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