Personal Essay: A Childhood Reckoning

On Miracles and Professional Wrestling

By Karen Foster

When I was five years old, none of the kids could play with me. Having failed to evict my new baby sister from the family, I began a reign of terror against the neighborhood. My pièce de résistance was leading a posse of younger kids in yanking the neighbor mother’s freshly hung sheets off her clothesline, dragging them through the stream and leaving them on her steps in a muddy heap. My parents’ solution was to send me to my grandparents for the summer.  
​

In the early morning darkness, my father and I began the long drive from Connecticut to Massachusetts. When tall, white birch trees appeared along the highway, I knew we were nearing Lockway Road. As the car climbed the steep driveway, my grandmother stood up from her aluminum chair on the front porch and called, “Greg, they’re here!” at the screen door. 

“Karen!!” She hugged me as I ran to their bedroom where a cot had been set up at the foot of my grandparents’ twin beds. And yes, the Nite-Lite was plugged in above it.

My grandfather’s snoring was like a heartbeat until near morning when the steady rhythm suddenly erupted into a flummoxed Donald Duck. Lying in the darkness before dawn, I would listen for it. 

Papa worked six days a week in the restaurant he owned and on his one day off, he took me to church with him. We sat in the front pew so I could see. The priest was behind a screen of all the saints that were as big as Papa. Above the saints there were babies with red cheeks and little wings coming out of their heads.   

“Papa, where are their bodies?” I asked, pointing to the floating heads.

“They are spirits, Pondicki (“little mouse”), not people. They don’t need their bodies.”

"What's a 'spirit?’”   

“They carry messages for the saints from God.” 

“But they don’t have any hands.”

“They whisper the messages in the saints’ ears.”

“Ohhhhh….” 
    
After lunch, Papa would turn on the TV, settle into his beloved, faux leather recliner, and signal for me to climb into the space beside him. Together we watched Pro Wrestling and Oral Roberts.  

“Wrestling” had a “ring” with people all around it. Two men in their underpants had to sit in their chairs until the “referee” blew a whistle. Then people started yelling.  

“Papa, he pushed him!” 

“It’s not real, Pondicki,” Papa would say, “They’re pretending.” 
 
The big man punched the little man and then sat on him. 

“Papa, why aren’t the people helping him?”  

 “He is not really hurt, Little Pondicki. It’s all fake.”

“‘Fake…’”

It was a new word. 

Oral Roberts was better because he did “miracles.” People who couldn’t walk or see would line up to see him. Oral wore a black suit and tie and had black hair. He also had a shiny ring on his pinky finger. I had never heard of anyone named “Oral.” He would bend down and whisper to the crippled person and then put both of his hands on their head and say in a loud voice, 

“Do you believe in the word of Jesus Christ?”

“I do!” The crippled person would say.

“Do you accept Jesus Christ into your life?” Oral would be shaking and a little curl of hair would fall on his
forehead.  

“I do!” the crippled person would say louder. Keeping one hand on the person’s head and raising the other hand, Oral would close his eyes and call up to the ceiling where the Lord lived.

“Lord, your servant, Joseph, accepts you into his life! Make Joseph walk today, Lord!”  

The crutches would crash to the floor, and the crippled person began to take baby steps. Then everyone started crying. 

“Papa, why are they all so sad?”

“Sometimes, people cry when they are happy, Pondicki."   

I never cried when I was happy. 

While watching Oral, Papa would sometimes nod his head slowly and say, “Tzesus is coming.”    

“When?  Papa, when is he coming?”   
 
“It could be any time.”  
 
“Well, what time?” 

“We don’t know exactly, but soon;” he would say, often adding, “at the End of the World.”  

 I knew I would recognize Tzesus when he came because there was a framed, Paint-By-Number picture of him over the little Formica table in the kitchen. He had long, brown hair and wore his pajamas. There was light all around his head, but there were no wings coming out.  ​