for a moment my heart stopped when they said they were asking a priest to go to the hospital to see my uncle, but it turned out he was actually better, not worse, and wanted to receive communion, not his last rites. i haven't any religious inclinations or affiliations of my own, but my father, aunt and uncle are catholics, and i've been meaning to write about my father and how he came to become one. and one day, too, i shall write something about father jeannequin who is our parish priest and the person they asked to go to the hospital. i have met him once or twice, and he's visited us a few times before on chinese new year. my pa was just telling me about how he was sent to burma just out of the seminary, and stayed for 15 years, this would have been in the fifties. and on a recent trip to myanmar, he was able to look up the man who was the very first baby he'd ever baptised in his career! it was so special to him, his first baptism, that he recorded all the particulars, and i think that's remarkable that after all these years he could find the same baby. my pa said, when you teach your first college class, you should keep a copy of your class list, like father j did, because these students going to be special to you. i thought it was rather like the edmundo d'amicis text - the school teacher who kept one essay of every student he ever taught.