Please join Synkroniciti in welcoming back southern California writer William Cass with “Baptism,” a probing look at the intersection between aging and belonging in the context of marriage. Emma, raised Lutheran, gave up her religion decades ago when she married Carl and promised to raise their children in Catholicism.
“She’d gone to Mass with them on special occasions but had always felt like a guest at a club where she wasn’t a member. For all those years, she’d missed the fellowship, the worship, the music, the meaning that church had once brought to her life. Not unlike how she missed whatever their wedding vows once meant.”
Living with Carl, who is increasingly distant–and it’s more than just his hearing that is failing–in a seniors-only development in Oregon, she converts to Catholicism and is baptized.
“I started taking evening classes months ago. I’ve been going when you thought I was playing bridge.” She reached over and put her hand on his. “I wanted to surprise you. I wanted it to be something we’d have together.” She paused. “During this last chapter of ours.”
It’s a gentle, heartbreaking, cautionary tale about the dangers of giving up the things that make us who we are in order to please someone who cannot truly appreciate our sacrifice. Cass is a meticulous storyteller and he does so much with 950 words. Carl and Emma are living, breathing characters that one could encounter in real life. Even more than that, one can imagine growing into an Emma or a Carl quite easily. Catholicism could be replaced by any religion or cultural institution that requires strict conformity–including political movements–and the story would still resonate. The tragedy of disconnection between two people who were once passionate about each other makes “Baptism” an engrossing story for anyone, religious or not.
Read “Baptism” in Synkroniciti’s “Belonging” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/. This is a simple and quietly devastating story, told with elegance, vulnerability and respect.
William Cass has had over 350 short stories appear in literary magazines and anthologies. A nominee for Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net, he’s also had six Pushcart nominations and won writing contests at Terrain.org and The Examined Life Journal. His first short story collection, Something Like Hope and Other Stories, was published by Wising Up Press in 2020, and a second collection, Uncommon and Other Stories, has recently been released by the same press. He lives in San Diego, California.