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.