The pool at the YMCA wasn't unusually crowded this morning. Maya the lifeguard, walking the deck, waved hi when I arrived. Her sister, a swim instructor whose name I can never remember, was there too, swimming laps. The preschool lessons hadn't started yet. A couple other instructors, still in street clothes, gathered around the lifeguard's chair chatting. A heavily pregnant woman swam slowly in one lane. Two women and three men, African-American and stylishly dressed, were seated on the benches where parents watch their children's lessons, leaning toward each other and talking earnestly and quietly. Workers were cleaning the sauna room, adding a piney disinfectant scent to the air. A couple of people were relaxing in the hot tub.
Something about the women and men on the benches caught my attention as I started my swim. Maybe it was just unusual for people in street clothes to be sitting in that spot unless they were waiting for someone in the pool, and I couldn't really connect them to anyone else. I shrugged it off, kept swimming, and forgot about them.
But about thirty minutes later, when I surfaced after my interval set for three minutes' rest before doing my timed 50-yard sprint, the young woman and the young man -- perhaps they were in their late teens or early twenties -- had shed their street clothes. The girl was standing waist deep in the pool and one older man was with her, his left hand on her back and his right hand upraised; he was speaking quiet and quick words that I could not hear.
No one else was looking at them.
It seemed I couldn't just dive in the pool and ignore what I was about to see. I raised my corrective goggles up off my eyes -- the scene brightened and blurred, but I felt more appropriate. The water drained from my ears and I suddenly heard singing -- the older woman, in her scarf and attractive jacket, was smiling and singing to the young woman -- over and over... something like "I been down in Jesus' name," or maybe it was "I bent down in Jesus' name," or maybe that wasn't it exactly, but that's what I thought I heard.
And the man in the pool grasped the girl's hand and dipped her, like a dancer, backward, and she was baptized.
No one else seemed to notice them. The instructors went on chatting. Maya went on walking the slow circuit around the pool. The pregnant woman went on swimming. The maintenance workers went on scrubbing the sauna and filling the air with the scent of pine. I stood transfixed.
She came up out of the water, and the older lady and the man clapped and hugged her and handed her a towel, and the young man walked down into the water. Again the lady sang softly, again the man in the water raised his hand; and the young man went back down into the water and came up again.
No one else seemed to notice them. They took no notice of me, not that I could see, or of anyone else there.
Up the men came out of the water. All five people gathered for a moment in a circle, holding hands, heads bowed. The young people and the preacher left through the door to the locker rooms. The woman who had been singing picked up her bag and left through the door to the lobby. The remaining man walked a few steps toward the door, pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, dialed a number and sat down on another bench, gazing into the middle distance the way people do when they are waiting for someone to answer.
I slipped my stopwatch ring onto my finger and dived into the pool. The water slipped freezing cold over the back of my neck and my shoulders. I swam several strokes before I remembered I was supposed to be swimming fast, but by the time I arrived back at the shallow end I'd made up the time and shaved another second off my personal record.
The benches were now full of parents tugging winter jackets off bathing-suited preschoolers. The instructors were gathering floats and water toys. The people I'd seen before were gone.
Unless they said "I baptize [you] in Jesus's name" instead of in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit -- then she wasn't actually (validly) baptized! See http://catholicexchange.com/2008/04/21/112529/
Posted by: theresa | 23 December 2008 at 01:43 AM
Yes, yes, yes, I know all that. I could not hear any words, so I choose to assume each was a valid, most likely Protestant baptism.
I promise to investigate further if one of my sons grows up to marry the young lady or something.
Posted by: bearing | 23 December 2008 at 01:26 PM