Breathing in. Breathing out. Again. And again. Ok. Now he pushed the button with the green telephone handset. There was the dial tone… Would their kid still know what a telephone handset is? Probably, when one day, their kid would see one, in a museum (oh, they would visit a lot of museums, that was for sure!) it would say: hey Daddy, look, there's some 3D model of the call button of the telephone and -
"Mary Cooper on the phone, who am I talking to?"
"Mum, it's Sheldon. Is my number still not saved yet in your new telephone?"
"How can it be saved when my technically mostly talented son almost never visits me?"
"I'm sure George or Missy can save it for you, too!"
"That was not really the point of my complaint, but ok, I will ask one of them at their next visit! So, what's up?"
"We have news, mom!"
"I already had expected that. You've never been the kind of person who calls their mom without any occasion out of the weekly schedule. So?"
He breathed in deeply. „We're having a baby, mom!" He couldn't suppress a smile, knowing how much happy that would make her.
There was silence on the other end of the line. Then, finally, Mary talked again. "Oh Shelly…" then, silence again.
Sheldon was not so sure what to think. "Are you happy about it?"
"If I'm happy? Are you kidding? You have a wife and now soon a kid and you're earning enough money to nurture both! What else could a mother wish for her son to have?"
"Mmh, maybe a Nobel?"
"Don't be silly now, Shelly. I'm so happy! One of my biggest dreams is coming true! But I have to know the truth: was it planned or was it some kind of accident? I mean, from your perspective, no child is an accident in the Lord's eyes, of course..."
Sheldon thought back to the night of the conception. In that moment, it wasn't planned at all. But in general, they had planned it, so what was the truth now? He decided to tell her the whole story. Not all the details, of course. "It was planned. But we had to try really hard. You know, since last summer when Amy's great cousin Robert had died."
"Oh, Robert, of course, I'm still praying for his soul… But that's really a long time ago. Why didn't you tell me you have issues? I could have prayed for you, too?"
"That's exactly the reason we didn't tell you, mom. We didn't want everybody to have high expectations and asking us every month if Amy was having her period or not… We've already put a lot of pressure on the matter by ourselves."
"You know, Darling, that's probably not the kind of things you want to talk about with your mother, but often the babies are received in the moments when you just don't think of making a baby at all, if you know what I mean…"
"Yeah, I know what you mean, but I don't think I want to discuss this with you in detail." He was blushing heavily at the imagination of his mother knowing about their wild night.
"Alright. That's ok. You may keep your little secrets of marriage, honey! So, tell me, did you already think about a godfather or a godmother?"
Ok. Now it was time for the unpleasant part. His heart had started beating a little faster. There was news for his mom, that she wouldn't like to hear.
"You know mom, that the church and the believe in God is not the top priority in Amy's and my life. Honestly, it has almost no priority. I know that this is not easy for you, but you have to accept this."
"I know, Shelly, I know." She sounded a little sad now, even he could hear this.
"And, Amy and I, we have agreed that… we don't want to get our kid baptized. If he or she wants to do this as an adult, we will accept it, but we don't want to prescribe any kind of religion to our child."
"Oh Lord, please help me with this son, that has been spoiled by liberal Californian hippies! Sheldon, a person that hasn't been baptized will burn in hell. You cannot want this for your child?"
Sheldon sighed mentally. How often did he have had this discussion with his mother, over and over again? He knew that she believed in the existence of hell, a place made of fire and lava, where a horned devil with his hosts of demons tormented the pour souls of all people who had never been baptized, who didn't believe in God firm enough or who didn't follow the rules of the bible. Whenever somebody that she knew had died and this person wasn't such a fanatic religious as herself, she was sure that him or her had gone to hell. And she suffered, she really suffered deeply from her sympathy for those people. He then always wished he could somehow soothe her pain, but the only way he knew to approach problems was logic and that wasn't really helpful in her case.
"Mom, you know I don't believe neither in the devil nor in hell… We have talked about that so often"
"Shelly, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
"That's actually a quote from a movie, that fundamental Christians hold for a truth."
"But it is true!"
"It's not!"
„Can you prove it?" That was always her killer argument. But not today. At least he hoped so.
„You know, mom, I have heard, that somewhere between Earth and Mars, there's a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit.* Howard says he thinks he might have seen it from the ISS."
"Sheldon, what's that nonsense supposed to mean?"
"Can you prove it's nonsense?"
"Sheldon, what do you want?"
"If you prove that the teapot doesn't exist, then I prove that the devil doesn't exist! Otherwise we will just agree that there's no need for any prove."
"Sheldon, stop with that games now. This is serious! Why can't you at least get the kid baptized? You know, how much you love preparedness and safety. See baptizing the kid as a kind of safety precaution for your kid's soul, can't harm, can it? And you don't have to do the religious education, I'd love to take that part for the both of you."
"Mom, if I would want a safety precaution for my kid's soul, I had to follow all the rules and rituals of all the religions of the world. And even then, I couldn't be sure if any of those religions was really telling the truth."
"But baptizing the kid cannot do any harm. So why don't you just do it for your mother's sake?"
"Because Amy and me, we agree that we want our kid to grow up with a firm faith in logic, science and humanism" Except that awful discussion about Santa Clause, he thought. "And honestly, we think that the sort of religious faith that the church, or at least your church, is spreading, is counterproductive to that."
It was true. Even if he would never admit it to his science colleges or even friends. His religious childhood upbringing sometimes made him doubt if all the things that science and logic and liberal people told him, weren't wrong in the end and he and Amy and their kids and all their friends would burn in hell one day for not believing that the bible was telling an absolute truth. He really admired Beverly, for example, for being a firmly convinced atheist. But he himself wasn't brave enough to finally cut the last thin string that still bound him to his childhood believe. Therefore, he still went to church once in a year, therefore, he still spoke his prayer at the dinner table, when his mom asked him to do so, therefore he still kept a bible somewhere in his book shelf. Because, some tiny place somewhere in the depths of his brain was in doubt, torturing him, making him afraid, although he actually knew better, didn't he? And he really didn't want all that insecurity for his kid.
"Sheldon, don't you think that there's a way for you to raise your child both religious and scientific?"
"Not when the religious education is based on a literal interpretation of the bible."
"But it's the only possible interpretation."
"That is your opinion."
"That is God's opinion."
"How can you know that?"
"It's written in the bible!"
"Mom, I guess we should stop this conversation now. I'll send you a sonographic picture of the baby via e-mail, ok?"
"Oh, that will be wonderful!" There was a pause. „I love you, Sheldon!"
"I love you, too, mom." He hung up the phone. "I love you", he whispered again. Then he burst into tears.
Actually, this chapter was very personal for me and I couldn't help crying in the end. I don't know if all of you can comprehend (on an emotional level) the religious conflict between Sheldon and his mom. But having grown up with a religious fanatic mother myself, the conflicted relationship with his mom is one of the things that makes me feel really close to the character Sheldon.
*Just to avoid misunderstandings and for legal reasons: this nice analogy wasn't invented by myself, but by the british philosopher Bertrand Russell.