WEBVTT - The Self I Could Have Been 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:05.279 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:10.320 I was three when I was kidnapped. Any age, the 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:13.360 day must have been a Saturday or a Sunday, because 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:15.960 when my grandmother and I stepped from the fabric store, 0:00:16.000 --> 0:00:18.200 we were shocked at how dark the day had become. 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:21.279 So it must have been midday. Me not in school, 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:25.480 unless it was the summer day. Usually, whenever we shopped 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:29.080 for fabric store things. Whenever my grandmother shopped for fabric 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:31.720 store things, we went to a Michael's and a strip 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:34.519 mall down Highway one eighty three, just far enough for 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:38.200 the strip mall to seem alien impossible to get home 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:41.000 if I were ever left there. But on this day 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:43.080 we had gone to a fabric store I had never 0:00:43.120 --> 0:00:47.280 seen before. It's name a blank stucco edifice. To me, now, 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:48.760 am I misremembering it? 0:00:53.400 --> 0:00:56.840 That's Sean McCrae, award winning poet, an author of the 0:00:56.880 --> 0:01:00.800 recent book Pulling the Chariot of the Sun, a memoir 0:01:00.840 --> 0:01:05.120 of a kidnapping. Shane's is a story about Yes being 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:08.680 kidnapped by his white grandparents to keep him away from 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:12.080 his black father, But at its heart, it's about the 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:15.880 attempt to recover memory to put together the many blank 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:19.440 or missing pieces that were kept from him to assemble 0:01:19.480 --> 0:01:33.880 a life and a whole complete self. I'm Danny Shapiro, 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:37.280 and this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:40.280 from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:42.040 secrets we keep from ourselves. 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:50.440 I suppose I could start with ground Rock, Texas, which 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:53.760 is where I lived from the age of almost four 0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:57.240 until the age of ten or eleven. I lived in 0:01:57.280 --> 0:02:00.400 a three bedroom house that was made of brick, and 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:04.480 the bricks were painted a very light yellow. The neighborhood 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:08.040 that I lived in was a suburban neighborhood, but far 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:12.680 away from anything that one might call a city center. 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:16.839 It was like a kind of stripmolish area, too far 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:20.640 away to walk to or anything like that. But that 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:23.600 was the closest to a kind of urban center near 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:25.639 where I lived, and so there was just a bunch 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:28.800 of houses across the street from me. There was the 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:31.359 elementary school that I ended up going to. I think 0:02:31.360 --> 0:02:34.120 that sidewalks are now there, but when I lived there, 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:38.880 there weren't any sidewalks. There was a creek that I 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:42.600 felt sort of separated the part of the neighborhood in 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:44.400 which I lived from the rest of the neighborhood, or 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:47.160 the rest of the neighborhood beyond. This creek was a 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:50.120 lot larger than the part in which I lived, and 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:53.280 the creek, as far as I know, doesn't exist anymore. 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:57.480 I saw my old neighborhood about ten years ago, and 0:02:57.760 --> 0:02:59.960 where the creek was, it seemed like it had all 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:04.240 been covered with cement, and so there's still a channel, 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:07.520 I guess for water. But when I lived there, there 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:10.560 was a creek with sort of these natural little rock 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:14.800 islands in it, and a lot of catfish and snakes, 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:19.400 poisonous snakes. You could kind of see the elementary school 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:24.520 from my house. Behind the elementary school was I don't 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:26.600 really know the history of this space, but it was. 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:30.560 It looked kind of like a ruin of a very 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:36.119 small settlement. There were a few houses in this kind 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:41.640 of large warehousey space, and it was really very very strange. 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:44.800 You accessed it by kind of going through a little 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:48.320 kind of foresty area, a large patch of which somehow 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:51.840 was bamboo. And on the other side of this bamboo 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:55.280 area were a few ruined houses. It looked as if 0:03:55.320 --> 0:03:57.200 they had been torn up like a storm had gone 0:03:57.240 --> 0:04:01.120 through them, but there were still remnant things that would 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:03.680 indicate that people had lived there, like bits of furniture 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:07.920 things like that, but they must have been abandoned or 0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:10.920 whatever it was it happened to them some years before 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:12.600 my family moved into that area. 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:15.160 Did that exert a pull on you at all? You know, 0:04:15.280 --> 0:04:17.640 that sort of abandoned area. 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:21.320 Visiting that space is one of the few relatively clear 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:25.200 memories that I have of my childhood. But now when 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:26.839 I think about it, it sounds like a sort of 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:29.480 impossible space, like how could it have been real? How 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:32.480 could I have ever gone there? Even though I feel 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:35.719 really confident that I went there, I also doubt the 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:39.800 possibility of it even existing. But it did exert a 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:41.400 pull on me. I like to explore a lot when 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:42.480 I was a small. 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:45.320 Child and tell me who you lived in the yellow. 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:51.359 House with my maternal grandparents, my grandmother, who was my 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:57.200 mother's biological mother, and my grandfather, who had adopted my 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:01.120 mother when my mother was I believe, thirteen years old. 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:06.400 So Shane is living with his grandparents. He refers to 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:09.120 them as mom and Dad, even though on some level 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.760 he's aware that they are his grandparents, and when his 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:14.480 mom a young woman who had him at just eighteen 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:17.480 years old, comes to visit. He calls her by her 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:18.920 first name, Denise. 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:22.320 When my mother came to visit me, I don't think 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:23.919 there's any way for me to know whether she felt 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:26.960 like my mother, because I wouldn't know what it feels like. 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:29.479 She's the only model that I would have, and so 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:32.719 particularly as a child, I guess maybe in some ways, 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:36.560 not just because the person that I called referred to 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:39.320 as my mother was my grandmother, but I was aware 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:43.320 that my mother was my mother, and so in a 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:46.520 kind of abstract way, I felt a very strong connection 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:49.320 to her insofar as she was my mother and I 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:52.120 was aware of it. I lived with her up until 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:54.359 I was about four. I guess most of the time. 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:57.800 You describe at one point sitting by the window, you know, 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:00.040 when you knew she was going to be coming, And 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:03.360 it struck me the way that you described that that 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:06.919 there was a kind of combination of excitement and a 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:12.080 kind of longing. Sure, so what was the story that 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:17.520 you grew up being told by your maternal grandparents about 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:23.680 your father and about why you were living with them 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:25.600 away from your family. 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:32.640 So my grandparents told me that the reason that I 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:34.560 didn't live with my father, well, really, the reason I 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:37.400 didn't see him, didn't really know him, was that he 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:42.720 didn't want me, and also that even if I were 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:45.080 interested in seeing him, it kind of didn't matter, because 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:48.720 they told me that he lived in Brazil and he 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:52.320 had a whole new family, other children now, and that 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:56.279 he just wouldn't be interested in seeing me anyway. And 0:06:56.320 --> 0:07:00.880 they told me that I had started to live with 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:05.080 them when I was eighteen months old, and that they 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:09.360 had essentially taken me in as a favor, a favor 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.840 to my mother because she felt like she couldn't take 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:14.520 care of me, and since my father was out of 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:18.080 the picture, whatever his opinions about whether he could take 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:21.840 care of me, those were irrelevant. The general sense that 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:24.960 I was supposed to have was that my father's family 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:28.280 were sort of disreputable criminal. Even my grandparents had told 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:31.360 me the story that one of my relatives on my 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:34.600 father's side had one year when I was very little, 0:07:34.600 --> 0:07:36.360 I guess it must have been one year old, had 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:39.440 stolen all of my Christmas presents. And I think that 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.360 that I think they told me that story just to 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:46.559 sort of reinforce the idea that I shouldn't even want 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:50.040 to have anything to do with my father's side of 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:53.880 the family, and I was better off not knowing them. 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:56.560 I should also say that, I mean, you know, as 0:07:56.600 --> 0:07:59.560 a small child, my sense of how biology worked was 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:04.600 regard to parents and children really vague. But I was 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:07.920 aware of my father's blackness, and I was aware that 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:11.760 my father's blackness had something to do with my own identity, 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:13.800 something very significant. 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:19.640 And did you have a sense that that was an 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:21.040 issue for your grandparents. 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:25.160 Yeah, my grandparents were very clear about not liking not 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:30.360 white people to various degrees. My grandfather was a self 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:34.440 identified Republican, my grandmother was a self identified Democrat. But 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:37.640 they could agree that not white people were not good. 0:08:38.000 --> 0:08:40.640 That was what they wanted to communicate in various ways. 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:43.720 My grandmother was more subtle than my grandfather was. 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:46.960 But that was a point of agreement for them. Yes, 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:52.560 all the years that Shane lives with his grandparents, he 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:56.599 always sleeps with his lights on. Something's going on internally, 0:08:57.000 --> 0:09:00.880 something that doesn't feel quite right. Always know, don't we 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:04.440 when something's amiss, even though we can't quite identify it. 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:08.640 One day in school where Shane has skipped a grade, 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:10.600 so He's five or six years old and already in 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:13.960 second grade. He draws a swastika on a white T 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:18.040 shirt with a black magic marker. Shane has seen swastikas 0:09:18.080 --> 0:09:21.120 in books about World War Two in his grandparents' house, 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:24.760 where they admire as a Nazi military effort, so he 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:27.880 has no idea he's doing something that people will find troubling, 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:30.160 and the principal sends him home. 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:35.040 My grandmother in particular, felt that that was an abusive 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:38.400 authority to send me home for drawing swastikas all over 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:41.640 my shirt, which it hadn't occurred to me because I 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:44.560 didn't know anything about the history at all. It hadn't 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:47.160 occurred to me that that was a sort of offensive 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:50.760 thing to do. Had no idea. When I was in 0:09:50.840 --> 0:09:53.920 elementary school, when I was asked about my father, I 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:56.720 would just say that I didn't have one. I felt 0:09:56.920 --> 0:09:59.760 really strongly actually, like I just didn't Whereas by the 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:05.600 time I got to middle school, I started asserting that 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:10.199 I hated him. I didn't know him, obviously, but nonetheless, 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:12.320 if I were asked about him, that's what I would say. 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:14.680 And Shane, where was the hate coming from? 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:18.360 That? He was not interested in me? And so I 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:20.400 hated him for that, or at least thought I it. 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:26.120 Meanwhile, there's other hateful behavior within the wall of Shane's grandparents' home. 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:29.960 His grandfather is violent toward him, and when Denise comes 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:32.959 to visit, she sometimes asks if he wants to come 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:34.080 live with her instead. 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:38.240 Whenever my mother would ask me whether I wanted to 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:40.760 live with her, it was very uncomfortable because I was 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:42.800 aware that she was my mother and that I was 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:45.840 supposed to feel a particular way, and you know, I 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:47.640 did love her. I didn't want to hurt her feelings, 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:52.160 but I was also I also sort of thought of 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:53.719 my grandmother as my mother, and I didn't want to 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:58.720 leave my grandparents. And I've often wondered, you know, why 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:03.640 did I want to stay so desperately with these abusive people. 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:08.679 And it wasn't until recently that I was sort of able, 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:12.679 finally able to make sense of it, thinking about you know, well, 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:15.760 along with so many other things, this is almost certainly 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:21.560 a consequence of being kidnapped. That I didn't want any 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:26.480 sort of major change in my living arrangement. That my 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:30.160 anxiety about that, even though I couldn't articulate it, was 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:35.480 incredibly high. I was very, very anxious and also always 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:39.480 feeling always worried that I was going to be forced 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:43.040 from the particular living arrangement that I had, and so 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:48.600 it was always extremely stressful. I think I understand why 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:50.800 my mother wanted me to be aware that I could 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:52.600 live with her if I wanted to, but it was 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:56.160 always an extremely stressful interaction to me. 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:00.840 But during these exchanges with his mom, she never tells 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:03.640 him that she too had been beaten by her father 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:07.120 when she was younger, which makes it even more striking 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:10.840 that she also never asks Shane whether his grandfather is 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:12.120 also abusing him. 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:16.680 It's something that I guess to some extent I still 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:20.360 kind of can't really understand unless I told in my 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:24.479 mind that she was very desperate to please my grandfather. 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:26.760 There's only so much I can read in her own motives. 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:29.280 But I think it partly has to do with he 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:33.360 adopted her when she was thirteen, but he had been 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:37.160 living with her for by that time, like eight years 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:40.040 or something, and he had told her from the beginning 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:42.880 that if she was quote unquote good, he would adopt 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:45.480 her when she was thirteen, and so he kind of 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:48.720 loading her with worry about living up to some sort 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:51.240 of idea of goodness so that she could have a father, 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:56.079 because you know, my grandmother had kidn up my mother 0:12:56.120 --> 0:12:58.040 from my mother's father when my mother was too had 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:00.480 just taken my mother and not told him where they 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:03.120 were going, and my mother didn't see him again until 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:06.760 she was about sixty when she found him. And so 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:10.400 I think that there was a lot of desire for 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:13.000 a father and a lot of worry that she would 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:16.679 be rejected by her father. And so I think that 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:23.559 when she allowed my grandparents to take me, she couldn't 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:28.120 allow herself to believe that it wouldn't be a safe 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:31.600 place for me for a couple of reasons that were 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:34.000 sort of reinforcing each other, because she maybe felt that 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:36.320 she couldn't take care of me herself, but she also 0:13:36.360 --> 0:13:39.080 felt like, as I said, she really wanted to please 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:40.000 my grandfather. 0:13:45.400 --> 0:14:09.319 We'll be right back. At age thirteen, Shane does ultimately 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:12.880 move in with his mother. In his adolescence, he's beginning 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:15.440 to stand up to his grandfather, and as a result, 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:19.280 their relationship has become even more violent, so much so 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:22.640 that Shane's memories of the beatings have receded into parts 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:27.360 of his mind. He still cannot fully access These memories 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:31.080 are blocked in ways that both cost and protect him. 0:14:31.440 --> 0:14:35.600 He does remember, however, in broad hazy strokes moving in 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:36.160 with his mom. 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:41.080 Being at my mother's house is sort of like an island, 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:43.960 Like it's a visible island where I can see days 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:47.920 and I can see place, and I can see arriving, 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:52.040 you know, but it's surrounded by blackness, like there's no 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:54.920 before and there's no after. I know what it was like, 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:58.160 you know, like physically, but I don't have any memory 0:14:58.160 --> 0:15:01.160 of the time leading up to being with my mother. 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:04.440 I just suddenly remember being there, but I feel like 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:07.240 I remember a long stretch of being there and then 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:08.920 I leave and I don't remember again. 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:12.360 I mean, that's such an interesting image, and I wondered, 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:15.560 I mean, do you think that you felt, briefly while 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:18.320 you were there, a certain kind of safety that you 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:20.880 hadn't felt before, Like did you feel safer? 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:25.880 I guess I must have felt safer at my mother's house, 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:29.760 but I don't know that I recall a feeling of safety. 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:34.120 I recall a degree of anxiety, a lot of worry. 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:38.120 It was just different from my grandparents' house, was I think, 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:40.680 in some ways really different there, But I was only 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:43.480 there for a few months. But in a lot of ways, 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:45.640 I guess actually my life was different, and I think 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:46.360 I was different. 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:51.240 Of course, Denise's life is different during this time too. 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:54.600 She's never had a child under her roof. She's never 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:57.320 really had this experience of being a mother. It's a 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:00.400 struggle for her, and it turns out she isn't of 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:02.920 taking care of Shane. She tells him that he'll have 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:05.760 to go back to live with his grandparents, but before 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:09.360 he goes, she tells him something else. The truth about 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:11.800 what happened when he was three years old, when he 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:12.480 was kidnapped. 0:16:13.440 --> 0:16:16.200 So before I left my mother to return to my 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:21.200 grandparents was when my mother told me that my grandparents 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:24.160 had taken me from my father without telling my father 0:16:24.680 --> 0:16:27.680 where they were taking me. Up until this point, it 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:30.160 was my understanding that my father just wasn't interested in 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:36.200 me at all, and so learning this was a shock. 0:16:37.240 --> 0:16:43.920 But because my grandparents had so effectively raised me to 0:16:44.000 --> 0:16:47.120 have no interest in my father, and because I didn't 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:50.440 have any kind of memory of my time with him, 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:54.160 and because I didn't have any understanding even of the timeline, 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:56.240 you know, I didn't know that I was almost four 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:58.160 years old when my grandparents took me up. I was 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:00.880 eighteen months old. And because I assume, because there's such 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:04.320 a huge conflict between reality and the story my memory 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:07.200 of it also, I mean, because I think the kidnapping 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:09.800 itself is such a traumatic event, the memory is just 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:13.080 it's all gone. I mean, I did know that at 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:16.680 this point, I had already decided that I didn't hate 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:19.720 my father, but I didn't know what to do with that, 0:17:19.920 --> 0:17:21.840 you know, because I didn't have any contact with him still, 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:24.320 and so hating him or not hating him in a 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:28.200 sense is sort of it's not exactly irrelevant, but it's 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:31.439 not what is its practical effect. I don't think that 0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:34.440 I stopped hating him for any particular reason. I think 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:36.680 it was just getting a little bit older. I mean, 0:17:36.680 --> 0:17:39.720 I wasn't, you know, still a child, but maybe sort 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:42.760 of beginning to think for myself a little bit helped 0:17:42.760 --> 0:17:46.760 me to get beyond the point where I felt like 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:49.679 hating my father was sort of necessary. 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:55.600 Chane's grandparents are in California at this point, and he 0:17:55.640 --> 0:17:58.080 does end up moving back in with them. He has 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:01.680 nowhere else to go. The throes of so much instability 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:05.560 Shane's early teenage years are defined by depression and flux. 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:09.639 When he's fourteen, his grandmother decides to leave his grandfather, 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:13.000 so she and Shane moved back to Salem, Oregon, back 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:17.520 where it all began. During this time, Shane becomes increasingly 0:18:17.640 --> 0:18:21.240 curious about his father. He now has the information his 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:25.040 mother told him, as well as his father's name Stanley 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:29.760 or perhaps it's stan Lee. What he doesn't note is 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:33.760 where this man is. The stories about Brazil suddenly don't 0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:37.080 sit right. Shane begins to wonder if perhaps his father 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:38.840 is right here in Salem. 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:43.879 I was with some friends and we were skating in 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:47.800 an apartment complex and have been skating for some time, 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:51.919 and for whatever reason, at that moment, I felt like 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:54.199 I should look at my father. I want to know 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:58.280 if he's still here. So I, with my friends knocked 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:03.440 on a stranger's door. This would have been, I guess, 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:09.800 probably nineteen ninety two, and it's a somewhat unusual thing 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:11.840 to do. It's a weird thing to do now maybe, 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:15.040 but in nineteen ninety two it wasn't completely bizarre, you know, 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:18.480 because there weren't cell phones, et cetera. And so I 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:20.840 knocked on a stranger's door and asked if I could 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:25.080 use her phone book. She said yes, so I, you know, 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:27.080 open up the white pages. I slipped around until I 0:19:27.119 --> 0:19:30.440 got to the MS and I saw an S. McCrae, 0:19:31.400 --> 0:19:33.880 and then I closed the book and that was sort 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:36.760 of it. I didn't write down his number or anything, 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:39.879 but from that moment I was aware that there was 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:43.840 at least somebody who could be my father, because same initial, 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:46.800 same last name, you know, SA. It's not a huge city, 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:50.280 so that there was somebody who could have been him 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:54.000 in the town. I don't think that I sat around 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:57.200 with that information for very long before I tried to 0:19:57.200 --> 0:19:59.199 get in touch with him. I think it might have 0:19:59.280 --> 0:20:02.879 only been a few days. As I remember it, I 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:05.920 called his number. This was at my house where I 0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:08.800 live with my grandmother. I called my father's number and 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:12.400 my stepmother, Candace answered. Obviously at the time, I didn't 0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:15.880 know who she was, and I asked if he was there, 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:19.919 and I didn't know his name exactly, you know, and 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:23.320 so I asked if stan Lee was there, but I 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:26.040 said it stan Lee McCrae. I said it in a 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:29.720 way that I hoped would cover the possibilities that either 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:33.760 his name was Stanley or stan middle name Lee, and 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:35.800 I tried to say any way they would do both, 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:40.520 And so I recall my stepmother, Candace, saying hold on 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:42.840 a minute, and putting the phone down and getting my 0:20:42.920 --> 0:20:48.639 father and talking with him. My father has a different 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:51.359 memory of it, that he wasn't at home at the time, 0:20:51.520 --> 0:20:54.280 and that so that we talked later. I still feel 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:56.560 like my version of it is what happened, but you know, 0:20:56.760 --> 0:20:59.800 I have to at least acknowledge that he remembers it differently. 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:04.119 And that was it. He came to see me that 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:09.600 night and then drove me around Salem, introducing me to relatives. 0:21:09.840 --> 0:21:12.080 The McRae family is a pretty big and well known 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:14.880 family in Salem, and so I knew who the mccrays were, 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:18.159 which is I guess part of the reason that I 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:20.800 thought he would might very well still be around. And 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:23.960 so he kind of drove me around, introducing me to them. 0:21:24.200 --> 0:21:28.040 And it was a sort of bewildering time. I learned 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:30.359 during the time that I was a kind of spectral 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:34.200 presence in their lives and had been my whole life. 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:38.199 Folks had talked about me. I want to say that 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:40.960 it felt like in some ways being a ghost, like 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:44.120 I was inhabiting an idea of myself that had come 0:21:44.160 --> 0:21:46.400 before me. But of course I don't know what it's 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:48.359 like to be a ghost. But that's how I would 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:51.040 That's how I would describe it, that I was walking 0:21:51.080 --> 0:21:53.520 around in the place of a previous version of myself 0:21:54.160 --> 0:22:00.640 and it was just very self dislocating and also well, 0:22:01.720 --> 0:22:06.520 maybe renewing, maybe affirming. It was a strange, a strange day. 0:22:10.960 --> 0:22:14.119 Shane imagines a parallel life, a life in which he 0:22:14.200 --> 0:22:16.879 hadn't been kidnapped, in which he would have grown up 0:22:16.880 --> 0:22:19.719 in Salem and been one of them, a craze and 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:24.000 part of this big family. And then all these years later, 0:22:24.359 --> 0:22:28.159 he's a late teenager and something has been restored, but 0:22:28.280 --> 0:22:31.840 in something being restored, what's been taken away is thrown 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:33.520 into even starker relief. 0:22:35.400 --> 0:22:37.000 I don't want to describe it in a way that's 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:41.800 too melodramatic, but you can never really, at least I 0:22:41.880 --> 0:22:46.080 can never, I think, really be healed if one conceives 0:22:46.119 --> 0:22:51.159 of healing, as you know, having a sense of wholeness 0:22:51.200 --> 0:22:54.760 in relations to in relation to the family that I 0:22:54.800 --> 0:22:57.320 didn't grow up with, and in relation to the self. 0:22:57.359 --> 0:23:02.440 I could have been. I am instead, very very aware 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:08.960 of all of these lives that might be my actual 0:23:09.000 --> 0:23:11.960 life and that might be, you know, have something to 0:23:11.960 --> 0:23:14.679 do with my biological information, et cetera. And I'm aware 0:23:14.680 --> 0:23:17.520 that I can't know any of them for sure. I 0:23:17.640 --> 0:23:20.760 don't really know who I am, and I can't really 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:23.479 know who I am, And partly that's the result of 0:23:23.560 --> 0:23:25.600 an effort on the part of my grandparents to ensure 0:23:25.600 --> 0:23:28.159 that I couldn't know. Partly that's because they had their 0:23:28.200 --> 0:23:30.919 own secrets that they were trying to hide from me 0:23:31.080 --> 0:23:33.959 and my mother, like my grandmother being married five times. 0:23:34.000 --> 0:23:36.440