Mysterious Visitor

One block from our house was our church, that of Our Lady of Mt. Virgin. My father did not attend church, but mother did, and I went with her. (My sisters were considered too young to behave themselves.) While there, Mom would give me her Rosary, and I would pretend the little beads were Roman solders, and would pile them up on the helpless Jesus bound to the little cross.

Or, sometimes, I would point to an architectural feature and ask about it. That's why I pointed to a particular statue, one Sunday, and asked what it was. "That's the Blessed Virgin," my mother explained.

Now, understand, neither the word "blessed" nor the word "virgin" was in my vocabulary; so, I thought the statue was "The Blessed Virgin", not just a representation thereof. My confusion was to become compounded shortly afterwards.

It was weeks later, and I had been put to bed on a normal, uneventful, night. However, I awoke in terror to find my room lit by a strange, blue light that glowed from the living room visible through my open door. Between the door and my bed, clearly silhouetted in the doorway, was a tall, angular figure, hooded and gray. To me, it looked like a statue; so I thought the Blessed Virgin was in my bedroom…and it did not belong there. I was terrified, and tried to scream for Mom—only to discover I was also paralyzed.

Unable to do anything else, I shut my eyes tightly and waited…and went to sleep. When I awoke, suddenly, sometime later, the figure and light were gone, and so was the paralysis. I did scream, then, and it seemed like it took an awful lot of screaming before anyone came to help me. It was my mother, groggy, who wanted to know what was the matter. "The Blessed Virgin was in my room!" I sobbed, "and I couldn't move!"

Mama, of course, like most Roman Catholics, believed in miracles as long as they happened to other people; so she offered her stock response: "It was just a dream, dear. Go back to sleep." For years, I harbored resentment: that she had taken so long to respond, that she hadn't believed me, that she hadn't comforted me. I thought the blue light had been the TV set, so I didn't see how she could have gotten that deeply asleep. Now, of course, that I am more familiar with the alien abduction phenomenon, I understand that Mom did all she could do under the circumstances.