20. The biological father stand-in
Removing the ashtrays of untruths
Hello friends,
Sometimes I think the journey of human existence is about uncovering truth. A belief works for a while to get humanity someplace, people revolt when it turns out to be untrue, and then a new world gets created as people accept the facts. Flat-earth theory, leeches as medical treatment, cigarette smoking, fossil fuel dependency … the list goes on. Ashtrays used to be everywhere, and thankfully, now they are not.
I lived with a personal version of this for 31 years, starting in 1991.
20. Learning the untrue truth
When I returned to college for my sophomore year, I started to get my groove back. I got my varsity letter in cross-country running. By spring, it was evident that I would make the Dean’s List (see the scan of my report card above).
Finally, I thought, the father I had never met would be proud of me. So I gathered up the courage to ask my mother who he was. She connected us, and he picked me up at Middlebury in May to drive me to Cape Cod, where a classmate and I had rented an apartment for the summer.
Don Gove and I did not get off to a good start. Upon seeing me walk out of my dorm, the first words out of his mouth were, “You’re not as skinny as your mother was.” I was a toned and tanned runner who weighed less than 125 pounds.
I thought this comment was creepy, considering that my mother was about the same age as me when they met. Shortly after she graduated from high school, he and his wife hired her to be the nanny for their three children. Though she was not working for them when she got pregnant with me, he was still married.
Our conversation, detailed in my memoir, was full of cul-de-sacs. He didn’t seem to appreciate anything I was doing with my life—the running, the academic pursuits, my love of the arts, or my boyfriend Josh, a Philosophy major at U-MASS-Amherst. He told creepy jokes and wore a pocket protector.
I landed on the Cape with a newfound appreciation for Scotty. The alternative values I had been raised with—vegetarian cooking, eating with chopsticks, living in RVs, homeschool, even drug use in the home—had shaped who I was enough to know that I would likely never be truly appreciated by this man.
I lost all respect that I might have had for Don Gove when he tried to reinitiate the affair with my mother. He was not going to leave his wife. My mother had moved on with her life while raising me, and didn’t take him up on the offer.
The power of truth revealed
The first draft (started in 2008), the second draft (finished in 2012), and the third draft (finished in 2022) of my memoir Escape from Nowhere end about here. Those drafts chronicled a journey of longing for my real father, finding a stepfather, and after meeting Don, coming to the conclusion that I got the father I needed to become who I was meant to be.
In 2022, a non-paternity event revealed in my DNA test upended my book. Don Gove is not my father! The years I put the book aside and my lame attempts at seeking publication suddenly had new meaning.
The ashtrays of untruth disappeared from my consciousness and brought my mother and me together around a newer, healthier dialogue that made perfect sense. (Did restaurant smoking sections ever make sense? Smoke fills all the air, not just the air on one side of the room.)
What difficult truths have been revealed to you that ultimately created a healthier belief system?
A stone wall is more than stone
Mill Valley has many stone retaining walls that become homes for mosses and plants. As much as humans try to build walls around the truth, life—and beauty— have a way of making themselves known. These Santa Barbara daisies happily blooming on a stone wall remind me that nothing is permanent.
May the cracks in outdated belief systems reveal a new foundation for living with the truth.
Have a great week!
Love, Lee Ann
