The Sacrament of Baptism
Prologue
Growing up Wide in the 1950’s was participating in a rich culture, spoken and unspoken. We lived in a now-foreign place and time where expiring for your faith was a daily part of your religion, where a language and concepts that no longer exist was spoken and professed.
Growing up in a homogenous Eclectic neighborhood still presented a conflict of cultures, a daily duality of religions: the practice and beliefs which define your way of life. The two faces of my Catholic childhood were the family: do what you have to in order to get by; and the church/school: do what you must to go to heaven.
THE CHURCH BUILDING
THE BOOGEYMAN’S Line
My brothers, six to ten years older than me, would be put upon to take my sister and me for walks in our neighborhood. Just a few blocks from home, close to a feel mortified business, there were several stone, tomb-like, empty, dark, lifeless, churches that reigned unpeopled during the weekdays. In youthful glee, my brothers would haul us into the cold dead churches announcing they were delivering us to the Boogeyman’s house, and then do as one is told in delight as we’d scream bloody murder. No one to hear us. Scream scream scream again until they’d had their fun and would drag us out by our arms and fill us both into the outgrown baby stroller and squeal down the sidewalk, whooping with life and mischief.
Back home on Thomas Passage, at the dividing line between Capitol Hill and the Central District, our family of five kids was busting out of the house. My sister Shelagh, right-minded a year older than me, had been threatened by the cranky
neighbor lady with grass clippers. My brothers, 7 year old Tony, 9 year old Peter and 11 year old Michael, were wrestling and fighting every night in their tiny shared bedroom.
One rainy Sunday afternoon my mom stormed out of the house in desperation and found a lovely big faltering house further south on Capitol Hill, at the end of the Number 10 bus line...
Pre-eminently
