They're scattered around the predominantly French-Canadian West Side like roadside shrines in Italy, sometimes known as "backyard Marys" or "bathtub Madonnas" (for the practice of sticking a cast-iron tub vertically in the ground with the statue of Mary inside the arch made by the tub). Made from plaster or plastic or marble or wood or coarse cement, these backyard shrines are as varied in shape and vintage as their owners.
The faces of the statues are never the same face. On some there is a generic mass-produced gaze. On others the face is girlish or matronly or blandly beatific, and on still others one could swear there is discomfort and concern and a tint of sadness. But Mary's feet always pin down the fanged devil/snake of temptation as she stands confidently on top of the world.
When I was in Catholic school, we boys prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary (or "the BVM" as we called her) a lot because she was supposed to intercede for all those humans like young Catholic boys who just couldn't resist throwing snowballs at the prissy girls clustered on the playground or who wore their shirt tails out and called the nuns, in their black and white habits, "pen guies" (for penguins, of course).
We prayed to the BVM for mercy because for us Mary was first and foremost a mom, someone we felt we could depend on. Christ came to being human like an immigrant who comes to a new country, but Mary was human from the start. Our kin with Mary was blood to blood, and her love was unconditional and "familiar," tied to family, to intimacy. We young Catholic boys believed in Christ, but we depended on Mary to get us through. These statues express that same desire to have a religion that's not too austere or distant. A statue of Mary visible from the kitchen window feels "okay," part of the accepted normal, one of their own who will care for them without any prepayments or fine print.
It's important that such small, mundane icons exist. It's good to know that as the social landscape becomes corporationed and the frequencies on which we are allowed to communicate get more filled with static, someone makes the effort to evoke the mysteries and pay attention to the spirit. And the statues are interesting all by themselves, these blends of the domestic and the mythical and the Christian and the pagan, representing human desires and visions as common and miraculous as the grass growing around their pedestals. They are signs of care and comfort in small ways on small properties, a recommendation that we pay attention to the portable mysteries residing neighbor-like just outside our window. Best of all they prod us to remember that there is greatness in treating each other like human beings with common roots in the mysterious and the awesome -- and that's a message that cannot be said often enough.
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