Blessing of the Bambino

University Hospital in Syracuse.

My oldest son Gabriel was born at University Hospital in Syracuse, N.Y., which also housed the clinic I attended for all of my mommy-body needs.

Soon after he was born, I took him with me for my first postpartum checkup. I was a confident mother but I was still a brand-spanking new one, and every "first" experience was an adventure. I'm pretty sure this was the first errand-like outing on which I dragged him.

Afterward, I stood outside the hospital entrance waiting for his daddy to fetch the car. It was a lovely sunny day in August, my checkup had gone well and Gabe was happily snoozing as I held him in my arms.

The tiniest, oldest Franciscan nun I had ever seen tottered up to us with her cane, lightly touching my arm with a very bony but extremely gentle hand.

"Oh, is the little bambino sick?" she inquired. I explained that we were just there for a checkup and that everything was going fine.

"Wonderful," she said, nodding her little head enveloped in a brown habit. She then reached out with that ancient hand, made the sign of the cross on Gabe's infant forehead and murmured, "May the Lord bless you and keep you forever."

I wasn't raised in a church with nuns, but I surely appreciated the gesture. My mother was completing her own seminary degree at the time, I was a regular worshiper of the Lutheran kind, and I was looking forward to Gabe's baptism.

When the sister blessed him, I looked down on the little boy I had named after an angel with pure contentment and joy, reveling in yet another "first."

When I looked up, my spiritual moment had turned into one of those panicky, veil-rent experiences. That little nun had disappeared.

I don't mean walked off or returned back into the hospital. She and that cane could not have gone too far in a literal blink of an eye, and I spun around looking for her everywhere.

She had blessed the bambino, and then apparently had been raptured.

When Gabe's dad pulled up to the sidewalk moments later, he leaped out of the car after seeing my white-as-a-sheet face. "What happened? Is the baby OK? Are you OK?" It took me a while to articulate what had happened. To this day I'm not really sure.

The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author, has begun a Twitter campaign, WhatSistersMeanToMe, highlighting individual nuns who had an impact on him and others.

This sister left an indelible impression on me and my son, in more ways than one.