My Catholic Mother Confessed:

She Sinned to Save Their Souls

My mom is a sneaky person. She’ll likely deny this, but I’ve accumulated fifty years of evidence, and though the majority of her offenses were relatively mild, like rearranging my kitchen cabinets without my consent, the time she snuck my childhood diary into the bathtub where she read it aloud to my father—that was devastating. I couldn’t even grab it from her hands without risking the pages taking a destructive plunge into the massive bubbles enveloping mom.

For all I know, the day she read my diary might’ve triggered my current writing life, flipping me from someone who writes for an intended-to-be private page to someone writing about her family for an audience. I’m sure it’s not easy for her now, having me for a daughter. Not only do I possess a superior autobiographical memory, but I mine it for writing memoir and personal essays. Whenever I write something about mom and start to feel apprehensive (will she be offended?), I recall the diary incident and how she even needed to find the miniature key to break into my beloved book, and I think: Payback’s a bitch!

Mom became even sneakier as a grandmother. I made her a grandma young—she was only 44 when my son, T, was born—so she had lots of energy to plan and execute clandestine operations. And she did.

Shortly before T’s second birthday, Mom accompanied us on a trip to San Antonio, Texas. While my husband worked a trade show there, I did sightseeing with little T and mom. I was a smoker back then, so I’d asked Mom to look after my son while I snuck aside to light up. I’d left them in an outdoor pedestrian plaza, but when I returned, they were gone. Frantic, I searched the area and noticed a church. Maybe Mom had wandered in, hoping for a cool respite from the Texan sunshine.

I hurried inside and spotted them immediately. Mom’s hands were in the holy water. Was she trying to cool off? It couldn’t be. Mom wouldn’t steal holy water for the sake of refreshment—not even if she were dying of thirst. She’s a properly behaved Catholic woman. (Although I suspect if she were to find her priest’s diary accidentally left behind alongside a stack of Bibles—well, I think she’d curl up in a pew and read it cover to cover.)

I watched her scoop the holy water with one hand, her other arm wrapped around my son. Then, she dribbled some water over his head. I heard words coming from her mouth. In the name of the father and son and the holy spirit. I couldn’t believe it. This was a baptism. Whether it “counted” or not, I didn’t know. But Mom had circumnavigated both me and the priesthood and performed the sacrament herself.

I don’t remember my reaction back then. Probably, I used the opportunity to sneak in another cigarette. It’s equally likely that I became enraged—not because the religious sacrament offended me much, but because I was highly sensitive to anyone overstepping a boundary that violated my parental authority. I got pregnant at age 20, while still in college (and unmarried), so any instance that threatened my sense of legitimacy as an adult and/or parent could throw me into a rage. If I were to bet actual money on the reality of what happened back then, I’d bet on this: I’d expressed outrage in a loud whisper, pulled dripping T outdoors, proceeded to express further outrage in a raised voice, and followed the whole scene up with an episode of chain smoking.

Now, almost 27 years later, I look back on the episode with a softened perspective. I’ve aged out of anyone mistaking me for the babysitter or the big sister (strangers used to assume mom was T’s mother). It’s amazing how wrinkles and gray hair make me wish for the return of those days—I should’ve enjoyed them.

But more than that, I now understand that mom’s behavior wasn’t motivated by a desire to undermine me. She believed she was literally saving little T from eternal damnation. Our religious upbringing, at least the way we’d learned it, included a belief that an unbaptized child would be excluded from admission to heaven. I wasn’t a believer, so I didn’t worry about my child’s afterlife. But Mom did. And she was scared.

More recently, Mom confessed to another secret baptism. She did it again, thirteen years later, while she and my maternal grandmother were here visiting for our daughter’s first birthday.

“Grandma helped me plan it,” she said. “She brought a bottle of holy water, and when S went to sleep, I made sure the video monitor was turned off, so you wouldn’t see or hear what we were doing.”

Very sneaky.

Apparently, on the eve of my daughter’s first birthday, Grandma and Mom sprinkled holy water upon her sleeping head.

As I write this now, I wonder if Mom’s ever thrown a handful of holy water at my sleeping spouse, and if not, why not? If all of us baptized persons are going to heaven, but my Jewish husband is left behind (according to Mom’s beliefs), should he be insulted? Should I?

In any case, once my conversion to Judaism is complete, I assume my baptism might not hold up with the heavenly gatekeeper, should there turn out to be one. I can only imagine how Mom feels about this. What’s it like for her, learning that her daughter is converting to Judaism?

Her answer surprised me. Stay tuned to find out!

Thanks for reading.

xoxo Jen

I searched through my old photo albums, and wow—there are lots of pictures of churches and missions. Without returning to the scene of the crime, I doubt I can figure out which church it was, but thinking it might be one of these two: