Iconophobia

Also known as fear of statues and/or graven images.

Young Samson has it and has it bad. It started last weekend at his Uncle Ben's wedding rehearsal. The church, St. Anthony's, is an old-style brick building with a small grotto outside the sacristy. In the grotto, behind wrought-iron gates and surrounded by candles, is a life-sized statue of St. Anthony holding the infant Jesus.

[How all these saints who lived centuries after Christ got to hold the toddler messiah, I don't know, but I digress.]

For some reason --- actually, for the reason that a wrought iron cage filled with candles and a life-sized cement man is really spooky --- Samson was terrified.

It's not like he's unfamiliar with life-sized statues of religious figures, but he's had nightmares since. [Sidenote: I'm glad he never got to see my grandmother's dresser; she had a complete set of New Testament statuettes. My sister and I used to call it the "Jesus action figure set."]

Of course, Samson has no idea that this statue of St. Anthony is different from the other statue he's familiar with. He just knows he scared. He's woken up almost every night this week whimpering "Pope, Pope, scared."

And while I know this is the age where the imagination starts to develop and that nightmares are normal, if not common, it still breaks my heart to see him standing in the half-light of his room, shaking in his PJs from a dream. As someone who has always had very vivid dreams and even more vivid (vivider?) nightmares, I can relate.

I wonder if right now, somewhere in suburban Calcutta, there's a Dad talking his child out of a nightmare based on a statue of Kali that he saw at his uncle's wedding. The odds have to be pretty good, no?