Dear Lulu,

Your dad and I--we have lots of feelings about religion. In our 12 years together, we have gone through many. We have been half-hearted Catholics, similarly half-hearted Protestants, Quakers, Unitarian Universalists, plain old atheists. You dad settled somewhere around pantheist. Your mom is hopeful, but ultimately undecided.

However, this weekend, we got you christened up nice and good. Just because we aren't sure doesn't mean that you won't be. Wherever your journey takes you, we wanted to start you off on the right foot, sparkling and clean, a bright shiny penny.

Your baptism took place at a church in our neighborhood, one of our favorites and one with a long and interesting history. There were three other babies baptized that day, but the church was half full with people there just for you.

You wore your Great-Aunt Cathy's christening gown. You looked like an angel in it.



She wants you to know that gown is approximately 39 years old. Not one day older, no ma'am.

You have the best godfathers in the world. This is said totally without one ounce of hyperbole. I think it's the best thing your father and I have done as parents, so far, picking them. They are two of the best men that we know--smart and loyal and kind and caring--and there is no doubt in our minds that they love you very much.


If good parenting is decided on the basis of how well you surround your kids with people who love them, then Daddy and I are ruling at it, indeed. We could probably lock you in a closet with snakes and still get a fair number of Good Parent Points. (There's some hyperbole for you--just so you know it's really me writing).

You were so good during the service, you didn't cry at all, not even when you had water dripped on your head, not even when you were anointed with chrism. You looked around at everything going on, so curiously. You did get a little tearful during pictures, after, but that's to be understood. Linda Evangelista won't get out of bed for less than $10,000 and here was granddad with his camera, expecting you to pose for free.

After the service was over, we had a party and a big Lebanese feast to celebrate you, the world's newest Catholic. Your whole family was there, and so many friends came to wish you well. They stayed long into the night. By the end of it all, you were plumb tuckered out, but it was the best kind of tired.


It was a happy kind of tired.

I like to think that this whole day stands for the idea that you will live your own life, that you will make decisions that are different from mine and your dad's. Maybe when you grow up, you will look back on your christening as the start of your own faith journey, a moment when all of your loved ones put aside their own differences in belief to celebrate the start of yours. If you choose another path, it will still always be a wonderful thing to have, the memory of a day in which you participated in a tradition from both sides of your family, a day you spent surrounded by family and friends and so much love.

Dad and I are counting on you to put in a good word for us with the Man in Charge, if you do one day decide to do the whole religion thing.


If you don't, though, that's fine by us too. As long as you're happy, we're good. That's our first, and most important, rule.

Lots of love to my bright shiny penny,

Mama