The Christening

D-Day (June 6,1944): I piloted my Sunderland aircraft over the Bay of Biscay.  June 7th: I met my future wife in the Officers' Mess at Castle Archdale, Northern Ireland. From the beginning, I knew that she was blonde, blue-eyed and besotted by me. When we married, Libby was not yet twenty and I was nine years older. We never sat down and discussed how many children we wanted and we never discussed spiritual values. I had no idea of her fervent desire to mother children. In fact, she was devastated because it took her four months to get pregnant. Then we had a little daughter, followed by a little brother thirteen months later. She suggested a christening but I was not a church person. So she let it slide—no big problem. In a couple of years, we had a third child and indeed, to my consternation, we ended up with five.

I was one of five and I did not want to repeat the experience. As a child of the 30’s Depression, my experience had not been good. Five kids need a lot of financial support. When I accused her of being careless, she simply told me that I should have spoken up because children are not the result of immaculate conceptions with one possible historical exception.

She sometimes conceived, simply because we passed each other in the hall. She had fabulous pregnancies with nary a problem.  Her doctors complimented her, saying that it was a pleasure to have had her as a maternity patient. She was thrilled with the birth experience. She waxed poetic on this subject. I began to think that she would breed the twelve tribes of Israel. I was a simple lad from Manitoba with no desire to be a patriarch who would lead anyone into any promised land. Too much!

Then Libby had a spiritual awakening of a serious nature. She was loaded with guilt because her children had never been christened. She was so uptight about it that she had difficulty phoning the minister and asking him to drop by. She remembered her mother discussing that Libby’s own christening had been delayed until she was six months old and how the ceremony had taken place at home. Thus her mother kept it as a secret that the baby had been heathen  for a full six months old.

The minister was obliging and gently assured her of a painless christening. But still, she didn’t want the secret to leak out. There might be gossip that her children had lived for years in danger of eternal damnation. Not so the fifth child—the baby was only five months old. Her brief period of being sinful was relatively short, compared to the state of her ten year-old sister Lois who had long lived  in a state of non-grace.

The date was set for a Sunday afternoon in May. Two weeks before Mother’s Day. Libby could fully enjoy the meaning of that day as all her children would be Christians!! O joyful day at last!! In the meantime, the children had to be appropriately clothed and there was much buying of sports coats for the boys and a baby dress for infant Jo-Ann. Libby nervously avoided discussing the subject except with a few trusted friends that would be attending the service. It did not help when she heard that her nine-year-old son Bobby was inviting his whole class to his christening. Fortunately, they didn’t show.

The big day dawned sunny and bright and the children piled into the car, scrubbed clean and neatly dressed. Our seven-year-old son Mike asked if they could go swimming afterwards. I replied that they might as well have the complete immersion. My mother had been Baptist but I don’t think any of her kids ever got immersed. My wife glared at me. She was shocked that I would be frivolous on this momentous occasion.

So we arranged ourselves in front of the altar. All went well until Jo-Ann started to stuff her mouth with her pink organdie skirt. I gave a faint chuckle—under my breath but I could feel my wife stiffen in horror. Then the sanctity of the whole thing fell apart when Mike started to giggle. Bobby nudged him in an attempt to smarten him up. Mike lurched to one side and knocked off five-year-old Elizabeth’s hat. Libby retrieved the hat and plunked it back on Elizabeth’s head. Libby had turned scarlet in the face and was shaking violently.

It proved to be too much for the group of friends that Libby had selected to attend the service, based on their degree of spirituality. Their unseemly laughter rang out loud and clear. Even the minister was breaking up.

We returned to the house for refreshments and Libby told us all off in no uncertain terms. It took her some time to recover but eventually, she came around and admitted that, although it hadn’t turned out as she expected, it still had been a good idea. That is how she summed it up.  How am I to argue when she gets a notion into her head? She’s got all the answers.