WEBVTT - Pulp Fictions 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:04.440 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Warning. 0:00:04.720 --> 0:00:08.920 This episode contains discussions of suicide. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:09.480 --> 0:00:11.920 If you are a loved one is struggling with suicidal thoughts, 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:22.560 please call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at three and 0:00:22.840 --> 0:00:26.599 four and huddled in the backseat of the VWS square back. 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:30.680 My fingers are dusty from the dirt of the community garden. 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:35.400 The patched knees of my jeans are caked and brown. 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:39.600 The community garden is a city of square plots with 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:43.440 this figot in the middle. It's a sea of green 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:46.640 beans and lettuce. There's no room to grow at home. 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:50.720 It's communism and free choice in the land of the people. 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:56.920 It's ideals. I don't understand. Home is a left out 0:00:56.960 --> 0:00:59.680 of the parking lot, and we always turn left out 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:03.520 of the parking lot and go home after. But today 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:07.240 Dad turns right, and I can hear my heart and 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:10.720 my ears when I reached my thumb into my mouth. 0:01:11.959 --> 0:01:14.520 I have never turned right out of the parking lot. 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:18.480 And what is up this hill? What is beyond these gardens? 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:22.280 How far does this road go? And where will it 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:27.000 lead us? We are lost, Dad says, And it's laughter 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:31.480 in his voice and cunning. Let's get lost, he shouts, 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:34.360 And am I alone in the car? And how far 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:40.160 do we drive? Lost? The word throbs through my head 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:43.640 like lightning, and I can't see out the window, but 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:47.160 I strained to see something I recognize, and my thumb 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:49.800 is in my mouth. And then I close my eyes, 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:54.320 but I still see him wild at the wheel. He 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:59.800 drives a cartoon car with television abandoned. We are lost. 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:10.239 That's Julia Mackenzie Muonemo, reading from her new memoir The Bookkeeper. 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:15.359 Julia grew up beneath the shadow cast by her father's 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:20.200 mental illness and suicide. You might think that this would 0:02:20.200 --> 0:02:24.600 be her family secret, But the secrets surrounding Julia's father 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:30.240 involve dusty paperbacks written under a variety of pen names, 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:34.320 hidden in a box that Julia couldn't bring herself to 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:52.359 open or face for the longest time. I'm Danny Shapiro, 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:55.880 and this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept 0:02:55.919 --> 0:02:58.840 from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:06.359 secrets we keep from ourselves. Tell me about the landscape 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:11.440 of your childhood, you know, I would say the landscape 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:15.000 of my childhood was sort of like indoors and somewhat anxious. 0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:19.280 I came home from school and I found my mom 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:22.120 in the TV room. Most of the time, she worked 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:24.799 from home, and her office was just outside the TV room, 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:27.360 and we would sort of gather there and watch soap 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:30.720 operas all afternoon. She periodically had to dash off to 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:34.160 answer her business phone, but that was really our time together. 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:37.960 And you know, I vaguely knew that I had friends 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:41.200 who did sports or other things after school. Even my 0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:45.080 siblings did sports and other things after school, but I 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:48.080 wasn't interested in that. For most of my childhood. I 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:50.520 really needed to be near my mom, and that's where 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:55.440 she was. What soap operas did you watch? What was her? Um? 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:58.119 The Guiding Light was the big one, that's what That's 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:01.080 what came on right at three o'clock, was around the 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:03.800 time I got home. Um, but on like half days 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:06.680 or vacation that you know, they're whatever the ones were 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:09.480 on Channel three. But that was what it was in Northampton. 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:11.960 So we were the Guiding Light side of things, not 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:14.760 the general hospital side of things. It was kind of 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:16.839 a war, yeah, I was. I was more of a 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:21.480 general hospital kid myself, so almost everybody was Yeah, So 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:23.560 the other place I spent a lot of time as 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:26.480 a child was at um My mother was a nikedo 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:30.039 instructor and she ran a dojo a couple of miles 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:31.920 away from home, and so I spent a lot of 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:36.120 time there with her on weeknights and Saturday mornings, and 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:38.920 you know, sort of watching her throw people around. And 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:42.000 it was not anything that was interesting to me. I 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:44.880 wasn't interested in niketo. I wasn't there to study. I 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:46.640 was there just to make sure that she was safe. 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:49.920 I think I spent a lot of my childhood kind 0:04:49.960 --> 0:04:52.359 of paying attention to my mom and making sure that 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:56.120 she was alive. There was this big absence, which was 0:04:56.120 --> 0:04:59.400 my father, who was always missing, and you know, sort 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:01.839 of the absence also of talking about the fact that 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:04.720 he was missing. We didn't really, I didn't really do that. 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:07.920 We didn't talk about him or mourning him or missing him. 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:10.320 We just sort of plotted along with soap operas and 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:16.680 aikido and things like that. Describe your mother a little 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:21.240 bit for me. My mother, I think before my father's death, 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:24.279 and I think certainly before we were born, I think 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:28.919 she was a very vibrant, socially active woman. You know, 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:32.679 they hosted dinner parties all the time they traveled the world. 0:05:33.160 --> 0:05:39.839 They had lots of friends. After his death, a lot 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:42.880 of with friends I think sort of faded away, you know, 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:46.000 some remained, but a lot of them didn't, And so, 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:49.480 you know, it's sort of a lonely time. And I 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:52.240 think my mother sort of wore the suit of that 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:54.320 almost as an armor. You know. She would never have 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:57.560 said that she was lonely, and she wouldn't call herself lonely. 0:05:57.600 --> 0:06:01.080 Now she you know, lives alone and says she's happy 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:04.960 to do that. But I see her as lonely, and 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:07.520 I think I saw her as lonely as a child too. 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:11.320 She's incredibly intelligent. She's one of the smartest people I know. 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:14.599 We had a joke when we were little that she 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:16.360 didn't know the answer to something, she would just make 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:19.400 it up, and often the made up answer was better 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:22.080 than the real answer, so we liked it better. I 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:25.680 always trusted her implicitly to sort of see us through 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:30.159 whatever needed seeing through. You know, she was a fierce 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:32.520 advocate for us when she felt that people had wronged us. 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:35.000 So there was a time when I was placed in 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:36.840 an English class that she thought was below me. In 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:39.040 high school, and I just remember her kind of charging 0:06:39.080 --> 0:06:41.920 in and talking to the guidance counselor and taking over, 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:44.760 and you know, my whole curriculum shifting as a result, 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:48.200 much for the better, obviously, but that was work. I 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:51.360 don't know that I would have ever done right. I 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:53.560 didn't see it really as a lack and so that 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:57.159 my mom kind of came to my defense. She advocates 0:06:57.160 --> 0:06:59.920 for us when she needs to. Yeah, you know, she's 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:02.520 fears she's a niketoist, right. She was one of the 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:06.080 highest ranking female aketoists in the country who was in Japanese. 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:10.000 How did your mother and father meet? They met at 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:13.640 a bar in New York City, um called the Riviera. 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:16.400 So when they met, they were both married to other 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:20.840 people and were introduced by a mutual friend. And my 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:23.280 understanding is that it was just kind of immediate that 0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:27.920 spark was was quite alive right away. And my mother's 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:32.080 marriage first marriage was very young, and she very quickly 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:35.120 discovered that he was an alcoholic and there were all 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:36.920 sorts of lives that he had told her, and she 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:40.120 was able to get that marriage annulled. So I grew 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:42.120 up with the sense of, like my mother was sort 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:45.040 of married before, but there's this word that means she 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:48.600 really wasn't ever married before, and it's annulment, so she 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:52.880 had her marriage annulled. My father was married to a 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:57.480 Dutch woman who I always understood to have been around 0:07:57.560 --> 0:08:00.600 for not a very long time, much like my mom husband. 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:03.000 Doing research for my book, I learned that she had 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:05.400 been around for actually quite a long time. They were 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:09.000 married for a while, but he left her, and he 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:12.760 and my mom got on a freight ship and sailed 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:17.760 across the Atlantic to write books under contract for various 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:22.160 sort of what they called factories of paperback originals, these 0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:24.600 publishing houses that just kind of put out what my 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:27.640 mother would describe as trashy novels, And so they had 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:30.400 contracts to write those, and I have pictures of them 0:08:30.400 --> 0:08:33.559 on that ship, sitting in there underpants, you know. Add 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:40.199 two typewriters romantic huh, a couple newly in love sailing 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:43.199 across the ocean on a freighter, pecking away at their 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:48.559 twin typewriters turning out trashy, pulpy novels, sort of like f. 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:53.160 Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, the non literary version. These are 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:55.360 the kinds of books that might display a man and 0:08:55.400 --> 0:08:59.800 a woman wrapped in all manner of torrid embraces on 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:05.160 our paperback covers. It's so interesting that very often in 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:07.400 that generation, if there were early marriages and there were 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:11.000 no kids, especially if they were brief marriages or even 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:15.720 more especially annulled, the kids would never have known. Parents 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:19.840 wouldn't have told. So that wasn't a secret. No, we knew. 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:22.440 There were things that a lot of people would have 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:25.440 kept from us that my mother just insisted on being 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:28.320 truthful about. And so the whole sort of definition of 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:33.520 secret in our family is feels a little different. Julia's 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:36.400 mom and dad were from very different backgrounds. Her father 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:40.439 was Jewish, raised in Brooklyn by Holocaust survivor parents who 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:44.160 were Orthodox. Her mother was raised in Albany in a 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:47.559 waspy family who were members of the local country club. 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:52.120 Her dad's mother is very unhappy that he's marrying a 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:56.640 non Jewish girl, super unhappy, and that doesn't change as 0:09:56.679 --> 0:10:00.440 they start to have kids. The story is that she 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:03.280 said to my mom while she was laboring with my sister, 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:06.800 who's the oldest. You know you're not religious anyway, Susie, 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:09.880 So why don't you just convert, and my mom was like, 0:10:10.679 --> 0:10:14.120 it's because I'm not religious that I can't convert. Right, 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:17.560 I have a sort of moral compass about this. So 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:20.240 you know whether or not that conversation happened actually during 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:23.199 her labor, I cannot confirm, but that's sort of the 0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:28.480 legend way to choose a moment. Tell me about what 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:34.400 you remember of your father. Yeah, my memories are spare um, 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:36.840 although I started to develop more as I was writing. 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:41.200 I remember this sort of you know, this larger than 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:46.160 life figure. I just he was physically enormous, you know, 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:50.120 very tall, strong and muscular, and you know, sort of 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:55.760 dark hair, mustache, glasses, this kind of not really Clark Kent, 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:59.320 but he felt like a superhero to me. Right. I 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:02.400 definitely stories from friends of his about the way he 0:11:02.520 --> 0:11:04.880 yelled my name when I came into a room, or 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:07.480 um sort of the way he held us and how 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:09.920 much he loved us. So there was the sense of 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:13.400 this warm kind of they're like figure, And I don't 0:11:13.440 --> 0:11:15.560 mean teddy bear, I really mean like sort of animal 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:18.880 kind of again. Vibrant also, you know the word I 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:20.839 used to describe my mother too. I think that there 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:24.439 was a vibrancy to him, and my brother certainly talks 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:28.120 about the sort of before and after. The dad he 0:11:28.200 --> 0:11:31.920 knew before his illness set in was just you know, 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:35.600 he was Daddy. He was this loving, larger than life figure. 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:39.880 You're the youngest of three, I'm the youngest of three. 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:43.680 And what's the age difference between you and your older siblings. 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:46.559 So my brother is three years older and my sister 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:49.160 is five years older, so enough of an age difference 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:52.800 that they would really have had much more concrete memories. Yeah, 0:11:53.120 --> 0:12:00.320 they definitely knew him better than I did. Will be 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:11.160 back in a moment with more family secrets. Julia's father 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:15.720 is frequently absent. He's looking for nothing less than the 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:19.280 meaning of life. It starts with the practice of Aikido, 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:23.040 which both of her parents become deeply involved in, but 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:27.400 then he branches out into other philosophies and spiritual seeking. 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:31.720 I don't know that he always knew what he was seeking, 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:35.360 but I think a sense of sort of answers he 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:39.559 had a he had a kind of quest to understand 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:43.440 cosmos in a way, I think he wanted there to 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:46.400 be something better than, something bigger, and he wanted to 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:50.679 be a part of it. He went on sort of 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:54.280 any excursion that would take him into the path of 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:56.839 someone he thought was sort of enlightened, right, So he 0:12:56.880 --> 0:12:59.400 went to see the Dalai Lama speak he would go 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:02.360 on a retreat, eat and meditate for days on end. 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:06.120 So when I was I think two and a half, 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:11.079 he left for one such retreat, and it was at 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.760 ten days, and it was the kind of retreat where 0:13:14.880 --> 0:13:18.160 I believe that it was meditation primarily, and there's a 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:21.520 teacher who you follow, and he was very eager to 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:26.000 impress the teacher, and he was very eager to return enlightened. 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:31.119 He felt that he was sort of ready to receive enlightenment, 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:34.719 whatever that might mean. And so his plan, which I 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:38.199 believe he executed, was to go there and in addition 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:42.480 to meditating all the time, also not sleep and I 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:47.040 believe eat as little as possible. So he was really 0:13:47.120 --> 0:13:49.440 sort of taking this ten day retreat to an extreme, 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:53.880 and it didn't go well. So he had an altercation 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:58.960 with the teacher, who pointed out to him that the 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:01.960 quest for enlightenment was not one you could speed up 0:14:02.120 --> 0:14:06.280 or compete to win. It was really a journey, and 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:12.640 he didn't like that at all. Julia's father sort of 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:17.520 falls apart. On this retreat, he steals a sacred bowl, 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:23.200 and then he escapes and drives back home. While he 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:26.200 was driving home, my mother got a phone call that 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:28.360 that it hadn't gone well and that he didn't look 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:32.720 right when he left. And this is actually, this is 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:35.200 a memory that I have, is um the moment that 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:39.000 he came home, which you know, the memory is very vague. 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:41.000 I was very young, but just this image of him 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:46.360 walking in the door pretty obviously transformed physically, not the 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:49.520 dad who had left. And in the image that I have, 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:52.080 he's just sort of standing in the entranceway of the house, 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:55.360 looking pretty rattled and confused, and he turns and looks 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:57.920 at me and starts coming towards me, and I don't 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:00.760 I don't think anything horrible happen next. But that's where 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:04.400 my memory sort of shut out. And so that was 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:08.080 his what his family says is his first breakdown. Are 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:10.520 sort of the family lore that that was his first breakdown, 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:13.920 and he didn't really ever come back from that one. 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:18.400 So he spent a lot of you know, the next 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:20.960 two years two and a half years in and out 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:25.120 of psychiatric institutions and in and out of therapy. There 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:28.520 weren't the same kind of treatment then, so um, he 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:30.800 didn't like the treatments that there were that he didn't 0:15:30.800 --> 0:15:33.440 like the way they made him feel. Um. And he 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:37.520 was really, really smart, and you know, one of the 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:40.080 things that he could do quite well was sort of 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:44.240 trick a therapist into into thinking that he was better, 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:48.840 better enough to sort of lower their guard. And so 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:53.240 then in probably November of the year that I was five, 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:58.200 he agreed to go to a psychiatric institution in western 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:02.440 Massachusetts called Austin Rigs, which I don't think anyone knew 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:04.600 very much about at the time, but it was a 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:07.480 place that he was willing to go because, like James 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:10.600 Taylor had gone there to kick a habit or something, 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:12.960 it felt like a place that he could respect. There 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:15.880 were people he respected who had gone there, and he 0:16:16.040 --> 0:16:18.440 went and it turned out not to be the kind 0:16:18.440 --> 0:16:22.200 of facility that was prepared to deal with his level 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:25.320 of illness. And he was there for a month. He 0:16:25.400 --> 0:16:28.280 came home briefly at Christmas to see us, and went 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:32.160 back to the hospital, and on January five, he hanged 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:38.880 himself in his hospital room. Did you know right away 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:45.320 as a five year old what suicide talked about Yes, 0:16:45.800 --> 0:16:47.720 I did as a five year old to know that 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:51.920 his parents wanted us to be told that he had 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:55.240 had a heart attack, and my mother was unwilling to 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:59.360 lie to us, and we also knew that we also 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:01.240 knew that his parents wanted us to know that he 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:05.160 had an heart attack, so we knew from the beginning 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:09.639 that it was a suicide. I didn't know the method 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:13.679 of that suicide. My sister and brother both did, at 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:18.320 least earlier than I did. My mother was certain the 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:21.359 line to us was not the solution that we needed 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:23.080 to know that it was suicide. We had known he 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:25.560 was mentally ill. I think we didn't use words like 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:29.199 schizophrenic or bipolar at that time, but we knew that 0:17:29.240 --> 0:17:32.760 he was mentally ill, and the suicide was not kept 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:35.960 a secret. But it wasn't for several years until she 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:39.360 told me that that he had hanged himself. And that 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:44.959 just that piece took up a lot of space in 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:49.040 my imagination as a very young child, not knowing how 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:52.560 he had committed suicide, I spent a lot of time like, oh, well, 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:54.560 did he shoot himself? No, where would he have gotten 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:57.600 a gun. He was in a psychiatric institution. Did he 0:17:57.680 --> 0:18:00.000 slid his wrists, Like again, where would he have gotten 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:03.680 the razor blade? I was sort of plagued by this question. 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:08.199 And when I did finally find out that we know, 0:18:08.240 --> 0:18:11.159 when my mother told me that he hanged himself, I 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:14.080 still had the questions because I didn't know with what 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:16.600 I was so sort of fixated on these details as 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:21.520 a kid. Just think of the imagination of a very 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:27.560 young child, a precocious, creative child, thinking about how her 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:31.880 father took his own life. Julia doesn't ask her mother, 0:18:32.440 --> 0:18:36.240 it's just too hard. It was years before she learned 0:18:36.520 --> 0:18:40.919 that he had hanged himself with his belt. Julia survives 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:45.360 the tragic loss of her father, grows up, excels intellectually 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:50.280 and academically, and heads off to bar to college. At 0:18:50.280 --> 0:18:55.480 what point do you meet the man who will become 0:18:55.480 --> 0:18:59.520 your husband? M hmm, Very early in my last semester 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:05.119 of college. So I'm going it comes from Zimbabwe and 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:08.800 I was a student at Barred and they had an 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:12.879 exchange program with schools in South Africa and Zimbabwe as 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:18.399 part of a program in international education. And he arrived 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:22.440 at Bard in you know, early February, in the middle 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:26.520 of a snowstorm in clothes you might expect someone to 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:31.280 arrive from Africa in, right, like light pants that didn't 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:34.119 go all the way down to his ankles, and you know, 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:37.120 a sweater that he had probably bought at the airport. 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:41.760 He looked so out of place and so handsome. And 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:44.960 I've noticed in the minute he stepped into the cafeteria. 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:49.680 I'll never forget that moment. Yeah, what had been your 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:52.639 in a sort of dating life before that? I had 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:56.919 had a relatively serious boyfriend earlier in college who I 0:19:57.080 --> 0:20:00.679 had felt great seriousness for. Right, I think that I was, 0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:04.520 from a pretty young age, kind of seeking a partner 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:08.480 and like a family. I wanted that sense of security 0:20:08.520 --> 0:20:12.199 and that sense of sort of constancy that I didn't 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:15.240 have as a child. And so I had sort of 0:20:15.240 --> 0:20:20.080 attached myself to this white Jewish man in college and 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:23.679 that didn't last terribly long or end with any grace. 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:25.919 My best friend in college said to me at one 0:20:25.920 --> 0:20:28.719 point when I was trying to figure out how I 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:31.320 was going to go forward and date someone, she said, 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:33.399 you know what, it was so great. You're not the 0:20:33.480 --> 0:20:35.840 kind of girl but a man wants to date. You're 0:20:35.880 --> 0:20:37.600 the kind of girl that a man wants to marry 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:40.959 and like college boys don't want to get married. And 0:20:41.000 --> 0:20:42.439 what do you think she meant by that was it 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:45.240 is kind of a seriousness about the way that you 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:47.240 were taking your life that you know, a lot of 0:20:47.280 --> 0:20:50.840 college students aren't kind of there yet. Yes, I had 0:20:50.880 --> 0:20:53.399 taken time off between high school and college before it 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:56.359 was called a gap year and a cool thing to do. Um, 0:20:56.400 --> 0:20:58.959 I had taken time off because I wasn't ready, so 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:01.680 I was a little bit older than the other people. 0:21:01.720 --> 0:21:04.760 But yes, I was serious. I was interested in kind 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:08.879 of figuring out the great mysteries of my family, of 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:12.560 my dad, of what that meant, what his history meant 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:17.040 about who I was. I had this real, deep sense 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:20.320 that I needed to connect myself to someone so that 0:21:20.359 --> 0:21:23.960 I would never be alone again. Right, of course, I'm 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:27.280 now much older and understand that that's impossible, but at 0:21:27.280 --> 0:21:30.480 the time I just thought, well, isn't that what you 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:33.400 do right? You find love and you get committed and 0:21:33.400 --> 0:21:36.320 and that person is your rock. And I think I 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:40.639 was really looking for a rock and lo and behold 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:46.000 in locked and Gone from Zimbabwe. And he too was 0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:51.080 very serious and was very interested in these larger questions. 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:54.560 He too came from a family with lots of complexity 0:21:54.680 --> 0:21:57.840 and also with mental illness, and we just had a 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:01.399 lot of questions and common and we were both willing 0:22:01.440 --> 0:22:04.520 to sort of be that rock for each other from 0:22:04.720 --> 0:22:12.000 very early on. I love that phrase, questions in common. 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:14.600 What a great way to go through life with a 0:22:14.640 --> 0:22:19.360 partner with shared questions. And this is just what happens. 0:22:20.160 --> 0:22:24.080 Julia and Goni become bonded and serious from the start. 0:22:24.920 --> 0:22:29.840 They're together for two semesters and then Goni returns to Zimbabwe. 0:22:30.680 --> 0:22:34.400 This is by now, and Zimbabwe is beginning to fall 0:22:34.440 --> 0:22:37.760 apart politically. The university where he hopes to do his 0:22:37.800 --> 0:22:41.680 graduate work to eventually become a professor is shut down. 0:22:42.359 --> 0:22:46.960 Julia fears Forni's physical safety, but there is a way 0:22:47.000 --> 0:22:51.760 he can come back on a fiance visa. As Julia 0:22:51.840 --> 0:22:55.639 and Goni plan their wedding, there's one person she fears 0:22:55.760 --> 0:22:59.240 isn't going to be happy about it. Remember her father's mother, 0:23:00.080 --> 0:23:04.320 the Holocaust survivor who hadn't approved of Julia's parents marriage. 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:08.479 Julia's grandmother had met and Gooni once and had been 0:23:08.560 --> 0:23:14.440 rude to him. Tell me a bit about that encounter 0:23:14.680 --> 0:23:16.480 with your grandmother when you went to see her and 0:23:16.520 --> 0:23:20.399 tell her my grandmother was a you know, she obviously 0:23:20.480 --> 0:23:24.600 had had more heartbreak in her life then really and 0:23:24.840 --> 0:23:29.000 anyone should have had to survive. But as a result, 0:23:29.080 --> 0:23:34.080 she was pretty broken. By this time. We had relatively 0:23:34.119 --> 0:23:37.359 regular contact up to the time that I started dating Goni, 0:23:37.600 --> 0:23:41.639 but she really did not approve and so communication had 0:23:41.680 --> 0:23:43.679 already been tense for some time. But I think she 0:23:43.800 --> 0:23:45.879 felt that she had sort of dodged a bullet when 0:23:45.880 --> 0:23:48.639 he moved back to Zimbabwe. So when I came to 0:23:48.680 --> 0:23:52.119 her to tell her that we were getting married, she 0:23:52.480 --> 0:23:57.480 I don't think was ready for that news. She had 0:23:57.520 --> 0:24:01.080 this very physical you know, she'd move her body, but 0:24:01.240 --> 0:24:03.840 her face just I had never seen someone's face just 0:24:04.080 --> 0:24:07.919 go white, and it was clear to me immediately that 0:24:08.920 --> 0:24:11.879 this was it. This was the sort of breaking point 0:24:11.960 --> 0:24:16.040 for us. And at first she cried. There were a 0:24:16.080 --> 0:24:20.080 lot of tears. She then sort of exploded in anger. 0:24:20.480 --> 0:24:22.840 And at this point where so we're at her condo 0:24:23.600 --> 0:24:28.200 in a development for older people in Connecticut, and we're 0:24:28.240 --> 0:24:31.360 moving between her living room and her kitchen, and she's 0:24:31.359 --> 0:24:35.480 sort of having this breakdown. I think, you know something. 0:24:36.520 --> 0:24:39.439 She stands at her counter in her kitchen and she 0:24:40.040 --> 0:24:42.439 sort of punches her fists onto the counter and she 0:24:42.520 --> 0:24:45.800 just says, to me, where will the children be? And 0:24:45.880 --> 0:24:49.639 that's when I realized that it wasn't really about me 0:24:49.800 --> 0:24:53.919 being white and going to being black. Her anxiety was 0:24:53.960 --> 0:24:58.000