River of Time

by Naomi Judd

  As November approached, the police chief from the city of Manchester, Tennessee, asked me to host the upcoming Veterans Day presentation on the courthouse steps. I would present military swords of recognition to about ten local veterans. Though I was feeling worse than ever, I knew I would never forgive myself for turning down this request. I think Veterans Day is one of the most underappreciated holidays in our country and that it should be held in the highest esteem. It would be a good idea to require all school-aged children to attend a ceremony like this one so that they are aware of the loyalty and sacrifice made by brave citizens who put their lives on the line for our freedoms. I was deeply honored to be able to have a chance to shake their hands and thank them in person.

  The day arrived, and the sun broke through the clouds as a crowd gathered near the steps of the courthouse. A bagpipe player added to the solemn atmosphere with his stirring, mournful music.

  When it came time for me to present the commemorative swords, I read aloud each name inscribed on them. All were men, except for one woman. I couldn’t believe the name of that woman: Althea Cimino, a beautiful nurse who had served in the Korean War.

  Althea had been my nursing supervisor when I worked multiple shifts in the ICU at a local hospital in the early 1980s. She was my mother’s age and I adored her for encouraging me with her bright smile every day at work. She and I had a cherished relationship. She allowed for my high-spirited approach dealing with patients and appreciated how I threw myself into my job. She also got my sense of humor and would only feign disapproval when I caused other nurses to shriek in cascades of laughter at the nurses’ station. Our jobs were stressful eight hours a day, so a two-minute laugh break was our release, and Althea understood that. I was grateful to her for helping me arrange my schedule to be able to get in enough hours to support my children and also have time to shop Wynonna’s and my audition tape where and when I could. Once the record deal with RCA was signed, I knew that it was time to focus full-time on music, and when our first song was getting airtime on the radio, I decided to move on from nursing.

  When our first hit song, “Mama He’s Crazy,” went to number one, I received a letter in the mail from Althea. She wrote about how proud she was of me along with compliments about my “real pretty” singing voice. It meant the world to me. Since 1984, we had exchanged Christmas cards through the mail every year, with her recounting the times she saw me on TV and filling me in on her five children. I had not laid eyes on her since my last day on the nursing job.

  I burst into tears when I presented her sword to her. She still had the exact same smile and spirited personality. Her five grown children had flown in to be there as the city of Manchester honored her.

  After the ceremony, Althea invited me to her home for a celebration lunch with her children. She had already prepared her famous chicken salad.

  She was now a widow, but still lived in the house her husband built. Every wall held framed photos of family occasions over the years. In her basement was a playroom for the grandchildren along with a closet full of dress-up costumes. No one would ever question that this was the home of a happy and emotionally stable family.

  As we toured her house, Althea held my hand or put her arm around my waist. Her adult children all hugged me and made sure I was comfortable. In the time span of that two-hour lunch, I felt more maternal and familial affection and warmth from Althea and her children than I had in my entire childhood from my own mother and siblings. Even though it had been a beautiful reunion and afternoon, I felt my heart sink with the hopeless longing to have this type of relationship with my own mother.

  The following day, I was steeped in a paralyzing depression, my body felt leaden, and I didn’t have the energy to get out of bed. Larry was worried that I was starting another long cycle of tuning out completely and so called our family therapist, Ted, to come over. When he arrived, Ted sat on the bed next to me.

  I told him about the previous day and how lonely it ended up making me feel as the reality had settled in that it was too late now to have a healthy relationship with Mother. I thought about how many mother-daughter relationships end with unresolved bereavement when the mother passes away.

  Ted listened and then offered up his opinion that my depression was mainly caused by my lack of connection and ties with the women in my family. Wynonna and I rarely saw each other and there were no signs that was going to change anytime soon since she was on the road for many days each month. I missed her desperately and wondered if she thought of me. Mother, who was now in an assisted living facility, didn’t seem to care if she spoke to me or if I visited.

  My mother was suffering her own panic attacks, though not remotely based in reality, one night calling 911 and screaming that a Mexican cartel was there to kidnap her. She also called the fire department another night, screaming that the facility was on fire, then filled her microwave with metal objects and turned it on.

  She tried to escape her new nursing home a couple of times to return to the only place she had lived for the last sixty-five years. Sadly, my younger sister and brother had sold our family home in Ashland months before. I had no chance to say goodbye to the place where I grew up. It was gone and I experienced the loss deeply, like a death in the family. All of my eccentric, mentally ill aunts had passed on, leaving me without older living relatives.

  * * *

  As 2013 came to a bitter end, I cried often throughout each day over everything that remained unresolved in my life. I wanted to call Wynonna every day, but I worried that I would drag her down emotionally while she was on tour, working so hard. I didn’t trust myself to contact her without explaining that my constant daily struggles with anxiety and depression were uncontrollable and exhausting. Through therapy, I had become aware that that as my oldest child, Wy had been affected by my divorce from Michael, our early poverty, my fear of the ex-con, my struggle to support us, and our constant relocations, probably more than Ashley, because she was four years older. It frightened me that Wy might be feeling about me the way I felt about my own mother, untrusting. If that were true, I didn’t know how or when our relationship would fully mend.

  In my teenage years, close friends of mine would point out to me that they thought Mother was jealous of me. I scoffed at the possibility. After all, I wanted to look up to my mother. Decades later, through soul-searching and talk therapy, I had come to realize that my friends had true insight. Mother’s jealousy of me, along with her resentment, had been a lifelong syndrome. I was also a “daddy’s girl,” and any small amount of affection that I received from him would be met with Mother’s rejecting scorn for days on end. I was always emotionally perplexed by her reactions. No matter what aspect of life I excelled in—academics, popularity, style, or financially—it only met with her not-so-hidden resentment. It was difficult to accept.

  The May 2015 issue of Psychology Today magazine contained an article that asserted a mother’s jealousy is “the last dirty secret: the topic no one really wants to talk about but should.” The content was based on a study that indicated that many mothers felt a boost in self-esteem if their sons achieved a lifestyle and success beyond their own, but felt worse when their daughters surpassed what they had accomplished.

  When I was in high school, and throughout my show business life, Mother lived vicariously through me. If I had been invited to one of the fancy dances at the country club, she would wait up for me, drinking coffee at the kitchen table. I would have to sit down and give her every detail of who was there, what they wore, what band played, and how the country club was decorated. She never asked if I had enjoyed myself.

  Later in life, I could see how Mother felt a deep inferiority, knowing she would never be invited to join the country club, for financial reasons. She had an insatiable curiosity about people in Ashland, who she perceived had a higher social status, while she simultaneously had a deep resentment and sour verbal opinion of them. Yet I know she would have given almost anything to become a member of the
country club. (I was later able to buy Mother a membership, which made her happy for a few days.)

  Because I was a popular teenager and had a buoyant personality, I would be invited into many different social circles. I had a great curiosity about people and was equally comfortable hanging out with the “hoods” as I was at a sock hop with the cheerleaders. I was invited to many different parties and events, and this worked in my favor at home. At first I liked the extra attention my mother gave me over these special invitations and occasions. Then I realized it wasn’t out of happiness for me; it was because she wanted to hear about others and the life she thought she would never live.

  In my early thirties, when the girls and I shared a dingy one-bedroom apartment in Lagunitas, California, I was putting myself through my second year of nursing school in Marin County and working in a restaurant in the evening hours. Ashley and I shared a deloused St. Vincent charity mattress on the living room floor and sleepwalking Wynonna had a twin bed in her own room. I was barely staying afloat, and relied on insurance from the state’s Children and Family Services Division for my daughters and on food stamps to get by.

  One day I heard an announcement at church that there was a housebound diabetic man who needed a nurse to change the bandages that covered the sores on his legs. I met with him and he offered me twenty-five dollars in cash per week to help him. That was good money to me for food and clothing for the girls, so I squeezed it into my already chaotic schedule. I remember mentioning my good fortune over the phone to Mother. I was so stressed from the long hours, going to classes, studying, helping the girls with homework, then going to my waitress job, that occasionally a coworker would take pity on me and we would share a joint to relax after our shift at the restaurant, while we wiped down all of the tables. It was the 1970s. For almost everyone I knew, smoking pot was preferred over drinking.

  I never figured out how Mother found out that I occasionally smoked pot, but she thought it was her moral duty to report me to Children and Family Services. She didn’t report me for smoking marijuana; she turned me in for making one hundred dollars in cash from the diabetic patient and not claiming it as income. I had to undergo an investigation and almost lost the medical benefits for my girls, her own granddaughters. This was only one of the many vengeful things my mother did that made no sense to me, until therapists helped me to understand that it was based in jealousy.

  After this incident, Mother barely spoke to me for the next seven years, until the day came when there was a reversal in her attitude. Suddenly she wanted to be right by my side, running to greet me with her arms outstretched as though it was only fate that had cruelly separated us.

  Chapter 13

  On the Good Ship Lollipop

  Seeing Mother’s unbridled exuberance as she burst from her front door, crossing her driveway toward our tour bus, her arms waving a warm welcome, was like watching a complete stranger. I had never seen her like this before.

  She was ecstatic that I had decided to make a quick detour from our schedule, into Ashland for the night. It was the week Wynonna and I had our first write-up in People magazine, which in 1984 was a media event that signified a new level of fame. It was a big deal for our careers and we were proud as peacocks.

  Considering that Mother had barely spoken a word to me in seven years, her manic show of happiness upon my arrival was baffling, to say the least. She was dressed up and had full makeup on. I was surprised that the local press had somehow found out about my arrival and was there with flashbulbs popping. In my deep need to have Mother’s approval, I took this display as her way to let me know she was proud of me. I was so wrong.

  Once out of the public eye, she didn’t speak of anything besides her desire to attend our concerts and any red carpet events. This would become the template of my relationship with her and how she interacted with me. If there was a chance for her to share the spotlight, she was ready to step in at a moment’s notice. The public saw her as a sweet and supportive mother, but I sadly knew otherwise.

  I was happy to make her feel important, knowing that for most of her life she had no chance to have a fun or a comfortable life. She married at age fifteen, and had me when she was eighteen, and then my three younger siblings followed, each two years apart. She had no help when she brought her babies home from the hospital. Her own mother was absent from her life. Daddy didn’t do any domestic chores at all. I doubt he ever changed a diaper or gave any of us a bottle. After I had Wynonna, I could more deeply empathize with the hard life my mother led. She had gone from raising her own brother and sister to taking care of Daddy and then raising children. She had no opportunity to express herself. No one asked her what would make her happy. I’m not sure she could have answered that question.

  I loved Mother and wanted her to know it. But it was one-sided. She could never say “I love you” to me, unless it was a mumbled “You, too” in response to my saying it first. She has never signed a letter or even a birthday card with “Love, Mom,” only “Mother.”

  She anticipated the chance to go on the road with us for at least part of every tour. She would glory in the moment when I would let the crowd know that my mother was in the audience. She would be sure to tell me exactly where she would be sitting so I could tell our lighting technician where to shine the spotlight. She would smile and wave as the spotlight found her, delighting in the welcoming cheers from fans.

  I invited her to attend almost every awards show, mentioning her from the stage every time we won, and made sure she attended almost every red carpet event on my calendar. I would buy her a new dress, jewelry, and shoes for each occasion, have her hair and makeup done, get her a special manicure, and made certain she had an “all access” backstage pass. She was so pleasant and friendly, everyone thought she was great. No one had ever spoiled my mother, and I found a certain level of satisfaction in being able to make her finally feel special. She would grab my arm and whisper to me about which celebrities she wanted me to ask to take a photo with her. In press photos of Wy and me at any event, Mother is in most of the pictures.

  At the Grammys, before the show even started she was hyperfocused on getting to meet Jack Nicholson. I only know him casually, not well, so I told Mother, “You can’t do that until after the show.” For the next three hours, every fifteen minutes she would ask me, “When is the show over?” I had the photo of her beaming next to Jack Nicholson enlarged and framed. She still has it displayed on her dresser in the nursing home, next to family photos.

  Whenever she returned to Ashland from one of our events or tours she would have her own social spotlight for the next three or four weeks. She knew that people in small-town Ashland would want to know every detail of celebrity life. She relished being able to answer questions like, “What is Garth Brooks really like?” Or “Did you get a close look at Dolly Parton?” She would walk slowly from shop to shop downtown, being fawned over like a celebrity in her own right. For once in her life she was no longer anonymous.

  It was probably the best gift I could have given Mother. She may not have had the finances to be among the elite in Ashland, but her daughter and two granddaughters were famous and that carried plenty of influence. I could appreciate her joy at this new social status, but I was constantly disappointed that she didn’t seem to appreciate how hard I worked or that I wanted her to be my mother first.

  One of the great benefits of the intense talk therapy I went through at Scottsdale was that it showed me how my mother’s inability to validate me as a worthy daughter had warped my sense of self for decades. If looked at in a positive light, her lack of maternal warmth and encouragement was probably the strongest motivating factor for me to make something of my life.

  I’m proud of the life I built for myself and especially proud of Wynonna and Ashley, their talent, intelligence, generosity, and humanitarian hearts. I try to make certain that they both know it, though I think mothers and daughters will always have a sensitivity about their interactions with each other tha
t is more heightened than in any other relationship.

  To be raised by an emotionally unavailable and unresponsive mother left me with an ever-present feeling of abandonment that is a gaping hole in my psyche. No matter how old I get, my biggest fear is being alone. I try to keep myself in check, to not let my fear of abandonment inform the way I am with my daughters, but I am not always successful. When my daughters were younger, I would tell them we were each one side of a triangle, which was only complete and strong with all three of us together. I still overreact to their fierce independence, because I don’t want to lose them, but I rarely try to give them advice. Ideally, I’d like to be like a firefighter and just come when I’m called.

  Shortly before I was diagnosed with hepatitis C, I was in the Northeast for a tour, followed by various events. It had been a frigid winter week and my health was taking a turn for the worse. I still had more tour dates to complete, but with a few days off I decided to rest and recover at Mother’s house in Ashland. After two previous flights, I caught a hopper flight into Huntington, West Virginia, and asked Mother to pick me up at the airport. On the flight, my sore throat roared into full-blown inflammation and my head was aching. By the time the plane landed I was flat worn out, sick, and exhausted.

  As I got in Mother’s car I blurted out, “I’m so happy to be home. All I want is to have something to eat, take a hot bath, and then go straight to bed.”

  As we drove into Ashland, my mother made a turn in the opposite direction from the house.