WEBVTT - Bonus: Inheritance 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:12.640 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm 0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:16.880 Danny Shapiro and this is a bonus episode of Family Secrets. 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:21.280 In the last bonus episode, you heard from Jennifer Mendelssohn 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:25.239 about what it means to explore d NA and genetic roots. Today, 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:28.840 I am so excited to share with you a special 0:00:28.920 --> 0:00:33.640 excerpt from my audio book of Inheritance. Recording this audio 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:36.960 book was an intense experience three days in a sound 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:40.840 proof booth narrating the story of my life, a story 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:43.720 I had never known until I stumbled upon it as 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:47.199 a result of a DNA test. Get ready for the 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:50.520 exact moment that I discover the truth of my own 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:54.320 genetic identity, the truth my parents had never wanted me 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:58.760 to know, the truth they took to the grave with them. 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:01.680 This excerpt is Curtis See of Penguin Random House Audio 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:16.280 from the audiobook of my memoir Inheritance. Michael came over 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:18.560 to the bed and sat next to me. It had 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:20.920 been thirty six hours since we had sat side by 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:23.520 side on the chaise in my office, since I had 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:28.759 discovered that my father hadn't been my father, Doctor Benjamin Walden. 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:33.240 I entered his name my fingers cold and shaking. Benjamin 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:38.640 Walden ben Walden, Doctor ben Walden. There was no part 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:41.240 of me that believed this was happening, even as it 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:45.240 unfolded with a sense of inevitability so profound that I 0:01:45.280 --> 0:01:47.200 will later come to think of it as a kind 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:52.600 of fate. On the page for a medical website. Doctor 0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:56.280 ben Walden is a thoracic surgeon who retired from active 0:01:56.320 --> 0:01:59.960 practice in two thousand three. He is a well respected 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:03.680 speaker on the subject of medical ethics. He is a 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:07.760 graduate of the Medical School at the University of Pennsylvania. 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:11.960 In the months to come, indeed, I suspect for the 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:16.200 rest of my life, I will hear stories. Friends will 0:02:16.200 --> 0:02:19.839 send me links to news items. Experts will share their experience. 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:22.680 I'll be told of people who have searched for their 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:27.919 sperm donors, their biological fathers, all their lives. When these 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:31.840 searches have been unsuccessful, some have had their anonymous donors 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:36.040 identification numbers tattooed on their bodies, a way of marking 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:40.960 themselves with their only clue. I've seen photos of arms, ankles, 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:45.560 shoulders inked with stark series of numbers, and with each 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:48.919 story of a dead end a locked door. I am 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:54.760 stunned anew A favorite poem Otherwise by Jane Kenyon, begins 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:59.320 like this, I got out of bed on two strong legs. 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:05.040 It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:10.600 flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. The poet goes 0:03:10.680 --> 0:03:12.880 on to regard ways in which the bounty of her 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:17.400 daily life contained within it the shadow of a darker possibility. 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:22.600 My daughter was conceived in Philadelphia, my mother had said 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:27.160 that long ago evening, not a pretty story. When pressed 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:32.360 the word institute, her language was precise. The thing she 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:35.840 never planned to say that slipped out on the second 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:39.560 anniversary of my father's death, and only because I introduced 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:43.000 her to my friend from Philadelphia was an enormous piece 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:45.960 of luck. What if that friend had been from Detroit. 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:48.800 What if I hadn't brought my mother to the graduate 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:53.200 student reading that night. A seam ripped open in my 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:56.360 mother that night that allowed me access to a vital clue, 0:03:56.800 --> 0:03:59.640 though I didn't know it at the time. A moment, 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:04.560 a split second, and then it closed up again. If 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:08.280 she hadn't said those exact words, but if everything else 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:11.160 had remained the same when I got the results from 0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:14.520 ancestry nearly thirty years later, I would have discovered that 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:18.120 my father wasn't my biological father, but known nothing more, 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:20.479 I would have come to the conclusion that my mother 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:23.400 must have had an affair. I would have supplied yet 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:28.080 another false narrative to the story of my life. What 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:31.160 if Adam Thomas hadn't shown up on my ancestry page? 0:04:31.520 --> 0:04:36.400 What then all would have been a yawning, cavernous emptiness, 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:40.640 devoid of possibility, like the baby bird that fell from 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:43.680 its nest. I might have wandered through the world, never 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:46.320 knowing where I came from. I would have been left 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:48.640 with a hole inside me in the shape of a father, 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:53.520 or rather two fathers, the father who raised me, who 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:57.520 died too young, too sad, too lost, and the anonymous 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:00.280 man I came from but would never be able to identify. Five. 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:04.320 Instead of a false narrative, there would be an infinity 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:09.479 of narratives. Michael kicked off his sneakers and sat in 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:12.760 bed next to me. My laptop was balanced between us 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:16.279 as we waited for a YouTube ad to finish. Doctor 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:20.960 Benjamin Walden five syllables seven. If you included the prefix 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:25.880 A nice molifluous name. He had a website. It took 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:29.040 three clicks to get there. It was a simple site, 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:32.480 a repository of blog posts and essays he had written 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:35.960 about medical ethics, along with links to a couple of videos. 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:40.159 The screen went black, and then his name, in white 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:47.040 sam seraph type appeared. Dr ben Walden speaking at Reed College, Portland, Oregon. 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:51.159 An old man with white hair and blue eyes was 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:57.640 standing at a lectern. My God, I whispered. Time slowed 0:05:57.680 --> 0:06:01.120 to a near stand still. I could compute what I 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:06.320 was seeing, or rather who I was seeing. The man 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:09.880 was wearing khakis, a blue button down shirt, and a 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:13.440 fleece vest. He had a pale complexion, but his cheeks 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:18.719 were pink. His color high, my exact coloring somewhere in 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:22.360 the background the comments I had fielded just about every 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:25.880 day for fifty four years. Are you sure you're Jewish? 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:28.560 There's no way you're Jewish? Did your mother have an 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:33.200 affair with the Swedish milkman? I saw my jaw, my nose, 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:37.040 my forehead, and eyes. I heard something familiar in the 0:06:37.080 --> 0:06:41.760 timbre of his voice. It wasn't merely a resemblance. It 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:46.200 was a quality. The way he held himself his pattern 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:49.760 of speech. He was recommending a book to the audience 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:54.040 at toll Gowande's Being Mortal. He referenced an article in 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:56.960 the Onion. I had the bizarre thought that he had 0:06:57.000 --> 0:07:01.119 good literary taste. I ran my hands down the length 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:05.680 of my legs. Who was I? What was I? I 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:08.240 felt as if I might disintegrate right there in that 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:12.320 hotel room, floating high above the city. This wasn't what 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:15.400 I wanted to see, But now that I had seen it, 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:20.440 I would never be able to unsee it. Dr ben Walden, 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:24.960 his name, continued to appear beneath the lectern, the glint 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:30.520 of eyeglasses a wedding ring. Michael raised the volume. The 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:34.120 man's voice moved through me and around me, like something 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:38.960 invisible stitched into the air. In just a moment, I'll 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:44.200 open it up to questions, Jesus, Michael was saying, Jesus Christ. 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:50.080 Now ben Walden was gesticulating. He held both his hands 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:53.640 in front of him, as if bracketing the air in parentheses, 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:59.160 a gesture that I suddenly recognized as my own. I knew, 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:03.120 in a place beyond thought, that I was seeing the truth, 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:07.600 the answer to the unanswerable questions I had been exploring 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:11.880 all my life. The audience in Portland was now raising 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:14.880 their hands. He called on someone in the back row, 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:20.520 then nodded, smiling slightly as he listened. Do you see that, 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:24.560 I asked Michael, the way he's he even runs a 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:30.600 Q and A like you. Michael said, the following summer, 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:34.200 there will be a total eclipse of the sun, and Michael, 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:37.040 Jacob and I will take turns looking at it through 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:41.040 NASA approved glasses. But I will not trust the NASA 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.840 approved glasses. I will still look at the eclipse for 0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:48.200 only a fraction of a second at a time. This 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:50.600 is the way I watched the YouTube video on that 0:08:50.720 --> 0:08:56.280 June morning, A glimpse, then away, another glimpse, as if 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:58.600 the old man in the blue button down shirt and 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:03.760 Patagonia vest who he was and what that meant might 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:09.280 blind me forever. I slipped out of bed and walked 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:12.960 barefoot into the bathroom. My mind and body seemed to 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:16.920 be disconnected. My body wasn't the body I had believed 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:19.920 it to be for fifty four years. My face wasn't 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:24.200 my face. That's what it felt like. If my body 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:26.800 wasn't my body, and my face wasn't my face? Who 0:09:26.920 --> 0:09:31.600 was I? In several weeks, once I'm back East, I'll 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:34.480 meet my best friend from college for dinner, and when 0:09:34.480 --> 0:09:37.600 I walk into her apartment, I'll realize I'm afraid that 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:40.400 her feelings for me will have somehow changed, that I 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:44.240 am now unknowable to her. I'll stand in her living room, 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:48.439 tears streaming down my face, and ask, do you still 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:51.559 see me as the same person? And she will look 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:58.280 at me, amused, compassionate. You are the same person, She'll say. 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:02.560 But on that morning in Japantown, I encountered my own 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:05.760 face in the mirror and understood for the first time 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:10.040 that the information reflected back at me had always told 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:12.560 a different story than the one I had believed, no 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:17.800 more than believed known. I didn't feel like the same person. 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:22.080 The white haired, blue eyed doctor from Portland's was now 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:25.640 staring back at me. He had always been staring back 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:29.360 at me, and it wasn't only a physical thing certain 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:33.680 common features. Watching him on YouTube, I felt, with my 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:41.079 entire being something I could barely understand come from him. 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:43.640 I wrapped myself in a robe and sat at the 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:46.680 small desk where Michael had made the discovery about Bethany 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:51.199 and Adam Thomas. Less than an hour earlier, I closed 0:10:51.200 --> 0:10:54.199 the tab for the YouTube video and opened my email 0:10:55.760 --> 0:11:02.439 two Dr Benjamin Walden from Danny Shapiro, subject important letter. 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:06.160 It had been easy, just as everything else had been 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:10.800 insanely easy, to find his contact information. He had a blog, 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:14.320 He was out there in the world, a well respected physician, 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:17.920 a public speaker. He was a man who would probably 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:20.160 have no reason to think his inbox would contain any 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:24.040 huge surprises. How old was too old for a surprise. 0:11:25.000 --> 0:11:30.760 He was seventy eight. Dear doctor Walden, I'm writing to 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:34.040 you about something that may come as a shock. My 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:36.319 name is Danny Shapiro, and I am a fifty four 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:39.880 year old novelist, memoirist, wife, and mother of a seventeen 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:44.320 year old son. I live in Litchfield County, Connecticut. I 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:47.080 recently took a DNA test as nothing more than a lark. 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:51.800 I have always believed my parents to be my biological parents, 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:54.679 but now I have reason to believe that you may 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:59.240 be my biological father. I won't write more and less. Ah, 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:02.760 this may sense to you, and be you're willing to 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:06.120 communicate with me about it. I so hope you're willing. 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:09.599 I'm going to send you a link to my website 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:13.559 so you can see something of who I am. Www 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:21.280 dot Danny Shapiro dot com. Thank you. Danny. Michael was 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:24.800 in the shower. I waited, my finger hovering for a 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:28.520 moment before I hit senned. Before she got off the phone, 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:31.400 Jennifer Mendelssohn had asked me what I was going to 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:34.520 do now that I had zeroed in on my biological father. 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:39.679 She urged me to be methodical to do research. Apparently 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:41.960 there was a right way and a wrong way to 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:47.000 go about this. There were, she told me, templates. But 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:51.599 I wasn't feeling careful or methodical. In fact, quite the opposite. 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:56.000 I was feeling wild and reckless. I needed not to 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:59.360 sit back and cogitate, but to take any and every 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:02.720 kind of action. As long as I was in motion, 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:06.320 my fingers against the keyboard, the pen across the page, 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:10.880 dressing for the day, swiping lipstick across my now unfamiliar lips, 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:14.480 strapping on my sandals, I was able to hold onto 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:18.240 the belief that I was propelling myself forward rather than 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:30.880 falling backward into the abyss. My publisher has a special 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:35.200 offer for Family Secrets listeners off my book and a 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:38.080 selection of other great reads when you shop from Penguin 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:43.199 Random House. Just visit www dot Penguin Random House slash 0:13:43.280 --> 0:13:48.439 Inheritance and use the code p r H Family Secrets. 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:53.240 Family Secrets is an I Heeart media production. Dylan Fagin 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:57.280 is the supervising producer and Julie Douglas is the executive producer. 0:13:58.120 --> 0:13:59.920 If you have a family secret you'd like to share, 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:02.560 you can get in touch with us at listener mail 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:06.120 at Family Secrets podcast dot com, and you can also 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:09.920 find us on Instagram at Danny Writer, and Facebook at 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:13.880 Family Secrets Pod and Twitter at fam Secrets Pod. That's 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:18.439 fam Secrets Pod. For more about my book, Inheritance, visit 0:14:18.679 --> 0:14:34.640 Danny Shapiro dot com.