All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [10]
On January 3, 1964, Mom and Dad were married in a sad ceremony in a Baptist church in Virginia, where nobody knew them, so shamefully regarded was the occasion. Mom borrowed a navy blue suit from her mother. The only guests in attendance were both sets of parents, who were barely on speaking terms, blaming each other’s children for ruining their dreams. The photograph from that day is one I can bear to look at only briefly; it is steeped in melancholy.
After the wedding, Nana rather mercilessly told Mom to move in with the Ciminellas, because she wouldn’t be able to handle a crying baby in the house along with her own sick child. So Mom carried her little suitcase up to Dad’s attic bedroom, with its junior high school pennants and trophies, where she would stay by herself while Dad continued his education in Lexington. It must have been the loneliest winter imaginable. After having rarely slept outside her own home, and then only to spend the night at a girlfriend’s house, she was a scandalously knocked-up teen living with adults she barely knew, knowing their son was not really the father of her baby. Her girlfriends were wrapped up in Ashland High Tomcats basketball and prom dates, but Mom had dropped out of high school when her pregnancy started to show and finished her courses with a tutor.
Mom gave birth to my sister, Christina Claire Ciminella, on May 30, 1964, the week her high school class graduated. She received her diploma in the mail. Back at school in the fall, Dad wrote Mamaw and Papaw letters, thanking them for taking such good care of “Honey and the baby,” whom they often drove to Lexington on weekends to visit him, telling them how much he loved them for it. The writing is touching and sweet.
My sister’s birth was the only happy coda in a grim year. Brian’s cancer treatments weren’t working, no matter how many specialists he saw, Finally, after months of deep yet brave suffering, Mom’s beloved brother died, leaving a gaping wound in her and her family’s heart and soul that I doubt has ever truly healed.
Mom and Dad continued to raise their new daughter with tons of help from both sets of grandparents. To help make ends meet while still a student, Dad worked delivering newspapers and loading a UPS truck. Eventually Mom and the baby joined Dad in a small apartment where married students could live at Transylvania University. After several months of living with Mom, and more experience in the methods of creating babies (and how pregnancies are prevented), Dad began to wonder whether Christina was really his child. He can’t remember the exact moment the light went on, or when he figured out that Diana’s ex-boyfriend, Charlie Jordan, was the biological father. All he knew was that he loved my sister and accepted her as his own, he was in love with his wife, and he was perfectly content to be a family. He decided not to confront Mom with his suspicions and moved on with their life together.
In 1967, Dad graduated and was offered a job with Amphenol, an electronics company based in Chicago that sold airplane parts. The little family of three lived there while Dad went through his training as a sales engineer. When he was finished, the company offered him a position at its plum office in Los Angeles. Both Mom and Dad jumped at the chance to move to exciting California. I was conceived right after they heard the news and born the following April.
My sister, who was four, thought I was a gift just for her. In photographs, I am lying on my belly while she powders my back, or she is sitting in a small rocker holding the little bundle that was infant me. She would rock away, pausing only to pat my cheek. I’m told I was a happy, easy baby with hugely chubby cheeks, deep dark eyes, and olive skin inherited from my father’s Sicilian