Mother Marys, Come to Me

Full disclosure: It feels kind of wrong for me to be writing this. But kind of right, too. Just know that I'm not dissing Mary, okay?

The other night I slept in the room I had as a child--my personal space from when I was about 5 to the time I left for New York City after college. I actually can't remember much about it, which is sort of sad knowing I have such a good memory, but there are little bits that stick out.

When I was 7-8ish, I had a blue and green striped blanket that doubled as the ocean and pasture for my Breyer horses (well, actually I think I only had one), and when I was about 10, I hung my  baseball cap collection from the windows. My favorite was the snazzy black and yellow Pittsburgh Pirates one, with the green and gold Oakland As a close second. I also had a knick-knack shelf where I displayed my little porcelain figurines, a sizable number of which were raccoons. I can't remember how anything looked toward the end of my reign, but I know I had the bed positioned catty-cornered, gulping up the small space, but in a positive feng-shui sort of way. I was never much for hanging stuff up, preferring four blank walls--a greater surface area to absorb my teenage histrionics (i was a big sobber), I figure.

So, after I left, my parents turned my room into an office and, uh, redecorated, as you can see in the above photo. "What is that??!" I asked my sister the other night, pointing to the myriad Marys.

If you haven't guessed, my family is super Catholic. And to be fair, my sister totally knew this was a little over the top--it turns out the mother of a friend of my brother's had the plastic Marys and didn't want to throw them out so found a good home for them…ours. Like they'd ever turn away Mary, you know? Even multiple ones in wee plastic form.

Anyway, a couple things tripped me up as I surveyed the scene. For one, it's sort of implied here that 7 plastic Marys are better than 1, even though, as far as I know, there was only one Mary in real life. And then it seemed that the giant Jesus was like the queen bee, and the little Marys were the drones. And there sure are a bunch of other religions w/males at the head--what's up with that?! And then I thought--could they all be from a backgammon set?

And you can't see them in this photo, but to the right of the Marys are several dog figurines, each one the equivalent in size of about 3 Marys. It's almost like they're two teams matched up against each other, but that doesn't seem a fair fight. 'Cause you know the Marys would totally kick some canine a$$, you know?



Kind of perfect that I used to play this: