Author: Judy Moore Parish

Debbie Halbedl was good at having fun. She was like a Cat in the Hat and she lived two doors down from me. So here’s the thing – when we moved to our new house in 1956 I played with my younger sister (17 months younger, to be exact and she would get to be the ‘baby’ of the family for seven whole years…). And yet we were like twins and people often assumed that about us. Despite the age difference we were the same size. Maybe that’s why I branched out. I wasn’t the baby, I wasn’t the first born (boy OR girl…). I was the proverbial middle child. So that’s why Debbie had such appeal – MISCHIEF and I was SPECIAL. The Cat’s chosen playmate. So I abandoned Roberta every chance I got and Debbie and I ran the neighborhood – juntos/con safos. Woo Hoo I was having an adventure for the first time without my family!  I was SOMEBODY.

Mom and Roberta weren’t on board with this arrangement. Roberta was lonely and left out and Mom, besides feeling sorry for her had to hear her woes. Mom had enough on her plate and this extra side dish irritated her.  Actually, to be honest, Mom didn’t care for Debbie. Let’s just say Mom’s dislike for Debbie was HUGE.. So when she read me the riot act almost daily, “You have to include your sister, Roberta”  there was urgency and and maybe a bit of anger too?  Now let me tell you I was an overly sensitive child (as in, scaredy cat)  and Mom’s ‘ suggestions ‘ gave my tummy a twirl.

I had a real problem, a dilemma. Probably the first ever in my whole life. Risk my mom’s wrath hanging with Debbie sans Roberta to have some REAL fun. [Debbie was firm. We were a duo not a threesome.  I was a true blue follower. And a wimp…or could I just say easy going. And two five year olds had me by the ring in my nose even though I had an entire grade on them I didn’t have the chutzpah to use my advantage]. My other road to play town was to stick solely with my Sis and make do with our usual play fare (no pun intended)

In September of my first grade year I could still venture out with Debbie knowing how my mom felt about it and the consequence was to simply endure the lecture and admonishments. By May of first grade the rules changed…play with Debbie, leave Roberta out, Mom fusses at me – but now it’s a SIN!  I’m doing the exact same thing only suddenly I’m loaded with GUILT.  Before you feel too sorry for me let me tell you I needed that guilt.  It actually came in real handy.  You see, all good little Catholic school boys and girls across the country in 1959 were being prepared to make their First Confession.  This would once again purify our souls and ready us for  our First Communion.  I couldn’t go into that tiny black  box and have nothing to say!

Sin or no sin, up to that time I had pretty much stayed out of grown ups line of fire. I feared my own shadow and instinctively avoided anything that would bring me face to face with a big person’s direct anger at me.  So month after month as we were each dragged into the confessional to be sin free for First Friday (no more consent required than for our nightly bathing routine – dirty or not) I had to become more creative with my definition of sin.  Fourth Commandment: Thou Shall Honor Thy Father and Mother. In short, it meant no disobeying your parents. Great!  I could dare to do that a little more often and have something to report. A few grades later I got hip to using GOSSIPING as a venial trespass (or in another parlance, misdemeanor). The older I got the easier it got.  Shame and guilt became my natural state of mind.

The Catholics didn’t invent guilt, and shame, and sin.  They just happened to ritualize the releasing of it.  My Protestant neighbors were into the whole thing too.  Good and Bad.  Right and Wrong.  Black and White.  Light and Dark.  Punishment and Reward. Karma and Energy.  Sin and Redemption.  Angels and Devils.  Every denomination puts it in these words or those  Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts espouse it and simply being good citizens requires indoctrination of similar intensity.

And all because I just wanted to play with Debbie Halbedl.  I guess, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun… That urge was so strong and my innocence was no longer presumed so now I entered a whole new inner dimension.  Who’s in there? What’s in there?

A good 60 years later I don’t think I’ve changed much as far as constantly and daily encountering some version of the Debbie Halbedl dilemma.  And most days I have about as much awareness of a ‘Choosing Debbie’ moment as I did before the Commandments took over my life. It takes seconds, minutes, hours days or weeks.  Sometimes as long as months or even years before it conks me on the head.  Ouchie. And there goes my happy days, my purity, my innocence.  I’m delivered to the dark side.

Thoughts, actions or words that I come to regret are never in their essence any different than my early playmate choice.  It feels good at the time.  I have limited awareness of its impact on me or anyone else.  So I do it! I call it my Human Power.  Most days that’s what’s running my show.  I can go for pretty long stretches, hours for sure, and sometimes even days Running on Human Power.  Sucked into the whole: This is Just Fun Flow, or the Let’s Play the Blame Game, or, my favorite, I’m gonna Wallow in Self Pity Day and I’m always oblivious to how HUMAN I’m being.

Pinging  and ponging from guilt and shame to righteousness and superiority, denial and self recrimination to anger and high drama – my Human Stuff is creating as good or better than anything on the Big Screen….

Lately, it seems my life is bringing me closer and closer to closing The Gap.  It’s happening more and more often.  Running on Human Power is so exhausting.  I’m desiring with greater frequency the ease and gentleness of my Divine Power.  Those moments when my body completely releases all my tension.  A smile that comes from courage to have my presence seen.  Laughter that I can’t contain any more than I could when I was a ‘victim’ of my brother’s tickle wars.  Star gazing in my front yard far from city light. Awestruck by the mystery and magic of all those blazing dots and the vastness of the Universe.  Babies  babies, babies.  Nose to their bellies and drinking in their fragrance.  Powder soft touch of their roly poly skin.  Girlfriends, old friends, sisters, the blessing of my 92 year old dear mother, my happy, healthy, wholesome children.  And the joy of true forgiveness for myself and/or a special loved one.  Running on Divine Power.  I’M HOOKED!

When you come from a big Catholic family of 5, 6, 7 or 8+ kids it’s rare for any one kid to have their very own pet – just not practical. My brother did. He had Frisky. A medium small, reddish scrappy looking dog. His very own.

Our neighborhood was put together in the mid 50’s. As a matter of fact, there was only one other house on our side of the block when my folks ‘custom’ built all 1,500 sq ft to house our family of 6 (and still growing….). So there was a lot of wooded area around us. And a lot of mesquite. AND these were the days when dogs ran free. It turns out those woods were full of ticks. Once attached to roaming canines those ticks got big and fat! You could spot them here there and everywhere on poor ole Frisky. Every so often my mom would haul him to be ‘dipped’ at the vet to remedy his sorry situation.  (Flea collars? Guess they weren’t strong enough or hadn’t been invented yet?).

I didn’t have anything against the pooch. I didn’t have much feeling about him one way or the other. He was just Frisky, chasing cars up and down our street and being my brother John’s dog.

But this one day, and I don’t know how it happened, Frisky showed up at my grade school, St Paul. He’d never done that before. It was very far from our house. Maybe he followed my brother? Anyway, my third grade classroom door was just a few feet away from the outside door. It was wide open (the good old days). You get where this is going… Didn’t Frisky toddle on into my classroom – ticks and all!

I guess I embarrass easily – but I really thought I was going to DIE.

Paralysis, instant headache, sick, sick, stomach. That can’t really be Frisky up at the teacher’s desk fuller than usual with the gorging blood suckers?!! Gross. If I admit he’s my brother’s dog the kids will think I have cooties too. And if I don’t speak up: 1) Frisky stays right there repulsing the kids in the front row. AND 2) I’m going to get CAUGHT! They’ll get me for not fessing up and telling the truth. BEYOND EMBARRASSMENT.

Somehow that second possibility jolted my tender little conscience (gracias first grade teacher, Mother Bernard for placing that angel on one shoulder and super gluing the devil on the other)  I did the right thing… And so I don’t remember exactly how it all went down but I figure my brother was called from his 7th grade classroom and he escorted his dear precious Frisky back home – ticks and all. Yuk

Embarrassment is right up there with my least favorite emotions. Jealousy could easily take first place in that category but you can see how they are related. I get embarrassed when I realize I’ve revealed my jealousy!!!

Embarrassment is the nightmare where I find myself on stage – FINALLY!  except that I’m naked..  Everybody sees what I don’t want them to see. It slipped out. It’s too late to cover it up. They SAW.

What’s the worst thing that can happen to me if anyone or EVERYONE discovers what I am hiding – the stuff  I sometimes don’t even know I’m stuffing until it is out there for God and all the rest to gawk at? It’s just an emotion. Just sensations in my body. Can embarrassment kill? Can I die from it? Why the expression DYING OF EMBARRASSMENT?  I don’t know. I just know it burns like fire

I’m pretty old now. Not in 3rd grade anymore. I wonder if I can still feel the Frisky kind of embarrassment? Or do I fight back? Do I quickly rationalize the situation?  Do I make myself RIGHT… Do I say, ‘ that audience is seeing things or they’re overreacting’? I like to believe that maybe, just MAYBE my embarrassing moments are on the wane. They are slowly being replaced with just a smidgen of more self confidence.  A modicum of self esteem.  And on my best days that old embarrassment is no match for my real true self love. Sometimes??

Toudouze Market was a little ahead of its time. It was like Sam’s Club and sorta like a Big Box store too. Mostly it was a warehouse that sold to the public. Upstairs food and grocery and  downstairs all the other stuff – electronics, jewelry, clothes, housewares, and TOYS!

When I was six years old I made a fateful trip to Toudouze with my mom and sisters. It was Christmas time.  Our family didn’t buy a lot of presents for other people so it never occurred to me that my mom had ‘shopping’ to do. Santa did all the work – right?

And then from one moment to the next, from one sentence to the next my world changed and I would never be the same again… I was standing in an aisle ( feels like it was full of toys – not positive) and my sister, 28 months my senior announced to me with some astonishment in her voice, ” You know Mom and Dad bring all the presents – don’t you?  I saw my doll up in the closet.”

Everything began spinning. She seemed so happy to know the secret. It didn’t make any difference to her why her doll came from a closet not Santa?! No, no, no – this couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t take it in. My body wouldn’t absorb it. This changed EVERYTHING.No more magic in the world. Just like that it was all gone.

It is not my earliest memory of feeling sad. Why does this one stick? Maybe because my transition into another reality had begun. My first grade teacher, Mother Bernard had already informed me that I had reached the Age of Reason. I thought that it only meant that I was now accountable for my ‘sins’. Not this. Not knowing and understanding that Santas and Tooth Fairies and Easter Bunnies and Birthday Wishes were all part of ‘pretend’…. What could ever be sadder than that in my whole life?

In what feels like a few lifetimes later I found myself at maybe my 55th Christmas Midnight Mass. It was during the years when we went to church on The River in San Antonio. Being the holiday season every tree was drooling rainbows of lights and the cypress trees were shadows that felt like big warm mammas giving you a hug. I knew that inside the altar would be stark white marble with a shock of screaming red poinsettias only allowed for the celebration of the nativity.  St. Mary’s is one of the oldest churches in town, massive and cavernous specifically to make us all feel small. It works every time. The night was cold ( and that is special for us San Antonians cause we have known too many coolish humid Santa Days and we’ve never seen a snowman!).  Frigid temps always clear my head and I was feeling the expansiveness. Then it happened. Walking up the steps I was transformed once more. I felt the MAGIC again – as real as anything. I had been a Santa for my kids and they no longer believed but he was back!!  Not in the red suit, no Bunnies hiding eggs, or Fairies buying teeth – but Magic. I knew it for certain. It was pure bliss. The very same as my first grade happiness.

My Christmas Magic has returned every year unleashed by the Macy’s Day Parade and filling me with joy and peace right through the New Year. Toudouze Market is long gone, just a memory now and the spirit of Christmas that I experienced there is snugly tucked into my soul …. Jingle all the Way

UPDATE: Another family gathering over the weekend brought our usual quorum of females cloistered in a side bedroom gossiping and ready should a family vote be required (on anything?). Christmas is in the air and the Santa disclosure came up. No one was properly sympathetic or outraged (some 60 yrs after the fact) by what my tender Christmas spirit had endured and then it got worse. My younger sister, who would have been about 5 yrs old at the time, stated flatly, “Yes, and then you told me”. I thought she was teasing. She was serious as a heart attack. I almost HAD a heart of attack. Could I really be a victim and a perpetrator?! I felt empty inside. At that moment Roberta dispassionately announced that it hadn’t bothered her. Not a problem. No trauma. No drama. You have no idea how hard it is and supremely painful to be such a sensitive (wimpy) child  

So it seems there are two kinds of human animals celebrating Christmas.  The kind that would just as soon get their baby doll and BB gun from a vending machine as have the old man in red go to the trouble. The rest of us MUST have the fairy tale. The magic. I guess, in the end, so long as wishes come true and the stuff gets delivered and every boy and girl feels joy in their heart it matters not the transport system…

The Condel family moved across the street from us long after the neighborhood had been full. They  took the last lot on Gettysburg Rd (we had the second house on Epler Dr – can you follow that?).  Here’s the thing.  They had a TWO story house. AND it had white columns, of all things!  Nobody had a two story house until you got to the rich folk up on Inspiration Hill. Who were these people!?   Turns out they were ordinary as you and me. Four kids and Mr. Condel worked at Kelly Field ( a post WWII hospital for sick airplanes).  Dee Dee was my younger sister’s grade but somehow I managed to spend the night in the Condel household a few times. Dee Dee could be fun. Mostly what I remember about those overnights was roaming their abode. On the wall on the upstairs wall was a needlepoint (didn’t know THAT word in 1962).  Why it caught my attention I don’t know? But here’s what it said: “To Err is Human, to Forgive is Divine”.  ERR? Wasn’t quite sure what that meant?  Maybe do something wrong? And forgiving is DIVINE?  Let me tell you not only was The Moore family not talking too much forgiveness in those days.  But DIVINE?  That was a heavy hitting word. Six years in Parochial Catholic school told me that had to do with GOD… I was curious and it stuck. That’s all I can say.

More than five decades later I GET IT!  Now the word ERR has been replaced with SIN or ‘ acting from the frightened  parts of my personality’ or at the very least,  doing something I will regret or feel lousy about later. I understand that me and the entire HUMAN race are into that kinda thing and indulge multiple times daily.

Why is that?  Maybe nobody knows for sure but I’m pretty certain that it has to do with all sorts of fears that are running the show. Right now I’m more interested in all this FORGIVENESS  angle to the problem. As a grown woman I’m finally taking forgiveness literally and it stumps me. I am paralyzed. It is delicious to talk about forgiveness, especially when it addresses minor petty stuff. Very romantic. The other day I had a situation that called for the REAL THING.  I was humbled. Forgiveness is the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do.  It stuck in my throat. I couldn’t get the words out. Why would I give up all my power to another human being?Where would that leave me?  Say I’m wrong?  Yikes!  But I wanted to feel close to the other person ( this time it happened to be my husband, Steve). It was more painful to be separate.  Guess what?  I think that’s when the DIVENE thing happened. Pure desire to be close with my sweetie Stevie called forth the Divine and the words came. Pretty COOL!

This feels like the beginning and I have lots more to learn about forgiveness and the Divine but I’m confident that it’s going to get better and better. 😊

My mom taught school for 32 years. She also did EVERYTHING for me, my brother and 3 sisters that simply had to be done. She cooked supper. She helped with homework. She did all the laundry (without a clothes dryer for many years). Mom did the grocery shopping and drove us around to the movies and the mall or the skating rink.  She was amazing at handling the family finances on a shoestring budget. My list of her activities could go on and on.  The older I get the more it impresses me. It is exhausting…

That is why I marvel that she managed to have any funny or cute memories of me (child #3) much less photos! But my favorite story that my mother tells about me captures my essence pretty well. It goes like this. One day I was playing outside with my cousin, Mikey who happened to live next door to us. I had to be less than 3 years old because when I turned 4 we moved to a new house.  Anyway, Mikey comes running inside all excited saying Aunt June, Aunt June Judy is saying bad words. Mom asked what was I saying? She said LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. Mikey was a little younger than me so maybe that accounts for his interpretation…  He also told my mom that I said LETS PLAY PRETEND.  That’s the part that really tickles my mom. Such bad words!!!  CUTE. I love this story too because it reminds me that I was heavy into using my imagination at a young age.

By grade school I was staring out the window most of the day ( thank goodness for overcrowded classrooms and overtaxed nuns) and my head was full of anything but what the teacher was going on about. Outside I was looking at clouds for bunnies or elephants and the like. On the playground we played HOUSE outlining bedrooms, kitchens and living rooms with rocks and stones picked up from the ground.  I did the same thing at home with my sisters, cousins and neighbors. So simple and so much fun. I can’t remember if I ever got to play the mom or dad. Lead roles. We played ‘baby dolls’ for hours on end and, of course, Me and Ken  and Barbie were a regular threesome…  By high school my daydreaming was spent on boy crushes and mod 60’s fashion. What to wear to the next Friday night dance ( in a gymnasium!). My creativity was conventional but abundant. More quantity than quality. And it was the one thing that sustained me through the normal loneliness and feelings of being different that all kids experience from time to time.

During my twenties things got a little out of hand and my imagination and daydreams took me to some dark places ( I promise to get around to that in another platica). Looking back some 40+ years I’m certain that it was also that very same imagination and daydreams that that pulled me OUT of that BLACK HOLE.

Our imagination and our dreams seem to be the most powerful things that we possess. It seems they are the fuel of the human race. Where would we be without Walt Disney and Steven Spielberg?  Hollywood and social media? Coca Cola commercials and music, music, MUSIC!  Images of beauty and fun, adventure, excitement and bliss drench our daily experiences in one form or another. It is what we use to create better and better and richer and deeper happiness. If you have only one hope for the planet and the humans running the show let it be our individual and collective happy, healthy and wholesome capacity for dreams and using our imagination. I do!

In 1958 I was six years old and in the first grade. Mother Bernard was my teacher. She was short, very short…  Maybe that’s why they had her teaching first grade.

Mother Bernard made a big impression on me. She had IMAGINATION!  Nobody could describe Hell. like Mother Bernard. She had a gift. Mother Bernard would get going the first thing in the morning during religion class. WOW.  She was vivid! She would have us picturing hell, or heaven, or Baby Jesus and Mary and a host of angels and saints.  Her hell had giant pots of boiling oil and another pot had burning flames and the third cauldron was full of snakes… I’m telling you she was GOOD.

On the days when Mother Bernard would be expanding on the concepts of infinity and eternity I was enraptured. This was serious stuff and I wanted to think about it all day long. It was like toys for my brain. Trying to get my head around no beginning and no end. Trippy.  ( may I remind you I was only 6 yrs old…) Thank you Mother Bernard.

When  I got to first grade I had an above average imagination but when Mother Bernard finished with me I was in the ZONE. I was soaring.

That little religious nun was obsessed with lots of things about Jesus and God and Mary and Joseph and the Angels and saints but her visuals of the devil were her forte. She made him real REAL  Scary stuff . She’d put that red devil on my left shoulder and made him talk to me.  On my right side she floated the the image of a pure and innocent angel come to save my soul.  Left shoulder battling right shoulder. Would I choose to go UP to heaven or be naughty and take the road to hell with my little red friend? 

It turns out, according to my first grade teacher and the Catholic Church that only a few short months prior to first grade the devil couldn’t get me.  Mother Bernard informed us that 5 years old was the cut off date.  Once you hit the big 6 you entered THE AGE OF REASON.  Now when I listened to the red guy and took his side it was a SIN!  A new word that would change my life… Guilt, shame, confession, mortal sins and venial  sins.  First graders join the ranks of mortals experiencing anxiety and become God fearing.  I made the transition easily.

60 years later the names have changed but Mother Bernard’s shoulder pals are still up front and center stage.  I no longer refer to my guiding angels or consider seriously a devil luring me into the depths of hell.  Good or Bad. Evil or Innocence.  Right and Wrong.  Black and White. They have all blurred over the years.  At the very least I’ve got a whole new vocabulary.  Now I like to talk about ‘frightened parts of my personality’ and I’ve dropped the word SIN.  I have a ‘higher self’ and expanded consciousness and more awareness.  Sometimes I call God The Universe.  And most days I don’t picture Him with a long white beard sitting on a throne.  I’m very modern and updated.

Mother Bernard was right  I probably did reach THE AGE OF REASON by the time I was 6.  What she called MY CONSCIENCE was perfectly functioning at that tender age And my intuition (sometimes I call it MY DIRECT LINE TO GOD or prayer) was already developed and assisting me to know my way.

I want to say Thank You to Mother Bernard.  You impressed upon my baby soul the magnificence of the time that I will spend  here. You gave me the depth of a knowing that I have choice. And that, most importantly  it is my conscious choices that create  my heaven on earth.  How delightful!

Is there anybody on the planet who has never hit their funny bone?  Little bitty children are still kinda gooey and soft on the inside so it feels ‘funny’ when it happens to them. Bigger kids freak out. It hurts! It tingles! It feels like no other pain they have ever known. It can even be scary for them. Over time we all learn that when out of the blue your funny bone goes off the best thing to do is just relax. The sensations keep coming but they aren’t so intense and painful

Last week I hit my funny bone.  Not my real one but a ‘grown up’ funny bone.  The world was doing its thing – being the world.  Everybody and everything was spinning in a natural way.  What was happening out there really and truly had very little to do with me.  Nothing Personal.  Then BINGO! The funny bone was struck and I felt huge intense painful sensations throughout my body.  This time it came as anger and frustration.  It came from one moment to the next.  I didn’t see it coming .  It was a shock and it was overwhelming.  It surged through me until it climaxed and then  like hitting my real funny bone I instinctively began to let go  and it dissipated.

Of course, it doesn’t always feel like anger.  A word or a look can send off the tingles of my jealousy or resentment.  Or something doesn’t go exactly as I anticipated and I reverberate with self pity or the blues.  From my experience there are all kinds oF EMOTIONAL funny bones that get hit when I least expect it.

It seems the older I get the less I happen to hit my funny bone.  Even my grown up one doesn’t sneak up and zap me as often as in my younger years. I don’t know why that is?  Hitting my emotional grown up funny bone is especially confusing and unwanted no matter how infrequently it rocks me.

Lately I’m dreaming that maybe I can get softer and ‘gooey’ like the toddlers who still have a FUNNY funny bone.  Maybe, just maybe I can let the world do its thing and instead of reacting with pain and any emotion that racks my body I can trust and let go.  Let the funny bone do ITS thing and I will simply flow  along.  The funny bone has gotta do what a funny bone does.  I gotta let it and then find the ‘funny’ in that bone that makes my life sweet and happy.

When you are born in 1952 by 1960 you are into some pretty serious jump roping. Like every other little girl I couldn’t help but JUMP given a thick braided rope, some rough asphalt and a couple of turners.

So, the way it worked was you had two choices. You could stand next to the rope and when the turning started, you jumped.  The second and inevitable option (or stay a baby forever) was to stand outside the rope and when the turning got going and when you felt the moment was just right, you JUMPED in!

I was pretty good at option #2. Sometimes, depending on how fast the circles were coming at me I might hesitate – but then I always made my move. It was exhilarating and once my momentum got my feet groovin, I was HOT.  Fast, fast, faster.  Why is jumping such a head rush for 8 year olds?

Now it’s 2018 and I’ve got a new kinda ‘jump rope’ looping in front of me. With each flip and turn I get a new opportunity to jump in. My ‘rope’ is simply LIFE and it just keeps coming.  But I’ve been hesitating more than I ever did in third grade (I was expert by then…). Can’t seem to show off what I’ve got.

And today I think I’m finally ready. Today I jump in. JUMP JUMP JUMP

If I knew the way, I would take you home…

(Jerry Garcia + Robert Hunter)