Take me to the water

I'm doing okay. Really I am, until I'm not. Sometimes it can feel just that sudden. Yesterday was one of those suddenly I'm not. My MIL and I were discussing Hope's baptism. I won't go into details, but we had different ideas on the ceremony. When I explained my thoughts, she looked crestfallen.

Okay, maybe I need a little detail. Children at our church are often baptised by more than just the pastor. When Joe was baptised, the pastor, deacon, Jim, I and even 3 year old Jon sprinkled water on him. MIL made a comment alluding to the fact that the aunts and uncles would be baptising Hope as well as the grandparents. Umm.... no. First of all, do you know how long that would take? My 5 siblings (Cali won't be making the trip back) plus their spouses. Then what about the 18 yr old nephew and the 16 yr old niece and at what age do you stop? Or just have a couple aunties and piss everyone else off? No, Jim and I had briefly discussed having his mom and my dad do it, but decided against it. We decide just the immediate family and the church personal would be sprinkling water. I don't think my dad would be comfortable doing it. Partly because he is a traditionalist and I think he believes only the minister should baptise and partly because he is not one to get up in front of a group of people.



When I made it clear to MIL that we were not planning on having anyone else baptise Hope, she looked very disappointed. She had assumed she would be. I want to mention, she did not baptise the guys and her other two grandchildren are not baptised (not that there's anything wrong with that). I'm just saying there was no precedent for her to assume she would be baptising Hope. I said I didn't think my dad would be comfortable baptising and she suggested I ask him. I know that is a very obvious suggestion, it just isn't a conversation I can imagine with my dad. I know I should be able to talk to him about it, but faith conversations were so Mom conversations. Hell, there were very few Dad conversations, buying a car, or other fiscal decisions, or yard work those were the limits of Dad conversations six months ago.

Then MIL suggested we have two baptisms, one public and one private. Hell to the no, that is not happening. I don't want a private baptism, the church and community has been so supportive, I want to share her special day with them. And it seems pointless to have two baptisms. At one point, having a private baptism had occurred to me. That Friday, when Dad called to tell me they had exhausted all treatment options for Mom, that Mom only had a couple weeks to live. I was 36 weeks pregnant at the time, off bedrest and cleared to give birth rather than try to stop it. I considered doing all I could to go into labor and then having Steve (my pastor) baptise her in Mom's hospice room. I'd even thought I would ask Sister Jill if she wanted Steve to baptise her daughter as well. But Sister Lu convinced me to "keep the baby cooking" as long as possible. And then I went to see Mom the next day and I knew even if I went into labor that day, Mom would not be there for her baptism. I didn't think she had a couple weeks (I was right, she died less than a week later) and Mom was so weak the baptism would have been more taxing on her than a blessing.

So when MIL suggested a private baptism, I was immediately back in those dark days of waiting and watching, both my belly and my mom. It went from a slightly uncomfortable conversation to me being engulfed by the grief again.

Reading over this post, I feel the need to defend MIL a little. She is a wonderful, sweet women who adores my children. She paid for the guys' summer actives and loves to spend time with them. For goodness sake, she took me the hour drive to my parents' small town twice when I was too close to giving birth to drive alone so I could help plan the funeral. And tries to help in anyway she can. You should see the beautiful blanket she made for Hope.

But I'm struggling to be appropriately appreciative lately. The MIL/DIL relationship is always challenging. But I think part of it for me is I can't be mad at my mother for dying, but I can be made at this sweet woman who is in front of me.