The Day Dad Held the Baby

They landed on Dad. On the wheelchair. On the green tank.

I watched the color go out of her face. She turned back around fast and stared straight ahead, and I saw her shoulders come up tight under her dress.

I want to say I felt good. I did not. I felt like a woman who had brought a storm into church. I sat with my hands folded in my lap and sang every verse of the hymn, and Dad sang beside me in his low, cracked voice, a line at a time, stopping to breathe.

Cody did not turn around. He was holding the hymnal for Brynn and looking down at the baby, and he did not see us.

The pastor at our church is a young man named Elwin, only three years out of seminary, with a farm boy’s hands and a voice that does not need a microphone in a room that size.

He had grown up two counties over. He had visited Dad at the care home a handful of times since spring, and he always brought him the church newsletter folded to the prayer list.

I saw Pastor Elwin see Dad. It was during the announcements. He was reading about the potluck in the fellowship hall after the service, and his eyes went to the back of the church and stopped there.

He did not miss a word. But he smiled, a small smile, just at the corner of his mouth, and he gave the smallest nod toward our pew.

Then it was time. He called the family forward, and Cody and Brynn went up to the font with the two sponsors. The font in our church is a stone one, set on a little round base at the front, carved by somebody’s great-grandfather in the 1890s.

The sun was coming in through the tall clear windows along the east wall. Our church never did put in stained glass. The old-timers always said they did not want to keep out any of God’s light, and that morning I understood what they meant.

The light came down across the font and the stone and the white gown, and the whole front of the church looked washed.

Pastor Elwin took Hadley from Brynn. He did it the way the good ones do, tucking her in the crook of his arm like he had done it a hundred times, so she never even stirred.

He asked the questions. Cody and Brynn answered them. The sponsors answered. Then the congregation stood and said we would help raise her in the faith, and I said it louder than I meant to.

He dipped his hand in the water and poured it over her head three times. Hadley opened her eyes and scrunched up her whole face and then let out one indignant little squawk, and the whole church laughed softly.

I heard Dad laugh too, beside me. It turned into a cough, and I put my hand on his back until it passed.