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Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: For Mom to have her little boy back in her

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Speaker 2: arms is like a kind of medicine, But when the

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Speaker 2: supply runs out, the crash will only be that much

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Speaker 2: more awful. For these few months of relief. But at

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Speaker 2: some point, even if I never find the courage to insist,

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Speaker 2: won't someone else make me go back? Anyway? Because I

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Speaker 2: am only now ten and know only our own narrow

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Speaker 2: experience of homeschooling, I still believe the answer must be yes. Mom,

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Speaker 2: I ask, are you sad all the time that I'm

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Speaker 2: growing up? She faces away, scrunches up her nose as

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Speaker 2: if pricked. I love the big kid version of you,

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Speaker 2: Steph so much, but I won't lie. I do miss

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Speaker 2: my baby boy. It's a parent's kurse. You know. Every

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Speaker 2: mother in the world wishes her kid wouldn't grow up

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Speaker 2: so fast. She holds my head against her chest as

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Speaker 2: she laughs. But I guess I'm the only one who's

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Speaker 2: actually doing something about it.

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Speaker 3: Right, that's Stephan Meryl Block, novelist and author of the

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Speaker 3: recent memoir Homeschool Stephens is a story of a maternal

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Speaker 3: bond grown profoundly awry and a son's conflicted heart as

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Speaker 3: he's forced over the years to choose between his mother

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Speaker 3: and himself. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets,

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Speaker 3: the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we

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Speaker 3: keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.

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Speaker 3: Tell me about the landscape of your childhood. You have

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Speaker 3: this move between certain and fourth grade, where you move

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Speaker 3: from Indianapolis to Plano, Texas, and that's kind of the

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Speaker 3: beginning of where a lot of things change.

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Speaker 2: My memories of Indianapolis are very impressionistic. I remember being

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Speaker 2: a part of a very small and loving school community

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Speaker 2: in a older leafy neighborhood, you know, middle class neighborhood,

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Speaker 2: somewhere north of the city, and feeling profoundly secure, and

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Speaker 2: also feeling in that moment that my mom was a

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Speaker 2: profoundly joyful person. I remember when my friends would come

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Speaker 2: to play at our house, everyone was always envious because

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Speaker 2: my mother was the fun mom. She was the one

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Speaker 2: who was always playing with us kids. Whereas you know,

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Speaker 2: I go to my friend's houses and the moms would

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Speaker 2: be busy with whatever business they had or talking to

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Speaker 2: the other grownums. But my mom was always down there

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Speaker 2: on you know, kid level with us. I've probably in

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Speaker 2: some ways idealized this time in my life, but I

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Speaker 2: just remember it being a period of immense closeness and

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Speaker 2: also security. And then when I was eight, my father

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Speaker 2: lost his job and was headhunted for a new position

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Speaker 2: at a hospital in this town called Plano, Texas, which

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Speaker 2: in that year was just at the start of a

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Speaker 2: massive transformation. When we moved to town, West Plaino, where

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Speaker 2: we settled was essentially farm land, and you know, the

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Speaker 2: earth fare is nearly perfectly flat, and you could see

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Speaker 2: as far as the horizon in any direction. We lived

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Speaker 2: in a brand new housing subdivision, but all around us

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Speaker 2: were just wheat fields and dirt roads. So it was

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Speaker 2: we were sort of like the last satellite settlement of

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Speaker 2: the Dallas Fort Worth sprawling metroplex. But over the years

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Speaker 2: of living in Plano, and especially in those early years,

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Speaker 2: the growth of the city was just almost instantaneous. There'd

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Speaker 2: be a field one day, it felt like, and then

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Speaker 2: a shopping mall the next day, or you know, these

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Speaker 2: big box stores would just go up with like impossible speed.

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Speaker 2: And also the housing subdivisions, we just like conquer the

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Speaker 2: place lanes in you know, a matter of months. It's

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Speaker 2: almost like I remember like looking out the window to

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Speaker 2: my old view of you know, old Texas and just

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Speaker 2: wheat fields and the horizon and maybe a barn in

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Speaker 2: the distance, and then the next day there's there's you know,

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Speaker 2: nine hundred houses up there and just like a sea

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Speaker 2: of sort of tar shingle roofs. So Plano was a

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Speaker 2: place of where a lot of a lot of major

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Speaker 2: corporations were building their headquarters. It was the you know,

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Speaker 2: always rated very well by magazines, is like one of

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Speaker 2: the most affordable, healthiest places to raise a family. The

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Speaker 2: schools were considered to be very good. The problem I

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Speaker 2: think with Plano was that not nobody was really from there,

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Speaker 2: you know these It was like an an instant city

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Speaker 2: on the prairie, and so there was no sense of

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Speaker 2: what I had felt in Indianapolis, which was like the

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Speaker 2: sort of intergenerational connectedness and a feeling of being in

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Speaker 2: a home that had belonged to a community for long

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Speaker 2: period of time. Plano, I often joke, was like growing

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Speaker 2: up in the city size airport duty Free, where it's like,

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Speaker 2: you know, it's nice in there, but it's all the

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Speaker 2: same shops you could find in any other city, and

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Speaker 2: it's filled with people just on their way to somewhere else.

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Speaker 3: Stephan grows up in a family of four, his mother,

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Speaker 3: his father, and his older brother, Aaron. His father is

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Speaker 3: a psychologist with a very particular specialty pre surgical psychological screening.

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Speaker 3: It is his job to assess whether patients are psychologically

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Speaker 3: prepared for surgery and how they may fare afterwards. When

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Speaker 3: his father accepts a new position at a hospital in Plano,

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Speaker 3: the family uproots from Indianapolis. The move is supposed to

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Speaker 3: be an opportunity, the next step, but for Stephan's mother,

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Speaker 3: it feels like something else. Entirely. She has left without

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Speaker 3: her support system. She is suddenly acutely unfulfilled.

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Speaker 2: I think that my family had hit a difficult spot,

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Speaker 2: and with my with my father's work in particular, and

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Speaker 2: you know, this sort of financial procarity. And I think

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Speaker 2: when he was offered this position in Plano, Plano seemed

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Speaker 2: to offer a lot, because I remember reading these articles

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Speaker 2: that she had found about how wonderful the schools supposedly were,

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Speaker 2: about what a nice house we could get. She was

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Speaker 2: excited by my father's larger salary, and it seemed like

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Speaker 2: a like a good news start and like the sort

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Speaker 2: of the most logical thing that we should we should do.

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Speaker 2: She moved it us there. I don't remember her writing

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Speaker 2: it or being resistant to it at all, but something

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Speaker 2: happened to her in that move. When we were preparing

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Speaker 2: to move, I remember she bought me this children's picture

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Speaker 2: book called Hula Motster's Meet You at the Airport. It

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Speaker 2: was about a kid whose family moves to the southwestern

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Speaker 2: where I think maybe Arizona, and it's just sort of

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Speaker 2: like preparing a child for a move in that direction.

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Speaker 2: But it wasn't Ela Musters that met us at the airport.

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Speaker 2: It was it was Mom's anger, and it came out

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Speaker 2: of what I can now see as some pretty dramatic

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Speaker 2: losses in her life. When we were in Indianapolis, she

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Speaker 2: had found a wonderful job as an editor of the

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Speaker 2: children's magazine owned by Highlights. She had this network of

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Speaker 2: close friends and one very very close best friend. And

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Speaker 2: what she had, and I think what was most fulfilling

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Speaker 2: to her, as she would say, was two small children

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Speaker 2: at home who needed her so much and so often.

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Speaker 2: And I think when we moved to Texas, you know,

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Speaker 2: she didn't have the job. Her friend was hundreds of

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Speaker 2: miles away. And this was in the time when phone

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Speaker 2: calls were expensive and the longestans phone calls were expensive,

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Speaker 2: So it wasn't you know, she wasn't in as regular

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Speaker 2: touch with with her best friend as she would have liked.

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Speaker 2: And now I was eight years old and my brother

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Speaker 2: was eleven years old, and we didn't need her in

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Speaker 2: the same ways. So I think she was struggling to

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Speaker 2: find a place for herself and for her energies, and

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Speaker 2: I think that's where her anger came from. But when

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Speaker 2: I remember my brother and I had this picture that

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Speaker 2: my father had taken of my brother, my mother, and

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Speaker 2: myself on the snowy Indiana morning, and you know, we're

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Speaker 2: all so rosy cheeked and happy, and we're pressed close

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Speaker 2: to each other, so the image of coziness. And in

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Speaker 2: the first year or two after we moved to Plain, Note,

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Speaker 2: my brother and I used to hide this picture. We

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Speaker 2: would hide it in the linen closet of our bathroom

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Speaker 2: and we would pull it out and look at the

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Speaker 2: picture together, and you would just say to each other,

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Speaker 2: what happened? Like she was so happy and we were

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Speaker 2: just trying to reckon with that shift in her persona.

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Speaker 2: She now became a person who yelled often and who

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Speaker 2: would speak to us in this like very intense and

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Speaker 2: sort of condescending way. She felt deeply unsettled.

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Speaker 3: It seemed like there was a pattern to the way

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Speaker 3: that her rage would present itself, and if I were

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Speaker 3: to kind of make a map of it, it was

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Speaker 3: like any kind of attempt to individuate on the part

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Speaker 3: of you boys was met with rage, and then after

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Speaker 3: the rage would come a kind of shunning or a

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Speaker 3: kind of silent treatment that was just brutal, and at

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Speaker 3: some point you would capitulate, you know, whatever it was

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Speaker 3: that you had been doing to try to kind of

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Speaker 3: express yourself as an individual, you would kind of let

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Speaker 3: go of that.

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Speaker 2: That's an interesting way of and I think a wise

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Speaker 2: way of observing that dynamic, and I think how I

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Speaker 2: experienced it was my mother had very certain views of

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Speaker 2: how the world operated, of what was right and what

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Speaker 2: was wrong, and she received any kind of pushback against

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Speaker 2: her position as betrayal. You couldn't argue with her without

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Speaker 2: her feeling like you were on the side of her

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Speaker 2: perceived enemies. And so when you did, like when I

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Speaker 2: once tried to gather my courage and confront her about

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Speaker 2: the changes we had seen in the sort of emergence

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Speaker 2: of this anger in her. She went silent on me,

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Speaker 2: and she wouldn't speak to me, you know, for a

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Speaker 2: long while. I mean, I remember it as being more

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Speaker 2: than a day that you know, I got this just

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Speaker 2: silent treatment because because I had not. It wasn't that

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Speaker 2: I had a difference of opinion. It was that that

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Speaker 2: I was sort of traitorous in expressing a different perspective

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Speaker 2: I had betrayed her.

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Speaker 3: It's nineteen ninety Stephen's between second and third grade when

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Speaker 3: he and his family moved to Plano. He enters the

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Speaker 3: school system there at the start of third grade, and

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Speaker 3: he doesn't have an easy time of it.

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Speaker 2: Third grade was challenging. My new school in Plano was

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Speaker 2: quite different from the school I had come from. Our

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Speaker 2: school in Indianapolis was this small, nurturing, hippyish kind of

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Speaker 2: almost like a monossory esque model, and the school in

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Speaker 2: Plano was this brand new facility, like everything else in

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Speaker 2: the town was brand new, and it seemed to work

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Speaker 2: under a similar ethos as the rest of the town,

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Speaker 2: which was you know, everything was sort of wrote and

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Speaker 2: regimented and geared toward academic advancement and ultimately toward career advancement.

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Speaker 2: You know, it felt kind of like we were in

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Speaker 2: a factory for the processing of our brains. There were

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Speaker 2: ten thousand worksheets to fill out. It was just all

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Speaker 2: kind of jarring after my experience, in my brother's experience

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Speaker 2: of our previous school. But there was also a lot

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Speaker 2: of joy there I made. You know, there's a pleasure

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Speaker 2: that comes from that can come from this placement, which

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Speaker 2: is you learn the possibility of some form of self reinvention.

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Speaker 2: But also, I think more critically, you learn your ability

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Speaker 2: to create new communities where you land, and that there's

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Speaker 2: something empowering in that. And I did have a lot

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Speaker 2: of friends, and I was very pleased at how I

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Speaker 2: was able to make new friends. You know. The school

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Speaker 2: was not the happiest place for me, but my mother

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Speaker 2: and I as third grade changed over to fourth grade

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Speaker 2: and I was assigned to this new teacher who I

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Speaker 2: did not love and who in some ways I feared.

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Speaker 2: An interesting dynamic developed between my mother and me around school,

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Speaker 2: which was she was often in that time and as

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Speaker 2: I said, so kind of unsettled. She would get into

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Speaker 2: these kind of angry states, and I discovered that I

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Speaker 2: could displace that anger away from myself by talking about

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Speaker 2: how unhappy I was at school. There's something about presenting

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Speaker 2: school as the target that the target off of me.

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Speaker 2: I would tell her all these stories. You know, I'd

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Speaker 2: be at school, and if anything negative happened, if the

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Speaker 2: teacher acted in some way that I knew would make

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Speaker 2: mom unhappy, I'd be thrilled because I would get to

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Speaker 2: run home with the story of, you know how my

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Speaker 2: abusive teacher and the crazy things she did that day.

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Speaker 2: And you know, I think often I probably exaggerated those

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Speaker 2: stories so that, you know, my mother and I could

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Speaker 2: have this connectedness as we both just like student in

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Speaker 2: our disdain for the school. But little did I know

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Speaker 2: where it would all lead me.

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Speaker 3: Stephan and Aaron are four years apart and are very

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Speaker 3: different kids, with very different personalities and very different trajectories.

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Speaker 2: My mother treated us quite differently. Aaron is was and

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Speaker 2: is a profoundly joyful person whose interests run towards he's

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Speaker 2: a computer scientist now, and he was always sort of

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Speaker 2: a computer scientist that art. You know, he was excited

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Speaker 2: by technical things and by you know, science fiction, fantasy,

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Speaker 2: and the subjects of his fascination were not my mother's.

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Speaker 2: And he was also a kind of loud and theatrical

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Speaker 2: kid in you know, I think ways that would be

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Speaker 2: charming to me now as an adult see in a kid,

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Speaker 2: but at the time I often felt like, you know,

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Speaker 2: he was the older brother who was like louder and

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Speaker 2: claimed a lot of the attention. And so I had

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Speaker 2: discovered that the way that I could get attention was

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Speaker 2: through quiet often and through a kind of sullenness. Like

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Speaker 2: I discovered that if I sort of exaggerated my feelings

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Speaker 2: of sadness, it was a way for my mother to

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Speaker 2: turn to me and to sort of take me to her.

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Speaker 2: And so, you know, this sort of codependent relationship developed

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Speaker 2: so early, you know, eight or nine, where you know,

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Speaker 2: I would sort of perform my unhappiness for her, whether

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Speaker 2: it be at school or just you know, outside of

250
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Speaker 2: school or whatever aspect of my life. I wanted to

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Speaker 2: present to her, and she would you know, hold me

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Speaker 2: to her. And it was a way I was winning

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Speaker 2: attention and also a way that I was diffusing her anger.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well that makes so much sense, but then it,

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Speaker 3: shall we say, backfires. Yeah, the idea of homeschooling Stephan

256
00:15:22,720 --> 00:15:26,720
Speaker 3: takes root after that unhappy fall semester. By the time

257
00:15:26,760 --> 00:15:30,400
Speaker 3: spring rolls around, it has become a seta COMPLI the

258
00:15:30,480 --> 00:15:34,040
Speaker 3: prospect of homeschooling. Stephan also seems to bring his mother

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Speaker 3: a great deal of joy, which is his job to

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Speaker 3: bring her joy.

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Speaker 2: I think it's important to say that at this moment,

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Speaker 2: which is nineteen now is nineteen ninety two, I had

263
00:15:47,520 --> 00:15:51,200
Speaker 2: never met any homeschoolers myself. I don't know that my

264
00:15:51,240 --> 00:15:54,360
Speaker 2: mother had ever met any Homeschooling today has become this

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Speaker 2: massive nationwide movement. In that time, it was still in

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Speaker 2: some places not fully legal, and Texas it had just

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00:16:02,440 --> 00:16:06,200
Speaker 2: become sort of officially legal. It was met with a

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Speaker 2: lot of skepticism. There was a weirdness to it that

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00:16:09,960 --> 00:16:12,800
Speaker 2: was a little bit scary to me. I did not

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Speaker 2: want to home school. I think we're if anything were.

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Speaker 2: I was hoping that all of these complaints and conversations

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Speaker 2: would lead to was to a different school that was

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00:16:22,200 --> 00:16:24,520
Speaker 2: something more like the school I had left in Indianapolis.

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Speaker 2: But in that moment, I remember the conversation was, well,

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Speaker 2: we can't afford that kind of a school, but if

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Speaker 2: we do this, we don't have to pay anything, and

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Speaker 2: you know I can give My mother was saying, I

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Speaker 2: can give you, you know, the best education, a one

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00:16:38,520 --> 00:16:42,760
Speaker 2: to one student teacher ratio, you know, and they'll be free.

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Speaker 2: And I remember well that the first time I had

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Speaker 2: even I heard the word homeschool come out of her mouth.

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Speaker 2: I was upstairs in my bedroom, just sort of like

283
00:16:50,880 --> 00:16:52,960
Speaker 2: laying in bed, I think, with a book, and I

284
00:16:53,040 --> 00:16:56,200
Speaker 2: heard my father and mother talking about my troubles at

285
00:16:56,200 --> 00:16:57,960
Speaker 2: school and what might be done about it. And I

286
00:16:58,000 --> 00:17:00,680
Speaker 2: heard her say the word homeschool, and I remember sitting

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00:17:00,760 --> 00:17:05,119
Speaker 2: up in bed. That can't be a real possibility, can it.

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00:17:05,760 --> 00:17:09,159
Speaker 2: I went downstairs and my mother had found some article

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00:17:09,280 --> 00:17:12,000
Speaker 2: I kind of remember. It had like infographics about the

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00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:14,760
Speaker 2: growth of homeschooling, and she was lit up with this

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00:17:14,880 --> 00:17:17,760
Speaker 2: kind of excitement. You know, since the move to Texas,

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00:17:17,880 --> 00:17:20,160
Speaker 2: she had really struggled to find a place to put

293
00:17:20,160 --> 00:17:24,119
Speaker 2: her energies and her enthusiasms, which were immense. She was

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00:17:24,119 --> 00:17:26,879
Speaker 2: a person who would get fixated on a theory and

295
00:17:27,040 --> 00:17:29,439
Speaker 2: sort of give her all to it and you know,

296
00:17:29,560 --> 00:17:33,199
Speaker 2: just come to something with almost like religious zeal. And

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00:17:33,240 --> 00:17:35,439
Speaker 2: so I could hear in her voice that she was

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Speaker 2: coming to homeschooling with that same kind of energy now,

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Speaker 2: and it scared me, and I started to ask these questions, well,

300
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Speaker 2: what will happen to my friendships? Will I know the

301
00:17:47,040 --> 00:17:49,600
Speaker 2: things I'm supposed to know to keep advancing in grades?

302
00:17:50,119 --> 00:17:52,920
Speaker 2: And at the time, she said, well, what we really

303
00:17:53,000 --> 00:17:55,600
Speaker 2: have to worry about is this one bad teacher you have.

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Speaker 2: We can just homeschool the rest of the year, then

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Speaker 2: you can go back in fifth grade. We'll make sure

306
00:17:59,560 --> 00:18:01,440
Speaker 2: you still have a social life, and you're going to

307
00:18:01,560 --> 00:18:04,000
Speaker 2: learn so much more in these months with me than

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00:18:04,000 --> 00:18:05,960
Speaker 2: you would learn in school. And she said it'll be

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Speaker 2: like summer vacation all the time. You know, maybe a

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00:18:08,119 --> 00:18:10,359
Speaker 2: little more structure, but basically summer vacation all the time.

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Speaker 2: That all sounded nice enough, but I still had enormous trepidation.

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Speaker 2: When she brought me in for the meeting with our

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Speaker 2: principal where she officially signed the papers to withdraw me

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Speaker 2: from the Texas school system. My principal said, are you

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Speaker 2: sure this is what you want? And she also said,

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Speaker 2: you know, you can come back to the school at

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Speaker 2: any time. I remember her reaching out to hold my hand,

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Speaker 2: and I remember feeling I remember feeling like it was

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00:18:37,359 --> 00:18:39,679
Speaker 2: the first time I had ever touched my principle, and

320
00:18:39,720 --> 00:18:44,399
Speaker 2: I was so excited about that, and I wished in

321
00:18:44,520 --> 00:18:46,560
Speaker 2: that moment. I was like, oh, we've just sort of

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00:18:46,680 --> 00:18:49,600
Speaker 2: repaired what was broken here for me, which is I

323
00:18:50,040 --> 00:18:54,240
Speaker 2: didn't feel, you know, closely nurtured by my school community,

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Speaker 2: and all of a sudden I did. But you know,

325
00:18:56,320 --> 00:18:59,520
Speaker 2: it was around this conversation of my leaving, and I

326
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Speaker 2: remember when she asked me, is this really what you want?

327
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Speaker 2: Maybe inside my mind I was thinking, of course not.

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Speaker 2: But then what I felt was my mother's anger over

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Speaker 2: the you know, the last year's, her unsettledness, and how

330
00:19:13,720 --> 00:19:16,639
Speaker 2: badly she wanted it. What I wanted more than to

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Speaker 2: be at school or not to be at school, was

332
00:19:19,160 --> 00:19:23,359
Speaker 2: to repair the broken world of my early years in Indianapolis.

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Speaker 2: I want. I wanted to be back and happy with

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Speaker 2: my mother, and so I said, yes, this is what

335
00:19:28,240 --> 00:19:32,520
Speaker 2: I want. Our homeschooling began with a shopping spree, and

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00:19:32,720 --> 00:19:36,680
Speaker 2: it began with the you know, sort of elaborate and joyful,

337
00:19:37,320 --> 00:19:40,800
Speaker 2: kind of vitigenous thrill of assembling a kind of theater

338
00:19:40,920 --> 00:19:43,840
Speaker 2: of school, but still in after a couple of weeks

339
00:19:43,840 --> 00:19:46,439
Speaker 2: at past we hadn't gotten to any actual schooling. She

340
00:19:46,600 --> 00:19:49,719
Speaker 2: was so happy then, and you know, I remember she

341
00:19:49,760 --> 00:19:52,359
Speaker 2: would say, like, oh, you've never you know, I used

342
00:19:52,400 --> 00:19:54,000
Speaker 2: to play hooky all the time as a kid. You

343
00:19:54,000 --> 00:19:56,119
Speaker 2: should just you're a kid. You should enjoy playing hooky.

344
00:19:56,119 --> 00:19:58,280
Speaker 2: And we would like when we should have been at school,

345
00:19:58,400 --> 00:20:00,240
Speaker 2: we should have been learning. I was like at the

346
00:20:00,280 --> 00:20:03,119
Speaker 2: movie theater, at the ice cream shop, and my brother

347
00:20:03,119 --> 00:20:04,479
Speaker 2: would come home at the end of the day from

348
00:20:04,520 --> 00:20:06,720
Speaker 2: the school bus, and my dad would come back from work,

349
00:20:06,760 --> 00:20:08,719
Speaker 2: and we would just sort of lie about what we

350
00:20:08,760 --> 00:20:12,240
Speaker 2: had done that day because it was like the secret

351
00:20:12,240 --> 00:20:18,359
Speaker 2: between us, and the secret was giving her this great happiness. Eventually,

352
00:20:18,720 --> 00:20:21,920
Speaker 2: we did settle down a bit, and my mother had

353
00:20:21,960 --> 00:20:25,439
Speaker 2: a theory at the time that when you get to

354
00:20:25,480 --> 00:20:28,879
Speaker 2: fourth grade, the only subject that you're not going to

355
00:20:28,960 --> 00:20:33,720
Speaker 2: sort of learn by osmosis is math. You need to

356
00:20:33,720 --> 00:20:36,200
Speaker 2: have curriculum, it needs to be more regulated, but everything else,

357
00:20:36,440 --> 00:20:37,919
Speaker 2: you know, sort of comes on its own if you

358
00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:41,199
Speaker 2: just follow your curiosity. And so we had math in

359
00:20:41,240 --> 00:20:45,600
Speaker 2: the mornings. She had mail ordered the textbook that I

360
00:20:45,600 --> 00:20:48,159
Speaker 2: had had at my public school. She ordered the teachers

361
00:20:48,240 --> 00:20:51,360
Speaker 2: edition for herself, and she and I would sit there

362
00:20:51,680 --> 00:20:54,280
Speaker 2: and sometimes we do the math together. Often I would

363
00:20:54,359 --> 00:20:56,760
Speaker 2: do it alone. I would work through a lessoner two.

364
00:20:57,520 --> 00:21:00,000
Speaker 2: One of my favorite tricks was was one she would

365
00:21:00,119 --> 00:21:02,160
Speaker 2: leave the room to you know, take a phone call

366
00:21:02,280 --> 00:21:05,200
Speaker 2: or to cook something. I would steal her teacher's edition

367
00:21:05,240 --> 00:21:07,040
Speaker 2: and like copy down all the answers and then she'd

368
00:21:07,080 --> 00:21:08,920
Speaker 2: come back in the room and be like, oh my god,

369
00:21:08,960 --> 00:21:11,320
Speaker 2: you got all the answers right there. Took you five minutes.

370
00:21:11,680 --> 00:21:15,520
Speaker 2: My mother believed from when I was very young. Let's

371
00:21:15,520 --> 00:21:17,840
Speaker 2: say she convinced herself that I was in possession of

372
00:21:17,880 --> 00:21:21,720
Speaker 2: this immense intellect. This I mean she she would refer

373
00:21:21,760 --> 00:21:24,760
Speaker 2: to it as genius. And so, you know, she would

374
00:21:24,760 --> 00:21:27,800
Speaker 2: see these worksheets that I had cheated on, you know,

375
00:21:27,880 --> 00:21:29,800
Speaker 2: filled in the answers from her own book, and she

376
00:21:29,800 --> 00:21:31,760
Speaker 2: would just take it as evidence of this sort of

377
00:21:31,840 --> 00:21:34,080
Speaker 2: like god given genius that I was in possession of.

378
00:21:34,160 --> 00:21:37,639
Speaker 2: And she would say to me, you know, thank God

379
00:21:37,800 --> 00:21:39,600
Speaker 2: I pulled you out of that place, like look how

380
00:21:39,600 --> 00:21:43,840
Speaker 2: they were wasting a mind as exceptional as yours, you know.

381
00:21:44,760 --> 00:21:47,119
Speaker 2: And I loved the attention, and it made, you know,

382
00:21:47,240 --> 00:21:50,239
Speaker 2: my supposed gifts made her so happy that I was

383
00:21:50,480 --> 00:21:53,520
Speaker 2: very happy to continue that that theater. I was so

384
00:21:53,680 --> 00:21:57,840
Speaker 2: happy in that moment to feel loved and celebrated. But

385
00:21:58,160 --> 00:22:01,440
Speaker 2: what I felt was I don't think I was necessarily

386
00:22:01,680 --> 00:22:05,040
Speaker 2: questioning or not questioning her assessments of me at that

387
00:22:05,160 --> 00:22:07,520
Speaker 2: at that moment. But what I what I felt was

388
00:22:07,520 --> 00:22:10,960
Speaker 2: this anxiety about my return to school, which was supposedly

389
00:22:10,960 --> 00:22:14,480
Speaker 2: going to happen the following year. And I thought, well,

390
00:22:14,480 --> 00:22:17,800
Speaker 2: if I'm actually cheating, and if actually math is the

391
00:22:17,800 --> 00:22:20,520
Speaker 2: only subject we're doing, am I going to be prepared?

392
00:22:20,560 --> 00:22:23,320
Speaker 2: Am I actually despite all of her you know, claims

393
00:22:23,320 --> 00:22:28,399
Speaker 2: of my supposed genius going to be way behind, which I,

394
00:22:28,560 --> 00:22:31,560
Speaker 2: you know, suggests that I did not subscribe to her,

395
00:22:31,840 --> 00:22:35,520
Speaker 2: to her view of my of my brilliance. We would

396
00:22:35,560 --> 00:22:37,600
Speaker 2: go to the library and she would have me check

397
00:22:37,600 --> 00:22:42,360
Speaker 2: out these books on history's great thinkers like Benjamin Franklin

398
00:22:42,560 --> 00:22:46,520
Speaker 2: or William Shakespeare, Albert Einstein, and she would we would

399
00:22:46,560 --> 00:22:50,440
Speaker 2: read the parts of these little kid biographies that concerned

400
00:22:50,480 --> 00:22:54,080
Speaker 2: their early childhood, and she would say, oh, at eight, Einstein,

401
00:22:54,200 --> 00:22:56,880
Speaker 2: was you know, getting seasoned math? Look how good you'res

402
00:22:57,080 --> 00:23:00,440
Speaker 2: you know, basically implying that I was already a track

403
00:23:00,520 --> 00:23:04,680
Speaker 2: that far exceeded Albert Einstein, and I think she believed it.

404
00:23:04,720 --> 00:23:06,959
Speaker 2: I mean that when she believed something, she committed to

405
00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:12,040
Speaker 2: it with such conviction that I see now that this

406
00:23:12,440 --> 00:23:15,960
Speaker 2: belief in my supposed brilliance was in some ways the

407
00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:19,520
Speaker 2: sort of central lie that helped everything together for us.

408
00:23:20,119 --> 00:23:23,119
Speaker 2: Because if I was so brilliant, then she must homeschool me.

409
00:23:23,400 --> 00:23:25,879
Speaker 2: She said, you know, I have to cultivate these talents.

410
00:23:26,359 --> 00:23:28,159
Speaker 2: You know. She compared me to Mozart and said, you know,

411
00:23:28,200 --> 00:23:30,040
Speaker 2: look at what Mozart's father did for Mozart. That he

412
00:23:30,040 --> 00:23:32,320
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been Mozart if he his father had sent

413
00:23:32,359 --> 00:23:34,000
Speaker 2: him off to some public school.

414
00:23:34,119 --> 00:23:39,760
Speaker 3: You know, we'll be back in a moment with more

415
00:23:39,800 --> 00:23:57,399
Speaker 3: family secrets. Stephan is nine or ten years old. His hair,

416
00:23:57,760 --> 00:23:59,960
Speaker 3: which was very light when he was a little kid,

417
00:24:00,359 --> 00:24:03,520
Speaker 3: is starting to grow darker. His mom wants it to

418
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:07,879
Speaker 3: be blonde again, so she uses bleach to lighten it.

419
00:24:07,880 --> 00:24:11,720
Speaker 3: It's around this time, too, that Stephan begins his own

420
00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:16,119
Speaker 3: private mutiny against what's happening to him. He needs to

421
00:24:16,200 --> 00:24:19,920
Speaker 3: reclaim his own body, though he doesn't consciously realize it.

422
00:24:20,359 --> 00:24:22,560
Speaker 3: He finds a locust for his pain.

423
00:24:24,880 --> 00:24:28,520
Speaker 2: She would often say to me, how the happiest moment

424
00:24:28,560 --> 00:24:32,520
Speaker 2: in her life was when I was, you know, three four,

425
00:24:32,680 --> 00:24:35,560
Speaker 2: and I would hold onto her body with both my

426
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:38,639
Speaker 2: arms and my legs, and I call myself a baby sloth.

427
00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:40,480
Speaker 2: And she would you be able to walk around the

428
00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:42,400
Speaker 2: house like use her arms because I'd be holding onto

429
00:24:42,400 --> 00:24:46,440
Speaker 2: her so tightly. She also kept pictures around the house

430
00:24:46,600 --> 00:24:50,080
Speaker 2: of you know, my toddler self, and she, you know,

431
00:24:50,320 --> 00:24:52,199
Speaker 2: it was clear to me that this was, you know,

432
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:53,840
Speaker 2: when I was like three and four was like the

433
00:24:54,200 --> 00:25:00,200
Speaker 2: moment of her greatest happiness. And also also when I,

434
00:25:00,280 --> 00:25:02,800
Speaker 2: in her estimation, was sort of at my most perfect.

435
00:25:03,080 --> 00:25:06,160
Speaker 2: She actually the first time I got a haircut at

436
00:25:06,320 --> 00:25:10,160
Speaker 2: probably at four, she kept clippings of that hair and

437
00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:14,720
Speaker 2: she would sometimes pull out these old clippings of my hair,

438
00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:18,120
Speaker 2: and so you know, you were like, you know, an

439
00:25:18,160 --> 00:25:21,040
Speaker 2: angel from a Renaissance Fresco. You were a perfect little

440
00:25:21,119 --> 00:25:24,320
Speaker 2: chair up baby. And she would look at my current hair,

441
00:25:24,359 --> 00:25:26,879
Speaker 2: which was brown, and she would say, you know, it

442
00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:29,679
Speaker 2: just breaks my heart, like what happened to this, my

443
00:25:29,680 --> 00:25:34,320
Speaker 2: perfect little baby. And what she was doing was was

444
00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:39,840
Speaker 2: putting lightner in my hair. She used sun in this

445
00:25:39,920 --> 00:25:44,000
Speaker 2: sort of it has like a hydrogen peroxide plus other

446
00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:47,080
Speaker 2: components to it. We had we had a swimming pool.

447
00:25:47,359 --> 00:25:49,119
Speaker 2: This was like the most exciting part of moving to

448
00:25:49,160 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 2: Texas was our house had a swimming pool out back.

449
00:25:52,600 --> 00:25:54,840
Speaker 2: And we'd have what she would call school time in

450
00:25:54,920 --> 00:25:57,760
Speaker 2: the pool, and she would cradle me in her arms

451
00:25:57,800 --> 00:25:59,680
Speaker 2: as if I wasn't infant, and she would talk about

452
00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:02,360
Speaker 2: that how you know, oh, in a pool, I can

453
00:26:02,400 --> 00:26:05,159
Speaker 2: hold you forever, like when you were a baby. And meanwhile,

454
00:26:05,200 --> 00:26:07,440
Speaker 2: my hair would be, you know, filled with this product,

455
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:09,639
Speaker 2: and she'd be angling my head towards the sun so

456
00:26:09,680 --> 00:26:11,399
Speaker 2: that it would be, you know, doing its work to

457
00:26:11,840 --> 00:26:14,919
Speaker 2: sort of restore my hair to its rightful color. And

458
00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:18,120
Speaker 2: then we would go inside and she would you, we'd

459
00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:20,359
Speaker 2: rinse out the product and she would compare it against

460
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:22,480
Speaker 2: the clippings of my toddler hair and she'd be like, oh,

461
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:24,679
Speaker 2: not to not bear yet, you know. And so then

462
00:26:24,680 --> 00:26:26,600
Speaker 2: I would have to do another session of this. And

463
00:26:26,600 --> 00:26:28,159
Speaker 2: it went on and on for a long time. My

464
00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 2: hair instead of turning to that color, she remembered to

465
00:26:31,800 --> 00:26:35,240
Speaker 2: turn this like bright fluorescent orange color. And then she

466
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:38,480
Speaker 2: got so frustrated with the project and with this product

467
00:26:38,520 --> 00:26:40,840
Speaker 2: she had been using, that she just pulled out a

468
00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:43,119
Speaker 2: bottle of hydrogen bronzie from under the sink. I just

469
00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:44,879
Speaker 2: sort of started to like pour it track me on

470
00:26:44,960 --> 00:26:49,000
Speaker 2: to my head and I just remember this like immense

471
00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:52,760
Speaker 2: pain in my scalp. After a few applications directly on

472
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:55,160
Speaker 2: my head of you know, it was just so painful

473
00:26:55,240 --> 00:26:57,080
Speaker 2: and my you know, my hair was starting to fall

474
00:26:57,119 --> 00:26:59,560
Speaker 2: out a bit and it was like this crazy color.

475
00:27:00,119 --> 00:27:02,080
Speaker 2: This is bright, bright lawn. And it never got to

476
00:27:02,080 --> 00:27:04,800
Speaker 2: where she wanted, but you know, eventually it was just like,

477
00:27:05,280 --> 00:27:07,359
Speaker 2: you know, I had this like wild dandruffe coming off

478
00:27:07,440 --> 00:27:10,479
Speaker 2: of my scalp. And she eventually called quits on that project.

479
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:12,720
Speaker 2: But that was not the end of her projects to

480
00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:20,640
Speaker 2: sort of return me to infant. So my mother bought

481
00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:24,040
Speaker 2: these children's trivia cards that they still exist in They're

482
00:27:24,040 --> 00:27:26,800
Speaker 2: a wonderful product called brain Quest. There are trivia that

483
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:28,239
Speaker 2: like a fourth grader should know. They have this one

484
00:27:28,240 --> 00:27:31,919
Speaker 2: for each grade level. My mom was convinced that the

485
00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:35,320
Speaker 2: if you knew everything on these trivia cards, like you

486
00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:37,760
Speaker 2: didn't need to worry. I had expressed all this anxiety

487
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:40,119
Speaker 2: about do I know everything that a fourth grader should know?

488
00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:41,920
Speaker 2: And she said, if you know everything on these trivia

489
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:43,960
Speaker 2: cards for fourth graders. You have nothing to worry about.

490
00:27:43,960 --> 00:27:46,320
Speaker 2: You know everything that you should know. And I tried

491
00:27:46,359 --> 00:27:48,119
Speaker 2: to believe her in that. So she would keep the

492
00:27:48,160 --> 00:27:50,720
Speaker 2: trivia cards on the edge of the pool and hold

493
00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:52,880
Speaker 2: me in her arms and like look over and ask

494
00:27:53,000 --> 00:27:55,640
Speaker 2: me a question from the card. And if I knew

495
00:27:55,680 --> 00:27:57,960
Speaker 2: the answer, she wouldn't dunk me. If I didn't know

496
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:00,440
Speaker 2: the answer, she would put me under water, pull me

497
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:02,680
Speaker 2: back up and tell me the correct answer. And honestly,

498
00:28:02,720 --> 00:28:04,919
Speaker 2: like that was a major part of our schooling for

499
00:28:04,960 --> 00:28:07,879
Speaker 2: that year. Like that that was, that was like our curriculum.

500
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:09,520
Speaker 2: And she would she would as she helped me, she

501
00:28:09,520 --> 00:28:11,240
Speaker 2: would talk about how it was, you know, just like

502
00:28:11,280 --> 00:28:13,119
Speaker 2: having a baby back in her arm, and you know,

503
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:16,399
Speaker 2: I was in my my swimming suit, and you know,

504
00:28:16,800 --> 00:28:19,399
Speaker 2: as this product was working on my hair, I just

505
00:28:19,520 --> 00:28:23,119
Speaker 2: felt like wholly exposed, Like I like she owned my

506
00:28:23,200 --> 00:28:25,760
Speaker 2: whole body. It was around this time I also became

507
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:29,560
Speaker 2: extremely modest. My mother would always say to me, you know,

508
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:33,000
Speaker 2: in fourth grade, like you went upstairs one day naked

509
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 2: and I put some clothes, and I never saw you

510
00:28:34,840 --> 00:28:37,240
Speaker 2: naked again. And I think that what I needed was

511
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:39,920
Speaker 2: to have some part of my body that was mine

512
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:44,840
Speaker 2: and not hers, and a part of that project, which

513
00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:46,960
Speaker 2: I mean, this is how I interpreted it at the

514
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:50,000
Speaker 2: time I think was was. I had this this metal

515
00:28:50,120 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 2: compass that you you know, of the sort that you

516
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:54,840
Speaker 2: used to draw a circle, I guess, a sort of

517
00:28:55,240 --> 00:28:58,239
Speaker 2: geometry class tool. When I was alone in my room,

518
00:28:58,280 --> 00:29:00,800
Speaker 2: I would take the point of this compass and made

519
00:29:00,840 --> 00:29:03,480
Speaker 2: a test of how far I could poke it into

520
00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:06,840
Speaker 2: the skin at my hip, and I, you know, sometimes

521
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:08,880
Speaker 2: I would if I made it bleed. That was like

522
00:29:08,960 --> 00:29:13,040
Speaker 2: a sort of successful test. And I, as an adult

523
00:29:13,080 --> 00:29:16,680
Speaker 2: looking at that, I see, you know, it was a

524
00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:20,480
Speaker 2: way of expressing pain that or of trying to empty

525
00:29:20,520 --> 00:29:23,240
Speaker 2: myself of pain that I wasn't even conscious I was

526
00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:27,320
Speaker 2: experiencing necessarily. But at the time I do remember I thought,

527
00:29:27,800 --> 00:29:30,800
Speaker 2: these wounds on me are something that mom does not

528
00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 2: know about, and it was like my thing that belonged

529
00:29:33,240 --> 00:29:35,160
Speaker 2: to me alone, and it was under my baiting zoo

530
00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:36,240
Speaker 2: where she couldn't see.

531
00:29:38,200 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes so much sense. I mean, both interpretations

532
00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:44,520
Speaker 3: make sense, right, Like it's.

533
00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 2: Not one or the other. Yeah.

534
00:29:45,560 --> 00:29:48,800
Speaker 3: So one of the things that's really striking is that

535
00:29:49,360 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 3: for several years from spring of fourth grade all the

536
00:29:52,800 --> 00:29:57,120
Speaker 3: way to the end of eighth grade. Each year, you think,

537
00:29:57,960 --> 00:30:00,040
Speaker 3: this is the moment I'm going to tell her I

538
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:02,280
Speaker 3: can't do this anymore. This is the moment I'm going

539
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:05,320
Speaker 3: to tell her that I'm going back to school. And

540
00:30:05,360 --> 00:30:13,440
Speaker 3: there was always a reason why that became impossible. Yeah,

541
00:30:13,920 --> 00:30:17,959
Speaker 3: Stephan's grandmothers are essentially the only ones from the outside

542
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:21,880
Speaker 3: who ever really step into the family's world, and when

543
00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:25,160
Speaker 3: they do, there offered just a glimpse of what life

544
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:28,760
Speaker 3: looks like inside the family bubble. The first summer after

545
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:32,200
Speaker 3: homeschooling begins, the family goes up to their old cottage

546
00:30:32,480 --> 00:30:36,320
Speaker 3: on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, the singular place where

547
00:30:36,360 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 3: Stephan's mother can let loose and be joyful. There, she

548
00:30:39,880 --> 00:30:44,120
Speaker 3: laughs easily, she moves differently, The tension that usually hums

549
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:48,800
Speaker 3: beneath her surface quiets. But then when Nana, Stephan's mother's

550
00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:52,440
Speaker 3: mother arrives, it becomes clear that she isn't quite herself.

551
00:30:53,120 --> 00:30:57,000
Speaker 3: At first, it's small things, little slips. Then it becomes

552
00:30:57,040 --> 00:30:59,360
Speaker 3: clear her mind is beginning to fray.

553
00:31:01,480 --> 00:31:03,280
Speaker 2: The other thing that was happening that I wasn't really

554
00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 2: fully aware of until we made a trip to the

555
00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:09,400
Speaker 2: family college that summer was the advancement of my grandmother's

556
00:31:09,560 --> 00:31:13,240
Speaker 2: mental deterioration. She had seemed like a little, you know,

557
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:15,960
Speaker 2: kind of fuzzy and maybe like a little abstracted for

558
00:31:16,040 --> 00:31:19,160
Speaker 2: a couple of years, but it was that summer, it

559
00:31:19,200 --> 00:31:22,520
Speaker 2: was it had just become undeniable. There was a sort

560
00:31:22,520 --> 00:31:27,200
Speaker 2: of heated conversation between my grandmother, Nana and who I

561
00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:30,960
Speaker 2: called Nana, and my mother about my mother's older sister

562
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:34,600
Speaker 2: with whom my mother had a very contentious relationship. And

563
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:37,960
Speaker 2: my mother said to my grandmother, you know, I need

564
00:31:38,000 --> 00:31:40,080
Speaker 2: you to see what my childhood was like with her.

565
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:43,920
Speaker 2: I need you to appreciate the pain she put me through.

566
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:49,520
Speaker 2: And my grandmother said, so, that's so awful. But my

567
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:52,719
Speaker 2: question is where were her parents? Meaning where were her

568
00:31:52,760 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 2: own daughter's parents? And my mother I just remember her face,

569
00:31:58,960 --> 00:32:02,040
Speaker 2: the pain in her face of them moment. You know

570
00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:05,040
Speaker 2: what she was looking for. She would never find, you

571
00:32:05,080 --> 00:32:09,040
Speaker 2: know that, because she was my grandmother wasn't capable of

572
00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:13,320
Speaker 2: any longer. And that night I found my mother crying

573
00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:17,120
Speaker 2: in her room, and you know I had I had

574
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:19,200
Speaker 2: come to the cottage that summer. This was after our

575
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:22,760
Speaker 2: first semester of homeschooling, like filled with these plans to

576
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:27,080
Speaker 2: tell her this is, We've done our semester, I'm going

577
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:30,440
Speaker 2: back for fifth grade. I'm worried about falling behind, I

578
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:34,479
Speaker 2: missed my friends, all these things. But then it was

579
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:39,000
Speaker 2: it was then that my mother, you know, I felt

580
00:32:39,040 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 2: the depths of her grief. And then the next morning

581
00:32:41,560 --> 00:32:44,000
Speaker 2: she took me out for this this kayaking trip where

582
00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 2: she told me this long story of the greatest traumas

583
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:51,840
Speaker 2: of her childhood. And the moral of the story of

584
00:32:51,840 --> 00:32:57,440
Speaker 2: her great traumas was you can't trust institutions, and you

585
00:32:57,440 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 2: can't trust what other people tell you. You have to

586
00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:02,680
Speaker 2: make your own way in this world. And so you know,

587
00:33:03,080 --> 00:33:05,280
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter what if anyone else thinks it's crazy.

588
00:33:05,320 --> 00:33:06,680
Speaker 2: We must keep homeschooling.

589
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:11,880
Speaker 3: And it's this combination too, of her philosophy in that regard,

590
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:19,120
Speaker 3: but also she's sharing some really painful details of her

591
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:23,560
Speaker 3: own traumatic memories with you. So how are you, as

592
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:27,960
Speaker 3: this kid, gonna go against that and take that away

593
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:31,800
Speaker 3: from her? It was very incredibly complicated, you know, just

594
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:35,280
Speaker 3: this combination of her fervor and her certainty and also

595
00:33:35,760 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 3: her kind of extraordinary manipulation.

596
00:33:38,840 --> 00:33:40,760
Speaker 2: You know, as you're saying this to me, I have

597
00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 2: not quite realized this. I have written a memoir on

598
00:33:45,360 --> 00:33:48,120
Speaker 2: this subject. I like yet to quite put this together,

599
00:33:48,240 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 2: that she and I both were using pain to draw

600
00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:55,000
Speaker 2: each other closer. I mean I must have in some

601
00:33:55,200 --> 00:33:57,760
Speaker 2: way learned it from her. I don't want to like

602
00:33:57,760 --> 00:33:59,800
Speaker 2: I'm wholly blameless, but I was. I was, in fact

603
00:33:59,840 --> 00:34:02,800
Speaker 2: nine years old, so in some ways it was, by definition,

604
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:06,120
Speaker 2: you know, fairly playless. I have to think that like

605
00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:08,919
Speaker 2: for choosing to tell me the story in that moment,

606
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:10,960
Speaker 2: she must have since we had been silent on the

607
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:13,600
Speaker 2: topic of my return to school. We had agree when

608
00:34:13,600 --> 00:34:15,480
Speaker 2: she first pulled me out that that's when I would return,

609
00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:17,560
Speaker 2: but we had there was a serf of curious silence

610
00:34:17,600 --> 00:34:20,840
Speaker 2: around the subject. And it was coming soon. It was

611
00:34:21,120 --> 00:34:23,920
Speaker 2: the summertime, school was about to start, and I was

612
00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:26,440
Speaker 2: the moment she chose to share these great traumas with

613
00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:30,239
Speaker 2: me of her childhood. She had been falsely diagnosed with

614
00:34:30,280 --> 00:34:34,440
Speaker 2: polio when she was three, and separated from her family

615
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:38,359
Speaker 2: and put into this polio quarantine, and it was her

616
00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:40,319
Speaker 2: first memory was of being on one side of the

617
00:34:40,320 --> 00:34:42,719
Speaker 2: glass and like pounding on the glass begging to see

618
00:34:42,719 --> 00:34:44,080
Speaker 2: her family, which is just on the out side of

619
00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:48,000
Speaker 2: the glass, and they wouldn't let her. And then and

620
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:49,799
Speaker 2: then in the end, apparently she you know, didn't have

621
00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:52,120
Speaker 2: polio at all, they thought, you know, I could see

622
00:34:52,120 --> 00:34:55,960
Speaker 2: how her skepticism of institutions might grow out of that moment.

623
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:58,359
Speaker 2: And I think in some ways, like when I look

624
00:34:58,400 --> 00:35:00,840
Speaker 2: at the whole scope of her life, there's something almost

625
00:35:01,640 --> 00:35:04,640
Speaker 2: tragic in a Greek mode about it about this early

626
00:35:04,719 --> 00:35:07,239
Speaker 2: childhood trauma and how it steered the course of her

627
00:35:07,280 --> 00:35:09,960
Speaker 2: life and eventually like her demise as well, Like it

628
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:13,600
Speaker 2: was such a powerful memory that was so determinative of

629
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:14,280
Speaker 2: who she became.

630
00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:19,880
Speaker 3: You write, at one point, Mom's history was our core curriculum,

631
00:35:20,520 --> 00:35:23,399
Speaker 3: and in a way, in her sharing with you in

632
00:35:23,440 --> 00:35:27,160
Speaker 3: that moment on the kayak, a place where there's no

633
00:35:27,560 --> 00:35:32,080
Speaker 3: there's no getting away, telling you those stories, the timing

634
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:38,239
Speaker 3: of that just really struck me that that was how

635
00:35:38,280 --> 00:35:44,160
Speaker 3: she was going to convince you to continue in that way.

636
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:47,600
Speaker 2: You know. And when I was reflecting on this as

637
00:35:47,640 --> 00:35:51,800
Speaker 2: an adult, I was just struck by a sort of perfect,

638
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:56,400
Speaker 2: weird symbolism of this moment, the way that she supposedly

639
00:35:56,440 --> 00:36:00,279
Speaker 2: contracted polio was by playing in a swamp that was

640
00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:05,800
Speaker 2: near the cottage, that was downstream from a dumping site

641
00:36:05,920 --> 00:36:09,279
Speaker 2: and you know, but perhaps contained probably did contain some

642
00:36:09,280 --> 00:36:12,319
Speaker 2: contaminated waters. She and her cousins were swimming and kind

643
00:36:12,360 --> 00:36:15,120
Speaker 2: of having there, like fighting with muckballs in the swamp,

644
00:36:15,239 --> 00:36:16,959
Speaker 2: and she became very ill that night and was rushed

645
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:19,960
Speaker 2: for the emergency room, and they you know, assumed polio,

646
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:22,400
Speaker 2: and then that's how she was put into quarantine. So

647
00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 2: so that morning when I was going to tell her,

648
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:29,400
Speaker 2: you know, I'm going back to school. Also the morning

649
00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:33,400
Speaker 2: after or very near to, when her mother had forgotten

650
00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:38,120
Speaker 2: her own relationship to her daughter, Mom kayaked us out

651
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:41,239
Speaker 2: to the exact place where that to that swamp where

652
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:44,400
Speaker 2: she had gotten so sick. And so she took me

653
00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:47,239
Speaker 2: to the literal place of her worst memory. And we

654
00:36:47,239 --> 00:36:49,520
Speaker 2: were in this kayak and that you know, the swamp

655
00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 2: there is the water level is very low, there's lots

656
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:56,080
Speaker 2: of logs and you know, mucky things, and it's hard

657
00:36:56,080 --> 00:37:00,520
Speaker 2: to maneuver, and we got stuck there. We were, as

658
00:37:00,560 --> 00:37:03,200
Speaker 2: she's telling me this story, you know, a memory in

659
00:37:03,239 --> 00:37:07,120
Speaker 2: which she is psychically stuck. We were literally stuck in

660
00:37:07,160 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 2: that space unable to turn around. And I think of

661
00:37:12,040 --> 00:37:14,520
Speaker 2: that still when I think of the power of that

662
00:37:14,600 --> 00:37:17,080
Speaker 2: memory in her life. But yeah, all of her memories,

663
00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:18,480
Speaker 2: you know. I think this was a big part of

664
00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 2: her project in homeschooling me. Is It's interesting to think

665
00:37:21,520 --> 00:37:24,920
Speaker 2: about it too, that she always wanted to write, and

666
00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:27,200
Speaker 2: she was a good storyteller, and she always wanted to

667
00:37:27,239 --> 00:37:31,880
Speaker 2: tell stories. She never could quite pull that together, but

668
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:36,319
Speaker 2: she always encouraged my literary aspirations, and she told me

669
00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:38,719
Speaker 2: her stories like I was the sort of reader for her.

670
00:37:39,320 --> 00:37:42,480
Speaker 2: And I took that job very seriously, and I still

671
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:46,160
Speaker 2: I think I take it seriously. Part of the obligation

672
00:37:46,239 --> 00:37:49,440
Speaker 2: I feel in writing about her is carrying those stories forward,

673
00:37:49,560 --> 00:37:50,799
Speaker 2: even if she's no longer here.

674
00:37:53,200 --> 00:37:55,200
Speaker 3: Stephen doesn't tell his mother that he wants to go

675
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:59,680
Speaker 3: back to elementary school. He continues to be homeschooled. One day,

676
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:01,719
Speaker 3: his mom decides that it would be fun for them

677
00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:05,239
Speaker 3: to drive by during recess. His classmates are all now

678
00:38:05,320 --> 00:38:07,880
Speaker 3: in fifth grade.

679
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:11,280
Speaker 2: It was one way of sort of reminding me of

680
00:38:11,560 --> 00:38:15,600
Speaker 2: the supposed freedom I had as a homeschooler, and I

681
00:38:15,640 --> 00:38:18,680
Speaker 2: think she was proud of giving me that freedom. She

682
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:21,080
Speaker 2: often thought that I was sort of too serious and

683
00:38:21,320 --> 00:38:24,120
Speaker 2: too rule a biting, and she tried to bring out

684
00:38:24,120 --> 00:38:26,319
Speaker 2: this sort of more rebellious streak that she had so

685
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:29,959
Speaker 2: enjoyed in herself as a child. But yes, she drove

686
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 2: me back to the school that I had left and

687
00:38:32,719 --> 00:38:35,359
Speaker 2: parked in the lot that was not so far from

688
00:38:35,520 --> 00:38:39,120
Speaker 2: the playground where my whole class that I had left was,

689
00:38:39,239 --> 00:38:41,719
Speaker 2: you know, climbing over the jungle gyms and you know,

690
00:38:41,800 --> 00:38:46,400
Speaker 2: playing catch. And she rolled down the windows and blasted

691
00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:49,640
Speaker 2: my favorite song, which was I Get Around by the

692
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:53,759
Speaker 2: beach boys had started to turn over the playground and

693
00:38:53,800 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 2: then she said, look at those suckers. And I was

694
00:38:57,160 --> 00:38:59,000
Speaker 2: just trying to have the moment and I was so

695
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:02,560
Speaker 2: uncomfortable and get yeah, what what suckers? And she said

696
00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:05,759
Speaker 2: say it louder. I was like the suckers. She said,

697
00:39:06,120 --> 00:39:08,680
Speaker 2: come on, really do it stuff, And so I yelled

698
00:39:08,719 --> 00:39:12,040
Speaker 2: suckers out out the window. And then she you know,

699
00:39:12,080 --> 00:39:13,520
Speaker 2: it was like we had just pulled off a heist.

700
00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:16,720
Speaker 2: She like went squealing away and like my former classes

701
00:39:16,719 --> 00:39:19,279
Speaker 2: watching on. On the one hand, it was like I

702
00:39:19,280 --> 00:39:22,160
Speaker 2: think she saw as an expression of joy and freedom,

703
00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:26,719
Speaker 2: but maybe didn't think about or maybe this was subconsciously

704
00:39:26,840 --> 00:39:29,680
Speaker 2: also the point that it was a way to distance

705
00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:32,760
Speaker 2: me from my last connections to that group of friends.

706
00:39:35,440 --> 00:39:39,200
Speaker 3: Noah, Stephan's one remaining friend from school and the last

707
00:39:39,280 --> 00:39:42,120
Speaker 3: thread connecting him to that world, says to him the

708
00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:46,839
Speaker 3: next day that was you. Was that you? Noah recognizes

709
00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:52,239
Speaker 3: the car Stephan's mom's Minivam. Stephan's mother seems determined to

710
00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:55,200
Speaker 3: keep him separate from his peers, from the outside world,

711
00:39:55,560 --> 00:39:58,360
Speaker 3: from any influence that might draw him back toward a

712
00:39:58,400 --> 00:40:03,120
Speaker 3: life beyond her reach. But Noah's home life is challenging too.

713
00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:06,840
Speaker 3: His family's struggling financially, and he's being raised by a

714
00:40:06,880 --> 00:40:10,279
Speaker 3: single mother. He spends a lot of time at Stephan's house,

715
00:40:10,800 --> 00:40:13,919
Speaker 3: and at one point, Stephan's mother decides that this time

716
00:40:13,960 --> 00:40:17,239
Speaker 3: together should come at a price. That Noah's mother ought

717
00:40:17,239 --> 00:40:20,960
Speaker 3: to pay her a babysitting fee, a request that of course,

718
00:40:21,280 --> 00:40:24,960
Speaker 3: would completely change the boy's relationship, would make their friendship

719
00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:26,120
Speaker 3: next to impossible.

720
00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:30,040
Speaker 2: My mother would would get these theories and you know,

721
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:34,040
Speaker 2: come to these conclusions, and would be so unshakable and

722
00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:39,239
Speaker 2: her certainty that she was correct, and this theory that

723
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:42,759
Speaker 2: she hatched was well. I was begging for as much

724
00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:44,360
Speaker 2: time as I could get with Noah. He was my

725
00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:47,439
Speaker 2: one friend. He showed me what people were talking about

726
00:40:47,440 --> 00:40:49,120
Speaker 2: back at school. He was like delivering me the news

727
00:40:49,120 --> 00:40:51,680
Speaker 2: of school, telling me the things that fifth graders need

728
00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:54,279
Speaker 2: to learn from each other. So I wanted as much

729
00:40:54,280 --> 00:40:55,960
Speaker 2: time as I could get with him, which was often,

730
00:40:56,840 --> 00:40:58,719
Speaker 2: and so he was. He was around the lot in

731
00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:01,360
Speaker 2: my fourth grade year and then going into fifth grade.

732
00:41:01,680 --> 00:41:05,000
Speaker 2: But yeah, my mother decided. Her theory was that if

733
00:41:05,040 --> 00:41:08,080
Speaker 2: he was at our house, you know, more than a

734
00:41:08,080 --> 00:41:09,560
Speaker 2: certain number of days a week, I think it was

735
00:41:09,600 --> 00:41:12,320
Speaker 2: more than two days a week, that we had become

736
00:41:12,560 --> 00:41:15,319
Speaker 2: a de facto daycare, and that she should be paid

737
00:41:15,360 --> 00:41:18,879
Speaker 2: for it. And so she called up Noah's mother, who's

738
00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:22,080
Speaker 2: you know, I may, I don't know their exact financial situation,

739
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:27,120
Speaker 2: but I think not as strong as ours, and demanded

740
00:41:27,719 --> 00:41:32,040
Speaker 2: a babysitting fee for Noah to come play with me. Amazingly,

741
00:41:32,800 --> 00:41:36,040
Speaker 2: she agreed. But that meant that now Noah came five

742
00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:38,520
Speaker 2: days a week. Now we were a baby, We were

743
00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:41,120
Speaker 2: a daycare for Noah, and it created all of this

744
00:41:41,840 --> 00:41:44,840
Speaker 2: terrible at tenching, it became impossible for us to be friends.

745
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:48,360
Speaker 2: Because of course, there was resentment over her mother paying

746
00:41:48,400 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 2: for us to play together. I had another friend for

747
00:41:50,960 --> 00:41:54,160
Speaker 2: a while, a fourth grade who would also come over,

748
00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:57,000
Speaker 2: and I guess my mother and his mother were talking

749
00:41:57,040 --> 00:42:01,920
Speaker 2: about their finances, and his mother felt anxious over the

750
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:06,520
Speaker 2: state of their money, and my mom offered to hire

751
00:42:06,560 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 2: her as our housekeeper. So then my friend's mom was

752
00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:11,799
Speaker 2: coming to clean her house. And again that you know,

753
00:42:11,840 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 2: in both cases, my mother used these financial arrangements to

754
00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:19,560
Speaker 2: create an impossible barrier between myself and my friends, and

755
00:42:19,680 --> 00:42:21,480
Speaker 2: both of those friendships were doomed in the same way.

756
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:25,120
Speaker 3: The last couple of years that she was homeschooling you,

757
00:42:25,560 --> 00:42:29,680
Speaker 3: and in a way sort of beginning with the babysitting

758
00:42:29,719 --> 00:42:33,279
Speaker 3: of Noah, but then it turns into I mean not

759
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:36,120
Speaker 3: in terms of Noah, but she begins to take on

760
00:42:36,440 --> 00:42:40,080
Speaker 3: after school tutoring of kids, and it turns into this

761
00:42:40,880 --> 00:42:45,120
Speaker 3: very popular business for her. And your house is filled

762
00:42:45,600 --> 00:42:48,759
Speaker 3: with kids who have been going to school all day

763
00:42:48,760 --> 00:42:51,960
Speaker 3: and are now getting tutored, and you're the boy upstairs

764
00:42:52,000 --> 00:42:56,319
Speaker 3: in your room who is ostensibly the reason why. Like

765
00:42:56,360 --> 00:42:59,600
Speaker 3: she kind of shows you off as her great homeschooling

766
00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:02,520
Speaker 3: a she's or her genius son, and this is part

767
00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:06,200
Speaker 3: of what she's doing with the tutoring of these kids.

768
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:09,239
Speaker 3: And it was so striking to me that you were

769
00:43:09,280 --> 00:43:12,440
Speaker 3: still so isolated. But meanwhile, your house is like you know,

770
00:43:12,480 --> 00:43:14,480
Speaker 3: the doorbells ringing, and it's like filling up with kid

771
00:43:14,520 --> 00:43:18,000
Speaker 3: after kid after kid who's been living you know, just

772
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:20,120
Speaker 3: sort of like a regular high school or you know,

773
00:43:20,239 --> 00:43:21,320
Speaker 3: or middle school life.

774
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:25,480
Speaker 2: It was a great and painful irony that I was

775
00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:29,239
Speaker 2: so alone, and yet at three o'clock every day, you know,

776
00:43:29,560 --> 00:43:33,120
Speaker 2: hordes of usually girls but they were often my age

777
00:43:33,120 --> 00:43:35,640
Speaker 2: would would come into the house and my mother had

778
00:43:35,640 --> 00:43:38,520
Speaker 2: turned the sort of home office into a classroom where

779
00:43:38,520 --> 00:43:41,759
Speaker 2: she would tutor these girls in their math work. She

780
00:43:42,160 --> 00:43:45,360
Speaker 2: was good with them, They loved her, and she connected

781
00:43:45,360 --> 00:43:48,799
Speaker 2: with them, and sort of the lost mother that I

782
00:43:48,920 --> 00:43:51,719
Speaker 2: was still searching for, the one that I remembered from

783
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:54,360
Speaker 2: my Indianapolis days, was the one that they got. Like

784
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:57,319
Speaker 2: I would hear her being her sort of warmer, you know,

785
00:43:57,400 --> 00:44:01,520
Speaker 2: more performative, like fun self. And the home office was

786
00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:04,600
Speaker 2: directly below my room, so I would be alone in

787
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:07,040
Speaker 2: my room, like you know, just sort of like vacantly

788
00:44:07,680 --> 00:44:11,400
Speaker 2: watching old TV sitcoms on my being back chair, and

789
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:14,160
Speaker 2: I could hear through the floorboards the sound of all

790
00:44:14,160 --> 00:44:17,720
Speaker 2: these kids and my mother like laughing together and being together.

791
00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:21,239
Speaker 2: And you know this like lost world was a both

792
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:22,960
Speaker 2: two lost world. I mean the lost world of like

793
00:44:23,160 --> 00:44:25,840
Speaker 2: my closeness with my mother and also the lost world

794
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:28,200
Speaker 2: of school and other kids. It was all right there,

795
00:44:28,480 --> 00:44:31,200
Speaker 2: like literal feet from me, and I was, you know,

796
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:32,080
Speaker 2: excluded from it.

797
00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:51,480
Speaker 3: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.

798
00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:56,759
Speaker 3: It's fifth grade when Stephan's mother becomes fixated on his handwriting,

799
00:44:57,320 --> 00:45:01,920
Speaker 3: searching for meaning in every uneven curve, every letter. She

800
00:45:02,040 --> 00:45:05,600
Speaker 3: does some research, and then she finds a theory something

801
00:45:05,680 --> 00:45:09,520
Speaker 3: she reads or maybe interprets that explains everything, at least

802
00:45:09,520 --> 00:45:13,680
Speaker 3: to her. She decides that the problem isn't the handwriting itself,

803
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:19,640
Speaker 3: but something deeper, something developmental. Stephan and Aaron hadn't crawled

804
00:45:19,640 --> 00:45:24,200
Speaker 3: as babies. They'd scooted, then stood, then walked, and so

805
00:45:24,400 --> 00:45:30,279
Speaker 3: she reasons, maybe that skipped step left something unfinished. Her

806
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:34,799
Speaker 3: solution is both literal and deeply strange. Stephan must learn

807
00:45:34,880 --> 00:45:38,759
Speaker 3: to crawl, to return to that lost stage, as though

808
00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:42,280
Speaker 3: retracing it could somehow fix what she believes went wrong.

809
00:45:43,520 --> 00:45:48,960
Speaker 2: She had read somewhere the study that connected an infants

810
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:52,640
Speaker 2: crawling phase to the development of fine motor control. And

811
00:45:53,080 --> 00:45:56,400
Speaker 2: I don't believe the study came to this conclusion. But

812
00:45:56,440 --> 00:45:59,600
Speaker 2: my mother, you know, cracked one of her theories and

813
00:45:59,680 --> 00:46:04,320
Speaker 2: came to the conclusion that the reason why my handwriting

814
00:46:04,320 --> 00:46:07,960
Speaker 2: and my brother's handwriting was never very good was because

815
00:46:08,000 --> 00:46:12,360
Speaker 2: we hadn't crawled long enough as babies. And then she

816
00:46:12,440 --> 00:46:17,520
Speaker 2: decided that it probably wasn't too late, that if we crawled,

817
00:46:18,400 --> 00:46:22,440
Speaker 2: we would maybe develop hone our fine motor control, and

818
00:46:22,520 --> 00:46:25,920
Speaker 2: it would become you know, our handwriting would improve. And

819
00:46:26,000 --> 00:46:31,040
Speaker 2: so for months she had me crawl around the house.

820
00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:33,920
Speaker 2: I would I would wake up in the morning. I remember,

821
00:46:34,080 --> 00:46:36,440
Speaker 2: like I had worked out this way to like on

822
00:46:36,520 --> 00:46:39,320
Speaker 2: all fours to come down the stairs backward, so that

823
00:46:39,520 --> 00:46:42,480
Speaker 2: would I wouldn't stumble coming down. I would crawl, you know,

824
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:45,040
Speaker 2: to the kitchen for my cereal. I would crawl to

825
00:46:45,160 --> 00:46:47,560
Speaker 2: the table to do my school work. I would crawl

826
00:46:47,600 --> 00:46:49,920
Speaker 2: to the bathroom, and once I got into the bathroom,

827
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:51,920
Speaker 2: I was pleased to stand up. I wouldn't I wouldn't

828
00:46:51,920 --> 00:46:53,759
Speaker 2: crawl once I was there. And then, you know, my

829
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:56,960
Speaker 2: brother went to school every day, so he got to

830
00:46:56,960 --> 00:46:59,360
Speaker 2: walk around on his on his feet all day, but

831
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:01,319
Speaker 2: then when he came home from school, he would have

832
00:47:01,360 --> 00:47:05,080
Speaker 2: to crawl too. And there is a curious silence in

833
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:08,080
Speaker 2: my family around my mother and her theories. She was

834
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:12,120
Speaker 2: so vehement, and the pain of disagreeing with her, as

835
00:47:12,120 --> 00:47:14,279
Speaker 2: I've said, was taking us such an immense betrayal, and

836
00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:17,839
Speaker 2: the consequences were so severe it was shunning. We were

837
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:21,719
Speaker 2: afraid to admit to each other that this wasn't a

838
00:47:21,719 --> 00:47:24,680
Speaker 2: pleasant situation. So my brother and I would like sort

839
00:47:24,719 --> 00:47:26,720
Speaker 2: of like eye one another as we were both crawling

840
00:47:26,719 --> 00:47:28,640
Speaker 2: around with and she wasn't even watching, but we never

841
00:47:28,640 --> 00:47:30,400
Speaker 2: said a word about it, and we just kept on.

842
00:47:31,320 --> 00:47:35,719
Speaker 3: So your grandmother, who is slipping further into dementia, it's

843
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:38,880
Speaker 3: kind of decided by you know, your mother and her

844
00:47:38,920 --> 00:47:43,200
Speaker 3: sisters that she's going to spend time in each of

845
00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:47,279
Speaker 3: their homes. So Nana comes to visit. And when she

846
00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:50,839
Speaker 3: comes to visit, you and Aaron are not crawling. So

847
00:47:51,200 --> 00:47:56,959
Speaker 3: on some level, your mother knows that this is very

848
00:47:57,000 --> 00:48:00,480
Speaker 3: strange and not okay, and that Nana wouldn't approve. So

849
00:48:00,800 --> 00:48:02,959
Speaker 3: like that period of time when Nana's there and Nana

850
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:06,839
Speaker 3: is appalled anyway. It seems even even though she is

851
00:48:06,880 --> 00:48:10,120
Speaker 3: in the throes of sort of of dementia, her being

852
00:48:10,120 --> 00:48:13,560
Speaker 3: appalled breaks through. But during that period of time you

853
00:48:13,640 --> 00:48:16,879
Speaker 3: and Aaron are walking around. It's not until Nana leaves

854
00:48:16,880 --> 00:48:17,920
Speaker 3: that you go back to crawling.

855
00:48:18,280 --> 00:48:20,359
Speaker 2: That's right. But I don't think that she knew on

856
00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:23,120
Speaker 2: some level that it was not okay. I think it

857
00:48:23,160 --> 00:48:26,480
Speaker 2: was more that she knew that it might not be

858
00:48:26,560 --> 00:48:30,760
Speaker 2: interpreted well, or that other people might see it as crazy.

859
00:48:31,080 --> 00:48:33,759
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, she would like really go on

860
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:35,520
Speaker 2: and on about how like my brother and I were

861
00:48:35,560 --> 00:48:37,920
Speaker 2: the first crawl students ever and this was going to

862
00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:41,040
Speaker 2: be a revolutionary technique that was going to improve the

863
00:48:41,200 --> 00:48:44,080
Speaker 2: handwriting of you know, millions of children, and that we

864
00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:46,040
Speaker 2: were going to maybe even become famous as the first

865
00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:49,799
Speaker 2: students that had ever had gone through her program.

866
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:54,040
Speaker 3: Did your father express anything during that time? I mean,

867
00:48:54,080 --> 00:48:58,240
Speaker 3: he's a psychologist. Your father's attention was like a focused,

868
00:48:58,360 --> 00:48:59,120
Speaker 3: narrow beam.

869
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:00,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.

870
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:03,640
Speaker 3: And it strikes me too, not to get overly analytical

871
00:49:03,640 --> 00:49:08,160
Speaker 3: about this, but that his profession as a psychologist being

872
00:49:08,160 --> 00:49:10,479
Speaker 3: one where he would see patients for a very brief

873
00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:14,200
Speaker 3: period of time. Yeah, it's almost like that focused narrow

874
00:49:14,239 --> 00:49:17,160
Speaker 3: beam could work there. But I don't know what did

875
00:49:17,160 --> 00:49:20,000
Speaker 3: your father make of crawl school, you know, I.

876
00:49:19,920 --> 00:49:22,759
Speaker 2: Can't really speak to what he made of it. I

877
00:49:22,800 --> 00:49:29,040
Speaker 2: think that my mother projected such certainty, and if anything,

878
00:49:29,080 --> 00:49:32,319
Speaker 2: I remember my father being somewhat amused by it, Like

879
00:49:32,360 --> 00:49:35,640
Speaker 2: I think he was sort of indulging her theory and

880
00:49:35,680 --> 00:49:39,799
Speaker 2: maybe maybe not focused on what it might be like

881
00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:41,520
Speaker 2: for me to crawl around all day in the house.

882
00:49:42,040 --> 00:49:46,960
Speaker 2: I think his focus was on keeping our family going

883
00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:50,960
Speaker 2: and providing this life for us, you know, at work largely,

884
00:49:51,880 --> 00:49:54,719
Speaker 2: and you know, and like the practical matters of every

885
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:56,880
Speaker 2: day like that. You know, for a lot of my homeschool,

886
00:49:56,880 --> 00:49:59,719
Speaker 2: and my mother wasn't working, and so you know, he

887
00:49:59,840 --> 00:50:03,520
Speaker 2: was like holding the whole thing together. One point out

888
00:50:03,560 --> 00:50:07,200
Speaker 2: that at this point in my life, I'm twelve years old,

889
00:50:07,239 --> 00:50:10,719
Speaker 2: probably you know, my mother's project of returning me to

890
00:50:10,760 --> 00:50:14,640
Speaker 2: infant hood was basically complete. Right, Like she had dyed

891
00:50:14,680 --> 00:50:17,680
Speaker 2: my hair back. We would still occasionally do these peroxide treatments,

892
00:50:17,680 --> 00:50:21,839
Speaker 2: so my hair was blonde. I was with her all

893
00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:26,040
Speaker 2: day with almost no connection to the outside world, crawling

894
00:50:26,040 --> 00:50:28,839
Speaker 2: around the house like an infant. Like I don't think

895
00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:31,480
Speaker 2: that she at all consciously was like I'm going to

896
00:50:31,760 --> 00:50:34,600
Speaker 2: actually make you into a baby again. But she had,

897
00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 2: you know, likes as close as as possible. She had.

898
00:50:37,719 --> 00:50:40,799
Speaker 2: She had restored me to this infant state. And the

899
00:50:40,880 --> 00:50:43,480
Speaker 2: thing that hurts the most when I remember it is,

900
00:50:43,880 --> 00:50:47,280
Speaker 2: you know, I didn't like. Crawling hurt sometimes on my knees,

901
00:50:47,320 --> 00:50:49,960
Speaker 2: and my hands hurt after a day of crawling, the

902
00:50:50,280 --> 00:50:53,520
Speaker 2: peroxide in my hair hurt. But the hard part was

903
00:50:53,560 --> 00:50:57,360
Speaker 2: the isolation. And it's just hard to convey, like, you know,

904
00:50:57,760 --> 00:51:00,319
Speaker 2: I have two children now, and I see how they

905
00:51:00,360 --> 00:51:03,359
Speaker 2: need other kids and other people in the way like

906
00:51:03,360 --> 00:51:06,719
Speaker 2: a plant needs sunshine. And I didn't have that. I

907
00:51:06,840 --> 00:51:11,200
Speaker 2: was so my days were so solitary. And we're talking

908
00:51:11,239 --> 00:51:14,120
Speaker 2: about the punishment of her anchor of my speaking back.

909
00:51:14,480 --> 00:51:16,839
Speaker 2: What it's like to be shunned when you have one

910
00:51:16,880 --> 00:51:20,120
Speaker 2: person in your life, when it's your mother and your

911
00:51:20,160 --> 00:51:22,319
Speaker 2: teacher and your only friend and your principal, you know,

912
00:51:22,600 --> 00:51:26,680
Speaker 2: and that person won't speak to you is so profoundly

913
00:51:26,760 --> 00:51:29,840
Speaker 2: painful that I would not disagree with her either. And

914
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:32,040
Speaker 2: I came to this point of just sort of like

915
00:51:32,080 --> 00:51:33,560
Speaker 2: acceptance of a lot of this.

916
00:51:36,480 --> 00:51:38,799
Speaker 3: A lot happens during this time to a twelve year

917
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:42,200
Speaker 3: old boy alone in his room. It's the very early

918
00:51:42,280 --> 00:51:47,040
Speaker 3: days of online culture, and Stephan discovers a forum, Blapatorium,

919
00:51:47,320 --> 00:51:49,800
Speaker 3: which was supposed to be a place to exchange ideas

920
00:51:49,840 --> 00:51:53,280
Speaker 3: about music and movies, but in reality is a tween

921
00:51:53,360 --> 00:51:57,719
Speaker 3: and early teen meat market. Stephan starts an online relationship

922
00:51:57,719 --> 00:52:00,160
Speaker 3: with a girl his age, who turns out to be

923
00:52:00,280 --> 00:52:04,000
Speaker 3: a thirty year old man preying on him, further increasing

924
00:52:04,040 --> 00:52:09,520
Speaker 3: his isolation. His grandma Mimi, his father's mother, comes to

925
00:52:09,600 --> 00:52:13,319
Speaker 3: visit and is appalled by what she sees. She's the

926
00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:17,640
Speaker 3: first adult who asks him, are you okay? What's really

927
00:52:17,680 --> 00:52:22,839
Speaker 3: going on? And Stephan tells her. When this comes to light,

928
00:52:22,960 --> 00:52:27,080
Speaker 3: Stephan's mother feels betrayed and she goes into her betrayal

929
00:52:27,160 --> 00:52:33,720
Speaker 3: response silence followed by shunning, followed by rage. In her rage,

930
00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:37,319
Speaker 3: she pushes Stephan so hard that he falls and hits

931
00:52:37,320 --> 00:52:41,680
Speaker 3: his head to the point where he's dizzy disoriented. Also

932
00:52:41,840 --> 00:52:44,560
Speaker 3: during this time, Stephan and Aaron have a pair of

933
00:52:44,600 --> 00:52:48,719
Speaker 3: hamsters who have a huge litter of baby hamsters. They're

934
00:52:48,760 --> 00:52:54,319
Speaker 3: briefly excited by this development until well, here's what happens next.

935
00:52:54,960 --> 00:52:57,719
Speaker 2: I see the lowest part of my homeschooling life, when

936
00:52:57,760 --> 00:53:02,080
Speaker 2: I felt like so lonely. We bought this hamster couple

937
00:53:02,120 --> 00:53:05,680
Speaker 2: from the pet store, and I would spend so much

938
00:53:05,680 --> 00:53:09,840
Speaker 2: time with these hamsters. We built them this elaborate house

939
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:13,440
Speaker 2: of you know, sort of plastic components, and we you know,

940
00:53:13,480 --> 00:53:15,680
Speaker 2: all these games for the hamster to play and stuff,

941
00:53:15,719 --> 00:53:18,960
Speaker 2: and I loved washing them. And then when Harriet the

942
00:53:19,000 --> 00:53:21,920
Speaker 2: hamster got pregnant, it was like a joy, you know,

943
00:53:22,040 --> 00:53:24,120
Speaker 2: like like our family is getting big for you know.

944
00:53:24,600 --> 00:53:28,520
Speaker 2: And then Harriet gave birth all these tiny little hamster pups,

945
00:53:28,520 --> 00:53:31,759
Speaker 2: and I was just thrilled, and I would like put

946
00:53:31,800 --> 00:53:33,560
Speaker 2: all the little pups in my hands at the same

947
00:53:33,600 --> 00:53:35,680
Speaker 2: time and sort of carry them around. I really felt

948
00:53:35,719 --> 00:53:38,839
Speaker 2: like I was in it with with Harriet. The cork

949
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:42,520
Speaker 2: at the pet store told us that you can't keep

950
00:53:42,560 --> 00:53:47,239
Speaker 2: hamsters that many hamsters in a cage together for that long,

951
00:53:47,360 --> 00:53:49,600
Speaker 2: that they could start to hurt each other or hurt

952
00:53:49,600 --> 00:53:52,480
Speaker 2: themselves or something, and that we had to take the

953
00:53:52,520 --> 00:53:54,560
Speaker 2: pups to the store at some point and they'd be

954
00:53:54,960 --> 00:53:57,840
Speaker 2: given good homes. And I couldn't. I couldn't bear to

955
00:53:57,880 --> 00:53:59,400
Speaker 2: do it for a while. And it gave me this

956
00:53:59,440 --> 00:54:02,480
Speaker 2: sort of off full empathy for mom, for you know,

957
00:54:02,480 --> 00:54:04,920
Speaker 2: this desire to stop time, and like, can't you just

958
00:54:04,960 --> 00:54:07,239
Speaker 2: be babies a little bit longer so we get to

959
00:54:07,280 --> 00:54:10,000
Speaker 2: keep you, you know. But then we did, and I

960
00:54:10,280 --> 00:54:13,239
Speaker 2: remember when we took them to the pet store and

961
00:54:13,280 --> 00:54:16,759
Speaker 2: we drove home from you know, from the pet store

962
00:54:16,800 --> 00:54:20,440
Speaker 2: with the baby's gone. I remember thinking, well, this, what

963
00:54:20,480 --> 00:54:23,280
Speaker 2: I'm feeling now is something like what Mom will feel

964
00:54:23,320 --> 00:54:25,600
Speaker 2: when I finally have a courage to tell her I'm

965
00:54:25,600 --> 00:54:29,400
Speaker 2: going back. And it's awful and I feel so sad,

966
00:54:29,520 --> 00:54:32,280
Speaker 2: but I'm going to be okay. She's going to be okay.

967
00:54:33,000 --> 00:54:36,400
Speaker 2: We're going to survive this. And then the next morning,

968
00:54:36,480 --> 00:54:40,120
Speaker 2: I wake up and I go to the hamster cage

969
00:54:40,239 --> 00:54:42,759
Speaker 2: to see how Harriet's doing now of her children have

970
00:54:42,800 --> 00:54:47,120
Speaker 2: been taken, and I found her dead in a tube

971
00:54:47,160 --> 00:54:49,719
Speaker 2: of the of the cage. She had just like died

972
00:54:49,760 --> 00:54:53,880
Speaker 2: of heartbreak. I mean, I guess I can't extrapolate hamster

973
00:54:53,920 --> 00:54:56,319
Speaker 2: psychology too much, but the loss of the pups had

974
00:54:56,400 --> 00:54:59,320
Speaker 2: killed her, and it was a devastating blow. I thought

975
00:54:59,800 --> 00:55:02,120
Speaker 2: that that's what the pain is. It's so immense that

976
00:55:02,200 --> 00:55:03,160
Speaker 2: it could be deadly.

977
00:55:06,520 --> 00:55:10,840
Speaker 3: Freshman year of high school. After years away, Stephen finally

978
00:55:10,880 --> 00:55:14,800
Speaker 3: returns to a classroom, but he doesn't derive empty handed.

979
00:55:15,400 --> 00:55:19,040
Speaker 3: He arrives with a typewriter. His mother has written to

980
00:55:19,040 --> 00:55:21,680
Speaker 3: the school explaining that he needs it because of his

981
00:55:21,760 --> 00:55:26,960
Speaker 3: dysgraphia his difficulty with handwriting. The typewriter is too heavy

982
00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:30,960
Speaker 3: for a backpack, so she finds a plastic rolling filing

983
00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:34,360
Speaker 3: cabinet for him to carry it in to her is

984
00:55:34,440 --> 00:55:41,440
Speaker 3: practical and almost visionary. To Stephan, it's mortifying. He's already

985
00:55:41,480 --> 00:55:44,720
Speaker 3: anxious about standing out after so long away from school.

986
00:55:45,440 --> 00:55:49,480
Speaker 3: Now he'll be rolling a clunky cabinet down the halls.

987
00:55:50,200 --> 00:55:53,560
Speaker 3: His mother insists it'll be cool. She covers it with

988
00:55:53,600 --> 00:55:58,799
Speaker 3: stickers bright ironic loud one reads Where's the Beef? From

989
00:55:58,840 --> 00:56:02,280
Speaker 3: that old Wendy's commercial. She imagines it'll start a trend,

990
00:56:02,400 --> 00:56:07,240
Speaker 3: making him popular. Instead, it makes him a target. Where's

991
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:12,440
Speaker 3: the Beef becomes his nickname, another well intentioned act of

992
00:56:12,680 --> 00:56:18,879
Speaker 3: helping that turns into something else, entirely an ostracization. Academically, too,

993
00:56:19,000 --> 00:56:24,400
Speaker 3: Stephan is struggling. Homeschooling hasn't prepared him for tests for structure,

994
00:56:24,760 --> 00:56:29,320
Speaker 3: for the rhythm of school life. He's failing classes, falling behind,

995
00:56:29,920 --> 00:56:33,440
Speaker 3: watching everything around him collapse just as he's trying to

996
00:56:33,480 --> 00:56:34,080
Speaker 3: begin again.

997
00:56:35,880 --> 00:56:40,479
Speaker 2: On the day I finally gathered the courage after five

998
00:56:40,560 --> 00:56:42,839
Speaker 2: years to tell her that I had to go back

999
00:56:42,880 --> 00:56:47,480
Speaker 2: to school, it was the spring semester of eighth grade.

1000
00:56:47,680 --> 00:56:51,200
Speaker 2: I was worried. At that time. It seemed very hard

1001
00:56:51,200 --> 00:56:53,640
Speaker 2: to get into college from homeschool. You know, there wasn't.

1002
00:56:54,080 --> 00:56:57,400
Speaker 2: I think now it's it's more of a root for that.

1003
00:56:57,440 --> 00:56:59,520
Speaker 2: But at the time I thought, if I don't do

1004
00:56:59,600 --> 00:57:02,560
Speaker 2: this now, like this could be it. Like I could

1005
00:57:02,640 --> 00:57:04,520
Speaker 2: end up not going to college. I could end up

1006
00:57:04,560 --> 00:57:07,600
Speaker 2: without a high school degree. You know. She had pleaded

1007
00:57:07,640 --> 00:57:10,000
Speaker 2: for me to try a little bit longer, to try

1008
00:57:10,040 --> 00:57:13,040
Speaker 2: homeschooling for high school, and I finally just my fear

1009
00:57:13,080 --> 00:57:15,640
Speaker 2: about my future one out and I insisted, and so

1010
00:57:15,640 --> 00:57:18,600
Speaker 2: she yes. She sent me back to school with with

1011
00:57:18,680 --> 00:57:23,440
Speaker 2: this electronic typewriter that made the most horrentous sound when

1012
00:57:23,760 --> 00:57:26,000
Speaker 2: when I used it in class, Like it was like

1013
00:57:26,520 --> 00:57:28,840
Speaker 2: the sound of like a rainstick turned upside down. It

1014
00:57:28,880 --> 00:57:31,120
Speaker 2: was like, you know, I would I would type it

1015
00:57:30,600 --> 00:57:32,920
Speaker 2: and you can like proof a ligne in the typewriter

1016
00:57:32,960 --> 00:57:34,800
Speaker 2: and then you hit enter it and we go click clickicklickicklick.

1017
00:57:35,000 --> 00:57:37,080
Speaker 2: You know, it deafening the room, and everyone was just

1018
00:57:37,120 --> 00:57:39,560
Speaker 2: scowling at me. Yeah, and I was. I went back

1019
00:57:39,600 --> 00:57:42,160
Speaker 2: wheeling around this file cabinet. Looking back on it now,

1020
00:57:42,200 --> 00:57:44,720
Speaker 2: it does feel like maybe a form of sabotage is

1021
00:57:44,760 --> 00:57:47,760
Speaker 2: how how am I possibly going to fit into, you know,

1022
00:57:47,760 --> 00:57:50,320
Speaker 2: a class of my peers with with this, you know,

1023
00:57:50,360 --> 00:57:53,160
Speaker 2: twenty pound typewriter and a filing cabinet. But you know,

1024
00:57:53,240 --> 00:57:55,760
Speaker 2: the more profound way in which I was not prepared was,

1025
00:57:56,160 --> 00:57:59,160
Speaker 2: you know, in my homeschooling years. By the end up homeschooling,

1026
00:57:59,480 --> 00:58:01,920
Speaker 2: we had basically no curriculum at all. My education was

1027
00:58:01,920 --> 00:58:05,360
Speaker 2: my responsibility. And what that meant was I would spend

1028
00:58:05,360 --> 00:58:07,280
Speaker 2: my days alone in my room. Maybe I'd write a

1029
00:58:07,320 --> 00:58:10,160
Speaker 2: short story, maybe I'd copy some pictures out of a

1030
00:58:10,160 --> 00:58:11,560
Speaker 2: comic book, and then I would show them to her,

1031
00:58:11,560 --> 00:58:13,760
Speaker 2: and my mom would be like, you are one of

1032
00:58:13,880 --> 00:58:16,160
Speaker 2: history's great artists. Like, look at what you can do.

1033
00:58:16,440 --> 00:58:19,840
Speaker 2: You know, everything was a plus plus plus. You're a genius.

1034
00:58:19,880 --> 00:58:22,360
Speaker 2: And I get to school. I haven't taken the test

1035
00:58:22,440 --> 00:58:25,080
Speaker 2: in five years. You know, I don't know how to

1036
00:58:25,640 --> 00:58:28,120
Speaker 2: memorize things. I don't know how to study they're huge

1037
00:58:28,120 --> 00:58:32,200
Speaker 2: gaps in my knowledge. And so what happened was I

1038
00:58:32,240 --> 00:58:34,840
Speaker 2: took my first test in that I remember it was

1039
00:58:34,880 --> 00:58:38,800
Speaker 2: in history class, and the teacher had asked, you know,

1040
00:58:38,880 --> 00:58:42,200
Speaker 2: a practical question about you know, ancient summer and you

1041
00:58:42,280 --> 00:58:44,520
Speaker 2: have to like name the reasons why it succeeded as

1042
00:58:44,560 --> 00:58:46,880
Speaker 2: like one of the world's for civilizations. And I responded

1043
00:58:46,960 --> 00:58:48,560
Speaker 2: with this kind of like high flute and bologna. That

1044
00:58:48,560 --> 00:58:50,600
Speaker 2: would impress my mom. I'd be like, I wrote something

1045
00:58:50,680 --> 00:58:53,480
Speaker 2: like since the time of Aristotle, man has been curious

1046
00:58:53,520 --> 00:58:57,160
Speaker 2: about yesteryear, you know, just just this like nonsense, this gobbledygook.

1047
00:58:57,280 --> 00:58:59,320
Speaker 2: And you know, my mom, if the word Aristotle came

1048
00:58:59,360 --> 00:59:01,600
Speaker 2: out my mouth, you'd like, how do you know Aristotle?

1049
00:59:01,840 --> 00:59:04,960
Speaker 2: You know. But my history teacher was not so impressed,

1050
00:59:05,040 --> 00:59:09,600
Speaker 2: as she failed that quiz. And I remember, like, you know,

1051
00:59:09,720 --> 00:59:12,200
Speaker 2: just the shock of that of, you know, my worst

1052
00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:15,720
Speaker 2: fears confirmed that I had fallen so far behind. And

1053
00:59:15,760 --> 00:59:17,440
Speaker 2: you know, not only was I not the genius my

1054
00:59:17,440 --> 00:59:20,320
Speaker 2: mother had said, I was way behind and maybe maybe

1055
00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:22,640
Speaker 2: like not sharp enough for this you know techt of

1056
00:59:22,720 --> 00:59:23,400
Speaker 2: public school.

1057
00:59:26,120 --> 00:59:29,800
Speaker 3: But Stefan does turn things around. He's determined to figure

1058
00:59:29,800 --> 00:59:33,440
Speaker 3: out a path forward, he becomes rigorous about his academics,

1059
00:59:33,840 --> 00:59:37,160
Speaker 3: making up for lost time. He gets to know his teachers,

1060
00:59:37,520 --> 00:59:41,520
Speaker 3: expanding his circle of adults around him. One of these

1061
00:59:41,560 --> 00:59:45,200
Speaker 3: teachers is his ap science teacher, Missus Shepherd, who everyone

1062
00:59:45,240 --> 00:59:49,000
Speaker 3: calls Shep. Stephan's on a winning team from his high school,

1063
00:59:49,040 --> 00:59:52,280
Speaker 3: and Shep takes them all to the ceremony in Louisville, Kentucky,

1064
00:59:53,280 --> 00:59:57,680
Speaker 3: and Stephan's mom insists on coming along. Shep tells Stephan

1065
00:59:57,960 --> 01:00:00,880
Speaker 3: that in all her years, she's never a mother do this,

1066
01:00:01,760 --> 01:00:04,880
Speaker 3: and then she says something tougher. She tells Stephan that

1067
01:00:04,880 --> 01:00:07,440
Speaker 3: he's going to need to leave his mother, that this

1068
01:00:07,520 --> 01:00:10,160
Speaker 3: will be the toughest thing he's ever done, but that

1069
01:00:10,280 --> 01:00:15,720
Speaker 3: he will survive and his mother will survive. Stephan goes

1070
01:00:15,760 --> 01:00:19,040
Speaker 3: off to college at Washington University in Saint Louis He

1071
01:00:19,120 --> 01:00:23,280
Speaker 3: continues to attempt to differentiate himself from his mother. When

1072
01:00:23,280 --> 01:00:26,520
Speaker 3: he comes home during freshman year, it's with bright red

1073
01:00:26,520 --> 01:00:30,280
Speaker 3: hair that he's dyed himself. He's no longer her baby.

1074
01:00:30,760 --> 01:00:34,920
Speaker 3: He's making his own decisions. The more Stephan tries to

1075
01:00:34,960 --> 01:00:38,760
Speaker 3: become himself, the more his mother pushes back. She no

1076
01:00:38,800 --> 01:00:41,320
Speaker 3: longer wants him to be the greatest writer who ever lived.

1077
01:00:41,920 --> 01:00:44,840
Speaker 3: Now she wants him to go to medical school so

1078
01:00:44,880 --> 01:00:49,120
Speaker 3: he can eventually return home and take over his father's practice,

1079
01:00:49,760 --> 01:00:53,439
Speaker 3: as if father and son's psychology teams might be a thing.

1080
01:00:54,560 --> 01:00:57,760
Speaker 3: But Stephan does not go pre med. He's making his way.

1081
01:00:58,480 --> 01:01:01,840
Speaker 3: He moves to New York City after graduation and supports

1082
01:01:01,920 --> 01:01:04,880
Speaker 3: himself as a videographer while trying to be a writer.

1083
01:01:05,920 --> 01:01:10,680
Speaker 3: The kids are growing up. Aaron now has a serious girlfriend, Nikki,

1084
01:01:11,080 --> 01:01:13,320
Speaker 3: who has not gotten a memo about what happens with

1085
01:01:13,360 --> 01:01:17,120
Speaker 3: their mother. If you argue back, it was.

1086
01:01:17,040 --> 01:01:20,480
Speaker 2: The first member of her family to you know, express

1087
01:01:20,680 --> 01:01:24,400
Speaker 2: opposing opinion without you know, fear or reluctance, and I

1088
01:01:24,440 --> 01:01:25,800
Speaker 2: think that was a great shock to her.

1089
01:01:26,680 --> 01:01:30,160
Speaker 3: So in a way, your mother's beginning too. It always

1090
01:01:30,320 --> 01:01:35,640
Speaker 3: had to happen. I mean, at one point she says

1091
01:01:35,640 --> 01:01:38,560
Speaker 3: something to you about, you know, the horrors of the

1092
01:01:38,640 --> 01:01:42,320
Speaker 3: empty nest, and someday you're going to understand that that

1093
01:01:42,360 --> 01:01:45,960
Speaker 3: it's just like a disease without a cure, this empty

1094
01:01:46,000 --> 01:01:49,040
Speaker 3: nest thing. So this was always going to happen, because

1095
01:01:49,080 --> 01:01:51,520
Speaker 3: the tragedy would have been if it didn't happen. But

1096
01:01:51,800 --> 01:01:55,919
Speaker 3: the tragedy is also that as it's happening, as you're

1097
01:01:56,000 --> 01:01:58,560
Speaker 3: moving into your adult life, you're making your own decisions

1098
01:01:59,040 --> 01:02:01,880
Speaker 3: about who you want to be in the world. Aaron

1099
01:02:02,800 --> 01:02:06,000
Speaker 3: is with Nikki, and your mother says some things to

1100
01:02:06,080 --> 01:02:08,919
Speaker 3: him about like if you stay with her, you're going

1101
01:02:08,960 --> 01:02:10,720
Speaker 3: to be dead by the time you're forty five, like

1102
01:02:10,800 --> 01:02:15,400
Speaker 3: just some really totally horrendous things. But Aaron manages to

1103
01:02:16,480 --> 01:02:18,800
Speaker 3: also stay the course and do what he wants to do.

1104
01:02:19,440 --> 01:02:22,160
Speaker 3: And as it's happening, your mother literally starts shrinking.

1105
01:02:22,760 --> 01:02:25,760
Speaker 2: She was declining. She was, you know, in her fifties,

1106
01:02:25,800 --> 01:02:28,880
Speaker 2: but she was shrinking. She was losing height, she was

1107
01:02:28,920 --> 01:02:32,560
Speaker 2: having osteophorosis, and her health was deteriorating much more quickly

1108
01:02:33,040 --> 01:02:36,800
Speaker 2: than I would have ever expected. And it didn't seem

1109
01:02:36,840 --> 01:02:39,720
Speaker 2: to be anything in particularly wrong with her. She said

1110
01:02:39,960 --> 01:02:43,960
Speaker 2: directly to me, in fact, many times, that her decline

1111
01:02:44,120 --> 01:02:49,240
Speaker 2: was directly related to my decisions to live my own life.

1112
01:02:49,400 --> 01:02:51,000
Speaker 2: And she would say, you know, if you have a baby,

1113
01:02:51,000 --> 01:02:52,560
Speaker 2: if you have a family, like what is going to

1114
01:02:52,560 --> 01:02:55,880
Speaker 2: happen to me? And so she directly linked her physical

1115
01:02:55,920 --> 01:02:58,240
Speaker 2: decline to my coming into my own life.

1116
01:02:58,840 --> 01:03:02,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean, just the like the definition of

1117
01:03:02,840 --> 01:03:07,480
Speaker 3: like just the biggest guilt trip imaginable. And you know,

1118
01:03:07,560 --> 01:03:10,240
Speaker 3: at one point you say to her, I'm killing you

1119
01:03:10,360 --> 01:03:13,720
Speaker 3: by living my own life. That's what you're saying. And

1120
01:03:13,800 --> 01:03:16,920
Speaker 3: her response is, no, I'm telling you how much I

1121
01:03:16,960 --> 01:03:17,280
Speaker 3: love you.

1122
01:03:18,400 --> 01:03:22,280
Speaker 2: That's right. That exchange. It's one of those moments in

1123
01:03:22,320 --> 01:03:25,480
Speaker 2: a relationship when you see it with sudden clarity and

1124
01:03:25,520 --> 01:03:27,600
Speaker 2: you're like, this is the heart of the problem, and

1125
01:03:27,720 --> 01:03:28,520
Speaker 2: this is it right here.

1126
01:03:31,200 --> 01:03:34,360
Speaker 3: Despite his mother's suggestion that her health would suffer if

1127
01:03:34,360 --> 01:03:37,760
Speaker 3: Stephan went on to have a family, he does just this.

1128
01:03:38,840 --> 01:03:42,360
Speaker 3: About seven years past, he's married, he has a one

1129
01:03:42,440 --> 01:03:47,440
Speaker 3: year old daughter. Life finally feels like his own until

1130
01:03:47,640 --> 01:03:50,960
Speaker 3: his mother calls. She says she wants to move to

1131
01:03:51,000 --> 01:03:55,520
Speaker 3: New York to live nearby to help, especially. She says

1132
01:03:55,600 --> 01:04:00,360
Speaker 3: if there's a second child. It sounds generous, even eternal,

1133
01:04:01,040 --> 01:04:04,479
Speaker 3: But Stephan knows what it really means. To say yes

1134
01:04:05,120 --> 01:04:08,840
Speaker 3: would be to surrender the boundaries he's built, to invite

1135
01:04:08,840 --> 01:04:11,560
Speaker 3: her back into the center of his life, into the

1136
01:04:11,640 --> 01:04:15,840
Speaker 3: raising of his own children. So he does the hardest thing,

1137
01:04:16,440 --> 01:04:21,720
Speaker 3: the right thing. He says no again. She tells him

1138
01:04:21,760 --> 01:04:25,240
Speaker 3: that his choices have made her sick. Then she mentions

1139
01:04:25,640 --> 01:04:31,760
Speaker 3: Harriet the hamster. He understands immediately she's telling him his

1140
01:04:32,040 --> 01:04:36,360
Speaker 3: no means she'll die. It's not my choice, Steph, she says,

1141
01:04:36,840 --> 01:04:41,800
Speaker 3: it's just biology. Months later, she's diagnosed with stage four

1142
01:04:41,880 --> 01:04:47,120
Speaker 3: lung cancer. It's the pandemic. As she fades, Stephan does

1143
01:04:47,160 --> 01:04:51,200
Speaker 3: have a second child, another daughter. His mother holds on

1144
01:04:51,320 --> 01:04:55,520
Speaker 3: long enough to meet her on a screen across the distance,

1145
01:04:56,000 --> 01:04:59,240
Speaker 3: literal and otherwise before letting go.

1146
01:05:01,040 --> 01:05:03,240
Speaker 2: I have like two pictures of them on Zoom together,

1147
01:05:03,720 --> 01:05:05,840
Speaker 2: and it was, you know, it was this moment of

1148
01:05:06,320 --> 01:05:09,520
Speaker 2: profound grace really that like I hadn't made this choice

1149
01:05:09,560 --> 01:05:11,439
Speaker 2: to live my own life, and we were never gonna

1150
01:05:11,440 --> 01:05:14,320
Speaker 2: see eye to eye on the choices I had made,

1151
01:05:14,320 --> 01:05:17,040
Speaker 2: and I was you know, there are elements of like

1152
01:05:17,400 --> 01:05:20,440
Speaker 2: the way she laid the guilt of her illness upon me,

1153
01:05:20,520 --> 01:05:26,000
Speaker 2: that you know, our heart to forgive. But I just

1154
01:05:26,120 --> 01:05:29,000
Speaker 2: felt at the end like such the profundity of her

1155
01:05:29,040 --> 01:05:32,000
Speaker 2: love for me and for my children, and it was

1156
01:05:32,160 --> 01:05:34,520
Speaker 2: like the most healing thing that could have happened. Really.

1157
01:05:34,880 --> 01:05:36,720
Speaker 2: There's still a pain to me that that happened on

1158
01:05:36,840 --> 01:05:38,720
Speaker 2: zoom and that we couldn't all be together, but it

1159
01:05:38,760 --> 01:05:40,920
Speaker 2: was I don't know it was. It was like a

1160
01:05:40,960 --> 01:05:43,919
Speaker 2: weirdly healing episode. Yeah.

1161
01:05:43,960 --> 01:05:47,680
Speaker 3: I was just very very struck by that, and both

1162
01:05:47,760 --> 01:05:50,040
Speaker 3: the grace in that and the pain in that.

1163
01:05:50,760 --> 01:05:53,520
Speaker 2: She said to me, you know, they knew that her

1164
01:05:54,000 --> 01:05:56,840
Speaker 2: therapy was no longer working. She had days left to live.

1165
01:05:56,960 --> 01:06:00,439
Speaker 2: And my you know, our second daughter was two days

1166
01:06:00,440 --> 01:06:02,800
Speaker 2: old or something, and she she looked at her at

1167
01:06:02,800 --> 01:06:05,160
Speaker 2: the zoom call and said, you know, I don't know

1168
01:06:05,200 --> 01:06:07,240
Speaker 2: how it works up there, but maybe there's a reason

1169
01:06:07,280 --> 01:06:09,480
Speaker 2: why she's arriving as I'm leaving. And she said, I

1170
01:06:09,480 --> 01:06:11,560
Speaker 2: want you to know that if I can choose, I'm

1171
01:06:11,560 --> 01:06:16,320
Speaker 2: going to come back as your daughter Ffalus. And I

1172
01:06:16,440 --> 01:06:18,080
Speaker 2: was like, I don't think that's how it works. Like

1173
01:06:18,160 --> 01:06:21,520
Speaker 2: she's already it's like the room's occupied, You're you're gonna

1174
01:06:21,560 --> 01:06:24,160
Speaker 2: have to just go on living for a while instead. Yeah.

1175
01:06:24,200 --> 01:06:26,400
Speaker 2: And I remember this moment when my father called to

1176
01:06:26,400 --> 01:06:30,080
Speaker 2: tell me that she had died. I looked over. Alice

1177
01:06:30,160 --> 01:06:33,160
Speaker 2: was taking a nap on the on the bed, and

1178
01:06:33,200 --> 01:06:35,440
Speaker 2: I looked over and she did this thing with her

1179
01:06:35,520 --> 01:06:38,240
Speaker 2: arms where like she suddenly looked like she was like

1180
01:06:38,400 --> 01:06:41,560
Speaker 2: flexing her muscles, like she had suddenly like received this

1181
01:06:41,760 --> 01:06:44,160
Speaker 2: enormous amount of strength from the ether, and I was like,

1182
01:06:44,200 --> 01:06:46,960
Speaker 2: oh my god, maybe maybe it's happened, but I don't

1183
01:06:46,960 --> 01:06:48,880
Speaker 2: think so. Now Now, now Alice is five years old

1184
01:06:48,920 --> 01:06:54,400
Speaker 2: and she's not my mother. After my mom died, my

1185
01:06:54,480 --> 01:06:57,720
Speaker 2: dad had been so much her sort of right hand,

1186
01:06:57,840 --> 01:07:00,880
Speaker 2: and had you know, supported her so holy and I

1187
01:07:00,920 --> 01:07:04,040
Speaker 2: had never heard him, you know, push back or criticize

1188
01:07:04,160 --> 01:07:09,560
Speaker 2: or express unhappiness in their relationship. I really worried about

1189
01:07:09,560 --> 01:07:11,800
Speaker 2: what would happen to my father. I thought he was

1190
01:07:11,800 --> 01:07:13,680
Speaker 2: going to become one of these like widowers that will

1191
01:07:13,680 --> 01:07:16,120
Speaker 2: never betray the wife's memory, and that he was going

1192
01:07:16,200 --> 01:07:19,120
Speaker 2: to be alone. It's not at all what happened. He

1193
01:07:19,440 --> 01:07:21,920
Speaker 2: went right on Jay Day, and he had suppressed his

1194
01:07:22,000 --> 01:07:24,680
Speaker 2: judaism for almost the entirety of his marriage. But as

1195
01:07:24,720 --> 01:07:27,840
Speaker 2: soon as she died, he like re emerged as this

1196
01:07:27,880 --> 01:07:30,760
Speaker 2: like uber shoe and he like he you know, when

1197
01:07:30,760 --> 01:07:35,200
Speaker 2: a sixties six year old widower walks into a temple,

1198
01:07:35,320 --> 01:07:38,960
Speaker 2: like it is like cox in the head that yeah,

1199
01:07:39,520 --> 01:07:42,640
Speaker 2: he had a lot of fitty frenzy. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1200
01:07:42,680 --> 01:07:44,160
Speaker 2: I guess that's a better way of say it. And

1201
01:07:44,760 --> 01:07:48,000
Speaker 2: dated almost immediately, and then you know, played the field

1202
01:07:48,200 --> 01:07:51,880
Speaker 2: briefly and then met someone that he, you know, felt

1203
01:07:51,960 --> 01:07:55,120
Speaker 2: very fondly toward, and she became his girlfriend very quickly.

1204
01:07:56,040 --> 01:08:00,120
Speaker 2: I was, you know, honestly uncomfortable with it, just the

1205
01:08:00,320 --> 01:08:02,520
Speaker 2: sort of speed of it. It wasn't that I was

1206
01:08:02,560 --> 01:08:05,560
Speaker 2: uncomfortable with the idea of him buying someone new. I

1207
01:08:05,600 --> 01:08:09,120
Speaker 2: wanted that. I think what made me uncomfortable was that

1208
01:08:09,200 --> 01:08:11,840
Speaker 2: there was a silence that had yet to be punctured,

1209
01:08:12,120 --> 01:08:14,720
Speaker 2: and I wondered, you know, are we just going to

1210
01:08:14,840 --> 01:08:16,800
Speaker 2: jump into this new life where now you're in love

1211
01:08:16,840 --> 01:08:20,320
Speaker 2: with somebody else, now you're marrying somebody else, without any

1212
01:08:20,400 --> 01:08:23,439
Speaker 2: kind of reckoning with what we had all lost and

1213
01:08:23,479 --> 01:08:26,800
Speaker 2: what our family had been in this time. When when

1214
01:08:26,840 --> 01:08:29,000
Speaker 2: you know, he's moving on to this new life and

1215
01:08:29,560 --> 01:08:32,920
Speaker 2: is reluctant to speak really at all about my mother,

1216
01:08:33,520 --> 01:08:35,880
Speaker 2: it was too painful, I think, you know, I think

1217
01:08:35,880 --> 01:08:39,160
Speaker 2: we were all all avoiding pain by not really speaking

1218
01:08:39,200 --> 01:08:41,600
Speaker 2: about her. So my father and my brother and I

1219
01:08:41,640 --> 01:08:45,080
Speaker 2: sort of carried on with this like code of silence

1220
01:08:45,120 --> 01:08:48,400
Speaker 2: around her as we always had, and it might have

1221
01:08:48,520 --> 01:08:52,040
Speaker 2: kept on, but I just started to have this immense

1222
01:08:52,400 --> 01:08:55,880
Speaker 2: crushing feeling that when my mother died, the only other

1223
01:08:55,920 --> 01:08:58,360
Speaker 2: witness to my you know, to massive parts of my

1224
01:08:58,439 --> 01:09:02,400
Speaker 2: childhood had vanished, which met like the only other sort

1225
01:09:02,439 --> 01:09:05,200
Speaker 2: of like citizen of this nation of two was gone,

1226
01:09:05,280 --> 01:09:08,280
Speaker 2: and so I was the last surviving member of this

1227
01:09:08,720 --> 01:09:11,280
Speaker 2: time and place and what had happened there. And I

1228
01:09:11,400 --> 01:09:14,280
Speaker 2: just felt like if I didn't start to write these

1229
01:09:14,640 --> 01:09:18,400
Speaker 2: memories down and do something with them, then it was

1230
01:09:18,439 --> 01:09:20,880
Speaker 2: as if it didn't happen, and it was. It was

1231
01:09:20,920 --> 01:09:23,080
Speaker 2: really just sort of to validate my own memory and

1232
01:09:23,080 --> 01:09:25,200
Speaker 2: to find a space for it that I began to

1233
01:09:25,560 --> 01:09:28,920
Speaker 2: write about mom and what happened in those years, in

1234
01:09:28,920 --> 01:09:31,280
Speaker 2: particular in those homeschool years. And it was in the

1235
01:09:31,320 --> 01:09:36,200
Speaker 2: process of writing about myself and placing myself in a

1236
01:09:36,280 --> 01:09:39,920
Speaker 2: narrative and then reading that narrative back and seeing the

1237
01:09:39,960 --> 01:09:42,599
Speaker 2: boy who I was, and you know, having a kind

1238
01:09:42,600 --> 01:09:45,760
Speaker 2: of empathy as now a parent myself, I've seen the

1239
01:09:45,800 --> 01:09:49,240
Speaker 2: predicament that this child was in that I started to

1240
01:09:49,320 --> 01:09:53,280
Speaker 2: feel like maybe silence was a problem all along and

1241
01:09:53,320 --> 01:09:55,600
Speaker 2: it needed to be broken. And so, you know, I

1242
01:09:55,680 --> 01:09:59,400
Speaker 2: started to speak with my brother first about our childhood,

1243
01:09:59,439 --> 01:10:03,559
Speaker 2: and I was amazed at how, you know, this code

1244
01:10:03,560 --> 01:10:06,439
Speaker 2: of silence instantly broke. It was all it took was,

1245
01:10:06,680 --> 01:10:09,519
Speaker 2: you know, like like one or two words. It was

1246
01:10:09,560 --> 01:10:11,439
Speaker 2: like we had these pent up feelings that had been

1247
01:10:11,800 --> 01:10:14,840
Speaker 2: there and unactionable for all this time. And as soon

1248
01:10:14,880 --> 01:10:17,800
Speaker 2: as they were expressed, like the floodgates opened, and my

1249
01:10:17,880 --> 01:10:20,880
Speaker 2: brother and I began by, you know, talking, talking and

1250
01:10:20,920 --> 01:10:25,599
Speaker 2: talking about our memories of our childhoods and what hadn't

1251
01:10:25,600 --> 01:10:28,479
Speaker 2: felt right and also what we missed about our mother,

1252
01:10:28,880 --> 01:10:31,400
Speaker 2: and we were just speaking honestly for the first time

1253
01:10:33,320 --> 01:10:36,479
Speaker 2: with my father. You know. As I started to sort

1254
01:10:36,479 --> 01:10:39,720
Speaker 2: of conceive this, these memories, and as I started to

1255
01:10:39,760 --> 01:10:41,880
Speaker 2: think of it as a book, I started to sort

1256
01:10:41,880 --> 01:10:45,559
Speaker 2: of interview my dad a bit, just started talking about memories,

1257
01:10:45,600 --> 01:10:49,640
Speaker 2: and I think that began the conversation. But the scariest

1258
01:10:49,640 --> 01:10:54,400
Speaker 2: moment didn't happen until I shared the whole book with him.

1259
01:10:54,640 --> 01:10:56,920
Speaker 2: I realized it was going to come out, and I thought,

1260
01:10:57,240 --> 01:10:59,439
Speaker 2: I still haven't said a lot of these things out

1261
01:10:59,439 --> 01:11:04,160
Speaker 2: loud to him, and maybe I couldn't, you know, maybe

1262
01:11:04,240 --> 01:11:06,000
Speaker 2: this is why I had to write a book, so

1263
01:11:06,360 --> 01:11:08,760
Speaker 2: I could tell him these things, you know, and show

1264
01:11:08,800 --> 01:11:11,920
Speaker 2: him how it felt to me. Not out of anger,

1265
01:11:11,960 --> 01:11:15,440
Speaker 2: but just because I needed that conversation and that engagement,

1266
01:11:16,120 --> 01:11:20,000
Speaker 2: and I sent it to him, and I was sick

1267
01:11:20,200 --> 01:11:23,759
Speaker 2: with anxiety and this profound guilt. I was just walking

1268
01:11:23,800 --> 01:11:27,519
Speaker 2: around my neighborhood like shaking over what he would make

1269
01:11:27,560 --> 01:11:31,479
Speaker 2: of this. It's such a profoundly radical act. It's like

1270
01:11:31,760 --> 01:11:35,760
Speaker 2: the central law of our family dynamic is that, you know,

1271
01:11:35,800 --> 01:11:38,080
Speaker 2: we all talk about this, and now I've put it

1272
01:11:38,120 --> 01:11:40,679
Speaker 2: all on the page, thought about it, honed it, dotten

1273
01:11:40,760 --> 01:11:43,080
Speaker 2: it down to what feels truest to me, and sent

1274
01:11:43,120 --> 01:11:45,880
Speaker 2: it to him. I said, you don't have to read

1275
01:11:45,920 --> 01:11:48,720
Speaker 2: it if you don't choose to, but here it is.

1276
01:11:48,760 --> 01:11:50,760
Speaker 2: It's up to you to make what you will of it.

1277
01:11:51,120 --> 01:11:52,560
Speaker 2: I didn't know what to expect. I thought maybe I

1278
01:11:52,920 --> 01:11:54,599
Speaker 2: wouldn't hear from him until he had read the whole thing.

1279
01:11:54,960 --> 01:11:59,280
Speaker 2: Maybe he would be furious, maybe he would be, you know, apologetic.

1280
01:11:59,320 --> 01:12:02,519
Speaker 2: I mean, who knows. But he called me after reading

1281
01:12:03,560 --> 01:12:07,479
Speaker 2: the first chapter with his voice shaking, and he, I think,

1282
01:12:07,560 --> 01:12:11,880
Speaker 2: felt appended by it. And he said, I never saw

1283
01:12:11,920 --> 01:12:16,759
Speaker 2: it this way. He recognized all facts in the story,

1284
01:12:16,880 --> 01:12:21,160
Speaker 2: of course, but hadn't really ever put together how that

1285
01:12:21,320 --> 01:12:28,160
Speaker 2: had felt for me. And it began this painful but

1286
01:12:29,080 --> 01:12:32,960
Speaker 2: profoundly healing reckoning with him over our whole history, and

1287
01:12:33,040 --> 01:12:37,000
Speaker 2: we had hard, hard conversations and it went on. The

1288
01:12:37,080 --> 01:12:39,360
Speaker 2: process took weeks. You know, he would read another chapter

1289
01:12:39,439 --> 01:12:41,639
Speaker 2: and then we would talk about it, and I would

1290
01:12:41,680 --> 01:12:43,360
Speaker 2: see the call coming in and I would think, I

1291
01:12:43,400 --> 01:12:46,439
Speaker 2: don't have like the strength to now get to this

1292
01:12:46,560 --> 01:12:48,680
Speaker 2: next chapter of our lives and like what had happened there.

1293
01:12:48,880 --> 01:12:50,639
Speaker 2: But I took the call and we had the conversation,

1294
01:12:51,960 --> 01:12:54,519
Speaker 2: and on the other side of that is I feel

1295
01:12:54,640 --> 01:12:57,920
Speaker 2: like we have a more profound and loving and close

1296
01:12:57,960 --> 01:13:00,600
Speaker 2: relationship than I could have ever conceive we could have.

1297
01:13:01,400 --> 01:13:04,800
Speaker 2: And it was just speaking the truth and sharing my

1298
01:13:05,280 --> 01:13:07,000
Speaker 2: story and how things had felt to me. There were

1299
01:13:07,040 --> 01:13:08,800
Speaker 2: things that he didn't know. You know, he had been

1300
01:13:08,800 --> 01:13:10,160
Speaker 2: at work and we had been at home. He didn't

1301
01:13:10,200 --> 01:13:11,880
Speaker 2: know all the things that had happened. I had been

1302
01:13:11,920 --> 01:13:14,200
Speaker 2: afraid to say them, or you know, like we just

1303
01:13:14,280 --> 01:13:18,280
Speaker 2: never spoke about them. So he was surprised and disturbed

1304
01:13:18,400 --> 01:13:21,080
Speaker 2: by a lot of the things that had happened. He

1305
01:13:21,200 --> 01:13:24,240
Speaker 2: told me something I didn't know, and it changed my

1306
01:13:24,320 --> 01:13:27,920
Speaker 2: whole perception of my mother, especially in her later years,

1307
01:13:28,040 --> 01:13:30,479
Speaker 2: in a way that I'm still trying to make sense of. Really,

1308
01:13:31,120 --> 01:13:33,080
Speaker 2: which was I said to him, my mother became very

1309
01:13:33,120 --> 01:13:35,360
Speaker 2: paranoid at the end of her life. She was afraid

1310
01:13:35,360 --> 01:13:38,280
Speaker 2: to see doctors, which is why, you know, when she

1311
01:13:38,360 --> 01:13:40,640
Speaker 2: went in finally, when she can hardly breathe, she had

1312
01:13:40,680 --> 01:13:43,320
Speaker 2: stage four cancer and you know, had metastasized through her

1313
01:13:43,320 --> 01:13:45,800
Speaker 2: body because she hadn't been to a doctor in years. Really,

1314
01:13:46,240 --> 01:13:49,000
Speaker 2: she became convinced that the FBI was parked across the street,

1315
01:13:49,120 --> 01:13:50,800
Speaker 2: and that there are certain things we couldn't talk about

1316
01:13:50,800 --> 01:13:53,000
Speaker 2: on the phone, you know, because the FBI was tapping

1317
01:13:53,040 --> 01:13:55,599
Speaker 2: the phone. I asked my dad about this, I said,

1318
01:13:55,640 --> 01:13:58,320
Speaker 2: what was that, Like, was she always so paranoid or

1319
01:13:58,520 --> 01:14:01,559
Speaker 2: was it just something that worsened? And he said, oh, well,

1320
01:14:01,680 --> 01:14:05,240
Speaker 2: that was her alcoholism. And I said her what and

1321
01:14:05,560 --> 01:14:08,360
Speaker 2: he was like, yeah, her alcoholism. And then he told

1322
01:14:08,400 --> 01:14:11,120
Speaker 2: me that she had been drinking a half a bottle

1323
01:14:11,160 --> 01:14:13,200
Speaker 2: of vodka a day, basically since the day I left

1324
01:14:13,200 --> 01:14:19,960
Speaker 2: for college, and that she had orrhosis and brain damage

1325
01:14:19,960 --> 01:14:23,040
Speaker 2: from years of alcoholism. You know, it's one of these

1326
01:14:23,439 --> 01:14:27,640
Speaker 2: obvious truths that you choose not to see, you know,

1327
01:14:28,280 --> 01:14:30,479
Speaker 2: like I saw that she was declining. I had already

1328
01:14:30,520 --> 01:14:33,000
Speaker 2: written a book when I learned this fact, and I

1329
01:14:33,320 --> 01:14:36,519
Speaker 2: remember I called my editor and I said, pull the presses.

1330
01:14:36,720 --> 01:14:39,360
Speaker 2: There's this new major fact about her, and I think

1331
01:14:39,360 --> 01:14:43,120
Speaker 2: it's gonna change how I'm thinking about her. And he said, well,

1332
01:14:43,160 --> 01:14:45,000
Speaker 2: what is it? And I said it was her alcoholism.

1333
01:14:45,040 --> 01:14:47,320
Speaker 2: I explained what my dad had said, and he said, well,

1334
01:14:47,320 --> 01:14:50,040
Speaker 2: I already know that. He said what and he said,

1335
01:14:50,080 --> 01:14:51,920
Speaker 2: he said, you know you describe an alcoholic.

1336
01:14:52,120 --> 01:14:53,919
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's in the book without.

1337
01:14:53,760 --> 01:14:56,120
Speaker 2: And I did not know. Honestly, Danny, I did not know.

1338
01:14:56,720 --> 01:14:58,439
Speaker 2: And I look back and I see I was lying

1339
01:14:58,520 --> 01:15:01,400
Speaker 2: to myself. You know, I know why I didn't permit

1340
01:15:01,520 --> 01:15:04,479
Speaker 2: myself to see that particular pain.

1341
01:15:08,200 --> 01:15:13,320
Speaker 3: Here's Stefan reading one more passage from his beautiful, heartbreaking memoir.

1342
01:15:15,880 --> 01:15:19,080
Speaker 2: You were happy, weren't you? She asked me one afternoon

1343
01:15:19,120 --> 01:15:23,240
Speaker 2: when I was back in Plano. What's that. I couldn't

1344
01:15:23,240 --> 01:15:25,120
Speaker 2: have known then that this would be the last time

1345
01:15:25,120 --> 01:15:27,519
Speaker 2: I'd share a room with her, that the pandemic we've

1346
01:15:27,520 --> 01:15:29,280
Speaker 2: been hearing about on the news would soon put up

1347
01:15:29,280 --> 01:15:32,760
Speaker 2: a final barrier between us. Mom looked at her pale

1348
01:15:32,760 --> 01:15:35,000
Speaker 2: fingers as she braided the tassels of her throat blanket.

1349
01:15:35,920 --> 01:15:39,120
Speaker 2: She bit a lip, her eyes spilling over weren't we

1350
01:15:39,280 --> 01:15:41,160
Speaker 2: so happy here in the house when it was just

1351
01:15:41,240 --> 01:15:43,920
Speaker 2: the two of us? Weren't those just the happiest years?

1352
01:15:45,600 --> 01:15:47,840
Speaker 2: I let her take my hand, but even then I

1353
01:15:47,880 --> 01:15:50,240
Speaker 2: could not bring myself to give her the answer she needed.

1354
01:15:50,960 --> 01:15:53,720
Speaker 2: Minutes later, I'd laced up once more and run away

1355
01:15:53,760 --> 01:15:56,400
Speaker 2: from the question. I ran out the door and through

1356
01:15:56,479 --> 01:15:58,000
Speaker 2: my hometown one last time.

1357
01:16:10,000 --> 01:16:13,599
Speaker 3: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly z Acre

1358
01:16:13,760 --> 01:16:16,799
Speaker 3: is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.

1359
01:16:17,439 --> 01:16:19,400
Speaker 3: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,

1360
01:16:19,800 --> 01:16:22,160
Speaker 3: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear

1361
01:16:22,200 --> 01:16:25,479
Speaker 3: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight

1362
01:16:25,560 --> 01:16:29,639
Speaker 3: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also

1363
01:16:29,800 --> 01:16:34,439
Speaker 3: find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder and if you'd

1364
01:16:34,520 --> 01:16:36,879
Speaker 3: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,

1365
01:16:37,320 --> 01:16:39,120
Speaker 3: check out my memoir Inheritance.

1366
01:16:56,160 --> 01:17:00,440
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Potodcasts,

1367
01:17:00,520 --> 01:17:02,519
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.