‘That’s nice, dear,’ she said. ‘What did he have to say? What was he wearing?’

Stupid question! ‘A long white thing. You know—what he always wears.’

‘Is he still out there? Have a look, love. I don’t think we’re expecting anyone today.’ And she got on with whatever it was she was doing.

I checked…He had gone. Thinking back, so, too, had a golden opportunity. Not for me the instant acclaim and veneration that had been the lot of Bernadette of Lourdes or the little Portuguese trio at Fatima. If only my mother had been quicker off the mark the world may well have been my oyster: ‘The Blessed Bill of Roslyn Road, Levin’, a shrine, the full works. Instant fame. Maybe, in the fullness of time, even sainthood.

Mind you, mine had been a singular, possibly only a partial, revelation as opposed to the multiple appearances of the Virgin Mary to Bernadette and the Portuguese, and Jesus had not hung around long enough for a good heart-to-heart. For all that, though, I had at least spotted Him and not just his mum.

I have a feeling that my encounter coincided with one of my mother’s decidedly non-conformist stages. Mother was religiously eclectic. Generally Anglican—high church and low—occasionally Methodist, Salvationist, Jehovah Witness…all largely depending on her mood, on what was available where we happened to be living and, naturally, on the character of the pastor or preacher. We also observed elements of the teachings of Christian Scientist Mary Baker Eddy, most particularly in the form of the children’s prayer that hung on the wall of my bedroom:

Father-Mother God

Loving me

Guard me while I sleep

Guide my little feet

Up to Thee…

I haven’t come across the embodied Jesus again. Not a sighting to be had, and certainly no revelations unless you can count being saved at age seventeen by Billy Graham at Athletic Park, Wellington, in the 1950s as a kind of mini-revelation and a spiritual rebirthing that, for good or ill, didn’t stick.

My mother’s matter-of-fact, if not downright cavalier, response to my encounter was at some variance to her normal persona. She brought a certain flamboyance to motherhood that was frequently a distinct embarrassment to Margaret and me, her two older children. Rosa Dorothea wasn’t quite like the other mums of our acquaintance in immediate post-World War II Levin. Good-looking, elegant, tall, beautifully spoken, she dressed with a certain flair that made us shudder and want to hide when she descended on our school to take on the authorities yet again with regard to some slight—real or imagined—inflicted upon her offspring. It wasn’t as if she crept, mouse-like, into the place. Firstly, everyone could see her coming. Not many women in 1940s Levin visited our school in a full-length black, seal-skin fur coat…God knows how many baby seals had given their all for that one item. If she had to wear fur, why couldn’t it have been a good old-fashioned brown bunny? Maybe even worse than the black fur was when she chose to wear her brilliantly, extravagantly red jacket. On top of all that, she certainly didn’t speak quietly in her dialogue with our teachers. Dialogue may not be quite the right word, for Mother would have the first word, the last word, and most of those in between. It is probable that our teachers dreaded her visitations more than we did.

Now, such a creature might have been expected to have arrived in some state, chauffeured at least to the gates of our school. Not Mother. She came on her bike, cycling the three miles into town from our small farm. We didn’t have a car. Didn’t have a fridge, either. I have a clear memory of summer jelly being put to set in bowls, placed into a wire basket, then semi-immersed in a stream that ran, cold, through our property. The jellies generally set.