LITTLE SAINT JASON
When
I was at St. Paul’s in New Haven, one of my neighbors stopped me on the street
and asked, “Do you do baptisms?” She and her husband lived in a handsome
brownstone on the park—they were a “Yale couple”, she was Vice-President of
something and he was a professor of economics. They were the ultimate
“yuppies”—a term that still meant something in the 80’s. She was tall,
immaculately dressed for success and quite beautiful, blonde and willowy. But
she wore her hair pulled back severely and horned rimmed glasses she may or may
not have needed. (I met several women who worked in big jobs for Yale who wore
clear glass in unflattering frames. One actually told me it was to tell people,
“I may be pretty, but I’m smart….”) She was wearing a pale gray, pinstripe suit
and a pink blouse buttoned to the neck with one of those floppy little ties
that are bow-ties on estrogen. But her shoes, I remember noticing (she was
beautiful, after all!) were extremely high heels with almost no visible means
of keeping them on her feet. Really
sexy, out of character shoes....She hadn’t given in to the corporate image
ultimately…her shoes were fiercely feminine.
I
allowed that I had been known to “do” baptisms from time to time and she invited
me to come ‘around to our house tonight for a drink…5:30 suit you?'
I
was fascinated. I knew Donna and her husband, Phil, from the park. Our daughter
was about their son’s age—5 maybe—and they sometimes chased each other in the
park while everyone around Wooster Square let their dogs off lead to run and
poop. But I’d never been invited to their house before. I could hardly wait.
When
we’d settled in with our drinks (scotch for Phil, a Manhattan for Donna and
white wine for me) I was offered hors devours more exotic than either of them
should have time to make before my arrival and we did Wooster Square small
talk. Phil, even taller than Donna and nearly as good looking, was a New Haven
clone of “Mr. Chips”—casually elegant and tweedy and yet a little awkward all
at the same time. He obviously needed his glasses—in fact had two pair with
those bands that hold them like long necklaces around your neck. One for
distance and one for reading, I imagined, wondering if it were vanity or drama
that prevented him from just getting bifocals—but then, I’m always hard on
people who ‘come from money’. There house made no secret that one—perhaps both
of them—came from money. Everything was understated but expensive from the rugs
to the lamps to the properly worn leather couch and chairs to the antique table
I sat my glass on and then picked up in horror and looked around for a coaster.
“Go
ahead and set it there,” Donna said. “It was my grandmother’s so it’s really
old.” The people who come from “real money” are casual about such things, those
who got rich on their own are much less relaxed about glass rings on a table
worth thousands. After some small talk about the weather (a pleasant September,
better than last year) and the neighborhood (“did you know the Mason’s moved to
Europe—Mark’s doing a post-doc in France”) we finally got down to business.
“We
don’t come to church,” Phil began, showing his humility, “but we are
Episcopalians….We were married in the Cathedral in Chicago. And both our
parents are serious Episcopalians and they’re all coming out for
Thanksgiving….”
Little Jason
hadn’t been baptized (“our fault,” Donna said, “totally”—as if it could have
been Jason’s fault or the fault of Sarah, their AKC standard poodle) and there
was going to be hell to pay to Grand-pop and Grand-mom and Granny and Gramps
come turkey day. Before they began to grovel, which they would have, I told
them I’d be delighted to baptize Jason, which I was. And we started talking
about dates and times, settling on the Sunday after Thanksgiving when the
grandparents on both sides could be there. All I asked them to do was come to
church a few times, just so they’d be familiar with the racially and socially
diverse parish of St. Paul’s and to let me talk with them…and Jason…about baptism
for a few hours soon.
They were
overjoyed, called Jason down with his nanny, a 20 something au per from France who was teaching
Jason French as well as looking after him and taking some classes from Yale on
their dime. (I thought I had maybe underestimated the money they came from!) I
knew Jason of course, and he knew me as “Mimi’s dad” and we talked briefly
about coming to church and talking about baptism. Later mom and dad and Jason
spent several hours with me. Phil, of course, and Donna to only a slightly
lesser degree, knew the ins and outs of liturgy and church history and the rich
myriad of symbols that made up baptism. Jason asked some of those classic kid
questions: “will the water be cold or hot?” “Will I have to say anything?”
“Will Jesus be there?”
I told them, at
some point, that baptism, to my theology, was admission to communion and Jason
should receive communion with them on his baptismal day. Donna was a bit
horrified: “But he isn’t old enough to ‘understand’ it,” she said. I thought
for a moment and replied, “If ‘understanding’ it is a prerequisite, then I
shouldn’t receive it either….” It was a hard sell but Jason won the day: “I
want to, Mommy,” he said to Donna and the deal was made.
True to their
word, Donna, Phil and Jason became fixtures on the third row near the pulpit.
From time to time Brigitte would come with them and all of them fit in just
fine—a little better dressed than most, but open and friendly and involved.
During that time I came, once more, face to face with my devotion to F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s observation that “the rich are not like you and me.” I’ve never
quite felt comfortable around the moneyed of the world—certainly both a
character flaw and a disadvantage for rapid advancement in the Episcopal
Church! Donna and Phil were ‘just like me’—we had many of the same interests
and opinions. And Jason was ‘just a kid’ dressed in clothes from Barney’s
instead of Sears. I came to like them a lot, which prepared me to like their
parents as well. Jason’s two grandfathers were cut from the same
mold—successful, keen and most likely ruthless Mid-Western business men who
never the less possessed the shy, inviting charm of people from the center of
the country. The grandmothers were different—Donna’s mom was an older version
of her: stylish, lovely, cultured. But Phil’s mother was like someone Garrison
Keeler would make up and put in Lake Woebegone. She was a tad over-weight with
a broad, smiling face, gray hair in a bun and simple clothing. She would have
been very comfortable in an apron puttering around the house.
They were all
delighted that Jason, as his paternal grandmother put it, “was finally getting
dunked.” And on the day of the baptism they were all radiant and joyful. The
baptism went fine—Jason answered loudly when I asked him if he desired to be
baptized and stepped up on the little stool I’d dug out to lean his head over
the font with perfect grace. But the real grace came when the family, led by
Jason, came up to receive communion. Jason received the wafer and carefully, precisely
dipped it half-way into the wine before consuming it. Then he said, “thank you”
to the chalicist and started back to his seat between the lines of people
waiting for the rail.
He stopped beside
the first person he passed and said, politely, “I just got the Body of Christ.”
That person nodded slightly but tried to remain solemn, just the way we should
be on the way to the greatest party ever thrown! So, Jason was a little louder
with the next person and louder still with the one after that. By then, the
lack of response began to confuse and annoy him and he started pulling on pants
legs and skirts: “I just got the Body of Christ!” he said to each person he
passed. Donna’s father got to him first and picked him up, looking back
embarrassingly at me. Jason was trying to get free from his grandfather’s
embrace…there were lots more people to tell about what had just occurred.
I stopped the
service right there, asking the organist to stop playing and pointing to Jason
in the arms of his grandfather.
“Do you hear what
he’s telling you?” I said, softly. “Can you begin to understand what waits for
you up here? Jason understands and he’s telling you to run to this table
because the mystery and wonder here is more than you imagine…more than you can
imagine….”
For months after
that, I was told, people going back from communion would lean over and whisper
to their friends, “Guess what I just got?” And for a while the spirit of
Jason’s understanding astonished us all.
(I had wondered if having Jason ‘dunked’
would be the end of the family’s church going. I wouldn’t have been upset if it
had, since the sacrament was valid and real and ‘objective’. But they kept
coming for a few months until Donna was offered a position in the President’s
office at Northwestern and Phil was asked to teach at the University of
Chicago. The jobs were so good they were leaving at the end of first semester.
I was sad to see them go, but it gave me a little rush to know that someone had
used Yale as a ‘stepping stone’ to what they really wanted!
I went down the day they moved and watched
the movers carefully empty the house of beautiful, valuable things. Donna, so
unlike her, was dressed in faded jeans and one of Phil’s J. Crew white shirts.
Her hair was a mess and she had on neither makeup nor glasses. She hugged me
and told me I could find Phil and Jason and the dog and the nanny over in the
park. Before I went to say good-bye to them, she said, “did we tell you that
Jason’s favorite game now is playing priest? He baptizes G. I. Joe daily and
gives us communion ever so often. He wears one of Phil’s tee-shirts and puts
one of his ties around his neck. It’s really very sweet.” She said it was
‘sweet’ but she looked worried.
“It’s just a phase,” I told her, “like me.”
“You’re in a ‘phase’?” asked, smiling.
“Yeal,” I said, “but mine came late and has
stayed for a while.”
Then I went to find my friends and say
goodbye.)
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