All That Is Bitter and Sweet (32 page)

I had seen a therapist or two in the past, mainly to try to respond to episodes of major depression, but I had never before endeavored to look at my childhood and my family’s history in the context of my adult perplexities and how the two might be inextricably related. Part of the problem was that large swaths of my childhood memories were voids, so I naturally disregarded them. It had never occurred to me there was stuff buried there that I needed to uncover, discover, and discard. With Ted I began to revisit my childhood and to address my “life scripts,” the basic messages I had been given by my family while I was growing up, that have shaped—or, more accurately, warped—my self-perception ever since. However unintentionally—I don’t believe anyone did so thinking,
Hey, let’s make Ashley feel abandoned and worthless
—my family members’ dysfunctional behaviors led me to conclude that I was a burden, that my needs and wants were too much and were inappropriate—and consequently that I was unlovable. Their messages distorted my thinking, causing me to internalize the fiction that I was too hurt and damaged to heal. Ted began to help me see that while I was powerless over others, their addictions, and the way they affected me, I wasn’t helpless. As an adult I was now responsible for my own life, which included the legacy of my childhood pain. I was finally acquiring the tools that would allow me to decide what to keep in my life and what to discard—something I had always wanted, but that had eluded me.

Soon after Ted and I started working together, consistent with my characteristic “why not?” attitude in life, I offered that I was happy for us to meet with Dad if Ted thought it was a good idea. Dad and I were in a relationship again, although it was at times uneasy. For me, when something uncomfortable came up in our present dealings, it inevitably dragged along with it, like a fishing hook that dredges up tins cans and other unintentionally found junk, the unresolved, unaddressed past. It held my attention that Dario loved him, as did his friends, who uniformly enjoyed his company. I accepted that I must be part of the uneasiness between us, so in the safe space of my home, with Ted to guide us, Dad and I arranged to have our first professional therapy talk. On the appointed day, my bravado wavered. There was so much unacknowledged pain around that relationship, so much loss and grief. The idea of being vulnerable with him, showing him (and myself!) the real trauma from the terrible losses overwhelmed me.

The three of us sat on velvet sofas in my sleeping porch, where I feel held and comforted by the hillside visible through floor-to-ceiling windows. But shortly into our appointment—I don’t even recall exactly what had been said, but obviously we were approaching something big from our past, previously never discussed—my throat started closing up and I felt as if I were going to pass out.

In a burst of formal manners I assume I used to try to cover my feelings, I said, “May I go to my husband?” and then I fled. I ran to Dario’s office, knowing the distress on my face was shouting, “Help me!” and then I ran to our nearest guest room and threw myself on the bed. I felt as though I were suffocating, I was crying so hard. Dario looked at me, wide-eyed, witnessing this eruption of years and years of feelings, and wordlessly held me until my crying began to subside. Eventually I pulled myself together and went back into the sleeping porch to resume the session.

In spite of the inexplicable terror I felt, and the considerable shame around not only having such big feelings, but feeling them in front of adult men (truly horrifying!), I did trust Ted and believed I was safe with him. Supported by him and yearning for growth in my life, I leaned into the fear and made another appointment with Dad. There was long-haul work to be done on this fragile relationship. I credit my dad enormously for his willingness to keep showing up for me, for his open-mindedness about participating in modern clinical therapy and practicing the tools Ted began teaching us.

I was able, for the first time, to tell my dad what growing up had been like for me and how often I was left alone—much of which shocked him. And I was allowed to tell him how his behavior while we were together (and apart) had made me feel. Ted remarked that my father was one of the best listeners he had ever encountered. Dad took it all in, occasionally offering observations, giving me more information (even about his own shortcomings), and asking questions, but never interrupting and never making excuses for himself, with weasel words like “Yeah, but …” or “What I really meant was …” He was thus able to validate the reality of my childhood perceptions, even though some of his had been very different from my own. My father gave me gift after gift, acknowledging with each recounted memory that his actions and inactions had devastated me many times.

I often discuss with friends from similar backgrounds what happens inside of us when our experiences growing up are minimized and denied by adults, both then and now. In response to the minimizing, we imbue our painful memories with even greater intensity, with anger that becomes rage, shame that becomes humiliation, and loneliness that becomes a hole in the soul. In short, the memories became indictments, of self and of others.

Ted had a huge assist from Dad. Aided by his utter lack of defensiveness, the nature, quality, and tone of what I did recall from childhood began to morph. My memories progressed from being an indictment to simply being a description. I was being taught ways to let go of my reactions to those who had wounded and neglected me and the carried emotions that had become toxic to me, and kept me isolated, especially from my dad. Even during our periodic truces, I had maintained a cautious mistrust, and kept him at arm’s length. Although the process we began with Ted would take time, I eventually began to realize he was back in my life for good this time. I began to trust him. I became my father’s daughter once more.

What I had understood about previous generations of our family had come from snippets of conversations with my grandparents and other family members, naturally filtered through my own subjectivity. Most of what I knew about my parents and my childhood was heavily dominated by my mother’s version of the story, which often differed sharply from how everyone else in my family remembered things. Their perceptions and memories were only whispers compared with Mom’s full-throated aria. My mother is a highly imaginative person who has always enjoyed a yarn. But I believe it was her darkly urgent need to protect the story of my sister’s paternity, which she had invented and perpetuated, and early childhood traumas of her own, that allowed very little room for my own or anyone else’s understanding of who we were and how we had arrived there. My own perceptions were molded, naturally, by the amount of time I spent with her, compared with my extremely limited exposure to my dad for years at a time.

When parents divorce, it’s not unusual that their kids become pawns in a sad game of resentment, accusations, and revenge. It is also not unusual for each parent to create a personalized narrative of what happened, who was at fault, how, and why. In spite of the tendency in each of my parents to paint the other as the “bad guy,” I have learned that in all relationships, both sides share pretty much equal responsibility, even when one’s actions are more visible and seem more egregious.

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 years in Sylmar, California, which my mother had always said were so miserable for her. Dad was at ease remembering he was still in love with Mom during this time, although he thought they would have been better off choosing a different community in which to settle initially, one where Mom would have been less isolated. In pictures, my family looks normal, my mom in a pixie hairdo and short skirts, Dad in bell-bottoms with some gnarly sideburns, standing in front of goats at a petting zoo and at other family tourist attractions. I love the photos of my sister dressed up in her cowgirl outfit, strumming a tiny guitar with a harmonica in her mouth. My favorite video is of her appearing with flair from behind a curtain, performing a magical show, singing into a xylophone’s drumstick, giving a confident shimmy of her wee shoulders. The photos of me show a smiling, dark-eyed baby who seems well fed and well loved.

We talked about my earliest memories in Hollywood, and Dad filled in some of the gaps for me. After he left the house on Larrabee Street, moving to Manhattan Beach, Mom had told us that he was a good-for-nothing bum, or words to that effect, but in fact he was going to grad school at UCLA, earning a 3.89 average toward an MBA. (If his being in school came up, she cut that conversation short with a dramatic, “He cheated.”) But he never finished his master’s.