All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [90]
Mom certainly wanted to make everything Dad’s fault. Her role was to discredit him, create distance, make us distrust and maybe even hate him all the while hopefully building herself up. I believe that she needed to, given that he knew that he was not my sister’s father, and she feared that at any time, he might unload the truth, which for some reason she genuinely believed would be catastrophic for her and for my sister. Thus the obloquy she had begun back on Larrabee Street continued unabated throughout my childhood, and long into my adulthood, accusations that he never loved us, he never paid child support, he lied, he cheated. Mom’s campaign against Dad was often very successful. I absolutely internalized some of those attitudes toward my dad and, contaminated by her invective scripts, developed my own wariness toward him.
I was in my thirties before I was able to calmly evaluate for myself Mom’s version of events and come to my own peaceful conclusions. For instance, my mom had always told me that Dad didn’t want another baby when I was conceived, that he had even pressured her to have an abortion. However, that was not the way Dad remembered it. He had told me I was planned and wanted. I could not reconcile their completely different versions of the story of my place in this world until my wedding to Dario in 2001, when my parents were uneasily but amicably placed in the same room for the first time since I was in first grade and living at Camp Wig.
The celebrations took place at Skibo Castle in Scotland. I had been very assertive with Mom: Dad was invited, and there was nothing she could do about it. Even her default position of needing to “protect” my sister from him would not work. She did not have a vote in his attendance. I was just beginning to suspect that my mistrust of him was something I had inherited from others and not wholly organic. So I had a stern word with my key family members in advance, indicating that no bad behavior would be tolerated, and I felt reasonably comfortable that everyone on my side could “act right” for the occasion. Plus, I felt well defended when Dario threatened to physically throw anyone off the property who was out of line. Dario and I offered different moments during which toasts could be presented. Dad chose the parents dinner, a time when Dario, his folks, Mom and Pop, and Dad would be sharing a special, private meal. (Man, I think now, was I brave!) As the evening unfolded, I realized Dad’s toast was the story of how I was planned, and loved, when brought into this world. It was a stunning revelation for me, and to my astonishment, my mom, to her great credit and my benefit, did not contradict him.
“Diana and I talked about having another child,” Dad said in his toast. “I said, ‘We’re going to California, what do you think?’ She said, ‘Well, I’ll let you know.’ And the next night I came home and there was a candlelit dinner and a bottle of wine. Di, was it beef Stroganoff?”
“Lasagna,” my mother confessed.
I was gobsmacked. And I began to wonder what other things I had been taught to believe about myself and my father might be fabrications.
I continued to be surprised. Dad recalled our early years, of which I still have very little memory, as a “storybook father-and-daughter relationship.” Perhaps I had to wipe those recollections out of my consciousness in order to endure the long separations when I didn’t know whether or not he loved me. I continued to struggle to generate any connection with the times we had been close when I was little. In our sessions with Ted, I did begin to remember more of the abandonment, which, however painful, was a necessary step toward healing.
There was a lot of ground to cover. We talked about those early