Mary Murphy, mother of Dilsey and Little Sean… among others.
If you have never written multiple novels about the same set of characters, you will not have inside knowledge of the process I am going to talk about in this goofy blog post. Because you don’t fully understand what I am talking about, you are welcome to call me an obsessive-compulsive fool. I am definitely a fool, but I prefer to believe the obsessive-compulsive part is off base.
I fell in love with Dilsey Murphy.
“You’re kidding!” you say with a disbelieving smile. “You fell in love with a fictional character from one of your stupid hometown fantasies? Nonsense! Not only is she not real, she’s just a supporting character.”
I think that might be the one thing I love most about Dilsey. She’s never the one demanding to be on center stage. She’s a shy, sweet-natured girl from a big family who does the best she can to avoid being the ant under her brothers’ magnifying glass. And yet, when she is called upon for empathy, or a little bit of sister wisdom, she mines the gold from King Solomon’s mine.
A new picture of Dilsey Murphy wearing her father’s old Carl Eller T-shirt.
You may not know this if you are not a writer of fiction, but a lot of the character-building process consists of compiling the character’s personal facts, personal history, and back story, developing an in-depth storehouse of details that may, in fact, never get used in any book, short story, or other writing. In order to create a character that feels real to the reader, an author must know the character far more intimately than the reader will ever be made privy to.
Dilsey is a member of the Murphy family who live in Norwall, Iowa. Her parents are Warren Murphy and Mary Murphy. Her father was a member of the infamous Murphy Boys, all of them brothers, that played brutal linebacker defense for the Belle City Broncos high school football team in the 1960’s. Mary Murphy is famous for being a small woman with a very large personality. The family is Catholic and of Irish heritage, determined to avoid church and yet hoping to get into heaven. They ar e also devout Minnesota Vikings football fans.
Dilsey’s older brother is Danny Murphy, a skinny, goofy kid that grows up into a reliable problem solver and mature young man. Danny eventually falls in love with Carla Bates, the sister of Blueberry Bates, Mike Murphy’s girlfriend. Danny and Carla marry in 1992.
Dilsey is the second oldest, born in 1977, so she is a young teen in most of the stories she appears in.
Mike Murphy is her younger brother, a member of the Norwall Pirates, a kids’ gang and 4-H softball team. Mike is a year younger than Dilsey. His girlfriend, Blueberry Bates, has a terrible secret, one that makes Mary Murphy turn resolutely against her even though she previously loved her. Mike and Dilsey refuse to abandon Blueberry even when Mike is forbidden to see her any longer.
Tim Kellogg is Mike’s best friend. Dilsey believes him to be a jerk and a hopeless goon. And yet, even though Dilsey hates him and is a year older than Tim, he is the only boy she dreams about naked. They eventually go on dates in high school and it is rumored that they will be married in 2000, though my hometown stories never progress beyond the 20th Century.
Dilsey is based on my unmarried sister and my daughter, though she really isn’t very much like either one in the long run.
Okay, so I know I haven’t sufficiently explained why I am so much in love with Dilsey Murphy. I, of course, take that as a challenge. I will write more stories. You will fall in love with her too.
Catch a Falling Star 
The Man in the Mirror
Every now and again we have to stop what we are doing for a moment and examine ourselves. If we are writers, we tend to do it every fifteen minutes or so. You have to expose the soul to the light of day for a moment and take a look with eyes wide open, prepared to see the worst… but also open to seeing beauty where you may not have seen it before.
So what do I see when I look in the mirror? More darkening age spots, more patches of psoriasis with increasingly red and irritated potential infections. Drooping eyes that have lost their sparkle and now darken with blue melancholy. I see a man falling down. Falling slowly, but falling never-the-less. It happens to everybody with age. I can no longer do the job I loved for 31 years. I am no longer the goofy Reluctant Rabbit with the big pencil in the front of the classroom, telling stories and making learning happen.
Once I was a big deal to little people. Once I created magical experiences involving books and great authors, poems and great poets… and I taught little people how to write and master big words. I mattered like a big frog in a small pond, able to make the biggest splash in that particular pond. I was the froggiest. But I haven’t drawn myself as a frog yet.
Of course, I was never as big as that other Michael. He made a really big splash in a really big pond. He was a really big frog.
He and I have a lot in common. Not far off in age. We got married about the same time. Both had three kids, two boys and a girl. Both were associated with Jehovah’s Witnesses at one point. Both of us never really grew up. He had Peter Pan Syndrome, and I stayed in school my whole working life.
And everybody has a dark side, in counterpoint to their better angels. I’m not entirely sure what my dark side entails. Being a grouch? A diabetic? A closet nudist? But I have one. I trot it out to make fun of it constantly.
But as I was feeling sorry for myself, being forced by the city to remove the pool, becoming a bankrupt poor guy thanks to Bank of America, and generally in such ill health that I feel like I am wearing a lead suit all the time, I stumbled across one of those life-affirming moments. A former student asked me on Facebook to post a picture of myself so he could see how I was doing. I posted this picture.
Yep, the man in the mirror is definitely me. I got loads of complements and howdys from former students, former colleagues, a former grade school classmate, and my Aunt Wilma. I heard from people I care about and they reaffirmed that they still care about me, even though some of them I haven’t seen in more years than I am willing to admit. Sometimes you have to look in the mirror to see what needs to be changed. Sometimes you just need to see the precious few things that were always good and haven’t changed. It is a process worth the effort.
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Filed under battling depression, commentary, empathy, feeling sorry for myself, grumpiness, humor, insight, inspiration, Paffooney, rabbit people, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as humor, Michael Beyer, Michael Jackson, rumination, self=examination