Among the monks.

The stairs. A steep unbroken flight, eighteen steps leading down to the retreat center's dining room. Ahead of me, in his black-and-white Crosier habit following 6:45 A.M. Mass, Brother Marty limps one step at a time, grasping the handrail. Not to startle him from behind, I take my time descending noiselessly to breakfast. I too touch the handrail for a moment. I too have grown older.

Twenty years ago, with my husband approaching retirement, he and I began to spend a week twice a year in this Catholic retreat house. Actually, he could spare only a weekend from university teaching. The other five days were mine: reading, writing, savoring monastic peace and prayer. "Single woman on private retreat: Room 3," said the bulletin board.

The stairs were nothing to us then. There are multiple flights of them in this 1889 foundation that was first a girls' academy. In all the years of our marriage, my husband and I never owned or drove a car. We adopted this particular sanctuary because it was only sixty-five miles from our mid-Nebraska home, and accessible by public transportation.

We adapted readily to monastery life, if not the complete Augustinian rule. Above all, my husband and I found ourselves supremely compatible with the community, thirty to forty strong. Up the stairs and down, the bustle of novices, already college graduates, students with varied gifts and accomplishments. At table, after sharing the hearty food from the monastery kitchen, my husband might find himself deep in discussion with priests and brothers who were his peers in learning and social concerns.

Brother Marty was one of them. A World War II veteran, with thirty-eight bombing missions as a gunner, and now a passionate peace activist who had been arrested for "crossing the line" at a protest rally, he engaged my ex-army professor in profoundly brotherly argument over differing points of view. At the same time, Brother Marty and I were collaborating on artistic projects, his artwork to my verse for Christmas-card designs and arts council auctions. Beyond his intense spirituality and his intellect, Brother Marty captivated me by the way he was using his art to reach developmentally challenged Catholic children in the CCD classes he was teaching.

Along with the youthful Crosiers, there were older ones, too, men like my husband progressing toward retirement. For some, the stairs were too many: their rooms were on the first floor. Father Leo, Father Joe, Brother Matthew: what stories they had to tell us of their lives and work in the missions. Crosiers don't die; they stop working. Soldier-clerics from their 1210 beginnings, they pursue a tradition of ministry, service, and hospitality.

As time passed, we grew ever closer to these gentle friends. Often, I was late going up the stairs after evening dinner. Someone at my table - though seating is always at random - began to talk intensely of his day, his life-journey, his perplexities. I listened. More and more, I listened, my ear from outside the community a safe one for someone's story being poured out. I learned secrets, some of them saddening, crises in the house and the order. I learned about human hostilities, jealousies, resentments, suspicions, possessiveness, in this family, a family like every other family from my world.

But I learned of the inextinguishable flames of faithful vows, the dignities of faithful deaths. One by one, these friends began to die, the steps down from last rites in the monastery chapel leading to consecrated ground in the gardens. There Father Leo sleeps, and Father Joe, and Brother Matt. Beloved Brother Marty, shuffling the stairs in his Parkinson's, will rest there.

It is twenty years later. My husband has Parkinson's now. Lately the stairs proved too much. He was allowed to ride the freight elevator down to the dining room and to the cloister library, his rare privilege to read there. I am younger, the stairs do not daunt me yet. But I count the springs when I can still return here to grow older in this community that embraced us. Here I have both given and taken away. Here I have shared my story, and listened to others'. Here my own hope and faith yearly are renewed.

Nancy G. Westerfield is a poet who lives in Kearney, Nebraska.