WEBVTT - Russian Dolls 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:06.160 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. This 0:00:06.280 --> 0:00:09.280 is a secret of my own. My father has been 0:00:09.280 --> 0:00:13.399 helping me write these pages in my dreams. My father 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:17.040 stands in our house. It is not burned or blackened 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:21.120 or infelicitous. No melted pools of television screens. Not yet. 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:26.400 My rocking horse is still there, rocking. The air is clear, 0:00:27.000 --> 0:00:30.600 the dining room table shines. It's all in one piece, 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:33.640 this house the way I've always imagined it could be. 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:38.560 So is my father. Sometimes he says, the things I wrote, 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:41.280 the way I wrote them. We play out the scenes, 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:45.800 we have our script. Other Times he says, no, not quite, 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:50.120 it didn't happen like that. My dead father is always moving. 0:00:50.680 --> 0:01:06.800 I follow him. I'm Danny Shapiro. And this is family secrets, 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:09.720 the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:12.959 keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:20.600 Have come to think of family secrets sort of like ghosts. 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:23.480 A family sits at the dinner table, and the ghosts 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:27.000 hover nearby. A family falls asleep at night, and the 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:30.600 ghosts linger in doorways, pace the halls. They make a 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:33.880 cup of coffee in the kitchen. These ghosts are invisible, 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:37.920 of course, but they're very powerful. In fact, they're all 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:43.039 the more powerful precisely because they're invisible. My guest today 0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:47.280 is t Kira Madden. Tikira is a supremely gifted young 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:51.840 writer whose essential piercing human nous shows up on every 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:55.280 page of her debut memoir, Long Live the Tribe of 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:59.840 Fatherless Girls. When I first read Tikira's work, I knew 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:04.080 that I had to have her on family secrets. Tikira 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:07.000 grew up in a family shaped by its secrets and ghosts, 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:10.720 and therefore she herself was formed by all she did 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:14.359 not know, all her parents kept from her, from each other, 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:19.760 and from themselves. This is a story about addiction, shame, 0:02:20.280 --> 0:02:24.040 a couple of world rocking DNA discoveries, and thrumming under 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:28.320 all of it, a family's love for one another. Where 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:31.440 does secrets go when they're stuffed away? We're about to 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:35.160 find out. We began, as I often do, by my 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:38.760 asking Tikira to tell me about the landscape of her childhood. 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:47.560 I think my childhood always felt like an adventure. I 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:50.680 think that's the word I would use. That I didn't 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:55.960 understand the dynamic of parents and child, and it was 0:02:56.000 --> 0:02:58.920 more like we were all on a team together, the 0:02:58.960 --> 0:03:01.120 three of us, me and my mother and my father. 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:05.840 And there were always fights. There were always conflicts outside, 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:10.280 conflicts inside conflicts, but we were always running away or 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:12.919 in a sense of adventure. My mother and I were 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:15.560 always you know, going in the car to find my 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:18.160 father at whatever bar or strip club he was in, 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:20.000 and we never knew what we would find there at 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:22.960 three in the morning. Um. Where I was going on 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:27.280 separate adventures with my father to bars, to baseball games, 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:30.760 two clubs, to Las Vegas. Um. But the three of 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:34.400 us always we had a team. Um. We had a 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:37.520 team and a loyalty that I think doesn't make sense 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:41.240 to people now, but it was. It was just implicit. 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:44.520 We were a team always. And how old were you 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:47.040 when you were going to bars and you know, out 0:03:47.040 --> 0:03:48.680 at three in the morning looking for your dad or 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:53.480 going to Vegas as early as I can remember, yeah, 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:57.840 um My, my very earliest memories, it was my my 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:01.960 parents wedding and being there and after that just these 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:05.640 wild apartments we lived in the wild characters who would 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:09.040 come in and out. Um, and I very distinctly even 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:12.560 have memories in a stroller going through some of these 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:18.919 experiences and just my very earliest memories going in my 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:22.440 mother's car to these clubs and meeting these strippers outside 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:25.720 the car, and at some points having golf clubs and 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:29.000 baseball bats being swung at car windows and shattering, and 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:32.040 it was all very exciting to me. Well, that's so 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:36.080 interesting because the fact that you have memories from the stroller, 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:41.240 if it had been seriously traumatic for you, um most 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:43.360 likely would have blocked them out. It doesn't surprise me. 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:46.520 I guess that you're saying that there was something, yeah, exciting. 0:04:46.839 --> 0:04:51.800 I think, in a way exciting. I didn't understand. My 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:59.120 mind wasn't then yet molded into these false binaries of good, bad, sober, drunk. 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:03.520 I didn't have those understandings. It didn't feel unsafe to know. 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:08.520 Everything was just kind of electric and arousing and exciting 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:15.800 in my early mind. I think. So, you're father was 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:21.679 in another family, in another relationship when you were very small. Yes, 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:24.839 he was married to another woman when I was born, 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:27.839 and he had two sons with that woman, which I 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:31.320 didn't understand, of course, until a little bit later. Was 0:05:31.360 --> 0:05:33.320 that something that you knew as you were growing up 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:37.080 as a toddler? He was the shadowy figure. He was 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:41.479 just the smell of cigarettes and gold and cash. And 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:44.360 that's who my father was, this kind of gravelly voice 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:49.320 figure in my house. I always knew there was this 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:54.320 other family. My father. Um. He sat me and my 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:56.960 brother's down when we were younger. My my brothers were 0:05:57.000 --> 0:05:59.720 at that point teenagers and I was a toddler, and 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:02.520 he explained to all of us that we were actually siblings. 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:05.960 And I hadn't realized before that point that I was 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:09.960 just supposedly my mother's kid. I was just a kid 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:14.200 who was around UM. So I had a sense of 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:17.920 them as my family or another family, but I didn't 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:21.839 understand what that meant. And I understood their photos in 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:26.480 my father's wallet, for example, and seeing similarities, but you know, 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:31.880 at that point, biology, genetics, um connection, those things didn't 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:34.400 quite make sense. Well, it sounds like you were left 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:41.880 to figure it out for yourself a bit. Absolutely. This 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:44.200 is something that comes up a lot in family secrets, 0:06:44.600 --> 0:06:46.719 the sense of having been a salution as a child. 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:50.239 So often we were left to our own devices, trying 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:53.120 to put together the pieces of our families, attempting to 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:57.159 understand what didn't add up. Our families are all we 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:02.200 know as children, we feel secrets as an ache, a strangeness, 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:05.280 or even internalize them as self loathing when we don't 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:11.440 understand why we feel the way we do. Could you 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:15.120 describe your mother a little bit? Wild? Is the word 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:17.040 I would use, and I think that's the word many 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:23.000 people would use who have met her. Daring, wild, beautiful, electric, 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:27.840 just a flash of light in any room. My book 0:07:28.480 --> 0:07:31.440 opens with a scene of her shooting a man out 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:34.040 our window, and that's I think very true to her 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:37.320 character and why I chose to open her in that way, 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:44.640 because she's fiercely protective, no boundaries, no filter, She's she's 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:47.560 just a force. She still is. One of the things 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:52.280 that really struck me in your book is the way 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:56.520 in which you had to educate the adults around you 0:07:57.200 --> 0:08:00.800 in the fact that you were a child. There's a 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:03.720 moment your father has been violent with your mother, and 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:05.600 it's not the first time, but it's the worst time, 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:10.680 and she gathers you and you get into the car 0:08:11.320 --> 0:08:15.040 and she hands you a map and she says, find 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:18.880 the best root out of here. And that moment struck 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:21.840 me for a lot of reasons, because that felt like 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:24.440 a metaphor in a way for both for your book 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:26.000 and for your life, which is you did find the 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:29.000 best root out of there. How old were you in 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:33.480 that in that moment? I was in the sixth grade, right, 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:36.280 and your mother was handing you a map and say saying, like, 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:39.480 you know, figure it out. Yes, I was very good 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:42.760 at maps at that point because of so many instances 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.600 of this. There have been many occasions with using maps 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:51.960 trying to get out of certain situations. Sure, as an 0:08:52.000 --> 0:08:55.840 only child myself, I'm well acquainted with the preternaturally adult 0:08:55.960 --> 0:09:00.640 feeling that many only children experience. At the same time, 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:03.640 there's also the feeling that the mom, dad, and kid 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:06.920 are part of a tight little trio, as opposed to 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:11.240 enlarger families where children banned together in solidarity against the adults. 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:14.920 Perhaps that's part of the reason why Tikira writes so 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:19.560 lovingly about both her parents and almost romantically about her 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:24.800 beginnings with them. It still feels true to me, and 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:28.360 I think people often say, you know, parents, we do 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:30.760 the best we can, or they did the best we could. 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:34.560 I think about that a lot, and I think the 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:37.800 easier answer would be to always say, yes, my parents 0:09:37.800 --> 0:09:40.719 did the best they could. But I'm not sure if 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:43.480 that's that was always the case, and I'm not sure 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:47.240 it even matters, because maybe sometimes you know, my father 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:51.200 didn't do the best he could, but that's okay. Like, 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:53.800 there's a life of being a father and the life 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:55.839 of being a person in the world. And I think 0:09:56.400 --> 0:10:00.199 through reflection and after his death, I start it to 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:05.439 understand those two versions and multiplicities of so many versions 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:08.160 of who a person can be. That the lens of 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:11.400 just a father is in some ways an unfair lens, 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:14.199 and the lens of just mother, like that scope is 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:18.880 too small. I had to think about how they ended 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:21.560 up the way they were um to my to my 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:24.520 limited knowledge, of course, and acknowledge the failure that I 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:27.800 can't break away from that limited scope of my own 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:31.280 singular experiences. As you've said, Danny, and some of your work, 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:38.320 there's a moment where you describe hearing the words addict, 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:42.280 you know, or crackhead or whatever the language was being used. 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:46.920 Someone was describing your parents in those ways, and you 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:51.199 had never put language to that at all. Yes, Yes, 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:55.000 is that something you would think of as having been 0:10:56.160 --> 0:10:59.240 secret in your childhood or was that it didn't seem 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:01.079 to me that ways seemed like they were pretty out 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:06.040 there with their addictions, that that wasn't something they were 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:09.360 hiding from you or from the world. Speaking to children 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:12.160 of addicts, I see and I hear that a lot, 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:20.880 that there's there's just no vocabulary. As a child, in 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:24.480 the absence of a vocabulary, Takira makes up a new 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:28.160 language with phrases that render her parents addiction in terms 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:32.360 she can understand. When her parents are high, she calls 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:36.920 them sleepy boy and sleepy girl. It wasn't until I 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:41.680 started seeing, you know, commercials about drugs and Whitney Houston 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:46.400 on the news, being caught and seeing those familiar objects, 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:50.120 and then hearing the words from other people from media 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:53.800 that I started putting together what was actually going on. 0:11:55.280 --> 0:12:00.080 Finding and knowing the language and labeling it is something 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:04.320 that's so powerful. I'm thinking of a previous episode of 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:08.040 Family Secrets where my guest Debbie Millman, who was being 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:12.040 abused by her stepfather, cuts out a clipping from an 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:16.280 Ann Lander's column in which someone writes to a Landers 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:19.400 about being abused, and for the first time she thinks, 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:22.080 a I'm not the only person in the entire world 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:25.120 that's happened to and be this is a thing, there's 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:28.400 a there's a name for it exists. That episode really 0:12:28.440 --> 0:12:31.160 resonated with me, and she kept it under her pillowcase 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:35.560 or under a mattress, and I kept a book by 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:39.840 Drew Barrymore under my pillowcase, and I remember hearing that 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:43.480 on that episode and um sharing that experience that I 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:47.240 There was this ghost written eighties book called Little Girl Lost, 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:51.280 which was Drew Barrymore's early memoir. And it wasn't until 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:54.959 I read that book that was the first it just 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:59.080 throttled me. That was the first sense of someone else 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:03.400 has parent like this. In some way, these behaviors are mirrored. 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:06.800 It's not just me in the world, because before you 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:09.920 understand addiction of course as a kid, or abuse of 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:12.440 any kind, you think that this is only happening to me. 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.280 This couldn't possibly be happening to anyone else in the world. 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:19.000 And until I read Drew Barrymore, of all of all books, 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:23.400 of all stories, this kind of gossipy Hollywood book, did 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:26.360 I realize, Oh wow, her her father is trying to 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:30.280 drink gasoline. My father tries to drink gasoline. It's not 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:33.160 just me, me and Drew Barrymore. It still wasn't plural, 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:35.720 but it was me and Drew Barrymore had the secret 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:38.839 from the rest of the world. We're going to take 0:13:38.840 --> 0:13:45.400 a quick break her parents. Addiction isn't the only secret 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:49.440 Tiakia learns to keep. When she's in middle school, Tika 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:52.200 begins an online relationship with a senior boy in her 0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:55.080 high school who eventually asks her to meet him at 0:13:55.080 --> 0:14:01.760 the local shopping mall. Love was violence, Love was desperate um, 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:08.240 love was forced, and it was forceful. And so you know, 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:10.720 at that time, I was I was a middle school girl. 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:14.240 I was talking to a senior from my high school 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:17.040 on the internet. I hadn't met him in real life, 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:19.720 and he wanted me to meet him at a shopping mall. 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:23.240 And he showed up with another senior in the car, 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:28.040 and the sexual assault. Sexual assault occurred at the shopping mall. 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:32.600 And I didn't have I didn't have any sort of 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:36.440 vocabulary for what that meant. M I truly did feel 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:39.440 that it was love, because he had used that word 0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:41.280 with me as well. I think I might love you. 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:45.640 I'm always trying to write into questions of you know, 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:49.560 how could things have gone differently had I told my father, 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:53.320 perhaps we could have had such a different relationship. Perhaps 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:58.400 we could have um just broken the secrecy in some way. 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:02.760 Why do you think you didn't, I think because of 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:06.520 my own confusion of what it was. Because I always 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:09.880 wanted clarity, I always wanted wisdom. I wanted to be 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:13.840 able to explain something, and this, that occurrence was something 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:22.480 I could never explain. When I left them all that 0:15:22.600 --> 0:15:24.320 day and my parents picked me up, they took me 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:28.240 to a restaurant, and at the restaurant, I went to 0:15:28.280 --> 0:15:31.560 the bathroom, and I still remember the stall I was 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:34.360 in at the exact restaurant, and I fell to the 0:15:34.400 --> 0:15:36.920 floor and I was just curled up in a ball, weeping, 0:15:37.960 --> 0:15:41.120 And in my mind I felt what had just happened 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:44.720 was something great and womanly and beautiful, and it was 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:47.920 love and this was sex, and but my body knew 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:51.000 the difference. And that's something I think about to this day, 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:58.600 that the body knows even before we do sometimes. But 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:00.400 I also think I just didn't want to it into 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:04.760 trouble for getting in cars with boys, of course, but 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:07.960 I wish I wish I did. In some ways, I 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:10.320 also know it would hurt him a great deal of 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:14.360 someone who was very protective over me. But as you 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:18.680 as you've described in your work, how a family and 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:21.160 a room can crackle with secrecy, I think is the 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:24.480 word you use, and that's definitely something I felt my 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:29.720 whole life, this crackling secrecy. I described my story in 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:33.400 this book almost as a Russian doll, but the whole 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:36.880 thing Russian dolled on me. Every single doll I opened, 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:40.240 there was another one waiting, and that's not something I expected. 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:44.640 And even my mother, when confronted with these family secrets, 0:16:44.640 --> 0:16:47.400 she described them as boxes. In the same way that 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:51.080 I think about opening them. She described as the boxes 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:54.560 all being closed. She closed them up, she kept them elsewhere. 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:58.080 She was so great and still is at compartmentalizing, and 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:02.440 I think that's really common. And I was really struck 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:05.520 by the end of your book how you describe how 0:17:05.560 --> 0:17:09.960 other people it's like they didn't consider the consequences. And 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:12.480 for us, that's all we're thinking about is consequence and 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:15.960 results and what happens. And for some people just doesn't 0:17:15.960 --> 0:17:19.960 cross their mind because they're so good at compartmentalizing what 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:23.640 they've done, their actions, their memories, the things that live 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:29.720 in their own bodies. Remember earlier when I mentioned that 0:17:29.840 --> 0:17:33.440 DNA is part of this story. Well, I'd say it's 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:37.119 more than part of this story. When Tikira is twenty 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:39.119 seven years old, she's given a d n A test 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:42.119 as a Christmas gift, just as happens in millions of 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:45.920 families each year. And this is the key to those 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:49.600 tightly sealed boxes, the beginning of the end of the 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:52.960 secrets that had thrumbed in the deepest interior of the 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:58.600 Madden family. And it was only because my father passed 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:02.119 away and I was interested in kind of building this 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:05.919 family tree um. I was just kind of spooked by 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:07.840 that death of Oh. I want to gather as much 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:10.960 information as I can while I still have the opportunity 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:14.080 to do so. So I was interested in this. When 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:16.040 my mother knew about the test when she saw the 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:18.520 box and I said I would do it, there was 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:21.520 no reaction, not even a flinch, not there was no 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:24.800 fear in her face about it. It was a curious 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:26.680 thing to her. Why would you want to do that? 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:29.880 What could you want to know? That's how deep that 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:33.399 box was, That's how tightly it was closed. So I 0:18:33.720 --> 0:18:37.359 took the test um. Like your story, it didn't feel 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:42.119 urgent in any way. I had this kind of running 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:44.600 joke in my head, because I'm always building story in 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:46.359 my head of like what if I find out my 0:18:46.400 --> 0:18:49.960 father is not my father because he's just died, wouldn't 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:53.440 that be a twist? And so I was almost preparing 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:55.520 myself for this to be a big secret, like what 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:58.520 if I find out because I look nothing like my father, 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:02.520 I look Chinese and and like my mother. Um, my 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:07.000 father was you know, blue eyes, blonde hair. So that 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:09.639 was the running joke. What if I found out after 0:19:09.680 --> 0:19:13.520 he died, after all this grief, through this grief, if 0:19:13.560 --> 0:19:15.680 I found out there wasn't a connection the way people 0:19:15.720 --> 0:19:18.800 had joked about my whole life. And I opened the 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:22.160 results and I don't find that. I find that I'm 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:26.720 exactly what I've been told. I am. The map glows 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:32.080 and all the places I would expect it to glow, Jewish, Hawaiian, Chinese, Irish, 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:37.080 Eastern European, jew Um, nothing's unexpected. And I said, Okay, 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:39.840 my mother's my mother, my father's my father. That was fun. 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:44.160 And it took a while to even find that other 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.720 page on ancestry that shows you the connections, that shows 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:51.440 you the people who have also taken the test, And 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:55.479 I see this icon of a woman who in a 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:59.360 very tiny maybe half an inch icon has dark hair, 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:03.520 and when I when I opened her picture, the picture 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:06.400 doesn't grow, but I can see that she's also Hawaiian 0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:09.080 and Chinese, so I know it's from my mother's side, 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:13.800 which shocks me, as is so often the case when 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:17.760 people receive unexpected results from a DNA test. Tikira first 0:20:17.760 --> 0:20:21.520 wonders about the test accuracy. She figures that this mystery 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:24.320 person might be a third or fourth cousin, or maybe 0:20:24.400 --> 0:20:27.159 no relation at all, but she does reach out to 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:30.720 her and when this maybe cousin, maybe not cousin connects, 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:34.679 her area code is nine five four, the same area 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:38.520 code as tikiras from South Florida, and I thought, how 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:41.680 could I have a cousin who lives where I grew up? 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:44.800 That doesn't make sense to me. And that's when the 0:20:44.800 --> 0:20:47.680 whole thing started to That was my big tip off. 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:51.760 I guess, how could that be the same area code 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:55.800 in the whole world. That's not a third or fourth cousin, Like, 0:20:55.960 --> 0:21:00.199 something's going on here. So Tikira calls the number and 0:21:00.240 --> 0:21:04.160 the two women begin to speak. At first, Tikira thinks 0:21:04.200 --> 0:21:06.880 that maybe this woman is an aunt. After all, she's 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:10.360 throughteen years older than Tikira. But that isn't what's going 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:13.320 on at all. This woman with whom Tikira shares a 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:16.240 significant amount of d n A, is not an aunt. 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:21.199 She's not a cousin. She's ti Kira's half sister. I 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:24.480 was saying, I think we are related. I think you 0:21:24.520 --> 0:21:27.800 could be my aunt. Um, this is what my grandfather 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:31.520 was like he passed away. And she's saying, please listen, 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:35.600 please help me. I have clues. I have I have 0:21:35.800 --> 0:21:39.240 major clues. All I know is that I was born 0:21:40.119 --> 0:21:45.679 on seven eleven, July eleven, and that's my mother's lucky number. 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:49.240 And I knew as soon as she said seven eleven, 0:21:49.440 --> 0:21:51.440 which is how my mom says. It's still it's still 0:21:51.480 --> 0:21:54.280 her her pass code on her phone, her alarm code, 0:21:54.359 --> 0:21:57.800 it's everything. I sort of stopped in my tracks, and 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:02.840 she said, I also think her first name is and 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:08.280 she says my mother's first name, and the whole world 0:22:08.320 --> 0:22:12.080 is sort of stopped. It really felt true and accurate 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:17.520 in that moment. Everything froze um, but I couldn't make 0:22:17.560 --> 0:22:20.280 sense of this in any way. It still felt like 0:22:20.280 --> 0:22:23.000 a mistake, until, of course I spoke to my mother. 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:31.040 Your mother put it in a box, you know, very 0:22:31.240 --> 0:22:36.760 very buried, tightly sealed box. And yet at the same time, 0:22:37.280 --> 0:22:44.320 your sister's half sister's birthdate was her code and her 0:22:44.400 --> 0:22:49.480 lucky number. Yes, that's fascinating because these boxes are really interesting, right, 0:22:49.640 --> 0:22:53.040 because she probably did not walk around with that kind 0:22:53.040 --> 0:22:56.400 of consciousness about that. It's just simply seven eleven. It's 0:22:56.480 --> 0:22:59.119 my lucky number. That's what makes me feel. That's just 0:22:59.280 --> 0:23:03.159 part of my idea entity. Sure, but in fact she 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:06.400 was walking around with that being her child's yes, birth date, 0:23:06.840 --> 0:23:11.760 two lucky numbers. Tikira's mother doesn't just have one lucky number, 0:23:11.880 --> 0:23:16.200 seven eleven. She has a second one connected to another secret, 0:23:16.440 --> 0:23:29.359 another ghost. We're going to take a quick break. So 0:23:29.440 --> 0:23:32.000 Tikira now knows that her mother had given birth to 0:23:32.040 --> 0:23:35.720 a child thirteen years before she was born. That put 0:23:35.760 --> 0:23:38.520 her mother as a fifteen year old girl who had 0:23:38.560 --> 0:23:42.200 given up a baby for adoption. What was your mother's 0:23:42.200 --> 0:23:45.159 reaction like when you um when you did go to 0:23:45.200 --> 0:23:49.080 her and say I've discovered this, It was the most 0:23:49.119 --> 0:23:55.800 bizarre moment. She was completely throttled back in time and 0:23:55.960 --> 0:23:58.760 in that moment when I when I mentioned it is 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:01.879 as delicately as I could. All I had to do 0:24:02.000 --> 0:24:04.879 was say her birthday, that I took the test, I 0:24:04.960 --> 0:24:08.560 got the results. There was someone with the birthday seven eleven. 0:24:09.320 --> 0:24:12.360 And she was so throttled in that moment that she 0:24:12.680 --> 0:24:16.240 believed my father was still alive. And that was her 0:24:16.240 --> 0:24:21.320 first concern was your father doesn't know. Your father doesn't know. 0:24:21.680 --> 0:24:24.040 What am I going to tell him? And I said, 0:24:24.440 --> 0:24:28.359 Dad's not here. But that's how far back she was 0:24:28.400 --> 0:24:31.360 throttled in that moment. She was so just, And that's 0:24:31.400 --> 0:24:34.480 not like my mom. My mom is very to her 0:24:34.480 --> 0:24:37.240 fault in a way, always living in the present moment, 0:24:37.320 --> 0:24:42.919 always very present um. But she was so somewhere else. 0:24:43.800 --> 0:24:47.879 And I knew in that moment, wherever she was um 0:24:47.920 --> 0:24:50.359 as she was saying these things and closing her eyes 0:24:50.400 --> 0:24:54.359 and drinking water, that I could never reach wherever it 0:24:54.520 --> 0:24:57.800 was she she was living in that moment, that there 0:24:57.880 --> 0:25:00.919 was a part of her, so many parts of her 0:25:00.960 --> 0:25:03.240 I will never know, and I don't think it ever 0:25:03.280 --> 0:25:09.480 occurred to me until that moment. Secrets begets secrets begets secrets. 0:25:09.720 --> 0:25:14.280 That is just how secrets work. Their viral contagious A 0:25:14.400 --> 0:25:18.320 married couple who are addict and alcoholics circle and circle 0:25:18.400 --> 0:25:22.159 around the unsaid, the hidden. Their lives are formed by 0:25:22.200 --> 0:25:24.800 what they don't speak of, what they keep from one another, 0:25:25.480 --> 0:25:28.720 And their daughter's life is formed by all that silence 0:25:29.160 --> 0:25:34.280 and fear and shame. Does it surprise you that she 0:25:34.359 --> 0:25:39.439 never told your dad? It did surprise me, knowing the 0:25:39.480 --> 0:25:43.879 full story and having a better understanding of my mother 0:25:44.080 --> 0:25:47.720 and my father and their secrecy. Now now it doesn't 0:25:47.760 --> 0:25:51.480