena finds them without trying.

Goodness, it turns out, does not require a habit