Gotta Have Faith

On Monday night Bryan and I attended Baptism class at St. James. We chose this church with the hope that its proximity to our house would encourage our attendance, which we learned, is tracked through an envelope system. Not much has changed since I last attended a religion class. Our instructor was the classic CCD teacher. Wearing a lumpy winter white sweater, adorned with a religious pin above her heart, and a beneficent smile that surely could be cracked by a classroom full of rammy confirmation students, she handed out some typed and possibly mimeographed information about the baptism process. She also handed out a colorful brochure while going over the agenda for the class, which would conclude with a video. I turned more optimistic due to the graphics on the brochure and the fact that she used the word “video” rather than “film strip.” I chose a table for us front and center so that I would be forced to pay attention, but right before we began a girl we went to college with walked in. We waved her over to sit with us, so all I really wanted to do was chat with her rather than listen to the lesson. So really, not much has changed about me since my last religion class.

The teacher began with a metaphor (my favorite!) about baptism, saying that there is a difference between a stop sign and a brick wall. I naturally finished the metaphor in my head before she finished her explanation, seeing the baptism as the stop sign, a moment to give pause and reflect on your faith and the brick wall as not having faith at all. Once I came up from my literary head I heard our instructor say, “So baptism is that brick wall. You can chose to go through a stop sign, but you can’t go through a brick wall. That’s it, you’re done.” Hmm.

I became awash with religious memories. My grandmother pinching my sister’s lip with a sewing needle for talking during the televised mass one inclement Sunday comes to mind. So does Sister Mary Grace condemning all those who tuned in to “An Officer and a Gentleman,” on HBO the preceding weekend before CCD class as sinners. I did not need to hear my mom gossiping breathlessly about the film on the phone to a friend to know that she was probably a sinner. That’s the way I like her.

Nori and Charlie will be baptized. Somehow they will navigate the terrain between faith and fundamentalism to be good people. I have faith in that for sure. In the meantime, we say our prayers each day. Yesterday’s was, “teach me faith and caring, teach me wisdom, teach me sharing. Raise me up and make me strong. Be with me the whole day long.” Hopefully, with God and me beside Nori all day long, she will get that whole sharing thing.

January 12, 2009

Some days I feel so comfortable in this new skin. It’s like a favorite sweatshirt or a great pair of boots. But, some days, I feel like I am wearing someone else’s clothes. They fit, but I am acutely aware that they are not really mine. After a while though, too long borrowed clothes become part of my wardrobe and I cannot remember that they were once borrowed at all. Perhaps we are almost there.

I am getting used to the attention we get out in public but some days I am not ready for it. Strangers, like paparazzi, fire questions like camera flashes. I have to gear up for it as we exit the car, ready to do a press conference on my beautiful babies at a moments notice. They smile reassuringly from their car seats, allowing me to represent them the best that I can.
Almost one year ago I began my official bed rest. One month from now, one year ago, the babies were born. It feels like a hundred years ago or maybe just one day ago. I look back on it and search for meaning, more lessons. “Hope is the thing with wings that perches in the soul.” For some reason that quote has been rattling around my head for the past few days. I think back to a year ago and revise it as “Hope is the thing to cling to when all else has flown away.” Without it I would have blown apart. And it was more than a hope that everything would be okay, because I knew that some things would never be okay. It was/is more of a hope that it would not all be in vain. One smile from my superstars and I know that it is not.