Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree Your Ornaments are History

My mother wasn’t much for holidays, and I only recall seeing our scraggly, 1960-something Christmas tree once or twice before I was eight. Most of my youth is fairly hazy, though I’m not sure why, but I remember one present clearly, because I kept it well into my adulthood: a little radio with turntable that I received when I was eleven or so. It was the gift that pissed my sister off the most. But with a birthday on January 10^th, apparently it was thought that combing Christmas and birthday would…what? Fool me? Save my mom time? Maybe I had even been given a choice to get one big gift instead of two smaller ones. Regardless, it was a wonderful and thoughtful gift that made me happy, guilty, and sad all at the same time. The combination of emotions I struggled with for many years.

Even at an early age I was independent and wanted to make others happy. There were ramification to independence in my family. If I wanted something done I’d have to do it myself; if I wanted something, I’d have to find a way to get it myself. This may be why I started working so young.

After those gullible Santa years, I braved the cold dark garage, climbing the wood ladder, and somehow retrieving the damn tree – and the box of ornaments – from the attic myself several times. Bugging and reminding my parents never worked, and they didn’t seem to notice when things just appeared and got done.

Holidays didn’t fare much better when I was married. Christmas and thanksgiving were spent at my in-laws, because soliciting my husband’s help meant an argument and frustration. Much like my youth, I learned to do most things myself if I wanted them done. So any tree at home was up to me.  

It wasn’t just holidays, though, it was keeping my brother, sister, mom and I together through all the drama and the fights, making sure my husband and I did things with his friends, getting us to and from my in-laws, making sure presents were bought and wrapped, and calling my dad a few weeks or months after my birthday so he could wish me well. Pleasing and doing becomes a burden when it’s one-sided, though. Thirty-three years of one-sided got old after a while.

In observation of myself and of others, I’ve come to believe that when we’re accustomed to something and know nothing else, that something becomes the norm.  In reading John Dewey, my thoughts were affirmed; we can either hold on tight to old truths or discover new truths. In hindsight, I believe that I was perpetuating old habits when I went from my parents to husband.

In divorcing my husband, I created new norms and built new habits. Got past and through things that no longer hurt me. In divorcing my husband, I created Christmas for myself; funny thing is, though, I’m now Agnostic. 

Murphy's Law

My mother’s given name, prior to her adoption, was Esther May Murphy. She then became Judy Goodwin and then Judy Maddera, and is now Jude Murphy or some such. Maddera is my father, my deceased brother, my lost sister. Maddera is me. In seeming compliment once, my mother said I’m just like my father, but in looking up, I saw she was frowning. It had been a jab. One I took to heart. One which has afforded me some sense of self. I am like my father in many aspects; I’m logical, methodical, I cross my t’s and dot my i’s, work hard, and quite frankly, I love too easy, too…complete and unconditional with a sense of wonder.

Maddera is Portuguese and the Portuguese know how to mourn a thing that never came to pass, that never was; suadade, a type of melancholia. In hindsight, I spent much of the first 17 years of my life in mourning, in suadade, without knowing what I had lost. In hindsight, the thing I mourned was my own identity and self-worth. Somewhere in my 16 years of marriage, suadade began to fade. Not so much because the marriage nurtured me, but because it didn't and I felt my self-identity lend way to the "wife of."

I’m still not sure where or when I became good enough, but I did. Or rather the concept of "good enough" became the acceptance of "just is." And can I say I truly know who I am when I now grow exponentially day in and day out?  I'm sure of few things.

I only know that if it can happen, it will happen, and it always happens to a Murphy, and I am a Murphy by blood. Yet where my mother will endlessly walkabout in a world that owes her…something, I am content knowing, like my father, I not only have the strength to persevere, but the will to conquer fears, and the desire to love and be loved.

So I may be a Murphy and life may throw me curves, but as a Maddera, I make my own laws and how I take those curves is up to me and any "law" can only bind me if I let it.

little ditty

If I die three days hence
I will die happy,
quenched.

barefoot in the stiff grass

I walk barefoot in the stiff grass of an 80-degree day, winter only three days out.

It's the first time since late April that I've gone without shoes further than across the room or about the house momentarily. Supporting my arch had been paramount and a single pair of shoes saw me through summer and into August; two new pair were bought for the school year, and all the cute heels I adored were given away or donated. But I have missed connecting to the earth, to touch, certain needs involuntarily squelched by other needs, the integral by the urgent. 

In the distance, the painter’s radio plays a local Hispanic station and I was content to sit on the step, feet bare on the warm concrete until I rose to walk row by row watching the ground, watching my feet, shoeless and toes painted bright in Neiman Marcus Red. I walk and stop and stoop and stand and walk again. Slow.

Pockets bulging with pecans, feeling each prick and poke none too gentle on tender soles, I walk anyway. I walk because I can. I walk because I need, and because I know I am not quite there yet.

on a dark high shelf

A baby white snake slithered

on a dark high shelf

this was

of which she dreamt once

Tarot: the death card drew

And drew and drew

very soon

death became her

the shedding

the death

the shedding

the death

Growth or no

her heart yearns

for the never was

of lovers lost

so close so far

but she may not be

where she thinks yet

something may remain

unshed

something in the way

on a dark high shelf

what came was now

Having focused

where she ought

where she should

on the idealism of

…Eventually

she slept overlong

in the complacency

of “ it will come”

and when she woke

she woke to words

to divulgences

when she woke

she woke

to the morning

cocooned in flesh

that fit just right

but what came,

was not Eventually

what came was Now

new moon

fervor of the full moon has calmed

post-coital

words which waxed full, throbbing

wane satisfactorily

she’d smoke if she smoked

and they have yet to touch

blue calm

It was neither noon nor sunrise,
sunset or twilight lit

there was only
the blue calm of midnight
when the moon tempts lovers
toward illicit liaisons
when she allows to linger
and forward thoughts

of flesh between teeth.

in a vessel

she don’t

talk about these things

keeps her worry

in a vessel where

ink like blood the scratch-scratch

crazy goes

so her smile can

lit her lips ablaze

with a slow lick and

her mind

stays shiny

he though,

he gets the thick of it

so she mutters

a little crazy his way

in the brightest hours

tossed in the air,

she lands

where she lands;

caked in soil

she cocoons

and in the brightest hours

dreams of air

engulf her;

fair parched pores

drink the water

when it finds her

in brief and fleeting hours

in brief and fleeting 
hours

I lingered

intentionally, unsure
 of intent;

mine or yours

yet we 
did part and I turned

longing to embrace, the urge 
to touch 

weighing heavy on 
questions of

what if

when

feast

calm
 cool 
ease


we did
 feast;

it felt
 like a thousand times deja veux


yet in a heart beat

we had never met

for you I was

For you

I was

soft
and gentle;
a part

of me
I had not

loved.

Dust lightly
brushed

away;

I shined.

the hours

losing track of time;

she meant to be writing

instead were she academic-ing

shards of her belaboring 

the hours

the days

the years

to be returned without receipt

not yet knowing

goat whispers

to lead her on;

she

is a two-date girl

who gets lost

in the not yet knowing

cocooned

Morning,

sky bright, cocooned

in the eye of the storm

driving North into a deep

gray hue; gray

like that day, like your leaving.

Ten years

Since I killed you; finally

I have learned to live.

dream visions

fever
I close my eyes
and turn the doors
louder, I
sway the vertigo
like a
slow. rag. doll.
weightless, I
sweat visions from pores

always glad to remember

Ten years had got behind me

I’m always glad to remember

even if it means crying

never were taught

When I said I would live for us both

I meant free and untamed

I meant doing

things and learning and growing

These days I only mean

in goodness, in living right

in a way we never knew

never were taught.

never-words

I hear
the lady bugs bark; sharp
fire alarms
planes and mowers; less

Bodies; learned
by brail
lovers' whispers; long
past faded

Lovers I let leave
never-words; never
coming
never-words;
                       stars
on which I wished

Prana

Even the smallest                        of splintered shards

work free

muscle bone sinew            pockets            miniscule

the shards travel            through            and through

dull in the sun           

a glitter in the shade of the moon

I await

In another limbo

none                        ever of my making

Still, heavy lidded

I breathe

shallow

belly rising                                    belly falling