"Today, I settle all Family business."

Michael Corleone knew how to make the most of a baptism. Six stiffs in the space of an hour, eliminated in quick and bloody succession by a disciplined troop of henchmen while the Padrino himself stood dressed to the nines at the font, swearing his services as moral guide. And a seventh corpse for dessert: the father himself, his sister's husband, the very man whose death would usher in Michael's own reign of moral responsibility.

Compared to Mr. Corleone, I made rather shabby use of my time at the Baptism. Before the service, about the only arrangement I made was for my shirt to be ironed. Didn't have time to talk to Clemenza, couldn't figure out who to kill to nullify my $140 library fees, couldn't find anyone to kneecap Charles Peterson of C.P. Developments who still has my $800. Nary a corpse. During the ceremony itself, the only thing I managed to do was snap a few backlit photos of hairy priest hands on white baby flesh. I don't mean to undermine the magnitude of this accomplishment (how many baby-handling father-types in enemy territory would summon the nerve?), but it lacked style: I really should have been looking pious and concerned, hands clasped meekly by the johnson, hedging a half-smile and beveling my gaze to the ground (Michael was very good at that.) Afterwards, I partially redeemed myself by thanking the officiant with exceptional sincerity, eyes wide, a firm double hand shake, a few deft phrases. My last act (my seventh corpse, so to speak) was to offer my body as a wall while my wife sat in the car and breatfed Benjamin through a tight purple dress which ceded cleavage access only through total removal. Passing frat boys intuited with beastly accuracy the nature of the transaction; they walked on, cultivating just the sort of deliberate, downcast smirk I had sought to bring to the baptism.

So I am no Michael Corleone, no avenger of secular wrongs at times of high moral seriousness, no tough minded mixer of the profane and the secular. One might ask what I was doing in the church in the first place, given that I haven't stepped into a House of God with Intent to Pray for many a year, and have no intention of raising a Papist. But family works in mysterious ways. It was one thing to insist on a secular marriage. That, at least in principle, was mostly about us, and though we ceded to the suegra's request that we talk it through with a priest, ultimately even he agreed that secular would be best. (Though in retrospect, the argument that 'marriage is about us' is a weak one. If that were true, why would every broke-ass relative in four continents converge on Bogota to wish us well?) But baptism didn't really seem to be about us at all. Though it still isn't totally clear to me what it is about, I do know that the fervor with which Beatriz hedged the Baptismal Dream, replete with white christening gown, the cathedral, la familia entera, a cooked goose afterwards and fine champagne, was such that I had no will to resist, that to resist would have represented unimaginable cruelty, would have broken something both in me and in her.

So Benji got dunked. Andrew played Il Padrino, swanked out in pin-stripe pants, a classy burgandy button down, and red-striped Adidas. We were lucky: he had gotten smeared by a van about two days earlier, dislocated a shoulder, and couldn't work, so he was free to hop the oh-so-secret Pit-NY Chinatown deathbus and be present for the cleansing. Madrina was played by Juana, impeccable, radiant, unflappable. Catalina appeared in the aforementioned frumpy purple dress, I sported indigo indian twill, Beatriz and Francisco looked the grandparently part and our friends Dan and Anna showed up in their Sunday best.

The actual ceremony was as wacky as it was improbable. Really, it never should have happened: apparently, if you want to get your kid baptized in the US, you need to take some sort of Moral Bearings class and then go through the ceremony en groupe (a lot like confirmation, I imagine.) But it seems Beatriz's Personal Priest (PP) in Bogota pulls some weight around here, for he arranged a private ceremony in the main cathedral on what must have been one of the busiest Saturday's of the season. Not only did we manage to skip the 'obligatory' baptismal class, but we managed to avoid the factory-line group soaking indignities that most new parents are subject to, being ushered into the heart of the baptismal font all by ourselves, with no one but a young, Spanish speaking Italian priest to perform the rights, and a few worshipers in the pews to make sure it got done right. The ceremony itself was a comedy of errors: the priest (Daniel was his name) was in a hurry, as he had to attend a wedding directly afterwards. So after hasty presentations he led us to the alter and we got busy with the questions, the first one, 'What do you seek from the church?", leaving us totally floored until he muttered under his breath "baptism", and we smiled and knew that he knew and that it didn't matter and that what we were doing was good anyway. The rest of the questions were standard protocol, I imagine, things along the lines of 'do you renounce the devil', 'do you promise to educate this boy in the ways of God', and 'you won't forget to tithe, will you?" About half way through the ceremony it became clear that he thought Andrew was the father and I was the padrino (did I mention that our introductions were hasty?) and we made no move to disabuse him of this notion. At the dunking, Cosmico wailed like a fire engine, the parishioners looked nervous, the priest smiled, and Beatriz cried.

The remainder of the day was devoted to the Fete. Roast turkey, cranberries, potatoes, copious good wine, lots of friends, story telling, pictures, laughter, cheer. I went to bed fully conscious of, and totally at ease with, the fact that I had yet again participated in a holy ritual whose meaning totally escaped me. Viva la iglesia, say I.