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Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. No

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Speaker 1: one live like family. We lie to each other all

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Speaker 1: the time. We'd love to keep each other at a distance,

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Speaker 1: to give ourselves some elbow room and the claustrophobic nuclear unit,

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Speaker 1: to spare each other's steelers, to cut short of conversation

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Speaker 1: or to begin one, to ensure that the artichoke heart

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Speaker 1: softness of our insights is sealed safely off forever. As

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Speaker 1: I write this, my two toddlers are in the next room,

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Speaker 1: cheerfully bolting out some interminable preschool song and throwing stuffed

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Speaker 1: animals at each other. They're too young to ask me

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Speaker 1: about my missing father or my never spoken of mother,

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Speaker 1: or why I am the way I am. They're too

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Speaker 1: young to understand how much they don't know. Then again,

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Speaker 1: I haven't started lying to them yet. This is the

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Speaker 1: story of digging out the biggest lie I was ever told.

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Speaker 1: That's Liz Shire, book editor, product developer, an author of

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Speaker 1: the new memoir Never Simple. The graph to Lizz's book

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Speaker 1: from the poet Adrian Rich goes like this. When we

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Speaker 1: discover that someone we trusted can be trusted no longer,

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Speaker 1: it forces us to re examine the universe to question

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Speaker 1: the whole instinct and concept of trust for a while.

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Speaker 1: We are thrust back onto some bleak, jutting ledge in

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Speaker 1: a dark pierced by sheets of fire, swept by sheets

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Speaker 1: of rain, in a world before kinship or naming or

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Speaker 1: tenderness exists. We are brought close to formlessness. This is

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Speaker 1: a story of lies, trust, and one woman's journey to

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Speaker 1: be brought back from that bleak, jutting ledge and make

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Speaker 1: herself whole. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets,

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Speaker 1: the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we

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Speaker 1: keep from others, and this good we keep from ourselves.

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Speaker 1: I was born in New Yorkville, which is the very

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Speaker 1: far east neighborhood in New York City. It is basically

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Speaker 1: falling off into the East River. And when you here

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Speaker 1: grew up in New York City, I think a lot

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Speaker 1: of people think gossip Girl, and that really could not

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Speaker 1: have been further from the truth of my New York City.

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Speaker 1: In the eighties and nineties, we were all very middle

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Speaker 1: class um, a kind of Manhattan that doesn't really so

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Speaker 1: much exist anymore. I lived with my mother. We lived

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Speaker 1: in a one bedroom apartment on eighty one Street, and

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Speaker 1: it was a very typical setup for the time, where

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Speaker 1: I lived in the bedroom and she had created out

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Speaker 1: of the hall closet a little nook for herself where

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Speaker 1: she had put a twin bed, and we lived there together.

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Speaker 1: And I did not know at the time that it

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Speaker 1: was unusual for a mother and daughter to share a

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Speaker 1: home with nobody else there. It wasn't really true of

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Speaker 1: other people. I know once I got out to school,

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Speaker 1: but as a small child, I didn't know any of

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Speaker 1: that yet. And so there we worked, just the two

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Speaker 1: of us together. Describe your mother for me. You know

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Speaker 1: your mother during your childhood. My mother was an incredibly

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Speaker 1: charming woman. She was brilliant. She had been an attorney

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Speaker 1: when very few women were attorneys. She was one of

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Speaker 1: the very few women in her law school class in

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Speaker 1: the early sixties. She went to n y U, and

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Speaker 1: her professors would have ladies Night the first Monday of

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Speaker 1: every month, and that was the one day that they

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Speaker 1: would call on the women in their classes. And this

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Speaker 1: was something I knew about her, even though she no

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Speaker 1: longer worked as a lawyer, she was retired, and because

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Speaker 1: I was so young, I didn't then know that people

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Speaker 1: don't generally retire in their late thirties. I didn't know

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Speaker 1: that there was something wrong with that statement. But she

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Speaker 1: could be enormously charming. She was a lot of fun.

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Speaker 1: She told great stories with you know, the arms pinwheeling

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Speaker 1: to to gesture and illustrate what she was talking about.

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Speaker 1: She was a quite a smoker. She smoked between four

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Speaker 1: and six packs a day, depending on how stressed how

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Speaker 1: she was that particular week. Um. And so she had

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Speaker 1: this sort of deep throaty voice, in this deep chuffle

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Speaker 1: that she would illustrate her stories with. And she treated

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Speaker 1: everything else in our lives as sort of incidental to

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Speaker 1: the fact that we were going to have time together.

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Speaker 1: So she would just take me out of school on

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Speaker 1: a moment's notice it was a good sledding day in

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Speaker 1: the park, or if there was something good at the

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Speaker 1: map that she wanted to see when it wasn't too crowded. Um.

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Speaker 1: And she just was not interested in anything that would

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Speaker 1: get in her way. No, it doesn't sound like she

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Speaker 1: was very interested in rules. No, not particularly. And I

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Speaker 1: thought everything in our lives was normal until I got

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Speaker 1: to school and I started realizing that things and other

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Speaker 1: kids lives weren't quite the same. My mother did not

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Speaker 1: have a hold on her anger, and she had a

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Speaker 1: lot of anger. There was no logical chain between an

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Speaker 1: occurrence and her reaction to the occurrence. So whether I

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Speaker 1: did some the really terrible and misbehaved, or whether I

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Speaker 1: left a water glass in the wrong place, you know,

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Speaker 1: sort of one time out of every ten, the rage

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Speaker 1: would come up, and it was like you know the

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Speaker 1: movie The Terminator, It was like talking to her there

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Speaker 1: with a red light would come on behind the eyes

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Speaker 1: and the screaming would begin, and I would either lock

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Speaker 1: myself in the bathroom or in the closet where just

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Speaker 1: sort of try to stay out of her reach. And

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Speaker 1: you could see, if you were dumb enough to get

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Speaker 1: close enough to see that there was just nobody driving

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Speaker 1: the bus there, that she was completely out of control.

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Speaker 1: And when the adrenaline wore off, then the self excoriation

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Speaker 1: would come in. Then she would say to the ground,

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Speaker 1: she would weep, what have I done to you? Why

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Speaker 1: do I treat you like this? I'm so terrible and

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Speaker 1: such a terrible mother. Um, And I would just try

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Speaker 1: to comfort her, because returning to that kind of normal

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Speaker 1: before the rage was the best we could do. What

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Speaker 1: did she actually look like when she would fly into

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Speaker 1: one of these rages. So my mother was a small

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Speaker 1: woman when she got pregnant with me. She didn't weigh

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Speaker 1: an hundred pounds, and she had a sort of perfect

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Speaker 1: blonde ploff if you can think of the seventies hair

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Speaker 1: hairstyle of the with a flip in the front um.

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Speaker 1: And when she got really angry, you know, her face

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Speaker 1: would turn red, the hair would flof up um and

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Speaker 1: the spit would start flying. She would she would lose

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Speaker 1: the ability to control her mouth or her body, and

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Speaker 1: she became huge to me in my eyes, Like you know,

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Speaker 1: was a very small child, and although she was not

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Speaker 1: a large person, she became like a giant. What did

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Speaker 1: you know about your father at that stage in your life?

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Speaker 1: What was the story about your father and where he was?

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Speaker 1: So I didn't know much when I was very young.

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Speaker 1: I didn't really have a firm grasp on the idea

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Speaker 1: that there was such a thing as a father. I

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Speaker 1: understood that there were men, we knew men, but I

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Speaker 1: didn't understand that there was, you know, at least a

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Speaker 1: man genetically related to each child. When I was very young,

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Speaker 1: she told me a story about my father that went

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Speaker 1: like this. My father was her second husband. She had

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Speaker 1: married someone read out of college. They had been married

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Speaker 1: for some time and divorced amicably, and because it was

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Speaker 1: a second marriage, they had a very small ceremony. She

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Speaker 1: had borrowed a pant suit from a friend, which she

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Speaker 1: returned after they were done. They were only married for

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Speaker 1: six months or so. He didn't have a living family,

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Speaker 1: that didn't have a lot of friends. And one night

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Speaker 1: he was driving and he got to a stop sign

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Speaker 1: and he stopped, and the driver behind him didn't, and

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Speaker 1: he died instantly. And she was in such a storm

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Speaker 1: of grief that she burned all his belongings, burned all

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Speaker 1: the pictures of him, burned all the evidence that he

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Speaker 1: had ever been there. And at the time, I believe

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Speaker 1: this because you believe what your parents tell you. It

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Speaker 1: wasn't until I was a little older that I started

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Speaker 1: to realize that that story was extremely convenient. It didn't

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Speaker 1: actually make any sense at all. It didn't fit together,

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Speaker 1: it didn't fit with our lives. You know, people and

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Speaker 1: just disappear off the planet, unable to be found, and

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Speaker 1: that it just wasn't incredible that nobody who had known

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Speaker 1: him was still alive or reachable, And so I thought,

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Speaker 1: if she is lying about his death, it must be

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Speaker 1: that he's still alive. I couldn't imagine a reason why

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Speaker 1: he would have died one way, and she would tell

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Speaker 1: me a different way. So I assume that he was

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Speaker 1: somewhere still around. And so, you know, we would walk

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Speaker 1: around New York and I would just sort of look

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Speaker 1: at all the men who were, you know, roughly the

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Speaker 1: right age and blonde and might potentially look enough like us,

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Speaker 1: and thinking, is that you are you the one? I

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Speaker 1: thought that there must be some really romantic, adventurous story

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Speaker 1: as to why he was still alive, but nobody would

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Speaker 1: let me talk to him. Write that he was a

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Speaker 1: spy or you know, wrongfully imprisoned, or an astronaut abandoned

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Speaker 1: on a distant planet or something um. And then as

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Speaker 1: I got into middle school in high school and got

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Speaker 1: to be disaffected, I thought, maybe he's just married. But

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Speaker 1: I knew that I was being told something that was

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Speaker 1: evidently untrue. I just didn't figure out why. Liz goes

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Speaker 1: to middle school at Hunter, an excellent, highly competitive public

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Speaker 1: school in Manhattan, and during this time, her mother's rage

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Speaker 1: escalates she's violent towards Liz, and Liz's sense that things

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Speaker 1: just don't add up about her father is really sinking in.

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Speaker 1: Liz grows more and more depressed. Her mother's volatility and

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Speaker 1: her father's elusiveness sit at the center of her middle

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Speaker 1: school years. I was kind of a weird kid that

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Speaker 1: was very socially awkward. I was depressed. I don't think

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Speaker 1: we knew at the time what depression looked like in

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Speaker 1: teenagers or young teenagers. Now, I think it would have

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Speaker 1: been diagnosed much earlier and probably treated. But I was super,

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Speaker 1: super unpopular. You know, there were bullies in my school

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Speaker 1: that made my life pretty hard, and I knew that

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Speaker 1: in a way, they were right that there was something

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Speaker 1: wrong with me. There was something wrong with my house.

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Speaker 1: And you know, every twelve or thirteen year old kid

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Speaker 1: thinks that, but in my case it was really true.

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Speaker 1: We were not living a normal life, um and I

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Speaker 1: took that very much to heart and thought it was

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Speaker 1: something integral to me. The fact that my father was

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Speaker 1: not there just really meant that there was no one

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Speaker 1: there to see us. We lived this life like a

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Speaker 1: panic room in the middle of this city of eight

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Speaker 1: and a half billion people. But there were no eyes

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Speaker 1: on us. No one knew what was happening in the apartment,

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Speaker 1: door closed, and my mother was enormously protective. I was

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Speaker 1: not allowed to go to friends houses for the most part,

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Speaker 1: I was largely not allowed to leave the apartment without

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Speaker 1: her eyes on me or the eyes of friends parents

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Speaker 1: who she trusted, and so there was just no one,

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Speaker 1: no one to see what was happening. And so I

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Speaker 1: despaired because to me, there was something irretrievably wrong with

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Speaker 1: our lives, and there was no reason to think it

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Speaker 1: could ever get better. A lot of this came to

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Speaker 1: a head when I was about fifteen and I had,

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Speaker 1: unbeknownst to my mother, started dating an older boy at

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Speaker 1: my high school. And he was a guitar player and

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Speaker 1: a baseball player, and you know, all those things that

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Speaker 1: are very very attractive to fifteen year old girls. And

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Speaker 1: my mother at that time, I don't remember what it was.

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Speaker 1: I think maybe she was taking a class. I knew

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Speaker 1: she was out one afternoon week And so, you know,

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Speaker 1: when you grew up in New York City, there's not

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Speaker 1: a lot of places to sneak away and make out

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Speaker 1: right because there's no basements, So there's no reddy couches

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Speaker 1: and there's no river banks, so there's no words, just

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Speaker 1: sort of sneak away. You really have to work at

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Speaker 1: it to find somewhere private. So I sneaked him into

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Speaker 1: my apartment and my mother came home early and caught us,

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Speaker 1: and she went ballistic and ended up sending me to

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Speaker 1: my godparents house in New Jersey, where I stayed for

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Speaker 1: a couple of months until she calmed down. And that

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Speaker 1: was really this kind of oasis of time living with them,

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Speaker 1: when I started to realize that other people do not

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Speaker 1: live on this sort of precipice of constant anger and

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Speaker 1: rage and sadness. Many people lived with an even kielan nows.

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Speaker 1: Many people never screamed at each other at all, which

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Speaker 1: was a totally novel concept. And even though I was

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Speaker 1: not living in my mother's house at the time, she

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Speaker 1: decided that I had to be tracked uh And so

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Speaker 1: she went to the principle of my teachers and she

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Speaker 1: had them all sit down together with the guidance counselor,

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Speaker 1: and she presented them with a plan for her unmarriageable daughter,

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Speaker 1: in which she was going to hire a Barnard student

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Speaker 1: to follow me in the streets. Should I ever come home,

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Speaker 1: I would not have access to the phone, of course,

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Speaker 1: the only plandlines at the time, and every time I

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Speaker 1: went to a class, I was going to have to

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Speaker 1: sign in, and we didn't do that at my school.

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Speaker 1: She required them to put together this whole system of

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Speaker 1: clipboards and signatures, and half the time they of course

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Speaker 1: forgot that that was supposed to happen at all. This

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Speaker 1: really moving thing happened on one day where I was

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Speaker 1: sitting in the hallway in a free period and my

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Speaker 1: most terrifying teacher came up to me, and I thought,

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Speaker 1: what have I done wrong? And she said so about

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Speaker 1: this signing in business? And I said yes, And she

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Speaker 1: said I want you to know that none of us

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Speaker 1: have seen you do anything wrong, and whatever happens, none

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Speaker 1: plus will. And that really blew me over because at

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Speaker 1: that moment I understood that when they sat in that

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Speaker 1: room Princilo in the guidance counselor, they weren't nodding along

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Speaker 1: going oh, yes, totally, you know, terrible out of control teenager.

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Speaker 1: What can we do to rein her back in? They

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Speaker 1: were thinking, this mother is crazy. And it was the

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Speaker 1: first time that I understood that people outside of our lives,

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Speaker 1: we're seeing that her behavior was completely out of the

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Speaker 1: realm of reason, and that her reactions could only kindly

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Speaker 1: be classified as only overreactions, and that someone actually saw

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Speaker 1: what was going on. So that was a really seminal

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Speaker 1: moment during those years. These seminal moments are so important

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Speaker 1: in our lives, the ones during which we're seen, recognized, witnessed. Thankfully,

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Speaker 1: now some eyes are on Liz and her mother, and

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Speaker 1: she no longer feels like the two of them are

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Speaker 1: entirely shrouded, their troubles invisible. Their dynamic has been so

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Speaker 1: deeply toxic, so much so that when her mother really

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Speaker 1: gets angry, she threatens Liz by telling her she's going

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Speaker 1: to put her beloved dog to sleep. But now, after

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Speaker 1: this encounter with her teachers at school, a bit of

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Speaker 1: life begins to dawn. Her teachers aren't out to get her, No,

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Speaker 1: they're actively protecting her. The years passed and Liz takes

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Speaker 1: off for college. She's still in touch with her mom,

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Speaker 1: but she's trying to keep her distance. Then she's home

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Speaker 1: from school on vacation when the damn breaks yet again,

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Speaker 1: this time with a number of surprising declarations, bombshells really

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Speaker 1: from her mother. I was home for fall break and

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Speaker 1: I was sort of sprawled on the couch in the

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Speaker 1: living room reading something, and she came in, you know,

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Speaker 1: wearing one of her crazy movemos. She by that time

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Speaker 1: rarely left the apartment and often rarely left her bedroom.

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Speaker 1: She was severely a grophobic. So she came and started

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Speaker 1: sidling with the door and absolutely very nervous, which is

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Speaker 1: definitely not hermilius. I mean, something was up. And she said, so,

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Speaker 1: you said you're going to try to get a learner's

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Speaker 1: permit while you're home from college. And if I'd gone

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Speaker 1: to college and found out the people outside New York

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Speaker 1: City drive and that was sonning to me. So I

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Speaker 1: was going to go do this thing. And I said, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's right. And she said you're not going to

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Speaker 1: be able to do that and I said, okay, why

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Speaker 1: and she said, well, you don't have a birth certificate

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Speaker 1: and I said, oh, I can just get a copy.

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Speaker 1: And she said, no, no no, no, not, you don't have

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Speaker 1: a copy of your birth certificate. I never filed a

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Speaker 1: birth certificate for you. There's no record of your birth

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Speaker 1: at all. And I said, okay, why, and she then

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Speaker 1: came out with this life changing line, I was married

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Speaker 1: when you were born, but not to your father. And

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Speaker 1: it turns out all of this that I discovered over

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Speaker 1: that next twenty minutes or so, that the first part

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Speaker 1: of the story she told me was true. She was

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Speaker 1: married to this, by all accounts, very lovely man after college.

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Speaker 1: They were married for it or ten years, divorced and

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Speaker 1: went their separate ways. What I did not know was

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Speaker 1: that she had married a second man, a man named Meryl,

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Speaker 1: sometime after that, and in the car on the way

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Speaker 1: back from their wedding ceremony, he pulled the car over

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Speaker 1: to the side of the road and popped the hood

307
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Speaker 1: because the voices from the engine were talking to him

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Speaker 1: and he needed to answer them. So there were clearly

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Speaker 1: there was there was a lot going on with this man,

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Speaker 1: not the least of which was that he was beating

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Speaker 1: the crap out of my mother, and she ultimately left him.

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Speaker 1: She uh, you know, she would call the police, and

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Speaker 1: and it was the seventies, out of big domestic abuse

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Speaker 1: was even a term, and they would come and say,

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Speaker 1: you know, this is between a man and his wife,

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Speaker 1: and then they would leave again. And so she finally

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Speaker 1: left him up and she would call, she would refuse

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Speaker 1: to talk to him, and eventually he stopped calling. But

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Speaker 1: really the key point here is that they never divorced,

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Speaker 1: and so until he died when I was a junior,

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Speaker 1: a senior in high school, my mother was married to

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Speaker 1: a man I had never heard of. And looking back,

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Speaker 1: even at all of the kind of weird and crazy

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00:17:01,840 --> 00:17:04,359
Speaker 1: things that happened, I think that's what strikes me as

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Speaker 1: the strangest. That she and I were living in this

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00:17:07,040 --> 00:17:13,320
Speaker 1: like incredibly codependent, tiny, claustrophobic towsome and there was this

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00:17:13,480 --> 00:17:18,959
Speaker 1: major thing about her that I didn't know. Twenty minutes,

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Speaker 1: twenty minutes and a lifetime the information is on rushing

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Speaker 1: a torrent. Lizz's mom tells her the truth for the

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Speaker 1: first time, the truth of her father. He was this

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Speaker 1: beautiful man ten years younger than she was. He picked

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Speaker 1: her up in Central Park by asking for a piece

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Speaker 1: of her New York Times, a classic nineteen seventies pick

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00:17:38,840 --> 00:17:41,439
Speaker 1: up if there ever was one. They embarked on a

335
00:17:41,440 --> 00:17:44,680
Speaker 1: love affair that lasted six months, maybe a year. They

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00:17:44,680 --> 00:17:47,840
Speaker 1: were both fairly depressed. One day, she realized she hadn't

337
00:17:47,840 --> 00:17:50,080
Speaker 1: heard from him in a little while, so she called

338
00:17:50,119 --> 00:17:52,679
Speaker 1: his apartment and his ex wife picked up the phone.

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00:17:53,240 --> 00:17:55,760
Speaker 1: The week before, he had jumped from the roof of

340
00:17:55,760 --> 00:17:59,359
Speaker 1: his building and fallen sixteen stories to the concrete below,

341
00:17:59,680 --> 00:18:05,240
Speaker 1: where died. And so my mother went into an even

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00:18:05,240 --> 00:18:10,399
Speaker 1: greater depression. And after some months she stirred herself to

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00:18:10,840 --> 00:18:12,720
Speaker 1: have a doctor so as that she was not feeling well,

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00:18:13,200 --> 00:18:16,160
Speaker 1: and she was seeing the sort of daughtering old character

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Speaker 1: of the doctor. And he ransom blood tests and said,

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00:18:20,119 --> 00:18:21,960
Speaker 1: you have a tomer on your patuitary glance, and you

347
00:18:21,960 --> 00:18:24,760
Speaker 1: are dying. And so she and her grief kicked herself

348
00:18:24,840 --> 00:18:26,680
Speaker 1: up and gets on the plane and flies to California,

349
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Speaker 1: where her brother is living, who had married a woman

350
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Speaker 1: with the four young children who they were raising together.

351
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Speaker 1: And my aunt took one look at her when she

352
00:18:36,000 --> 00:18:37,920
Speaker 1: got off the plan and said, honey, you're not dying.

353
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Speaker 1: You are pregnant. And by that time she was almost

354
00:18:42,080 --> 00:18:44,919
Speaker 1: five months long, and there was nothing to do about it.

355
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Speaker 1: And her idea was that she would put me up

356
00:18:47,720 --> 00:18:49,840
Speaker 1: for adoption when I was born. She had never intended

357
00:18:49,840 --> 00:18:51,960
Speaker 1: to have children. She was alone. What it was not

358
00:18:52,560 --> 00:18:56,360
Speaker 1: not something she had intended to take on, and when

359
00:18:56,400 --> 00:18:59,720
Speaker 1: I was born, apparently I didn't cry, and she felt, well,

360
00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:01,800
Speaker 1: even maybe it's quiet, I could just slit see along

361
00:19:01,840 --> 00:19:05,600
Speaker 1: this last And on day twelve she thought, maybe this

362
00:19:05,680 --> 00:19:07,359
Speaker 1: kid is mute. And she poked me with a diaper

363
00:19:07,440 --> 00:19:10,360
Speaker 1: band and it turned out of his and she decided

364
00:19:10,400 --> 00:19:12,919
Speaker 1: to keep me, and you know, being my mother, she

365
00:19:12,960 --> 00:19:15,720
Speaker 1: didn't name me for the first six months because there

366
00:19:15,760 --> 00:19:17,639
Speaker 1: was no need to distinguish me from anybody else. There

367
00:19:17,680 --> 00:19:19,879
Speaker 1: are only two of us in the apartments. That the

368
00:19:19,920 --> 00:19:25,360
Speaker 1: baby was enough, and so we went done, And so

369
00:19:25,480 --> 00:19:29,119
Speaker 1: they went on. Liz graduates from college and begins working

370
00:19:29,119 --> 00:19:32,199
Speaker 1: and publishing. She's living in New York City in a

371
00:19:32,240 --> 00:19:35,920
Speaker 1: relationship with a woman. She's making her way, but there's

372
00:19:35,960 --> 00:19:38,879
Speaker 1: always the specter of her mother, the possibility of a

373
00:19:38,880 --> 00:19:42,480
Speaker 1: phone call that will up end her hard one equilibrium.

374
00:19:42,640 --> 00:19:45,040
Speaker 1: Once Liz is at her job when she receives a

375
00:19:45,080 --> 00:19:47,960
Speaker 1: call from her mother and she's using what Liz describes

376
00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:52,440
Speaker 1: as her tranquilizer voice. Her mom tells Liz that she's

377
00:19:52,480 --> 00:19:55,679
Speaker 1: missing her own mother, who has been dead for forty years,

378
00:19:55,840 --> 00:19:58,840
Speaker 1: and that she has a brilliant idea she knows Liz

379
00:19:58,880 --> 00:20:01,920
Speaker 1: doesn't want to have children, her health. But maybe Liz

380
00:20:01,960 --> 00:20:05,240
Speaker 1: could give birth to a stillborn baby, Yes, stay with it,

381
00:20:05,760 --> 00:20:09,120
Speaker 1: a stillborn baby who could then be buried with her

382
00:20:09,160 --> 00:20:11,879
Speaker 1: long dead mother so that she wouldn't be lonely in

383
00:20:11,920 --> 00:20:17,040
Speaker 1: the cemetery. Imagine being on the receiving end of that

384
00:20:17,119 --> 00:20:21,359
Speaker 1: phone call, sitting in an office surrounded by coworkers, colleagues.

385
00:20:21,960 --> 00:20:24,679
Speaker 1: Liz has been trying to understand her mother all her life.

386
00:20:25,280 --> 00:20:28,680
Speaker 1: Now she has to consider is her mother mentally ill,

387
00:20:29,040 --> 00:20:37,000
Speaker 1: heavily medicated, eccentric, dangerous, hurting all of the above. At

388
00:20:37,040 --> 00:20:39,000
Speaker 1: that stage, she was calling it a couple of times

389
00:20:39,000 --> 00:20:42,159
Speaker 1: a day. Probably she did not have bipolar disorder, but

390
00:20:42,240 --> 00:20:44,960
Speaker 1: she did have manic CASA. She would have swings where

391
00:20:45,720 --> 00:20:48,600
Speaker 1: these frequent calls would happen, and then if she took

392
00:20:48,680 --> 00:20:52,359
Speaker 1: enough tranquilizers, it would come out in situations where, just

393
00:20:52,520 --> 00:20:54,840
Speaker 1: as an example, she would decide that it was the

394
00:20:54,920 --> 00:20:57,399
Speaker 1: right thing for me to somehow orchestrate is still worth

395
00:20:57,840 --> 00:21:00,520
Speaker 1: And then I don't know what she thought we would do,

396
00:21:00,720 --> 00:21:02,879
Speaker 1: sneak into the graveyard in the middle of the n

397
00:21:03,720 --> 00:21:06,399
Speaker 1: I don't know which a logical chain there was, but

398
00:21:06,960 --> 00:21:08,920
Speaker 1: Danny I realized that it may sound change to say

399
00:21:08,920 --> 00:21:11,639
Speaker 1: this now. But I actually found those moments kind of validating,

400
00:21:11,720 --> 00:21:14,960
Speaker 1: because so often her behavior was just on the edge

401
00:21:15,600 --> 00:21:19,960
Speaker 1: of eccentric and really out of the realm of normal,

402
00:21:20,600 --> 00:21:23,600
Speaker 1: and those moments reminding like, this actually is not normal,

403
00:21:23,840 --> 00:21:27,760
Speaker 1: Like most parents don't do this, Most parents do not

404
00:21:27,920 --> 00:21:30,880
Speaker 1: call and request that you have still one baby. This

405
00:21:30,920 --> 00:21:34,600
Speaker 1: is not this is not in the normal woods. And

406
00:21:34,640 --> 00:21:38,120
Speaker 1: so sometimes these were very comforting conversations because they reminded

407
00:21:38,160 --> 00:21:41,520
Speaker 1: me that I was dealing with something that I could

408
00:21:41,520 --> 00:21:43,800
Speaker 1: not predict, and that if my response to it was

409
00:21:43,840 --> 00:21:47,520
Speaker 1: not perfectly formulated or sufficiently comforting, because of course I

410
00:21:47,520 --> 00:21:51,040
Speaker 1: felt responsible for her, uh that that was not some

411
00:21:51,160 --> 00:21:55,320
Speaker 1: deficiency in me, It was that the situation was inherently bananas.

412
00:21:57,240 --> 00:22:02,080
Speaker 1: Bananas is one word for it, but there's also another. One. Afternoon,

413
00:22:02,680 --> 00:22:04,680
Speaker 1: Liz and her mother are having lunch outdoors at a

414
00:22:04,760 --> 00:22:07,560
Speaker 1: restaurant in Manhattan. When her mother lights up a cigarette.

415
00:22:08,080 --> 00:22:10,200
Speaker 1: The waitress comes over and tells her that smoking is

416
00:22:10,240 --> 00:22:13,959
Speaker 1: against the law, and her mom she goes completely crazy

417
00:22:13,960 --> 00:22:16,440
Speaker 1: on the waitress, livid at being told what to do,

418
00:22:17,160 --> 00:22:20,200
Speaker 1: and then Lizza's mother uses a word for the first time,

419
00:22:20,680 --> 00:22:24,240
Speaker 1: just slips it into the conversation after the waitress walks away,

420
00:22:24,400 --> 00:22:29,280
Speaker 1: and that word is borderline, And you know the moment

421
00:22:29,359 --> 00:22:31,199
Speaker 1: she said that word, I think. I think in all

422
00:22:31,240 --> 00:22:33,679
Speaker 1: of this story there are these pivot points, like one

423
00:22:33,720 --> 00:22:35,880
Speaker 1: of those old yardsticks that were foldable, and the whole

424
00:22:35,920 --> 00:22:39,520
Speaker 1: thing just completely goes off into a direction I wasn't expecting.

425
00:22:39,560 --> 00:22:43,400
Speaker 1: And the moment she said borderline was one of those moments.

426
00:22:44,040 --> 00:22:46,680
Speaker 1: Because again, for all of this time, I had known

427
00:22:46,720 --> 00:22:48,520
Speaker 1: she was eccentric. I had known there was something odd

428
00:22:48,520 --> 00:22:53,159
Speaker 1: about her. I had known that people didn't respond to

429
00:22:53,160 --> 00:22:56,359
Speaker 1: her the way they responded to other people, but I

430
00:22:56,400 --> 00:23:00,800
Speaker 1: didn't know what it was. And having a diagnosis just

431
00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:03,320
Speaker 1: meant the world to me, just that there was now

432
00:23:03,359 --> 00:23:05,399
Speaker 1: something I could read, there was something I could research.

433
00:23:05,760 --> 00:23:09,359
Speaker 1: This happened to other people, but this wasn't something that

434
00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:12,800
Speaker 1: we were just the two of us tussling around between us.

435
00:23:13,119 --> 00:23:16,400
Speaker 1: But this was something out in the world that psychiatristn't

436
00:23:16,560 --> 00:23:18,640
Speaker 1: dealt with and had written articles on. And I could

437
00:23:18,680 --> 00:23:21,560
Speaker 1: read those articles. And so I went and looked up

438
00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:26,720
Speaker 1: the symptoms of borderline personality disorder, and people with borderline

439
00:23:26,760 --> 00:23:31,840
Speaker 1: personality disorder obviously have a wide range of severity and symptoms,

440
00:23:31,880 --> 00:23:35,879
Speaker 1: but it's characterized by extreme fear of abandonment. Usually that

441
00:23:35,960 --> 00:23:39,080
Speaker 1: comes from some kind of trauma and childhood, and so

442
00:23:39,280 --> 00:23:42,840
Speaker 1: people who are suffering with this cannot abide the idea

443
00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:46,280
Speaker 1: of the distinction between them and another person, particularly between

444
00:23:46,320 --> 00:23:49,439
Speaker 1: them and their children, and so so much started to

445
00:23:49,440 --> 00:23:52,040
Speaker 1: fall into place. Her her inability to let go of

446
00:23:52,040 --> 00:23:55,080
Speaker 1: me in any way, her screaming fits of rage when

447
00:23:55,119 --> 00:23:57,080
Speaker 1: as an adult, for example, I would failed to send

448
00:23:57,080 --> 00:24:00,399
Speaker 1: her a Valentine's Day card. These kinds of things made

449
00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:04,160
Speaker 1: her livid, and I never understood why, And that helped

450
00:24:04,160 --> 00:24:07,760
Speaker 1: me understand that those those things where I was not

451
00:24:07,880 --> 00:24:09,679
Speaker 1: responding to the way that she wanted, where I was

452
00:24:09,720 --> 00:24:13,000
Speaker 1: not prioritizing her as the sole thing in my life,

453
00:24:13,920 --> 00:24:18,080
Speaker 1: sent her into her absolute panic that she had been

454
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:22,000
Speaker 1: abandoned in the bottom of figuratively the bottom of a

455
00:24:22,080 --> 00:24:26,119
Speaker 1: deep well with no getting out of it. That's a

456
00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:29,879
Speaker 1: great description. So in this period of time of young adulthood,

457
00:24:30,359 --> 00:24:35,200
Speaker 1: your girlfriend at the time has a wealthy aunt who

458
00:24:35,520 --> 00:24:38,159
Speaker 1: just really wants to help you figure out more about

459
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:41,600
Speaker 1: who your father was and find out more as much

460
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:45,000
Speaker 1: as you possibly can about him. So she offers to

461
00:24:45,080 --> 00:24:49,760
Speaker 1: hire a private investigator. So that was an absolutely amazing

462
00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:53,040
Speaker 1: and shocking conversation I had with We called her Auntie

463
00:24:53,160 --> 00:24:56,119
Speaker 1: because that had, frankly, just never occurred to me at

464
00:24:56,160 --> 00:24:57,760
Speaker 1: that time. I had thought, this man is gone, he

465
00:24:57,880 --> 00:25:00,320
Speaker 1: is dead. There there's no way I'll ever find out

466
00:25:00,320 --> 00:25:02,760
Speaker 1: about him. So it was astonishing to have this avenue opened.

467
00:25:03,080 --> 00:25:06,080
Speaker 1: And so I found out this story when Andy called me.

468
00:25:06,280 --> 00:25:08,800
Speaker 1: I was at work. I was an editorial assistant at

469
00:25:08,920 --> 00:25:11,080
Speaker 1: Random House, and the way it was set up was

470
00:25:11,119 --> 00:25:13,439
Speaker 1: that the cubicles were in the middle of the aisle,

471
00:25:13,480 --> 00:25:15,400
Speaker 1: and there were offices to either side, so you were

472
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:17,200
Speaker 1: like in a little moat in the middle of the

473
00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:20,520
Speaker 1: stream with people just walking by another side. And Andy

474
00:25:20,640 --> 00:25:23,200
Speaker 1: Collins and says, we have to talk. I had the

475
00:25:23,200 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 1: private investigator on the line and found out something about

476
00:25:25,560 --> 00:25:27,760
Speaker 1: your father, and you know, I look up and there's

477
00:25:27,760 --> 00:25:31,359
Speaker 1: seven fifteen people standing around me talking about publicity plans,

478
00:25:31,440 --> 00:25:32,760
Speaker 1: and so I just start of put my shoulders up

479
00:25:32,760 --> 00:25:35,080
Speaker 1: around my ears and tried to make a little climate

480
00:25:35,080 --> 00:25:43,680
Speaker 1: controlled dome around myself. It turns out that Liz's father's father,

481
00:25:44,280 --> 00:25:48,639
Speaker 1: her paternal grandfather, had been a very popular entertainer. He

482
00:25:48,680 --> 00:25:51,000
Speaker 1: had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He

483
00:25:51,080 --> 00:25:53,320
Speaker 1: was in a movie in the nineteen forties. He wrote

484
00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:56,239
Speaker 1: hundreds of songs that were constantly on the radio, and

485
00:25:56,400 --> 00:26:02,200
Speaker 1: he was a fantastically popular children's entertainer. And as the

486
00:26:02,520 --> 00:26:05,160
Speaker 1: investigator was reading this, he said, you know, I used

487
00:26:05,200 --> 00:26:07,240
Speaker 1: to listen to Frank Luther stuff when I was a kid.

488
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:10,359
Speaker 1: Isn't that amazing? And it was just so astonishing to

489
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:12,879
Speaker 1: me that, first of all, I had had grandparents, which

490
00:26:13,440 --> 00:26:16,359
Speaker 1: I had never really thought of before. In the face

491
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:18,680
Speaker 1: of the one more immediate loss, I just didn't think

492
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:22,240
Speaker 1: beyond my father's absence, and then other people had known them.

493
00:26:22,280 --> 00:26:25,120
Speaker 1: That many people, thousands and millions of people knew who

494
00:26:25,160 --> 00:26:29,639
Speaker 1: my grandfather had been, and that was absolutely shocking. I

495
00:26:29,680 --> 00:26:32,399
Speaker 1: also discovered that I had an aunt's living and living

496
00:26:32,880 --> 00:26:36,040
Speaker 1: on Roselt Island, which is a small island that that

497
00:26:36,080 --> 00:26:39,280
Speaker 1: sits alongside Manhattan, Um, and she was married and had

498
00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:41,880
Speaker 1: two children, that I had cousins living. And these were

499
00:26:41,880 --> 00:26:45,040
Speaker 1: people who were just, you know, half a mile from

500
00:26:45,080 --> 00:26:46,520
Speaker 1: where I grew up, and I had never known they

501
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:49,560
Speaker 1: were there. So I called my aunt at home that

502
00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:53,800
Speaker 1: evening and she had been prepped by her husband. So

503
00:26:53,880 --> 00:26:56,240
Speaker 1: it was not a complete shock that I was calling

504
00:26:56,280 --> 00:26:59,920
Speaker 1: out of the blue, and I needed to stress here

505
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:04,360
Speaker 1: or that none of these people knew my mother had existed.

506
00:27:04,680 --> 00:27:07,159
Speaker 1: They certainly didn't know that I existed. So this is

507
00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:11,680
Speaker 1: really just the past coming back twenty five years later

508
00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:14,440
Speaker 1: or whatever. It was really as a shock to all

509
00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:17,399
Speaker 1: of these people. And so, you know, my heart thumping

510
00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: in my throat, I make this call. And we had

511
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:23,240
Speaker 1: a you know, perfectly pleasant, maybe five or ten minute

512
00:27:23,520 --> 00:27:26,600
Speaker 1: conversation where I asked some some general questions, where hating

513
00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:29,040
Speaker 1: gone to high school, what was he like, those sorts

514
00:27:29,040 --> 00:27:33,400
Speaker 1: of things, and she gave me perfectly polite but short answers,

515
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:36,960
Speaker 1: and over the course of conversation, she let me know

516
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:39,080
Speaker 1: that she and my father had not gotten along. They

517
00:27:39,080 --> 00:27:42,080
Speaker 1: were not close. There was clearly something else there. There

518
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:44,199
Speaker 1: was a lot of history between them that was not

519
00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:49,639
Speaker 1: perhaps always very positive, that she remembered him with a

520
00:27:49,640 --> 00:27:54,240
Speaker 1: great deal of pain, and that maybe she viewed my coming,

521
00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 1: my popping up out of nowhere, not not with any joy,

522
00:27:59,359 --> 00:28:02,000
Speaker 1: not with any surer eyes, that all I was doing

523
00:28:02,080 --> 00:28:04,399
Speaker 1: was reminding her of a painful time in her life.

524
00:28:04,800 --> 00:28:07,480
Speaker 1: And then we hung up, and I thought to myself,

525
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 1: that you know. Number one, I didn't want to cause

526
00:28:10,119 --> 00:28:14,160
Speaker 1: someone pain. That certainly wasn't my intention. And then number two,

527
00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:16,359
Speaker 1: if I was going to find out anything about my father,

528
00:28:16,480 --> 00:28:19,880
Speaker 1: my mother remembered almost nothing about him, just a handful

529
00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:22,520
Speaker 1: of things that maybe I didn't want it to be

530
00:28:22,640 --> 00:28:25,000
Speaker 1: from someone who hadn't gotten along with him. Maybe I

531
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 1: wanted to be from someone who could remember him only

532
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:32,480
Speaker 1: with with love. And during that conversation, that brief conversation,

533
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:38,560
Speaker 1: she did agree your request to send you a photograph

534
00:28:38,720 --> 00:28:41,960
Speaker 1: of him. He had ever seen a photograph of him,

535
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 1: But my mother had saved an Oldsmobile add that she

536
00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:47,640
Speaker 1: cut out of a magazine from I think seventy seven

537
00:28:47,720 --> 00:28:50,040
Speaker 1: or seventy eight that she had seen when she already

538
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:52,960
Speaker 1: knew she was pregnant, where there was a model who

539
00:28:53,000 --> 00:28:55,880
Speaker 1: looked enough like my father that she thought would suffice

540
00:28:55,920 --> 00:28:57,400
Speaker 1: that she could say, this is what he looked like.

541
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:01,520
Speaker 1: But she had no actual pictures of the game. But

542
00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:04,760
Speaker 1: the photograph doesn't come right away, Liz gives up on

543
00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:07,719
Speaker 1: the idea that it will ever come. Reflecting on this,

544
00:29:07,840 --> 00:29:10,760
Speaker 1: she writes, it's a hard lesson that when your needs

545
00:29:10,800 --> 00:29:15,200
Speaker 1: bump up against a stranger's pain, their pain always takes precedence.

546
00:29:18,880 --> 00:29:22,120
Speaker 1: But later that year, the holidays arrive and she receives

547
00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:24,880
Speaker 1: a Christmas card from her aunt with photos in it.

548
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:30,560
Speaker 1: I open it and into my hand follows these four pictures.

549
00:29:31,360 --> 00:29:33,560
Speaker 1: Remember what pictures look like from that time, They sort

550
00:29:33,560 --> 00:29:38,360
Speaker 1: of CPA toned, you know, colorized with CPIA toned square,

551
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:40,400
Speaker 1: but with the corners rounded off. And they fall into

552
00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 1: my hand and I was I had just come into

553
00:29:43,280 --> 00:29:44,880
Speaker 1: the house with my girlfriend at the time, and I

554
00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:48,160
Speaker 1: just sat down right in the middle of the kitchen floor, um,

555
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:50,800
Speaker 1: and it was, you know, the world went white around me.

556
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:53,760
Speaker 1: I was just in absolute shock because there he was.

557
00:29:53,840 --> 00:29:56,760
Speaker 1: The pictures were taken a couple of years before he died.

558
00:29:56,800 --> 00:29:59,200
Speaker 1: He died at eight, so he was must have been

559
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,960
Speaker 1: twenty six pages a young man, and you know the

560
00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:06,760
Speaker 1: age I was at the time. We were contemporaries. And

561
00:30:06,800 --> 00:30:08,960
Speaker 1: at that moment I understood why I looked nothing like

562
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:13,400
Speaker 1: my mother, because he and I could have been. I

563
00:30:13,440 --> 00:30:14,960
Speaker 1: happen to have at that point in my life, very

564
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:17,640
Speaker 1: short hair. We could have been exchanged for each other

565
00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:20,080
Speaker 1: from the neck up, and it would have been difficult

566
00:30:20,080 --> 00:30:23,200
Speaker 1: to tell us apart. We had the same in bullbot

567
00:30:23,240 --> 00:30:26,200
Speaker 1: snows and the same sloping chin and the same infuriating

568
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:30,080
Speaker 1: cowlick um. And it was the first time I had

569
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:32,240
Speaker 1: looked at someone who looked like me, and I was

570
00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:52,480
Speaker 1: really just an incredible moment. We'll be right back. As

571
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:54,880
Speaker 1: time moves on and Liz continues to build her life

572
00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:57,800
Speaker 1: as a young adult with all the professional and personal

573
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 1: changes that entails, all the while she keeps seeking out

574
00:31:01,400 --> 00:31:04,560
Speaker 1: information about her father. She eventually is able to get

575
00:31:04,560 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 1: in touch with her father's ex wife, Lydia, who, unlike

576
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:11,920
Speaker 1: her aunt, responds to Liz and the situation with kindness,

577
00:31:12,280 --> 00:31:17,240
Speaker 1: not self protectiveness. I had had a sort of strange

578
00:31:17,280 --> 00:31:19,000
Speaker 1: milestone in my life where I had just had an

579
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:22,840
Speaker 1: absolutely terrible breakup, had major surgery, lost my job, and

580
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:24,840
Speaker 1: moved all in the course of a couple of months.

581
00:31:24,840 --> 00:31:27,280
Speaker 1: And so suddenly I found myself that's time on my hands,

582
00:31:27,280 --> 00:31:30,960
Speaker 1: and I hired a forensic genealogist. M Again. It turns out,

583
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:34,960
Speaker 1: just like with the private investigator, that these things which

584
00:31:34,960 --> 00:31:38,360
Speaker 1: remain mysteries for decades, can be found just for the

585
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 1: for the price of finding a professional um. And she

586
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:46,160
Speaker 1: put me in touch with my father's wife. They were

587
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:50,000
Speaker 1: not officially divorced at his death. So she wrote an

588
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:52,200
Speaker 1: email to Lydia just saying, there's someone who would like

589
00:31:52,320 --> 00:31:55,440
Speaker 1: to know about this man. And she wrote back absolutely

590
00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:58,920
Speaker 1: lovely response, telling me more in that two pages than

591
00:31:58,960 --> 00:32:03,480
Speaker 1: I had ever known about at him before, and ending

592
00:32:03,640 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 1: saying I'd be very curious to know who this relative

593
00:32:06,560 --> 00:32:10,080
Speaker 1: is and how this person is connected to the Luther family.

594
00:32:10,480 --> 00:32:14,400
Speaker 1: And again I'm in this this quandary of I am

595
00:32:14,440 --> 00:32:19,040
Speaker 1: about to bring my own pain potentially into someone else's life.

596
00:32:20,640 --> 00:32:23,640
Speaker 1: It turned out my father had been an alcoholic and

597
00:32:23,680 --> 00:32:26,160
Speaker 1: they had split when he was unable to stop drinking.

598
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:29,840
Speaker 1: Finally they reconciled he was going to move back in

599
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:33,040
Speaker 1: with her. He arrives at the door drunk, and she

600
00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 1: turns him away, and he leaves the apartment door, takes

601
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:39,720
Speaker 1: the stairs, goes up to the roof, and jumps off.

602
00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:42,920
Speaker 1: And now that I know this, I'm thinking, how can

603
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:46,240
Speaker 1: I bring up these memories again, things that she has

604
00:32:46,320 --> 00:32:50,120
Speaker 1: surely put to rest, just because I am desperate to

605
00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:53,960
Speaker 1: know anything about him. But she was enormously generous in

606
00:32:54,040 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 1: sharing that information with me, even though it must have

607
00:32:56,680 --> 00:33:01,200
Speaker 1: brought up quite a bit of veried sadness. And you

608
00:33:01,280 --> 00:33:04,520
Speaker 1: tell her that the way that you're related to him

609
00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:09,680
Speaker 1: is that you're his daughter. Yeah, And I sent her

610
00:33:10,040 --> 00:33:11,920
Speaker 1: a picture of myself at about the same age he

611
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:15,960
Speaker 1: was when he died, and I thought to myself, you know,

612
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:17,760
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of ways this could go. She

613
00:33:17,800 --> 00:33:19,480
Speaker 1: could she could laugh at me, and she could say no,

614
00:33:19,560 --> 00:33:21,800
Speaker 1: get a de sect to me, like you're you're definitely

615
00:33:21,800 --> 00:33:23,840
Speaker 1: not his daughter, and I could have to start all

616
00:33:23,880 --> 00:33:25,840
Speaker 1: over again, like this could all have been a mistake,

617
00:33:26,320 --> 00:33:28,480
Speaker 1: this could not have been the guy. And I was

618
00:33:28,640 --> 00:33:32,960
Speaker 1: really trepidacious about losing this one lead that I had.

619
00:33:33,320 --> 00:33:35,640
Speaker 1: But I sent this picture and she said something to

620
00:33:35,640 --> 00:33:37,680
Speaker 1: the effect of I don't need a DNA test to

621
00:33:37,680 --> 00:33:40,440
Speaker 1: know that you are his daughter. So that was quite

622
00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:43,400
Speaker 1: quite a moment um. She shared some more pictures with

623
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:46,200
Speaker 1: me that of course I had not seen, and told

624
00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:49,040
Speaker 1: me about what he had been like as a young man,

625
00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:57,360
Speaker 1: which was charming, athletic, loving, affectionate, and in the grip

626
00:33:57,480 --> 00:34:01,480
Speaker 1: of an illness that was ultimate late because of his death.

627
00:34:03,080 --> 00:34:08,520
Speaker 1: She also tells you where she scattered his ashes. Yes,

628
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:11,760
Speaker 1: and it turned out that she had taken the ashes

629
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:15,800
Speaker 1: and scattered them in turtle pond. Under Belvede or castle

630
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:18,480
Speaker 1: in Central Park, or what would become Turtle Pond. And

631
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:20,520
Speaker 1: I mean I spent half my childhood running up and

632
00:34:20,560 --> 00:34:23,759
Speaker 1: down those steps, which is one of the things that

633
00:34:24,040 --> 00:34:27,560
Speaker 1: that in retrospect is so startling to me. That he

634
00:34:27,600 --> 00:34:31,719
Speaker 1: grew up in this very wealthy, very troubled family lots

635
00:34:31,719 --> 00:34:33,799
Speaker 1: of people, and I grew up just being my mother

636
00:34:34,640 --> 00:34:38,399
Speaker 1: about a mile away, and our lives were overlaid over

637
00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:41,600
Speaker 1: this map of a very small area of the earth.

638
00:34:42,200 --> 00:34:45,600
Speaker 1: And I had been in proximity to his family, his

639
00:34:45,640 --> 00:34:48,960
Speaker 1: living family, and to his remains in the place I

640
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:52,719
Speaker 1: was playing as a child. And so I went to

641
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:55,880
Speaker 1: Turtle Pond, and I sat down, and I talked to

642
00:34:55,920 --> 00:34:57,759
Speaker 1: him for a while. And you know, in Central Park,

643
00:34:57,800 --> 00:34:59,920
Speaker 1: I certainly wasn't the only person having a visible come

644
00:35:00,080 --> 00:35:04,480
Speaker 1: station with myself that day didn't trouble anyone. And I

645
00:35:04,640 --> 00:35:07,880
Speaker 1: said goodbye to him there in a way that I

646
00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:15,160
Speaker 1: had not thought I would be able to. As her

647
00:35:15,160 --> 00:35:18,680
Speaker 1: father's life begins to crystallize for Liz, her own life

648
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:22,640
Speaker 1: gains focus too. She's no longer in flux between jobs

649
00:35:22,640 --> 00:35:26,160
Speaker 1: and relationships. She's advancing her career and starting a family

650
00:35:26,200 --> 00:35:29,600
Speaker 1: with her partner Ari she's pregnant when they get married.

651
00:35:30,160 --> 00:35:33,480
Speaker 1: At their wedding, Liz's mother, whose physical and mental health

652
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:36,680
Speaker 1: has been on the decline, makes a bit of a statement,

653
00:35:38,400 --> 00:35:41,319
Speaker 1: she's only did she um. I think at heart, what

654
00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:44,400
Speaker 1: she wanted was to have that connection with me and

655
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:46,920
Speaker 1: to be the last person who saw me before the wedding.

656
00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:50,879
Speaker 1: She wanted the movie moment of pushing the bobby pins

657
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:53,160
Speaker 1: into my hair and giving me something blue and all

658
00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:56,080
Speaker 1: of that, But we didn't have that relationship. By that time.

659
00:35:56,160 --> 00:36:00,319
Speaker 1: She was even more just jointed from reality than she

660
00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:02,319
Speaker 1: had been in previous years. It had been a very

661
00:36:02,440 --> 00:36:06,320
Speaker 1: challenging a couple of years, and we were not close

662
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:09,440
Speaker 1: at all. And so the way she decided to make

663
00:36:09,480 --> 00:36:12,279
Speaker 1: that happen was by throwing a fit as I was

664
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:17,920
Speaker 1: standing upstairs waiting to process Dennie aisle for the wedding

665
00:36:18,560 --> 00:36:20,799
Speaker 1: um and say that if if I did not let

666
00:36:20,800 --> 00:36:22,719
Speaker 1: her walk me down the aisle, which had never been

667
00:36:22,719 --> 00:36:25,359
Speaker 1: the plan, she was going to stand in the middle

668
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:28,399
Speaker 1: of the synagogue and scream, and she instead I did

669
00:36:28,400 --> 00:36:30,520
Speaker 1: go to the lobby and start screaming until I agreed

670
00:36:30,920 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 1: to see her and the you know, the rabbi came

671
00:36:34,080 --> 00:36:36,879
Speaker 1: up and said, we can do whatever you want. Here.

672
00:36:37,520 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 1: You can see her. We can hold off the ceremony

673
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:44,879
Speaker 1: until she calms down, we can have security take her out.

674
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:48,120
Speaker 1: We will do whatever you want. And I realized that,

675
00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:50,959
Speaker 1: you know, Ari and I had known each other then

676
00:36:51,000 --> 00:36:53,080
Speaker 1: for twenty five years, We had known each other since

677
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:55,760
Speaker 1: summer camp, but his family didn't know me. We hadn't

678
00:36:55,760 --> 00:36:58,759
Speaker 1: been dating a year at that point, and that would

679
00:36:58,800 --> 00:37:01,239
Speaker 1: be the first thing they knew about me was that

680
00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:06,439
Speaker 1: their golden child, the son slash nephews slash cousin, had

681
00:37:06,480 --> 00:37:08,640
Speaker 1: just married a woman who got her mother arrested at

682
00:37:08,640 --> 00:37:11,160
Speaker 1: the wedding. And I didn't want that to be the story.

683
00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:13,800
Speaker 1: And I think my mother knew that that I wouldn't

684
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:16,480
Speaker 1: let that happen, and so I agreed to see her.

685
00:37:16,520 --> 00:37:19,640
Speaker 1: And she came up and she, you know, patted me

686
00:37:19,680 --> 00:37:21,120
Speaker 1: on the head and said something nice, and then she

687
00:37:21,320 --> 00:37:24,600
Speaker 1: sat down perfectly nicely and let the wedding occur. But

688
00:37:24,800 --> 00:37:28,400
Speaker 1: that was another one of those pivot points in our relationship.

689
00:37:30,520 --> 00:37:34,080
Speaker 1: Another pivot point in your relationship is that once you

690
00:37:34,160 --> 00:37:37,720
Speaker 1: become a mother yourself, you have two children, you're able

691
00:37:37,760 --> 00:37:41,560
Speaker 1: to see your mother's inability to be a functional grandparent

692
00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:45,960
Speaker 1: much earlier than you ever have been able to understand

693
00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:48,520
Speaker 1: her inability to be a parent. Which I think is

694
00:37:48,560 --> 00:37:51,640
Speaker 1: something that's so universal when somebody has had an extraordinarily

695
00:37:51,640 --> 00:37:55,120
Speaker 1: difficult parent, is that when you become a parent yourself,

696
00:37:55,560 --> 00:38:00,360
Speaker 1: suddenly you see the level of dysfunction or mental illness

697
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:02,440
Speaker 1: and the cost of it, and you're not going to

698
00:38:02,560 --> 00:38:04,920
Speaker 1: let them happen to your children the thing that happened

699
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:12,600
Speaker 1: to you. Yes. Yet another pivot point occurs when Liz

700
00:38:12,640 --> 00:38:15,319
Speaker 1: receives a call that her mother is being evicted from

701
00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:18,440
Speaker 1: the apartment she's lived in for years, the same apartment

702
00:38:18,480 --> 00:38:20,960
Speaker 1: that Liz has co signed the lease with her each year.

703
00:38:23,160 --> 00:38:26,000
Speaker 1: So one day when I was pregnant with my second

704
00:38:26,080 --> 00:38:28,640
Speaker 1: and had I had my kids in very quick succession.

705
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:31,480
Speaker 1: So I'm holding You've got Rachel in a in a

706
00:38:31,520 --> 00:38:34,400
Speaker 1: wrap and the bump seven months bump of David it

707
00:38:34,560 --> 00:38:38,520
Speaker 1: looked like a camel on inside, um, you know, swawing

708
00:38:38,520 --> 00:38:40,799
Speaker 1: through the GC heat. We have moved at DUC for

709
00:38:40,840 --> 00:38:44,760
Speaker 1: ours job and the phone rings and its adult protective

710
00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:47,560
Speaker 1: services in New York. Asking if I'm planning on showing

711
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:50,640
Speaker 1: up for any of the court appearances and I say,

712
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:55,360
Speaker 1: what court appearances, And it turns out that she had

713
00:38:55,560 --> 00:38:58,879
Speaker 1: stopped paying rent about a year earlier. And the back

714
00:38:58,920 --> 00:39:01,960
Speaker 1: story on this is that since very soon after college,

715
00:39:01,960 --> 00:39:04,839
Speaker 1: I had started paying some of her bills. Another one

716
00:39:04,880 --> 00:39:07,040
Speaker 1: of the sort of mysteries around my childhood was that

717
00:39:07,080 --> 00:39:09,920
Speaker 1: my mother had worked since the early seventies be whore

718
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:11,799
Speaker 1: I was born, and to this day, I don't know

719
00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:13,719
Speaker 1: what her source of income was. I don't know how

720
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:17,000
Speaker 1: she raised me. In high school, she had rented out

721
00:39:17,080 --> 00:39:19,759
Speaker 1: the additional rooms in the apartment to international students. She

722
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:21,840
Speaker 1: would run about and breakfast, that kind of thing. The

723
00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:25,239
Speaker 1: apartment was her one asset, her her rent stabilized least

724
00:39:25,280 --> 00:39:29,880
Speaker 1: was her one asset. And she had called me in

725
00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:32,640
Speaker 1: the middle of that awful breakup and said, I need

726
00:39:32,640 --> 00:39:34,560
Speaker 1: a little help with at rent this month. And I said,

727
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:37,359
Speaker 1: I'm in the middle of a move. Things are going

728
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:39,239
Speaker 1: badly at work. I think I'm going to lose my job.

729
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:43,000
Speaker 1: I just don't have it right now. And she said, fun,

730
00:39:43,040 --> 00:39:44,920
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. I'll make it. Don't worry about it.

731
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:48,000
Speaker 1: And it seemed like she had things under control, But

732
00:39:48,040 --> 00:39:49,520
Speaker 1: it turned out that was the last month she had

733
00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:53,279
Speaker 1: her paid runs. Now a year later, it turns out

734
00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:55,280
Speaker 1: she has been going to housing court all this time.

735
00:39:55,800 --> 00:39:58,520
Speaker 1: She has a court appointed lawyer from the from the city,

736
00:39:58,719 --> 00:40:00,840
Speaker 1: but every time the judge says, and where is the

737
00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:04,400
Speaker 1: lawyer for the other Midshire? She just sat there silently,

738
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:08,000
Speaker 1: and so I had never shown up. I didn't know

739
00:40:08,040 --> 00:40:11,799
Speaker 1: what was happening. Adult Protective Services was very concerned. She

740
00:40:11,840 --> 00:40:14,279
Speaker 1: did not seem to understand the gravity of the situation,

741
00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:19,200
Speaker 1: and over the next two years that she lived in

742
00:40:19,200 --> 00:40:26,160
Speaker 1: that apartment, RI and I spent hundreds and hundreds of

743
00:40:26,160 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 1: hours trying to find her housing that she would accept.

744
00:40:31,200 --> 00:40:36,080
Speaker 1: If you are impoverished and elderly, you are actually in

745
00:40:36,080 --> 00:40:38,760
Speaker 1: a somewhat better situation than if you are middle class,

746
00:40:38,800 --> 00:40:41,480
Speaker 1: because there are no assets to spend down. She had

747
00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:45,799
Speaker 1: qualified for Medicaid, you know, years and years before she

748
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:49,000
Speaker 1: had neither income nor assets. I think her total income

749
00:40:49,040 --> 00:40:51,840
Speaker 1: was something like seven dollars a month, and in Social

750
00:40:51,840 --> 00:40:55,799
Speaker 1: Security and food stamps and so there are places that

751
00:40:55,920 --> 00:40:59,680
Speaker 1: take Social Security or Medicaid subsidies, but she wouldn't agree

752
00:40:59,680 --> 00:41:03,200
Speaker 1: to go to them. She would throw out what seemed

753
00:41:03,239 --> 00:41:06,720
Speaker 1: to me to be totally insane refusals like it's in Brooklyn,

754
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:09,600
Speaker 1: you know, I don't do Brooklyn. Or there's a shared fridge.

755
00:41:09,600 --> 00:41:11,719
Speaker 1: How would I ever go someone with a share fridge?

756
00:41:12,040 --> 00:41:14,399
Speaker 1: And I couldn't tell if it was her doing her

757
00:41:14,480 --> 00:41:18,920
Speaker 1: like elderly Kent tankers, Jewish lady persona thing, or she

758
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:21,960
Speaker 1: genuinely didn't understand that she was in the process of

759
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:25,440
Speaker 1: being evicted and that she would not have anywhere to go.

760
00:41:26,360 --> 00:41:29,920
Speaker 1: And I think, looking back on it, I think there

761
00:41:29,960 --> 00:41:31,920
Speaker 1: was probably a spectrum. Probably at the beginning she was

762
00:41:31,960 --> 00:41:33,920
Speaker 1: doing a ship because she was scared, but by the

763
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:35,600
Speaker 1: end of it, she really did not seem to have

764
00:41:35,600 --> 00:41:38,000
Speaker 1: any concept of what was going on. And by the

765
00:41:38,080 --> 00:41:40,320
Speaker 1: very end, after the I don't know the tenth of

766
00:41:40,360 --> 00:41:43,520
Speaker 1: the eleventh hearing, a judge came and did a bedside

767
00:41:43,640 --> 00:41:47,600
Speaker 1: hearing and ultimately decided that there was no point in

768
00:41:47,640 --> 00:41:51,000
Speaker 1: continuing them because she just kept repeating, these people should

769
00:41:51,080 --> 00:41:53,279
Speaker 1: leave me alone. I have a month's rent saved, not

770
00:41:53,360 --> 00:41:56,239
Speaker 1: realizing that by that time she was three years in

771
00:41:56,280 --> 00:42:00,160
Speaker 1: the hole, and she's also put you and your own

772
00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:05,160
Speaker 1: finances and therefore your family in a kind of jeopardy. Yeah,

773
00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:07,360
Speaker 1: she she sure had um. I did not know that

774
00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 1: there was a laws out there naming me and had

775
00:42:10,640 --> 00:42:14,400
Speaker 1: gone to a judgment that would have what if an

776
00:42:14,480 --> 00:42:16,719
Speaker 1: adult version of going on need a permanent record? Is?

777
00:42:16,760 --> 00:42:18,480
Speaker 1: You know where we're in DC. It's a it's a

778
00:42:18,520 --> 00:42:22,200
Speaker 1: government town. Most jobs require background check. I couldn't have

779
00:42:22,200 --> 00:42:25,279
Speaker 1: passed the security clearance anywhere. We couldn't get insurance at

780
00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:27,800
Speaker 1: one point, just because there was a lawsuit at standing.

781
00:42:28,280 --> 00:42:32,200
Speaker 1: It took a long time. We ultimately did extricate ourselves

782
00:42:32,239 --> 00:42:35,960
Speaker 1: from it, but but my mother obviously remained. He remained

783
00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:42,000
Speaker 1: in the crosstairs. We'll be back in a moment with

784
00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:56,200
Speaker 1: more family secrets. Liz stops returning her mother's calls. She's

785
00:42:56,239 --> 00:43:00,360
Speaker 1: calling ten fifteen times a day. She calls every Friday

786
00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:03,040
Speaker 1: evening and leave the message wishing her a good shop

787
00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:07,239
Speaker 1: is a good sabbath. But Liz won't be pulled back in,

788
00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:11,680
Speaker 1: As she writes, I did what women have always done.

789
00:43:12,200 --> 00:43:15,520
Speaker 1: I cut off the risk to my children. The reminder

790
00:43:15,560 --> 00:43:18,680
Speaker 1: of how dangerous she could be made me quail when

791
00:43:18,680 --> 00:43:21,239
Speaker 1: I thought of them caught up in her vortex. I

792
00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:23,680
Speaker 1: did for them what I had never been able in

793
00:43:23,760 --> 00:43:27,880
Speaker 1: forty years to do for myself. Admit that taking responsibility

794
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:33,759
Speaker 1: for insanity only spreads the insanity around. So your mother

795
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:38,840
Speaker 1: is evicted. Yes, So, after a little bit over three years,

796
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:45,040
Speaker 1: the judgment finally went through and the marshall arrived with

797
00:43:45,120 --> 00:43:48,040
Speaker 1: a drill and drill through the lock, and they brought

798
00:43:48,080 --> 00:43:51,880
Speaker 1: my mother to an intake shelter in the Bronx. I

799
00:43:51,920 --> 00:43:54,920
Speaker 1: don't know if she was surprised or she had expected

800
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:58,600
Speaker 1: it happened. Her aid had packed her a suitcase and

801
00:43:58,640 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 1: took her personal stuff with her, but I think they

802
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:03,800
Speaker 1: give you half an hour to pack and she was

803
00:44:03,880 --> 00:44:09,320
Speaker 1: gone shortly after Liz's mother is forced to leave the apartment,

804
00:44:09,760 --> 00:44:12,120
Speaker 1: it falls on Liz to go clear out her things.

805
00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:16,560
Speaker 1: Amid the detritus of a life. There are boxes, files,

806
00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:20,640
Speaker 1: documents that is proof in the form of letters and

807
00:44:20,680 --> 00:44:24,520
Speaker 1: exchanges from neighbors who had expressed worry over Liz and

808
00:44:24,560 --> 00:44:28,000
Speaker 1: the sounds that were coming out of the apartment. Liz

809
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:31,920
Speaker 1: also makes a staggering discovery when she finds a certain book.

810
00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:37,880
Speaker 1: Her mother quite amazingly owns a book titled Understanding the

811
00:44:37,920 --> 00:44:42,920
Speaker 1: Borderline Mother by an author named Christine Larson. Further proof.

812
00:44:43,840 --> 00:44:47,680
Speaker 1: By owning this book, on some level, her mother must

813
00:44:47,719 --> 00:44:51,120
Speaker 1: have known she was so sick, yet not so sick

814
00:44:51,160 --> 00:44:53,400
Speaker 1: that she didn't know that this was the very malady

815
00:44:53,440 --> 00:44:58,239
Speaker 1: that plagued her. It was an extraordinary moment that the

816
00:44:58,320 --> 00:45:00,520
Speaker 1: dust chapter was off the book and I lift open

817
00:45:00,600 --> 00:45:07,120
Speaker 1: the front cover and I just bellowed with astonishment that

818
00:45:07,239 --> 00:45:10,719
Speaker 1: this was what I had found. And you know that,

819
00:45:10,880 --> 00:45:13,319
Speaker 1: to this day, I'm not sure why she bought that book.

820
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:16,200
Speaker 1: My mother was a ferocious reader of all kinds of

821
00:45:16,200 --> 00:45:19,680
Speaker 1: books and a lot of self help, and it wasn't

822
00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:22,560
Speaker 1: clear to me because borderline personality sort of can be

823
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:27,319
Speaker 1: passed down from parent to child, as the parents who

824
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:30,160
Speaker 1: is in such pain creates a traumatic experience for the

825
00:45:30,239 --> 00:45:33,640
Speaker 1: for the next child. And now, having read her mother's

826
00:45:33,840 --> 00:45:36,600
Speaker 1: letters to other family members, I believe that she also

827
00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:39,680
Speaker 1: suffered in the same way. So I don't know if

828
00:45:39,680 --> 00:45:43,120
Speaker 1: my mother bought it seeing herself as the adult child

829
00:45:43,360 --> 00:45:49,160
Speaker 1: of someone of BPD, or if she saw herself in

830
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:53,600
Speaker 1: it as the parents. And either way, you know there

831
00:45:53,680 --> 00:45:56,919
Speaker 1: was a Dengel cleaning reminder card tucked into page their team.

832
00:45:56,960 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 1: She clearly didn't get very far one way or the other.

833
00:46:00,960 --> 00:46:04,759
Speaker 1: You describe reading passages from that book allowed to Ari

834
00:46:05,480 --> 00:46:07,880
Speaker 1: in bed. You know that that feeling of just being

835
00:46:08,400 --> 00:46:13,560
Speaker 1: completely understood in a book of just yeah, that's exactly it.

836
00:46:13,680 --> 00:46:18,600
Speaker 1: That's what went on between us. It was incredible to

837
00:46:18,719 --> 00:46:23,680
Speaker 1: read about other people who had had similar experiences. There

838
00:46:23,680 --> 00:46:25,600
Speaker 1: were stories in there that were far worse than what

839
00:46:25,719 --> 00:46:28,520
Speaker 1: my mother and stuff. There were people in the book

840
00:46:28,520 --> 00:46:30,880
Speaker 1: talking about how they slept with a knife under their

841
00:46:30,920 --> 00:46:33,840
Speaker 1: pillow all through their childhood. My mother was capable of

842
00:46:33,920 --> 00:46:35,640
Speaker 1: hurting me, but I knew she would not kill me.

843
00:46:35,760 --> 00:46:38,759
Speaker 1: That was that was never my concern. But it was

844
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:41,960
Speaker 1: amazing to read other stories of people who had grown

845
00:46:42,040 --> 00:46:46,360
Speaker 1: up in this entirely constructed fairytale life. You know, my

846
00:46:46,400 --> 00:46:50,400
Speaker 1: mother had created the story for us that you know,

847
00:46:50,480 --> 00:46:55,960
Speaker 1: she was mourning her dead husband, living in austere celibacy,

848
00:46:56,040 --> 00:46:58,720
Speaker 1: and that she had the sort of perfect hie, achieving

849
00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:01,040
Speaker 1: child and everything looks great, except, of course, I was

850
00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:04,200
Speaker 1: a greeting depressed mass. She had been having an affair

851
00:47:04,239 --> 00:47:07,320
Speaker 1: with a married man for the majority of her adult life.

852
00:47:08,239 --> 00:47:10,840
Speaker 1: She was not ogado, she had never been married to

853
00:47:10,920 --> 00:47:13,880
Speaker 1: my father. She had me living under a false Social

854
00:47:13,920 --> 00:47:17,719
Speaker 1: Security number. I mean, she just constructed the Truman show

855
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:23,319
Speaker 1: for us, and none of it was real. Lizz's mother

856
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:26,040
Speaker 1: is taken to a shelter with a limit for a stay.

857
00:47:26,080 --> 00:47:28,759
Speaker 1: As opposed to be two weeks, she stays for five.

858
00:47:30,040 --> 00:47:32,640
Speaker 1: At one point, a social worker at the shelter caused

859
00:47:32,680 --> 00:47:35,440
Speaker 1: Liz to tell her that her mother had stopped showering.

860
00:47:37,360 --> 00:47:40,759
Speaker 1: That really shook me out. My mother was very big

861
00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:43,719
Speaker 1: on cleanliness, and that, I think really let me know

862
00:47:43,800 --> 00:47:48,319
Speaker 1: that what was happening was no longer stubbornness and no

863
00:47:48,440 --> 00:47:51,040
Speaker 1: longer her putting on any kind of stick, but that

864
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:54,520
Speaker 1: she was really descending into this last phase in her life.

865
00:47:55,280 --> 00:47:58,479
Speaker 1: And when you know, telling friends about it, I said

866
00:47:58,480 --> 00:48:01,719
Speaker 1: that I could see a couple of outcome. Either she

867
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:05,479
Speaker 1: would neglect her hygiene so much she would you get

868
00:48:05,520 --> 00:48:08,719
Speaker 1: an infection and die. Or she would get in a

869
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:11,960
Speaker 1: fight with someone and would be arrested and the justice

870
00:48:11,960 --> 00:48:15,720
Speaker 1: system would take over where the shelter system had stopped.

871
00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:19,440
Speaker 1: Or she would get sick in some other way and

872
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:21,279
Speaker 1: go to the hospital and then the health system would

873
00:48:21,280 --> 00:48:23,480
Speaker 1: take over. But that we had now reached a crisis

874
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:27,520
Speaker 1: point where this three years couldn't just unschool forever anymore,

875
00:48:27,560 --> 00:48:30,840
Speaker 1: she could stall anymore. There were now enough people involved

876
00:48:30,880 --> 00:48:35,680
Speaker 1: in her life that something was going to change. And

877
00:48:36,280 --> 00:48:41,080
Speaker 1: sure enough, um after about five weeks, the social worker

878
00:48:41,120 --> 00:48:42,760
Speaker 1: called to let me know that she had been taken

879
00:48:42,840 --> 00:48:46,920
Speaker 1: to assist living facility in Coney Island, Brooklyn, with the

880
00:48:47,080 --> 00:48:52,239
Speaker 1: unbelievably amazing name of Mermaid Matter. And if I'm ever

881
00:48:52,760 --> 00:48:54,600
Speaker 1: get to write to TV series, I will call it

882
00:48:54,640 --> 00:48:57,719
Speaker 1: Mermaid Matter because this is just the fact that such

883
00:48:57,719 --> 00:49:01,000
Speaker 1: a place is. This just tickles me so much. And

884
00:49:01,360 --> 00:49:03,520
Speaker 1: we felt that it was this was the dream come true.

885
00:49:03,560 --> 00:49:06,239
Speaker 1: This was the answer that we have been looking for,

886
00:49:06,400 --> 00:49:09,759
Speaker 1: because all along we kept thinking, should we just go

887
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:12,840
Speaker 1: rescue her? Should we just go pick her up? You know,

888
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:15,240
Speaker 1: everyone who called me the court evaluator of the social

889
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:17,200
Speaker 1: workers kept saying, when are you coming to get her?

890
00:49:17,719 --> 00:49:19,799
Speaker 1: And then I would explain she wasn't allowed access to

891
00:49:19,840 --> 00:49:22,520
Speaker 1: my children because she could be too violent, and then

892
00:49:22,520 --> 00:49:25,879
Speaker 1: there would be this silence, right and we would try

893
00:49:25,880 --> 00:49:27,960
Speaker 1: to figure out what if we pay her rent? What

894
00:49:28,040 --> 00:49:29,680
Speaker 1: if we do this, what if we do that? And

895
00:49:30,480 --> 00:49:34,160
Speaker 1: every solution we came up with uh would not solve

896
00:49:34,200 --> 00:49:37,319
Speaker 1: the problem because she had reached a point where she

897
00:49:37,320 --> 00:49:39,120
Speaker 1: could no longer pay the rent and she would not

898
00:49:39,160 --> 00:49:42,920
Speaker 1: willingly live anywhere else, And so we thought, maybe this

899
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:45,240
Speaker 1: is the magic solution where she is now somewhere safe.

900
00:49:45,560 --> 00:49:48,319
Speaker 1: You know, she has one roommateance that six, they're feeding her,

901
00:49:48,640 --> 00:49:51,320
Speaker 1: if there's someone watching after her, it's gonna be okay.

902
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:53,919
Speaker 1: And for two weeks I would talk to her every

903
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:56,120
Speaker 1: now and then and like she had found her dentries again.

904
00:49:56,160 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 1: She sounded normal, she sounded chipper, it's id seemed like

905
00:49:59,719 --> 00:50:02,480
Speaker 1: things are gonna be great. And then after two weeks,

906
00:50:02,480 --> 00:50:04,879
Speaker 1: I get a cough from their social worker saying, your

907
00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:08,040
Speaker 1: mother has gone to the hospital and she hasn't come back.

908
00:50:09,920 --> 00:50:12,720
Speaker 1: So she ends up in the hospital for about a week,

909
00:50:13,239 --> 00:50:15,680
Speaker 1: and she refused to let anyone examine or touch her.

910
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:20,200
Speaker 1: And so you know, one day that the doctor calls

911
00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:23,839
Speaker 1: me and says, we have a few minutes I can

912
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:27,279
Speaker 1: intubate her, but she is dying right now. And I

913
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:29,120
Speaker 1: was alone in the house. I had just gotten home

914
00:50:29,800 --> 00:50:33,960
Speaker 1: from work, and I knew that my mother hated medical care.

915
00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:37,040
Speaker 1: She had me at home in so that she wouldn't

916
00:50:37,080 --> 00:50:38,719
Speaker 1: have to go to a hospital or have any truck

917
00:50:38,800 --> 00:50:42,200
Speaker 1: with doctors. I knew that the disaster for her would

918
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:46,600
Speaker 1: be extending her life, and so I said, I said, no, don't,

919
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:49,239
Speaker 1: don't intubate her, let her go, and so they put

920
00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:53,160
Speaker 1: me on speaker phone, and I just listened for six

921
00:50:53,239 --> 00:50:56,879
Speaker 1: or seven minutes as I heard nurses rustling around and

922
00:50:57,560 --> 00:51:01,640
Speaker 1: you know, clipboard being put down, and what I had

923
00:51:01,680 --> 00:51:05,800
Speaker 1: never before thought to think of as the sounds of death,

924
00:51:06,400 --> 00:51:10,520
Speaker 1: which are very logistical in a lot of the ways.

925
00:51:10,560 --> 00:51:13,600
Speaker 1: I heard the sheets rustling, you know, she she coughed,

926
00:51:13,880 --> 00:51:17,200
Speaker 1: I heard a little choke, and then there was silence

927
00:51:17,520 --> 00:51:22,920
Speaker 1: and footsteps and the doctor, whose voice is wavering because

928
00:51:23,040 --> 00:51:25,640
Speaker 1: my mother had had herself checked into the roomatology word

929
00:51:25,640 --> 00:51:27,520
Speaker 1: when she arrived. I imagine you dont have a lot

930
00:51:27,520 --> 00:51:31,040
Speaker 1: of deaths in rooms, tells me that that she has gone,

931
00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:34,600
Speaker 1: And because I'm not there, all I can do is

932
00:51:34,640 --> 00:51:37,480
Speaker 1: imagine it right that this there has been this death.

933
00:51:38,560 --> 00:51:40,959
Speaker 1: The two great dramas of our lives are birth and death.

934
00:51:41,320 --> 00:51:43,600
Speaker 1: And now we have the death and is over and

935
00:51:43,600 --> 00:51:44,960
Speaker 1: now they have to pull up the sheet and do

936
00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:48,640
Speaker 1: the paperwork, and we hang up, and I'm just standing

937
00:51:48,640 --> 00:51:51,000
Speaker 1: alone in my living room and I've been listening to

938
00:51:51,080 --> 00:51:53,239
Speaker 1: a podcast when the call came in. And so this

939
00:51:53,280 --> 00:51:56,760
Speaker 1: American life just turns right back home and starts squeaking

940
00:51:56,840 --> 00:52:00,040
Speaker 1: through earbuds, and it was the most surreal thing that

941
00:52:00,120 --> 00:52:04,680
Speaker 1: had happened, because to me, my mother, despite how much

942
00:52:04,760 --> 00:52:09,480
Speaker 1: she had become diminished, was still that gorgon of my childhood.

943
00:52:09,520 --> 00:52:13,280
Speaker 1: She was so powerful, and she had always been sick,

944
00:52:13,880 --> 00:52:16,719
Speaker 1: but she had never been dying until she was dead.

945
00:52:20,760 --> 00:52:24,239
Speaker 1: Do you think that there's something about the dynamic of

946
00:52:24,320 --> 00:52:28,279
Speaker 1: having a mother like yours where it seems impossible that

947
00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:30,759
Speaker 1: they will predecease you, that you're just going to be

948
00:52:30,800 --> 00:52:34,560
Speaker 1: in it together forever and ever there there so all

949
00:52:34,640 --> 00:52:40,160
Speaker 1: powerful that somehow it's never gonna end. I absolutely thought

950
00:52:40,160 --> 00:52:42,040
Speaker 1: my mother was going to be the first modern woman

951
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:44,279
Speaker 1: to live to the age of a hundred sixty. She

952
00:52:44,440 --> 00:52:47,960
Speaker 1: was going to be the Jewish medistla and she was

953
00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:51,040
Speaker 1: going to outlive all of us, running on a pure

954
00:52:51,120 --> 00:52:54,520
Speaker 1: diet of emtam and sheet cakes in vitriol. I could

955
00:52:54,560 --> 00:52:56,919
Speaker 1: not have imagined a world in when she was dead

956
00:52:57,160 --> 00:53:04,200
Speaker 1: until very, very suvely she was y you rode, and

957
00:53:04,360 --> 00:53:07,240
Speaker 1: God did I relate to this um? The world without

958
00:53:07,239 --> 00:53:14,080
Speaker 1: her felt safer than it ever had before. Yeah. Um,

959
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:18,000
Speaker 1: life as my mother's daughter could be very booby trapped.

960
00:53:19,200 --> 00:53:21,960
Speaker 1: My mother had seen at one stage in her life

961
00:53:22,200 --> 00:53:24,879
Speaker 1: hypnotist in addition to a psychiatrist when she was trying

962
00:53:24,880 --> 00:53:26,799
Speaker 1: to stop smoke, and she found it very helpful, but

963
00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:28,759
Speaker 1: she couldn't afford to go very often, so she made

964
00:53:28,800 --> 00:53:32,240
Speaker 1: tapes of the sessions and saved them. And after her death,

965
00:53:32,320 --> 00:53:35,880
Speaker 1: I found these recordings of her therapy sessions, and I

966
00:53:35,880 --> 00:53:39,200
Speaker 1: went through this whole ethical quandary. You know, I would

967
00:53:39,200 --> 00:53:41,879
Speaker 1: be man, I would be curious if someone ever listened

968
00:53:41,880 --> 00:53:43,520
Speaker 1: to taps in my therapy. But on the other hand,

969
00:53:44,320 --> 00:53:47,400
Speaker 1: maybe there were stories on there, Maybe there was more news.

970
00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:50,160
Speaker 1: Maybe there was something about my father she hadn't that

971
00:53:50,239 --> 00:53:51,880
Speaker 1: I never knew. Maybe there's something about her that I

972
00:53:51,880 --> 00:53:54,919
Speaker 1: never knew. Write so many mysteries still to be found out,

973
00:53:56,000 --> 00:53:59,160
Speaker 1: and listening to them was very validating because she she

974
00:53:59,280 --> 00:54:02,440
Speaker 1: presents all these stories to the psychiatrists of how I

975
00:54:02,480 --> 00:54:05,480
Speaker 1: have betrayed her and let her down, and those stories

976
00:54:05,480 --> 00:54:08,120
Speaker 1: were such things as I had gone on vacation with

977
00:54:08,160 --> 00:54:11,200
Speaker 1: my first girlfriend during which time, it turns out, and

978
00:54:11,239 --> 00:54:13,280
Speaker 1: she relates to the stories that these are totally reasonable

979
00:54:13,280 --> 00:54:16,760
Speaker 1: things to do. She had gotten some of her friends

980
00:54:16,760 --> 00:54:19,120
Speaker 1: and mind to research the hotel she knew were staying

981
00:54:19,120 --> 00:54:21,440
Speaker 1: at on the internet. And sent her pictures of it.

982
00:54:21,640 --> 00:54:24,040
Speaker 1: She called the front desk and a security to watch me.

983
00:54:25,360 --> 00:54:27,960
Speaker 1: Those kinds of things were for her the acts of

984
00:54:27,960 --> 00:54:31,360
Speaker 1: the loving mother. And that went on for years and years,

985
00:54:32,280 --> 00:54:35,680
Speaker 1: and in the three years when she was declining and

986
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:38,760
Speaker 1: caught it in the legal system, we just kept finding

987
00:54:38,800 --> 00:54:43,040
Speaker 1: out more things that I hadn't known, more things about

988
00:54:43,040 --> 00:54:45,040
Speaker 1: the doctor who it turns out, was catching her social

989
00:54:45,040 --> 00:54:49,960
Speaker 1: Security checks, more ways in which she had angered the landlord.

990
00:54:50,640 --> 00:54:52,839
Speaker 1: And when she died, there was this line in the

991
00:54:52,880 --> 00:54:55,600
Speaker 1: sands that there might still be things to find out,

992
00:54:56,200 --> 00:54:58,840
Speaker 1: there might still be papers I haven't found, but she

993
00:54:59,040 --> 00:55:03,200
Speaker 1: can't spring anymore on me. That story is that vant

994
00:55:19,360 --> 00:55:22,760
Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Molly

995
00:55:22,840 --> 00:55:25,560
Speaker 1: z Achor is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is

996
00:55:25,560 --> 00:55:29,319
Speaker 1: the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd

997
00:55:29,320 --> 00:55:31,799
Speaker 1: like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your

998
00:55:31,840 --> 00:55:35,239
Speaker 1: story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is

999
00:55:35,320 --> 00:55:39,880
Speaker 1: one eight eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You

1000
00:55:39,920 --> 00:55:44,520
Speaker 1: can also find me on Instagram at Danny Writer. And

1001
00:55:44,960 --> 00:55:46,520
Speaker 1: if you'd like to know more about the story that

1002
00:55:46,600 --> 00:56:08,840
Speaker 1: inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance Yeah for

1003
00:56:08,920 --> 00:56:11,399
Speaker 1: more podcasts. For my heart radio, visit the I heart

1004
00:56:11,480 --> 00:56:14,400
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your

1005
00:56:14,440 --> 00:56:15,120
Speaker 1: favorite shows.