Preparing the ground

reflections on the almost newly born

We have a grandchild on the way. New life for the newly born. New phase of life for us and for the community that will support him. We are looking forward to all that this will entail.

I find myself looking back as well, to when our daughter was born in 1994–and those early years. I remember the Siege of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces was in its second year. The first Information Superhighway Summit was held in Washington, D.C. at which government officials, industry leaders, and academics discussed the future of the internet. The Dow had yet to top 4,000.

But all of that was background noise. At Columbia Hospital for Women in Washington DC there was a new person, yet unnamed, who invited all our attention. When she wasn’t nursing or sleeping, her darting eyes were scanning the new world with what seemed like focus and deliberation. Hours into life she was already collecting data.

When it was time to take our baby home, the checkout nurse stopped by the room. She had a brusque but efficient bearing. She was filling in a form on a clipboard, and asked for the baby’s name. We had contenders, but hadn’t settled on one.

“You don’t have a name? You need one before you leave here. If you don’t, you’re going to have to visit the DC vital records office. The long lines, the bureaucracy, they take up time you never get back. You don’t want to deal with the DC vital records office. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

We took out our short list of names and were able, in a matter of minutes, to take home Molly Graham Hickman.

Molly, some months old, with her Mama

Bureaucracy would come up again at the time of baptism. We thought it would be fitting to make a pilgrimage to Wilmington, Delaware, and have Molly christened at our old Episcopal church.

I recently came across this letter from my mother, which recounts her effort to scope out a venue. Here she is writing to the Reverend William Lane at Christ Church:

Dear Bill Lane:

The clergy have always seemed fond of the concept of joy; therefore, I thought I’d report that I saw some of it a couple of weeks ago on the faces of my family when my son’s baby was baptized at the Cathedral Church of St. John.

In offering early on to scope out the Wilmington churches for this Washington, D.C. branch, my first call was to you since Christ Church is where I’ve been trying to find my way back to the denomination. You told me about the necessity for current parish membership as a prerequisite for baptism.

Ditto, my call to St. Andrew’s in which “vineyard” I’d worked the kitchen, the choir stalls, the classroom, the board room and the lectern. Hardly someone who had just wandered in from the street - although, come to think of it, that might have been an advantage in that particular church.

Moving on to the Cathedral [Church of St. John]. Canon Kerr agreed immediately to the christening and I was mightily relieved not only because I could report good news to my family but also because I was spared a perhaps terminal case of rancor over the church that preaches individualized ministry and inclusion and then gets its feet tangled in frivolous legalities. As a clergy friend parodies: “Like a mighty glacier/Moves the church of God.”

All this said, I do like that grand old parish of yours out there where many of my oldest friends are pillars - and I intend to darken its doors now and then!

Sincerely,

Janet Hickman

I am sure our family will not confront any ecclesiastical hindrances this time around. And as for the name, a front runner was selected months ago by the mother-to-be. (It was her boss’s Sufi grandmother, whom Molly met in Istanbul, who first predicted it was a boy, and went so far as to assign him the name Aziz. With all due respect, Molly has since made other plans.)

We are making the world ready for him, and he is suitably preparing himself for his excursion into this world. He will be lovingly received, attended by every blessing.

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There is an incipient garden plot in our back yard, maybe ten by twenty feet, demarcated by landscape timber. Over the years it has hosted onions, tomatoes, green beans and such. It has been fallow and I had no plans for its use. Yet there I was recently, garden spade in hand, turning over and over rich shovelfuls and busting them up. Where we came from, up north, the ground was compact and rocky, and what soil strata existed was thin. This land holds more promise.

I will start small, maybe a few rows of wildflowers. Something new in the furrows to echo the new delivery of life upon which our love and attention will come to focus.

Part of the backyard garden (to be developed) in pre-dawn light