Baptized on Palm . . . Tuesday

There was a frond in the pool when I got back to our rental this afternoon, and when I bent down to fish it out, I remembered that I should finally go after the Pilot House palm frond all brown and ugly hanging over our "living room."

It's the kind that needs to be trimmed off the trunk, not a self-cleaning palm like the ones over the rental pool and we're putting in at the house. So I'd have to cut as much of the frond as I could, considering the tree itself is three or four stories tall.

I got the heavy shears, grabbed the end of the dead, brown frond, pulled it as far down as I could, cut as far up as I could reach. I was using all my weight to pull on it.

I neglected to consider that I was angled over the pool, and that as I cut there would be a quick loss of support from the frond.

As I tumbled into the pool, I had a slow-motion thought: I was baptized at Trinity Church on Palm Sunday, 58 years ago. Thus on Palm Tuesday, 58 years plus 2 days, I did the total immersion route, a block from St. Paul's.