Saints & Sinners

When you believe in ufos and also believe in God, then you will face some serious doubts.
I am not even starting with the theory that states Aliens-equal-God-equal-biogenetic experiments.....
This is a story that I lived in first person a long time ago when I was about 5.
I am not a "role model" when it comes to be a religious person, but....
It was a summer of more or less 26 years ago and my family and I were flying over Sicily (Italy). My seat was next to the window and I was looking outside: blue sky and white clouds.... What happened next, actually is unusual in terms that it never happened to me before (or after):
I am looking out of the window and at a certain point, I swear on my own life, I see "painted in the sky" the face of the Holy Mary, looking at me with a candid smile on her face. It was not a cloud, I remember it totally looked like a painting. In that moment I asked for my father attention and I told him: "Dad, look, there is the Holy Virgin!", he did not even looked and just told me: "Yeah, yeah...", only now I understand why he did not look or paid attention to my words: I was only 5 years old and my father probably thought I was goofing around".
The story is not ended yet. Since then, I forgot the incident, removed from my memory until a few years ago when one day out of the blue the total incident re-entered my mind like it happened yesterday.
This event left me with two big questions:
What was real or not?
But the most disquieting answer is:
If it was real, why do I remember it now that I am certainly not the best among religious men?