Read Online Holding Silvan by Monica Wesolowska - Free Book Online Page B

lots of grandparents in this situation. She can baptize Silvan herself, just with water, or even by desire alone, that she doesn’t even have to tell us.”
    I feel such relief, but David is horrified. “Silvan’s Jewish.”
    â€œBut if you don’t even believe in baptism,” I say, “who cares? It’s just a little water.” I can even picture the water, in a little plastic bottle from the trip to Lourdes when I was young, saved in a back corner of the kitchen cabinet all these years. Though nothing in me needs Silvan baptized, it’s easy for me to imagine how much someone might still need to believe. This is my mother’s way of caring.

    â€œBut why do it if it’s just water? What does it matter?” he asks.
    â€œIt matters to her .”
    â€œBut it’s so illogical, it’s so obviously made up,” David says.
    â€œBut if it’s made up,” I say, “why do you even care? ”
    Â 
    SHORTLY AFTER THIS conversation, Sister C shows up at Silvan’s bedside. Now it’s David who has gone home, to return the messages building up on our answering machine; and I am alone with Silvan. He’s wearing only a diaper under his heat lamp, and I admire the frog-like spread of his chubby legs, the crow’s-foot of wrinkles raying out from his armpit, the little starfish hand that I hold in mine. Though Sister C is the “non-denominational” chaplain for the hospital and wears lay clothes, she is obviously a Catholic nun. Exhausted perhaps from all these conversations, from this struggle between my mother and my husband about something that matters so little to me, my first response to her is to echo David. “My son is Jewish .” I’m startled by my own vehemence. What does this even mean for a comatose newborn? Perhaps I’m afraid that she will try to interfere with our decision; that she will appeal to the side of me that once yearned for sainthood; remind me of my namesake Saint Monica who spent her life praying for the soul of her sinful son Augustine; make me feel bad about my soul and the soul of my own son. Or perhaps I’m just being loyal to my husband. I keep hold of Silvan’s hand.
    Sister C smiles. “So he’s Jewish. I’m still wondering if there’s anything I can do for you or for him.”
    With her question, I understand why she’s here. She’s here to relieve suffering. And so I beg her, gesturing with my free hand, “Take care of my mother. She’s Catholic like you. She’s out in the hall saying her rosary. She wants to baptize him.”
    Already I am turning away with relief.
    â€œIs that all?” Sister C asks. “Nothing for you?”
    But I have returned to Silvan, to his little body, here and now.

Distillation
    FOR NOW, SILVAN LIES ASLEEP AS USUAL, THREADED with tubes and wires and the medical tape that holds it all in place. He is five days old, and nothing has changed. We have a plan, but Dr. A still wants us to wait, as if we ourselves might change. Silvan has not opened his eyes since his first night of life; a fat tube in the mouth helps him breathe; thin tubes give him fluids and medicine. To help us hold him, nurses transfer him with all his equipment onto a pillow, and then pass the pillow to us. For all of this, Silvan seems sweetly asleep. He has the flushed cheeks and lips of a baby who has just finished nursing. He keeps his two little fists curled up, one on either side of his face, the way I do sometimes in bed because I find it comforting. I watch him lying calmly on a pillow in my brother Kim’s lap.
    Now at last when we have made our decision, there is time just to mother Silvan.
    At the next bed, a mother and grandmother of a baby who is ready to go home sit silent as always, taking turns feeding and burping their baby. They seem self-conscious about speaking to him in the silly way that people usually speak to babies. The only