WEBVTT - The Journal 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:10.800 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm 0:00:10.880 --> 0:00:14.840 Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets that 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:17.400 are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:29.280 and the secrets we keep from ourselves. It starts to 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:32.960 come together for my mother that he is literally forgetting 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:36.400 to lie, and my father sort of realizes that his 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:39.040 brain has betrayed him and he's admitted to this thing, 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:44.160 and he says, oh, oh, I did a bad thing. 0:00:46.240 --> 0:00:49.760 My guest today is Sasha Rothschild. Sasha is a television 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:53.040 writer based in Los Angeles who made the recent discovery 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:55.920 that her father was not exactly the person she had 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:59.440 always thought him to be. This is a story of 0:00:59.480 --> 0:01:06.640 a secret buried deep in a man's psyche. I grew 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:11.600 up in Miami Beach in the eighties, and at that 0:01:11.720 --> 0:01:16.160 time it was sort of this forgotten place of old 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:21.920 age homes and crack houses and sort of a lawless town. 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:27.680 And my parents are incredibly I think of them as 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:32.840 submarine parents. They were always there, but opposite to like 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:36.440 a helicopter parent. They were never hovering. They were just 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:40.400 deep below the surface of my life and if I 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:46.360 needed something, I could go to them. But they weren't overbearing, UM, 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:52.840 and I kind of discovered my self and my childhood 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:58.600 and Miami on my own terms. Um. My mother was 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:03.520 this total free spirit who had lived a life of 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:07.040 a chameleon. She was a socialite in New York and 0:02:07.080 --> 0:02:10.919 then she became a hippie, and then she met my father, UM, 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:17.280 who presented as this very upstanding journalists UM, and he 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:21.600 seemed like the normal one in the family. And so 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:24.560 growing up, my mother was sort of do whatever you 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:28.040 want as long as you're interesting, and then tell us 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:33.520 great stories at dinner. And my father didn't approve, but 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:38.560 he never gave boundaries or rules. So I grew up 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:43.560 running around Miami Beach, getting into trouble and doing drugs 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:47.359 and sleeping with older boys and sort of felt like 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:54.959 my parents were really interesting landlords, really interesting landlords. So 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:57.280 like if there was a problem with the sink or 0:02:57.360 --> 0:03:00.720 the dishwashers, say, they would get somebody to come fix it. 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:06.359 But there wasn't huge parmental oversight that said. Sasha describes 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:09.840 her mom as one of her favorite people. She is 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:14.440 so smart and fascinating and nothing shocks her because it's 0:03:14.480 --> 0:03:18.560 like she's done it all already, and so no matter 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:23.639 what I did growing up, I couldn't quite top her experiences, 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:28.080 and whatever I did, my father sort of was removed 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:31.640 from it. So when I started doing drugs, for example, 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:34.640 my mother said, you know, if you're going to do drugs, 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:36.920 just make sure you can trust your dealer, and just 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:40.160 make sure you never shoot up heroin. If you have to, 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:42.880 you know, smoke it because it's safer. That was sort 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:46.480 of her maternal advice, that that that definitely takes the 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:50.320 all the fun out of rebellion. Yes it did. It's so. 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:53.840 And my father's response was to put a lawyer on 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:58.640 retainer um in case legal matters came up. But his 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.480 response was never to like hug me or say are 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:04.320 you okay? Or you know, can I help or is 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:08.080 there anything I should be doing? So I felt alone 0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:10.560 really as a child, and I have an older brother 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:13.920 and sister who were out of the house already for 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:17.600 a lot of my teen years, and um, I just 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:20.960 had this really strong sense of self preservation. So when 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:23.360 I started to really act out, I kind of pulled 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:28.400 myself back from the brink, and my parents were very like, 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:31.800 you know, see, you're an individual and you can take 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:35.400 care of yourself. And we raised you right. But one 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:37.880 thing that Sasha was always really clear about growing up 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:41.200 was how much her parents loved each other. It seemed 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:44.400 like a magical marriage. They were open with each other, 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:48.280 they laughed, they had intellectual debates, they traveled the world, 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:51.839 they had friends and adventures. This was one of those 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:55.480 marriages that wasn't primarily about the kids. It was about 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:59.640 two people in love. The kids kind of were an afterthought. 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:04.120 And as upsetting as that is, in a lot of ways, 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:07.760 I felt good about the fact that they were so 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:11.400 in love. And because I loved my mother so much, 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:17.280 um I hated my father less because he loved her. 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:22.119 And I never felt close to my father. I felt 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:24.560 like he was kind of an asshole. He had a temper, 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:28.320 not physically violent, but just sort of would fly into 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:32.080 a rage, you know, because there was bad traffic, or 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:34.919 you know, because I have all so many memories of 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:38.360 there's too many catchup bottles from Costco and why do 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:40.120 we need so much catchup? And he would just start 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:43.119 yelling about the catchup. Sort of all of his anger 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:46.440 was put into meaningless things. And I thought he was 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:49.640 a jerk, and I didn't feel close to him. And 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:54.360 because I didn't feel close to him. I wanted so 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:56.840 much for him to love me and to be proud 0:05:56.880 --> 0:06:00.279 of me. So I followed in his footsteps, and I 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:02.520 desperately wanted to go to Yale, which is where he 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:05.080 went to college, and I ended up not getting in, 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:09.160 and it was the biggest tragedy of my life. At 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:12.200 that point, I learned that you can try and do 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:16.159 everything you can and still fail. And he's a writer, 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:19.040 and I grew up watching him sit in his office 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:22.120 off the garage writing and then all of a sudden 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:24.400 a book or an article would appear, and I thought 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:29.600 it was the most romantic like life and just uh, 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:33.719 you know, it's sitting there all day, seems not fun 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:36.679 at all, but like then this thing is in the world. 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:41.240 And I was mesmerized by that. And he really taught 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:45.839 me how to write. And so it's very complicated for 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:50.159 me because I never liked him, but I desperately wanted 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:55.160 to be just like him. When you say that he 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:56.720 taught you how to write, what do you mean by that, 0:06:56.800 --> 0:07:01.479 aside from sort of by emulation. I remember, in like 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:03.880 seventh grade, we had to write a short story and 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:10.960 I wrote about um surfing, and I Umm, basically allergic 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:13.680 to the sun. I'm very pale. Growing up in Miami 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:16.400 was you know, I always wear hats and long sleeve 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:19.800 shirts and absolutely have never surfed a day in my life. 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:22.480 But surfing was cool and it was the cute boys 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:26.720 were surfers. So I wrote the story about surfing, and um, 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:29.360 he's He read it and he said, you know, this 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:33.080 is a false story. This isn't you. You don't know 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:37.600 about surfing. It doesn't come off as anything real and compelling, 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:40.120 and I think you should rewrite it. And I was 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:42.240 really angry because I knew that I would get in 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:45.400 a It was fine, the teacher would like it, who cares. 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:50.120 But I couldn't let that go. And so I thought about, 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:54.040 all right, what's a real story that I can tell? 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:57.120 And I ended up writing a story about a turtle 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:00.560 who really wanted to be a superhero and no one 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:03.480 would take him seriously because he was so slow. And 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:06.520 that story my father loved. He's like, there's meaning in 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:11.120 this and there's something personal, and he was right and 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:14.840 that in that way, he taught me how to be 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:18.320 a good writer, to not ever sort of take the 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:22.000 easy way out, and to really investigate why I'm writing something, 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:24.960 and I remember when I was in AP English in 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:28.040 high school and you're taught the very structured, you know, 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:31.800 five paragraph essays. My father really sat down with me 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:34.280 and told me, yes, it's important that you have a 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:37.400 statement saying what the article will be about, and you 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:41.760 back that up. But you don't want to feed your 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:45.480 reader everything up front. You want to sort of slowly 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:48.800 build tension and then have a twist or reveal or 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:52.679 an emotional something emotionally powerful. And those are the kind 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:55.679 of things that you don't necessarily learn in school when 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:57.600 you learn to write. Um, but I was sort of 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:00.839 taught every single day because he read what I wrote, 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:04.360 and my mother always encouraged me to write everything down. 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:07.200 And I think that was the one way that I 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:12.520 was able to really bond with him, because there were 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:14.960 no other ways that he and I had a real 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:32.040 conversation about anything. Let's take a quick break here. So 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:35.280 Sasha and her dad have this one shared language, the 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:39.640 language of writing. This was the way they communicated. Sasha 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:42.480 goes off to college determined to become a writer. She 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:45.360 goes to Boston College, where she majors in theater and 0:09:45.360 --> 0:09:50.000 playwriting and graduates Phi Beta Kappa. At graduation, she's awarded 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:53.920 the highest honor in the theater program. Only one person 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:56.960 in each major gets an award. So there is this beautiful, 0:09:57.080 --> 0:10:02.200 very small ceremony for like thirty five students, and I decided, 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:05.719 instead of going to graduation, my family should come and 0:10:05.720 --> 0:10:10.200 watch that ceremony because it's really personal and I'm really 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:13.440 proud and I've accomplished all this stuff. And my name 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:15.080 is called, and I walk up on the stage and 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:19.080 I just so want my father to be proud. And 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:22.280 I look out and my entire family is sitting in 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:25.400 a row doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, looking 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:28.440 down with their little pens in their papers, and they 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:33.840 each have their own paper. I just feel like, nothing, 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:39.760 nothing I do, is going to get the attention that 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:46.400 i'd like desperately want. And that sort of feeling stayed 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:48.679 with me. I moved right to l A to start 0:10:48.679 --> 0:10:52.920 my writing career, and I stopped sending my father things 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:55.480 that I had written, also because he was not someone 0:10:55.559 --> 0:11:01.120 who understood scripts. He was definitely understood like sort of 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:04.120 you know, long form writing, but he didn't he wasn't 0:11:04.120 --> 0:11:06.600 good at reading scripts or movie scripts or TV scripts, 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:09.640 which is what I was focusing on. And when I 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:12.960 started to become an adult, UM, I still talked to 0:11:12.960 --> 0:11:15.680 my mother on the phone like every day because I 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:17.920 have so much fun talking to her. We gossip. She 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:21.080 knows everything about my life. My father and I. You know, 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:23.920 he'll sort of yell in the background, like how she 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:27.320 doing or put her on, and I'll talk to him, 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:31.760 but it's like small talk. It's it's just meaningless. And 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:35.880 I think for most of my adult life I felt 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:42.000 very disconnected from him, and yet still knowing that I'm 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:44.560 trying to make a living doing this thing that he 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:49.640 inspired me to do to a great extent. So when 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:52.280 she's writing her first book, Sasha calls her father for 0:11:52.320 --> 0:11:55.920 advice and he offers it. He tells her, the minute 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:57.960 you don't want to write a thing, you have to 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:01.640 write it because that's where the good stuff is so true. 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:04.640 She takes his advice and writes a memoir about her 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:08.520 first marriage that's real and raw and scary. During that 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:11.920 year of her books publication, the two of them grow closer. 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:18.160 I felt really connected with him, and then it again 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:22.880 sort of slipped away. And then it wasn't until several 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:28.720 years later that we started to notice that his memory 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:32.680 was going and he was no longer writing. He said 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:35.880 he was retired, but we had realized he had been 0:12:35.880 --> 0:12:38.680 trying to write a new article about something he was 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:41.640 interested in and couldn't quite get it done, which is 0:12:41.640 --> 0:12:46.120 something that had never happened him before. What were the 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:51.000 signs of his memory going. One of the first things 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:54.800 I remember being very concerned about him is he didn't 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:59.360 know which side the espresso pod went into the machine. 0:12:59.679 --> 0:13:01.840 And he had been using this machine, you know, every 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:04.160 day for years, and all of a sudden, this pod 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:07.959 in his hand seemed foreign to him. Um, that was 0:13:08.120 --> 0:13:10.319 the first time I thought, oh my god, there's something 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:14.400 wrong with his brain. And then actually another thing happened 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:17.440 with the espresso machine, which it was broken. The thing 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:20.160 about me being out of town and my brother and 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:22.640 sister were all out of town. We would come visit 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:25.440 every few months and see my parents, and because we 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:27.480 had three or four months in between every visits, we 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:30.400 could really see him declining, whereas my mother, who was 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:33.280 with him every day, didn't see it as clearly. And 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:36.520 also there's a great deal of denial when your spouse 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:41.320 has Alzheimers. It's a horrible slow thing, and and she 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:45.760 really didn't see it for a long time. Another thing 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:49.960 happened where he started to confuse my husband with my 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:53.880 sister's partner. Um just sort of not quite sure who 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:57.839 was with who. And that's you know, was completely not 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:01.480 like him as distant did as he was in our lives. 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:05.720 Sometimes he absolutely, like you know, knew who are husbands were. 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:08.120 How old was he at this point? And how old 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:13.920 is your mom? He was sixty nine when we really 0:14:13.960 --> 0:14:16.680 started to notice things happened, and my mother is seven 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:21.840 years older than him, so she was seventy six. We're 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:24.560 going to take a quick break when we get back. 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:28.640 Sasha talks about how her father's failing memory at first 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:33.400 changes him into a nicer, kinder guy, and then inadvertently 0:14:33.480 --> 0:14:46.920 opens the door to a lifetime's worth of massive secrets. 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:52.000 Something that started happening for me was my father while 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:55.520 his memory started to go, he became a really different person. 0:14:55.600 --> 0:15:00.440 He was so patient and calm, and if there was traffic, 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:02.960 he said, that's okay, you know, we'll get there. When 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:07.720 we get there, his entire demeanor changed and he really 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:15.480 became like this loving, kind person. And I felt like 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:18.320 I have a few years now with him where I 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:21.720 can change our dynamic and call him and talk to 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:25.680 him and visit. I tried to visit every month. Um. 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:29.200 And at one point he said he was proud of me, 0:15:29.400 --> 0:15:31.000 and it was the first time he had said that 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:34.360 in my entire life. And he was also physical for 0:15:34.400 --> 0:15:36.600 the first time in my life. My family are not 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:40.400 a physical family. We barely hug each other like I 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:43.040 don't think we maybe kissed each other on the cheek 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:45.480 three times in my entire life. And all of a sudden, 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:48.080 my father was like hugging me and sort of putting 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:51.720 his hand on my shoulder, and um, and I struggled 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:55.160 with is this the real him? And all these years 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:58.280 he was just an asshole because of stress and career 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:00.600 in life and who knows or is it not the 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:03.720 real him? And it's just you know, brain damage. But 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:06.880 in a way I didn't care because I was getting this, 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:13.440 like this nurturing in these nice moments with him. And 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:16.320 when I would go to visit, I would make sure 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:19.280 that we always had his favorite playlists from the nineteen 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:21.720 fifties playing on Spotify, and I would want to make 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:24.320 sure to do things that he would enjoy, and I 0:16:24.360 --> 0:16:28.600 would get annoyed that my mother seemed a little bit callous, 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:31.040 and she wanted to listen to NPR, but I could 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:33.840 see that it was confusing to him and jarring, and 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:36.960 he didn't it wasn't good for him, and I wanted 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:41.120 my mother to be more patient. So Sasha lets her 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:44.480 guard down. She enjoys her father and feels loved and 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:47.600 nurtured by him, admired by him, possibly for the first 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.920 time in her life. No matter how successful she is 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:53.640 as a television writer, she has longed for this kind 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:56.840 of connection with her dad. But then she gets a 0:16:56.880 --> 0:17:02.800 call from her mother. Something huge has happened. So my 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:05.679 father and mother are walking. And one thing about my father, 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:10.919 um is he was always very jealous. He was very 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:15.240 conservative in certain ways. He didn't want to talk about sex, 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:19.119 he didn't want to know about sex. He thought pornography 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:26.840 was disgusting. Really sort of antiquated possessive behavior from my father. 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:30.680 So they were taking a walk in this little old 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:32.520 man on the side of the road says hi to 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:35.160 my mother, he's probably you know, ninety, and my mother 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:38.840 says hi back, and my mother sort of says, I think, 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:42.040 you know, I think Bob might have a little crush 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:45.600 on me, and all of a sudden, my father says, really, well, 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:51.760 then I'm going to get back together with Karen. Karen 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:55.080 was an friend of my mother's um, a friend of 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:57.800 the families for a long time, someone my father spent 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:01.120 a lot of time with. And my other whipped around 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:04.120 and said, what do you mean you're going to get 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:07.159 back together with Karen. You were with Karen? And my 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:10.280 father says, yes, I was with Karen for years. We were, 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:13.880 you know, madly in love or something like that, and 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:19.080 then it was gone. Whether it was gone because his brain, 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:21.800 you know, it falls through like Swiss cheese, which is 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:24.920 what happens when you have Alzheimer's, or he just pretended 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:26.720 in the moment because he didn't want to talk about it. 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:30.080 But my mother realized he had had an affair with 0:18:30.119 --> 0:18:32.800 her friend. Your mother knew that this was I mean, 0:18:32.840 --> 0:18:34.840 she knew in her bones that this was true, That 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:38.040 it wasn't yes, a fantasy that you know, some Alzheimer's 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:41.200 fueled fantasy that that actually Alzheimer's was opening the door 0:18:41.240 --> 0:18:44.520 to a piece of truth. Yes, she knew it was true. 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:49.480 And we had always sort of joked to like, oh, 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:53.240 you know, my father's in Karen, what are they up to? Like? 0:18:53.320 --> 0:18:57.399 But it was so my parents were so open about 0:18:57.440 --> 0:19:02.320 their past that I didn't realize they had private lives 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:07.520 because they were so open about everything that I was 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:11.639 so shocked to find out that my father had this 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:15.640 private life, even from my mother. But once he said 0:19:15.640 --> 0:19:18.440 it out loud, it completely made sense to all of us. 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:24.440 Shortly after Sasha's father's bombshell about Karen, she's with her 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:27.320 mother and sister in Aspen at their parents summer home, 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:32.920 and there there is Sasha's father's laptop just sitting there, 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:35.919 begging to be accessed. He hasn't been able to use 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:38.719 it for a few years because he no longer understands computers. 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:42.720 Sasha's sister goes into his laptop and searches for the 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:47.359 name Karen. What ended coming up was sort of a 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:52.719 lifetime of lies. He had kept a journal, and I 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:57.680 definitely have mixed feelings because it's an invasion of privacy 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:00.359 that we read this, or I read part of it 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:02.960 and then decided I don't need to read anymore. He 0:20:03.000 --> 0:20:06.440 wrote in great detail about all of his sexual exploits, 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:10.560 and it was almost like a teenage boy was writing it. 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:14.200 It was really in his he's he's a wonderful writer, um. 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:18.600 But this this was almost like a different side of him, 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:23.760 of sort of a teenage boy bragging, um. And he 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:26.720 went way back into his past, and it was sort 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:30.679 of writing about all of his times he lied to 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:34.520 my mother and cheated on her and the friends of 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:37.399 hers that he had hit on, and that he had 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:39.840 cheated on his first wife as well, and he had 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:43.600 made up some business trips. He was a mountain climber, 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:47.720 that was one of his hobbies, and he would talk 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:51.320 about mountain climbing so often that my mother used to joke, 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:54.719 I almost wish he was having an affair because then 0:20:54.720 --> 0:20:57.240 I wouldn't have to hear about it. And he even 0:20:57.320 --> 0:21:00.880 referenced that joke while saying, ha ha, I am having 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:04.480 an affair right under her nose with her friend. And 0:21:06.000 --> 0:21:08.879 there was a moment in his journal that he wrote 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:15.000 about having sex in my bed with this woman and 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:19.639 not changing the sheets. And that was when I decided 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:23.439 I didn't need to read anymore of his journal, because 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:28.480 I knew that I didn't know who he was ever, 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:32.680 and um, that was enough information for me to know 0:21:32.960 --> 0:21:38.159 that I needed to just now work on reframing my 0:21:38.200 --> 0:21:42.200 own childhood and looking back and figuring some things out 0:21:42.200 --> 0:21:47.159 for myself, but that this was a man who was 0:21:47.280 --> 0:21:52.400 beyond for me anything that I could even try and comprehend. Yeah, 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:57.080 it's as if you it's almost like there's three acts 0:21:57.119 --> 0:22:00.520 here in your relationship with your father, and it's the 0:22:01.080 --> 0:22:06.840 emulating him, wanting his approval, his his distance, and then 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:12.760 having this brief period of time of his becoming this 0:22:12.800 --> 0:22:17.680 other person, this loving, kind, thoughtful person who would hug 0:22:17.680 --> 0:22:20.720 you and say I love you, and then losing that 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:25.280 person to what had been the truth all along. It's 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:28.080 like all of these layers, how do you? How do 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:33.399 you untangle that? One one of my first thoughts was, I, like, 0:22:33.560 --> 0:22:36.720 I want my three years of compassion back. I was 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:39.960 loving and and kind to him, and yelled at my 0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:42.560 mother for not, you know, turning off the NPR and 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:47.159 I should have. You know, I wanted my I wanted 0:22:47.200 --> 0:22:50.880 my compassion back. And then I you know, worked through 0:22:50.880 --> 0:22:54.280 that and realized it's always healthy and wonderful to be compassionate. 0:22:54.320 --> 0:22:56.720 It's never going to hurt you to be compassionate, and 0:22:57.080 --> 0:23:01.600 wanting that back isn't the way to go. Um. But 0:23:01.760 --> 0:23:06.440 then I thought my instincts growing up were actually correct, 0:23:07.080 --> 0:23:12.399 that he was unreachable, that he was guarded, and I 0:23:12.440 --> 0:23:19.320 didn't really ever know him. A discovery and adulthood that 0:23:19.400 --> 0:23:21.960 forces us to reckon with our childhood memories and re 0:23:22.160 --> 0:23:25.240 understand them is often one of the legacies of a 0:23:25.280 --> 0:23:30.000 family secret. In Sasha's case, she looks back and certain 0:23:30.040 --> 0:23:35.320 memories now means something altogether different. She recalled the time 0:23:35.359 --> 0:23:37.600 in her childhood when she was seven or eight and 0:23:37.680 --> 0:23:40.240 she was alone with her father. He woke her up 0:23:40.320 --> 0:23:42.040 late at night to say that he had to leave. 0:23:42.400 --> 0:23:46.160 He had food poisoning brought on from bad cevich, as 0:23:46.200 --> 0:23:49.840 he put it, and was going to the hospital. And 0:23:49.880 --> 0:23:53.720 I remember this so clearly because cevich was a word 0:23:53.800 --> 0:23:56.840 that I had just learned, and it sounded really fancy 0:23:56.920 --> 0:23:59.040 to me. And he said he had to go to 0:23:59.080 --> 0:24:01.879 the hospital because he had this food poisoning, but he 0:24:01.880 --> 0:24:03.920 would be back in the morning and just to stay 0:24:03.920 --> 0:24:05.960 inside and I'll be fine. And so he left me 0:24:06.000 --> 0:24:10.440 home alone overnight. And now looking back on that, I'm 0:24:10.520 --> 0:24:13.880 I'm he didn't have food poisoning. No grown man leaves 0:24:13.920 --> 0:24:15.600 their child alone in the middle of the night because 0:24:15.600 --> 0:24:17.840 they have food poisoning, they throw up, or they bring 0:24:17.880 --> 0:24:19.680 their child to the to the e R with them 0:24:19.680 --> 0:24:22.120 if there's really a problem. But he I'm sure went 0:24:22.160 --> 0:24:25.080 off and met some woman or some hooker, God only 0:24:25.119 --> 0:24:28.919 knows um and its memories like that that make a 0:24:28.960 --> 0:24:32.920 lot more sense to me that he was an addict, Uh, 0:24:32.920 --> 0:24:34.840 I mean, this is my like a sex addict, or 0:24:34.960 --> 0:24:38.399 he lived this other life that sort of sort of 0:24:38.400 --> 0:24:44.159 adds up and in a way that's helpful now for 0:24:44.200 --> 0:24:48.200 me to sort of heal. That makes sense. I think 0:24:48.240 --> 0:24:50.280 that there's something, you know, in all of this exploration 0:24:50.320 --> 0:24:53.720 that I've been doing a family secrets, there's a kind 0:24:53.760 --> 0:25:02.480 of liberation and finally understanding what was sort of hiding 0:25:02.480 --> 0:25:06.399 in plain sight, that there was always something that didn't 0:25:06.440 --> 0:25:09.200 add up. And then no matter how painful or awful 0:25:09.240 --> 0:25:12.639 it is to find out what that thing is, there's 0:25:12.680 --> 0:25:16.520 something that is also, ultimately I think, pretty grounding and 0:25:16.600 --> 0:25:21.200 freeing about that. Yeah, and this idea that I wanted 0:25:21.240 --> 0:25:24.000 to be just like him, and I realized in so 0:25:24.040 --> 0:25:27.600 many ways I am such a better person than he is, 0:25:27.720 --> 0:25:30.879 and I don't need to be like him, and I 0:25:30.920 --> 0:25:34.879