Sheilah Murphy March 8, 1991 English 6316 American Folklore Professor Lindahl Being a Murphy

For approximately the first twenty years of my life, the single most-important factor in my own self-definition was my position as a member of the Murphy family. As the ninth of ten children, I learned very early in life that the world did not revolve around me; any decision my parents made that affected my life, my happiness, was inextricably linked to the lives and well-being of all my brothers and sisters. Thus, my happiness as a child was contingent upon the happiness and well-being of my nine siblings. If one of the other children misbehaved, I aiso suffered the disapproving silence at the dinner table; if one of the others was sick at home with the flu, then none of us could go to the swimming pool. Any successes or faliures of my siblings was my success or failure as well. When my sister Pegeen competed in high school gymnastics, we were all there sitting on the bleachers, breathless as she performed daring and graceful maneuvers on the balance beam or the parallel bars. We cheered her on at the state meet; we suffered along with her when she stumbled during her floor exercise routine. Likewise, when my 16-year old brother, Michael, was discovered to have been taking drugs, not only was he temporarily hospitalized and given therapy, but the entire family met at the hospital for weekly family therapy sessions. I was only six at the time and would come to the Wednesday afternoon sessions dressed in my Brownie uniforml Perhaps I did not completely understand what was going on, but I did know that I belonged there with the rest of my family.

I was proud to be a Murphy. By the time I started first grade at Most Pure Heart of Mary Catholic School, the Murphys (for better or worse) were an institution. On the first day of class, my teacher never needed to be told who I was. Even in a Catholic school, a family of ten was considered an achievement. When we entered the front of the church every Sunday for mass (my father proudly insisted on our entering from the front so that we would have to walk down the center aisle in front of everyone), we would giggle self-consciously, aware of the spectacle we created by our imposing presence. We always used an entire pew. I remember our disappointment when the rival family, the McGiverns, finally surpassed us with an eleventh child. My mother firmly refused to give in to our clamoring for retaliation. My parents encouraged and probably initiated this feeling of pride. Interestingly, neither of them comes from large families. My father has two sisters, and my mother (who had had absolutely no babysitting experience when she gave birth to her first child) has one. Neither of them has kept particularly close ties with their own families, so grandparents, cousins, and aunts, have never played a large part in my family's life. In fact, I do not recall ever having even met the children of my father's two sisters. This lack of significant extended family relations was compensated by the huge importance we all placed on the immediate, Murphy family. Although our ethnic origins are somewhat mixed ("Irish," my mom would say, "with also some English and Swedish--and maybe some Danish"), my parents always emphasized the Irish part of our heritage. Although the Irish are often known for their dark hair, my father seemed to associate our blonde hair and blue eyes as further evidence of our Irishness. Whenever a fair-haired, blue-eyed friend would come to our house, my father would tell the friend proudly, "You could be a Murphyl" as if he could bestow no

greater compliment. Until college, I believed that almost all Irish people (besides the famous redheads) had blue eyes and blonde hair. Our house and vard reflect the sense we had of our family as a visible and important presence. Situated at a corner in one of the "nicer" neighborhoods in Topeka, Kansas, the large red house with huge un-curtained windows was the meeting place for neighborhood kids, cheerleading practice, and the innumerable cast parties given on the closing night of the plays and musicals we all performed in. When my father bought us a trampoline, it was with the stipulation that we shared it with all the neighbor kids. It has been six or seven years since the youngest child moved out, but the Murphy house is still a gathering place for children in the neighborhood, still a meeting place for my mother's Chamber theater group and for the frequent parties my parents give. Whenever one of us reached driving age, my dad would buy another old car--usually a rambler. By the time my youngest sister, Tara, was fifteen, there were six or seven cars parked in front of our house. People would tease us that our house looked like a used-car lot. Being a Murphy meant being visible. Both my parents grew up in small, Midwestern towns during the Depression, and both participated extensively in school activities (my mother in theater and the visual arts, my father in sports, student government, and band). My mother and father were good students; both held part-time jobs from a young age and worked their way through college. My father embodies the concept of the "self-made man." The day after his high school graduation, he bought himself a gold watch (the same one he wears today) and left home to work in the Oregan shipyards until he was old enough to join the war. After finishing college, he began his life-long career with New York Life Insurance Company, first as a salesman, then as a

manager. Thomas C. Murphy is a big man with a strong voice, recognized as an important member of his community. He always encouraged his children to take risks, to sample a variety of things in life, and, most importantly, to be independent. Although he continued to help us financially during our college years, we were expected to move out of the house at the age of 18--just as he had done. My mother is in many ways the antithesis of my father. Small, introspective, unorganized, she is the artistic force in the family. Although she got her degree in art, her true love has always been theater, and from the time I was a baby, she has been extremely active in community and dinner theaters in Topeka. We have always been extremely proud that our mom, despite being the mother of ten children, is still beautiful and that she had her own talents and interests outside of the family. Like our parents, my siblings and I participated in a wide range of activities: sports, theater, music. We all sing, and putting on shows, dancing, and singing were favorite pastimes. My father used to jokingly complain that if his children weren't all so "damned independent," we could have formed a musical group and made him rich. All of the children have strong, outgoing personalities--the result, probably, of having to compete for attention from our parents. We learned at an early age that if you didn't want to be interrupted, you had to talk loud and fast; if you wanted to get enough food at the table, you had to be aggressive. For all of us, being a Murphy was an integral part of our identity as we were growing up. From the annual comparing of our heights to the passing down of outgrown clothes, our position within the family, its traditions, and our conception of the Murphy family as something special

and exclusive were extraordinarily connected with our individual sense of self and the images of ourselves that we projected to others. The following discussions of the significance of names in my family and the importance and continued telling of certain family narratives will illustrate two ways in which the "Murphy phenomenon" has been created and perpetuated.

I. NAMES

Names are a very important part of my family's identity. Names and nicknames are used to reinforce our Irish heritage, to describe our personalities or physical characteristics, to identify us as a part of a group, and for humor. The names of the male children were chosen by my father whereas those for the female children were chosen by my mother. We always felt that my mother was the more creative of the two. She used to tell us that two other names she had considered using were "Nora" and Kelly." We daughters felt lucky for some reason that we didn't end up with one of those names. Our names were something to be proud of, something that belonged to us and that reflected our Irish ancestry. The thought of having any other name but our own was inconceivable. The history behind some of the nicknames is equally important. We often proudly rattle off the whole list of family names and the stories behind them to anyone willing to listen:

Thomas Clemons Murphy--"Tom" or "Dad"

Marjorie Jean Murphy-- "Marge" or "Mom"