December 15, 2014
Monday

That it was fine linen flawlessly stitched,
as silken as new skin.
. . .
As a sacramental dress, it too had been blessed.
. . .
That it smelled as clean as God.
— Jeanne Marie Beaumont, American poet
from “Fifteen Views of a Christening Gown”
in Ploughshares, Winter 2014-15

Today is the twenty-ninth anniversary of the baptism of Evelyn Rose DeAngelis, now known as Lynn DeAngelis April. I’ve searched both iterations of this blog for pieces I might have written about this event, without success. Mostly I was looking for a picture of her in the family christening gown, “because she had been heard to say it had been passed/down. Saved. This was not the first.”

The search brought home to me even more sharply the haphazard condition of my pictures files, my text files, my memorabilia, just about everything in my life. I did hold in my hand earlier the picture of Lynn in her christening gown, propped against a white ruffled pillow on the blue couch we had then. It’s in a frame that her half-brother, Dan, brought as a gift. A plate under the picture is engraved:

Christening
Evelyn Rose
12-15-85

Dan had turned 19 years old the day before Lynn was born. Ron told me later that as Dan arrived, he said to his father, “Do you spell Evelyn with just one n?” and Ron was glad that we did, since it was probably already too late for whatever reason Dan needed to know this..

The gown Lynn wore was a family heirloom, made by my grandmother for the baptism of her first child, my Uncle Ed, who was born in 1902. (My mother always used the word “christening.” Christening and baptism are different theologically, but in popular parlance, especially for members of religious groups that practice infant baptism, they are the same.) Children were baptized as soon after birth as possible in those days, so the gown is small. Lynn at 11 weeks fit into it easily. My cousin’s daughter was nearly eight months old when she was baptized in 1997. Her head couldn’t fit through the opening at the neck, so her mother wrapped her in it like a shawl, and we all agreed that that was acceptable.

That it came with a matching hat, beribboned.

By the time Lynn was baptized in 1985, the gown had been worn by my uncle and his two younger sisters, the sisters’ five children (me, my sister, and our three cousins), my niece and my nephew, and by the ten children of two of my cousins. When I received it a month or so before Lynn was born, there was a satin cap overlaid with crochet in the box. Although the gown was bright white despite its age and the uncertain care it might have been given, the cap was yellowed and dingy. My mother said it was not the cap that usually accompanied the gown, certainly not the one she had used for me and my sister. I made a new hat for Lynn, with a hand-smocked band, that I still have.

I was one week old when I was baptized. My mother did not attend the ceremony. New mothers were treated like invalids then, and she was still forbidden to go up and down steps or to go out. I had no such restrictions, and wouldn’t have observed them anyway. Nevertheless, Lynn was at the advanced age of nearly three months at her baptism, because I wanted to be able not only to be there, but also to look good.

December 15 that year was Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday in Advent. I had a reception afterward, the precursor to what became my Holiday Open House Extravaganza. In planning the party, I sought to present “the breads of Lynn’s heritage.” I made a Russian kulich that used cardamom, Polish kolachy (a cream cheese dough) and Italian anise biscotti (a twice-baked cookie). Finding an Irish bread that was not the stereotypical soda bread proved difficult. I remember that the cookbook section of Waldenbooks, went from Iranian to Italian with nothing between.

I remember walking down the stairs with Lynn in my arms just as my sister, who was standing as Lynn’s godmother, arrived. Lynn was patting her small hand against my shoulder, and when she heard my sister call her name, she turned her head and smiled. She had only recently begun to do that, to laugh when we laughed, to offer a smile at the sound of her name. Lynn’s smile is still the most spectacular thing about her appearance, and she gives it readily. I, on the other hand, can no longer walk down steps holding an infant, or anything else, upright in my arms. My recently begun work with a physical therapist is designed to help me get back there.

Jeanne Marie Beaumont’s poem ends in sadness.The infant dies and is buried in the gown. The Dwyer family gown was boxed up not long after Lynn used it and has served the children of my cousins’ children in various parts of the country. I’m not sure where it is right now, but I know that should there be a need for it here in Pennsylvania, where it began, it won’t take long to find it and make it ready

It will still smell as clean as God.