This week, Aaron explores his childhood church aversion and a transformative friendship that taught him the power of understanding.
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Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Birce
Art: Pete Whitehead
Original Music: thomas j. duke
Transcript
Aaron Calafato: I didn't expect her to say this when I shook her trembling hand. Because as a little kid, I was afraid of her. But what she said to me, I still think about to this very day. I'm gonna tell you this story and what she said right after the music.
Cori Birce: You're listening to 7 Minute Stories with Aaron Calafato. This is season 4.
Aaron Calafato: I have to admit, as a young kid, I had an aversion to church. My mom took us to a really nice church, St. Paul's, in the town where I grew up and live now. It was a nice little community. The Reverend at the time was great. He could tell a wonderful sermon. And even as a young person, I could connect with it. But they had a pretty high turnover rate in terms of how long the pastors or the Reverend stayed there. So he was only there for a few years and then he left. And then they brought someone in new and it's okay.
But here's my thing. Listen, as a storyteller now and even as a kid, if you can't preach a sermon that gets me fired up, I'm getting fired up right now. I gotta back up from this microphone. If you can't fire me up in a sermon and get me ready to go out there and do good deeds, get out of here.
I don't want to sit for it. I'm not gonna sit through this thing and pretend to be moved by something if it's not delivered in a way that moves me. That was part of it. But the other part probably was also because my parents had recently gone through a divorce, I was upset about that.
And so I put up an extra fight to go to church or really just an extra fight with whatever my mom wanted me to do. And I think the other part of it too is that I just didn't like getting dressed in the morning and waking up early, and I was starving at church. I would eat the wafer, but it was just never enough to fill my stomach and all of this stuff as a snotty kid. Just complaining. There's this one time my mom took us to this weekend program where you got to go in and have snacks and cookies and hang out with the other kids.
And they had, like, a fireplace with a painted wall of the 3 wise men, and they took pictures of us. And there's this picture of me somewhere sitting with my arms crossed. I say somewhere meaning it's in someone's house, but I can see it right now in my brain. I'm sitting on this chair reluctantly posing for the picture. My arms are crossed, and I'm snarling at the camera.
I don't wanna be here. I'm mad. And I feel this is one picture I'm embarrassed of now. Is a forty-year-old guy. Because I'm as old now as my mom was then.
When she's a single mother trying to just do probably in her mind what was best for us. It's all good. I look back and I'm like, damn, dude. I wish I had a little bit more grace at that time.
And the last thing and this will bring us full circle now. That I had this aversion was because by the time we got there to church, we were usually running late, and this was usually my brother and I's fault because we were fighting in the car. We were dragging our feet. So we were always showing up 10 minutes, 10, 15 minutes late. And then you have this kind of walk of shame that has to happen.
Which my mom hated. And we were like, who cares? And when I started getting really smart ass, I was like, what do you care what people think? I don't. I remember this vividly and we would walk in. And when we do the walk of shame and even when we got there on time, We'd always sit in this particular pew, and we would have to walk around the back part of the church. And in the back corner, there was this super old lady. I'm talking, like, not elderly, like, old. Like, I'm thinking a 105 plus. And the rumor was she had been going to church there forever.
Nobody didn't know. We're talking even the elderly people didn't know a time when she wasn't old and when she didn't go to church. This just gives you a sense of the timeline here. Nothing wrong with that, but it's incredible. But as a young kid, hustling the walk of shame trying to follow my mom and find her pew to sit down and not be noticed.
This lady freaked me out. She scared me because she would reach out to try to grab me. Her hand would be trembling, and she would be, like, grabbing my shoulder, or she would do that gesture where someone says come here And so I'm thinking, like, this is something out of a nightmare. And she would do this for as long as I can remember. And my mission in my mind was to avoid eye contact with her and to not let her grab me because I was scared.
And I never told my mom about this, and she never noticed because she's looking for the pew and she's looking to get in when it's not noticeable to sit down. For the rest of the service. One day, I decided to tell my mom about this on the drive home. And my mom said, have you ever considered that maybe that elderly lady is just trying to say hi to you. And honestly, I was wrapped up in my own shit that I never even considered it.
So the next Sunday, I tried something different. When we were doing the walk of shame, we get into the church. We go around the back. My mom is looking for the pew for us to sit down, and the lady reaches her hand out and it's trembling, and I don't back this. I reached my hand out too, and I make eye contact with her.
And I was a little bit scared, but she shook my hand. And then she pulled me in, And I'm not gonna do an elderly lady voice, but this is what she said to me. She said, god bless you. Every Sunday I see you. You remind me of my son.
I said, oh, that's good. And she goes, but my son passed away very young. And so when I see you, it reminds me of him. And in her eyes, I could see she just lit up looking at me and me looking at her. She just lit up.
And in fact, when I'm looking at her in this moment, I almost see a younger version of her. Who so bizarre. And so from then on, every Sunday, when I went to church, I would make sure to go see my friend in the back pew and shake her hand. And I did this until we became a teenager. And she was still there kicking it.
And then maybe that aversion set in some more, and I decided that I didn't wanna go to church anymore. It just wasn't something I wanted to do. Maybe I wanted to take a journey and explore something else. But that last month that I was there before I left, I didn't see my friend in the back pew. Until my very last day there when I read in the bulletin that she had passed away.
And on the drive home, I thought about her a lot. And I thought a lot about all the hellos and handshakes that I missed. And my mom said to me, it's too bad about our friend, I said, it is. I said, you know what? I think she's okay.
My mom goes, what do you mean? I said I think she went to go visit her son.
Cori Birce: 7 Minute Stories is created and performed by Aaron Calafato. Our senior audio engineer is Ken Went. Our resident artist is Pete Whitehead, original music by TJ Duke. If you or your company needs help starting a podcast, Aaron and Ken's company Valley View does just that. Reach out to them at Valley View.fm.
Special thanks to our partners at Evergreen Podcast and I'm Cori Birce. Make sure to tune in next week for another story.
