Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. You
Speaker 1: ain't never gonna be man enough. Those words would haunt me.
Speaker 1: I would hear their echo in his voice, in the
Speaker 1: squish of hunting waiters stepping into a marsh, in the
Speaker 1: metallic clinking of his wrenches while he fixed the grain combine.
Speaker 1: I would hear those words every morning when I walked
Speaker 1: to the one room schoolhouse and watered the ponderous pine.
Speaker 1: I would hear them when I was promoted the CEO,
Speaker 1: came out of the closet, got married and divorced, and
Speaker 1: graduated twice from Cornell University with the Masters and doctorate,
Speaker 1: Knowing my father was not present for any of it.
Speaker 1: Long after he came home from Vietnam and started fighting
Speaker 1: a different war against cancer, I would always remember that
Speaker 1: I ain't never going to be man enough. That's Trent Pressler.
Speaker 1: Trent is the CEO of Bedel Sellers, an esteemed vineyard
Speaker 1: on the North Fork of Long Island. He's the author
Speaker 1: of the debut Men More, Little and Often, And Trent
Speaker 1: is also the builder of bespoke artisanal canoes. His canoes
Speaker 1: have been called the most beautiful in the world. This
Speaker 1: is the story of what one man does in order
Speaker 1: to make meaning of the secrecy and silence surrounding his life.
Speaker 1: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets
Speaker 1: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. Where I grew
Speaker 1: up in South Dakota was flat and void of pretty
Speaker 1: much anything. In the extreme western part of the state
Speaker 1: where we lived, it was you know, it's the prairie,
Speaker 1: so it's flat, d aren't many trees. But there was
Speaker 1: also some study done by a Berkeley sociologist in the
Speaker 1: I think in the eighties or nineties. The tin pointed
Speaker 1: the most remote part of the lower forty eight states,
Speaker 1: and his his barometer was which part of the U
Speaker 1: s where does people live? Where their furthest away from
Speaker 1: a McDonald's drive through and the coordinate latitude and longitude
Speaker 1: pointed to my family's branch in South Dakota. So we
Speaker 1: were just surrounded by by almost nothing, just grass and cattle.
Speaker 1: There were five times more cows than people in that
Speaker 1: part of South Dakota. What you're saying is that you
Speaker 1: could drive for hours and still be on on the
Speaker 1: land of your ranch. Absolutely Yeah. There's even a sign,
Speaker 1: like an old billboard in my hometown which is called
Speaker 1: Faith South Dakota, where it's like, if you haven't filled
Speaker 1: up your car with gas now, you should turn around
Speaker 1: and go back because the next station isn't like for
Speaker 1: another ninety round a mile. What was the origin of
Speaker 1: the town being called stas say, South Dakota is just
Speaker 1: so poetic and strange. I know there was a time,
Speaker 1: I believe in the late eighteen hundreds and around nineteen
Speaker 1: o six when my family came from the Ukraine where
Speaker 1: that settlement was the last stop on the railroad. The
Speaker 1: Burlington Northern I think was the name of it. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure which company operated at the time, but if
Speaker 1: you took a train from New York City to Chicago
Speaker 1: and then Chicago West, like, that's kind of where they
Speaker 1: That's as far as they had built it at that point.
Speaker 1: And I think that the people got out, you know,
Speaker 1: didn't see much when they got out, so it took
Speaker 1: an act of faith to sort of settle there. In fact,
Speaker 1: the family lore is that my great grandparents got off
Speaker 1: that train in faith and looked around and they felt
Speaker 1: right at home because they came from the steps of
Speaker 1: Ukraine where basically, I mean it's basically Siberian in nature,
Speaker 1: and they said it reminded them of home and they
Speaker 1: felt comfortable there, so that they were happy to settle
Speaker 1: in the days. Tell me about your mother, you know,
Speaker 1: from your childhood self, when you were growing up, and
Speaker 1: about your family life. What was it like to be
Speaker 1: in this vast place with many more cows than people
Speaker 1: in a one room school house? Right, Well, it was,
Speaker 1: you know, ranch life was rough, and my mother was
Speaker 1: always I think I called it running interference, but she
Speaker 1: always kind of was the conduit of communication between me
Speaker 1: and my father, and she was always kind of softening
Speaker 1: the blow of a lot of the harsh things that
Speaker 1: happened growing up on a cattle ranch. So my family
Speaker 1: had about ten thousand acres of land. My father raised
Speaker 1: a couple thousand head of cattle. He formed wheat, barley, alfalfa,
Speaker 1: many crops, and then my mom's role was to keep
Speaker 1: the home and she had a basically a master class
Speaker 1: in food production, these massive gardens and canning and preserving
Speaker 1: operations that she was constantly involved in. And I went
Speaker 1: to a in room school house which had eight students,
Speaker 1: and I would either walk or ride horse to get there,
Speaker 1: and you know, Mom would pack my lunch box and
Speaker 1: kind of send me along the way. But Dad was
Speaker 1: this harsh kind of cowboy, silent, stoic figure in every
Speaker 1: quintessential American cowboy way that you can think of. And Mom,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of I think shielded me to some
Speaker 1: extent as much as she could from the brutality of
Speaker 1: ranch life. And we were surrounded by death all the time,
Speaker 1: you know, killing chickens for food, or killing beef cattle. Um,
Speaker 1: even our pet dogs would get rinnen over by tractors
Speaker 1: or kicked in the head by cows or horses. Like
Speaker 1: it was just this constant um barrage, which I think
Speaker 1: was really traumatic for a young person. So I think
Speaker 1: Mom did the best she could. But in Dad's mind,
Speaker 1: I don't think there was any shielding us for many
Speaker 1: of it. I think he kind of wanted us to
Speaker 1: be exposed to it in a way. See how really
Speaker 1: is did that violent, kind of raw, kind of punishing existence.
Speaker 1: Did it feel to you as a kid, like that
Speaker 1: was just the world? Yes? It did. I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything else, I mean I had We would go to church,
Speaker 1: where we were told a lot of hell fire and
Speaker 1: brimstone kind of things. But it was a very sheltered life,
Speaker 1: and it didn't seem all that abnormal that we had
Speaker 1: to get water from a pump that came out of
Speaker 1: a window and you know, the water kind of ran
Speaker 1: brown for two seconds before it turned clear. That didn't
Speaker 1: seem abnormal to me. Nothing did. It was just like, well,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to watch television, Dad had to climb
Speaker 1: up on the roof of the house and turn the
Speaker 1: antenne to face the cities in the east, and then
Speaker 1: we'd watch the TV. And then he'd go back on
Speaker 1: the roof and take the antennae down. Trent shared this
Speaker 1: upbringing with his sister Lucinda, who was just two years older.
Speaker 1: But Lucinda's health began to deteriorate quite rapidly when she
Speaker 1: was ten years old, and she fell down and had
Speaker 1: a seizure right in front of Trent on a dusty
Speaker 1: barn yard. Not only did her mysterious illness add to
Speaker 1: the constant barrage of trauma, but it also set in
Speaker 1: motion a family pensiant for silence and secrecy. Difficult things
Speaker 1: were not spoken of. There were a lot of mysteries
Speaker 1: and secrets in our family, and that was one of
Speaker 1: the first ones I remember where we just didn't know
Speaker 1: what's wrong with Lucy? Why is she suddenly, you know,
Speaker 1: unable to do the things that she could always do?
Speaker 1: And did you talk about it? No? No, it was
Speaker 1: sort of mm hmm, well she's having a hard time.
Speaker 1: There was no specificity or clarity, like here's a medical
Speaker 1: definition of what's going on with her until much later
Speaker 1: in life, when I had to press for it and say,
Speaker 1: is there a name for this and what's wrong? And
Speaker 1: by that point, she was you know, she died when
Speaker 1: she was and you know, by the time I really
Speaker 1: understood what was going on, I felt like I had
Speaker 1: already missed out on our whole childhood together, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of with all the uncertainty about what was happening.
Speaker 1: Was it something I was causing? I would have these
Speaker 1: nightmares where I felt like I wasn't doing enough to
Speaker 1: help save her, and I began to kind of blame myself.
Speaker 1: I think my aid or ten or twelve year old
Speaker 1: self really somehow believed that maybe I caused it, or
Speaker 1: there was this sense that maybe I wasn't doing enough
Speaker 1: too to help her. That's the thing about silence. Where
Speaker 1: there are secrets, there is inevitably silence, and without even
Speaker 1: knowing we're doing it, we fill that silence with our
Speaker 1: own stories, our own narratives, to try to make sense
Speaker 1: of what isn't being said. In Trench's case, the stories
Speaker 1: he spun in his head made him feel guilty and helpless.
Speaker 1: Lutherans aren't big talkers, was what my dad always said,
Speaker 1: and we weren't. And I think the unfortunate thing was
Speaker 1: that children have to fill that silence with their own imagination.
Speaker 1: And if it's not a loving environment or a warm environment,
Speaker 1: you fill that silence with negative things, and you start
Speaker 1: to blame yourself and wonder is this silence sort of
Speaker 1: an indication that they're upset or is it just how
Speaker 1: just how it is. That's exactly right, it's it's turned inward, yes,
Speaker 1: because it's this kind of shapeless thing. It has nowhere
Speaker 1: else to go but boomerang back at the child. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I think the first time my parents ever normalized secrecy
Speaker 1: was with Santa Claus. I mean it was like the
Speaker 1: first time your parents lie to you is when they
Speaker 1: say Santa Claus is real and he's gonna slide down
Speaker 1: this chimney and give you presents. And I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: I think was eight or something, and I discovered a
Speaker 1: bunch of wrapped presents in the floor and my parents
Speaker 1: shoe closet, and I was shocked. Wow, this whole thing
Speaker 1: was a myth, and they've been keeping this secret for
Speaker 1: me this whole time. Wait, sand is not real. And
Speaker 1: so then when I became a teenager, like I got
Speaker 1: my first copy of Playboy magazine or something, what did
Speaker 1: I do? I put it in the closet, in the
Speaker 1: shoe closet, on the floor, because that's where you that's
Speaker 1: where you put your secrets. Did your parents discover it?
Speaker 1: They did. When I was in high school, I had
Speaker 1: like one single VHS tape of porn and one Playboy
Speaker 1: magazine and like a glass bottle of vodka and it
Speaker 1: was like my secret vice corner. And I hid that
Speaker 1: all on the shoe closet and I put like a
Speaker 1: box of fish aquarium supplies on top of it or something.
Speaker 1: But my mom found it one day and was furious
Speaker 1: and what is all this? And she threw it all away.
Speaker 1: But that Playboy magazine isn't the real secret, which is
Speaker 1: the Trent is gay. He hides it from every especially
Speaker 1: his parents, even after he goes east to college, far
Speaker 1: far away from South Dakota. At first, he tells very
Speaker 1: few friends. I kept up appearances for so long. My
Speaker 1: parents belonged to a very strict sect of Lutheranism, where
Speaker 1: um it was fundamentalists, and the judgmental ideals of the
Speaker 1: Scripture to them were rock solid. And we were told,
Speaker 1: point blank, you know, in certain terms, that homosexuals were
Speaker 1: condemned to hell forever, and that if you were gay,
Speaker 1: you were an enemy of God. And so my whole childhood,
Speaker 1: I had been told this, even while I inside knew
Speaker 1: I was gay, and I had started experimenting sexually with
Speaker 1: boys when I was a teenager. But I always had
Speaker 1: a girlfriend, and I always brought girlfriends to family events,
Speaker 1: even if I never kissed the girl, just but like,
Speaker 1: if there was a girl beside me, I would feel
Speaker 1: like I was fulfilling some sort of cultural milestone and
Speaker 1: a scent that I wouldn't be judged. And you know,
Speaker 1: queer people don't grow up as ourselves, you know, we
Speaker 1: grow up playing a version of ourselves. And when we
Speaker 1: do these mental somersaults to try to justify who we
Speaker 1: are and present one thing to the world and another
Speaker 1: thing that we keep inside, and all of that erodes
Speaker 1: our authenticity and our sense of self. And it totally
Speaker 1: has one purpose, which is to minimize our own humiliation
Speaker 1: and our own shame. You know, I knew that if
Speaker 1: I came out, my parents would not be okay with it,
Speaker 1: and I knew it would cause a rupture. And it's
Speaker 1: not until Lucy dies and you go home for the
Speaker 1: funeral and you bring a boyfriend of yours. Yes, of course,
Speaker 1: I was very distraught and I wanted to bring someone
Speaker 1: for support, so I brought him with. You know, in retrospect,
Speaker 1: I think, gosh, a straight person probably would never have
Speaker 1: to think twice about bringing a significant other to a
Speaker 1: family event. It's just kind of what you would do.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't have to ask, I guess, permission maybe, But
Speaker 1: I just showed up. And it was a devastating experience,
Speaker 1: just because my sister had died, full stop. But then
Speaker 1: I added in this layer of complexity. I didn't consciously
Speaker 1: think that this would be the moment that I revealed
Speaker 1: my big secret. It just felt like I was so
Speaker 1: desperate for some kind of affection in some sense of
Speaker 1: security and love beside me that I didn't really feel
Speaker 1: like I had any other choice. You asked for your boyfriends,
Speaker 1: as far as your parents were concerned, your friend to
Speaker 1: sit with you during the service, and you were told
Speaker 1: that's just for family, and he was relegated to the
Speaker 1: back row. Yes, you know, I'm there in the front
Speaker 1: row with family, and they wield my sister's casket down
Speaker 1: the aisle and I look in the back and my
Speaker 1: boyfriend's like twenty pews behind us, sitting there staring at me,
Speaker 1: and just breaks my heart, my grown up self, just ah.
Speaker 1: It was such a sad and devastating moment that there
Speaker 1: was a physical representation of what our place was in
Speaker 1: the world and in society, and in particular in my
Speaker 1: family's structure, and in the church. We were inside, the
Speaker 1: very church that I knew condemned people like us. And
Speaker 1: so when you then are moved to come out to
Speaker 1: your parents, what does your father say? He said, we
Speaker 1: ain't never going to talk about that again. And it
Speaker 1: was like taking a big gulp, and he was not kidding.
Speaker 1: I mean, we never spoke about it again until I
Speaker 1: saw him about a week before he died. So he
Speaker 1: doesn't blink, doesn't you know, doesn't seem to be register.
Speaker 1: He just is kind of blank and still, and he says,
Speaker 1: let's not talk about that again. And you go back
Speaker 1: east and back to graduate's clown, back to your life,
Speaker 1: and you receive a letter. Yes, I got a letter
Speaker 1: from the Church of the Lutheran Confession, and it was
Speaker 1: essentially an excommunication letter describing that my name had been
Speaker 1: removed from the roster of membership at the church. And
Speaker 1: there was no in classic Lutheran passive aggressive style, there
Speaker 1: was again no specific mention of why, but I knew why.
Speaker 1: There could only be one reason why, you know. It
Speaker 1: just said you're no longer remember, and if you'd like
Speaker 1: to have individual Bible study to read scripture again. They
Speaker 1: gave me the number of some minister in Buffalo, New
Speaker 1: York who I could go see, which I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: their goal probably would be for me to come around
Speaker 1: to being straight or something. But again it's the silence
Speaker 1: of like even being excommunicated was not clearly articulated to me,
Speaker 1: Like it's not a secret to me. I know precisely
Speaker 1: why this is happening, but people were just afraid to
Speaker 1: say things that occurs to me too, that that means
Speaker 1: that your father must have told someone the church. He
Speaker 1: did somehow speak of it, But then your understanding afterwards
Speaker 1: was that he and your mother never spoke of it together.
Speaker 1: They didn't, and that was equally as devastating, because I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: how could you not have talked about me, your only son,
Speaker 1: and how to fall unfolded? But they didn't. I asked
Speaker 1: Mom later in life, did you guys ever bring this up?
Speaker 1: And she just kind of sat there silent, like there
Speaker 1: was nothing to say. Day people were just I don't know,
Speaker 1: something to be swept under the rug. And I knew
Speaker 1: in my heart of hearts that that's how it would go.
Speaker 1: I thought, if I come out and when I come out,
Speaker 1: it's going to go down in such a way where
Speaker 1: I am the black sheep of the family, or where
Speaker 1: we're just gonna put this pot on the back burn
Speaker 1: and let it simmer for thirty years and never really
Speaker 1: check inside to make sure that the water is still there.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Trent earns a doctorate and a master's.
Speaker 1: He works his way up in the wine world and
Speaker 1: ends up the CEO of an esteemed vineyard. He's living
Speaker 1: a successful life, but he never goes home again. After
Speaker 1: Lucinda's funeral and his excommunication, he's completely estranged from his father,
Speaker 1: so he and his mother still talk. Then one day
Speaker 1: his phone rings and it's his mother asking him to
Speaker 1: come home for Saying Giving for the first time in
Speaker 1: fourteen years. Mom again acting as the great intermediary between
Speaker 1: me and my father. She and I did speak through
Speaker 1: those fourteen years. Often she would talk when she was
Speaker 1: at work on her landline at the University of South Dakota,
Speaker 1: so that she wouldn't have to talk I think at
Speaker 1: home when Dad was around, and we would have a
Speaker 1: relatively normal conversation once in a while. But I had
Speaker 1: almost no interaction with my father whatsoever for those fourteen years.
Speaker 1: Maybe once or twice if we spoke, it was, you know,
Speaker 1: five words were spoken, like hello, how are you, and
Speaker 1: Merry Christmas, and then he'd hand the phone back to Mom,
Speaker 1: very cold. You describe it in your book as a
Speaker 1: silent battle of the wills. Yes, it was. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if he thought of it that way. I'll
Speaker 1: never know, but I certainly did. Um I was angry
Speaker 1: and how I had been treated. I was angry that
Speaker 1: they couldn't bring themselves to talk about what it meant
Speaker 1: that they had a gay son. I think more than that,
Speaker 1: I was angry that they never said I love you,
Speaker 1: and I wanted so badly for them to say it
Speaker 1: first that it became like this grainy undercurrent of my
Speaker 1: life where if I say I love you first, it
Speaker 1: would lose value, or if I asked them to say it,
Speaker 1: it would lose value. I kind of wanted them to
Speaker 1: think of the idea on their own and say it.
Speaker 1: But those fourteen years were the Cold War. Then Mom
Speaker 1: called in two thousand fourteen, and and Mom and Dad
Speaker 1: were kind of on the phone together, and they invited
Speaker 1: me home for Thanksgiving. And I thought about it, and
Speaker 1: I went. And I had just got a new puppy
Speaker 1: in a new car, and I hadn't been to South
Speaker 1: Dakota in a very long time, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll just road trip out there. And I needed
Speaker 1: a break anyway. It was the holidays, and so I
Speaker 1: got in the car and I drove west. What made
Speaker 1: you do you think at that moment and the silent
Speaker 1: battle of wills? Why then I knew from years prior
Speaker 1: that my dad had calling cancer, but I hadn't heard
Speaker 1: much about it, and I thought he had gotten better.
Speaker 1: But the sound of his voice on that phone call
Speaker 1: was terrifying. It was like this gruff cowboy of a
Speaker 1: man that I had always known had been reduced and
Speaker 1: his voice was like feeble and hacking, and he was coughing.
Speaker 1: It's sent sort of shock waves of terror for me
Speaker 1: that this the strong man that I had hated for
Speaker 1: so many years was in a weakened state. And I
Speaker 1: think that was a big part of my motivation for
Speaker 1: going back. So by the time you get this call
Speaker 1: from both of your parents on the line saying would
Speaker 1: you come home for Thanksgiving, you've moved out of New
Speaker 1: York City. You've got this great line somewhere out being
Speaker 1: like two country for the city and not city, and
Speaker 1: what Yeah, I always felt like I was too gay
Speaker 1: for the country, but two country for New York City.
Speaker 1: So just this feeling of, you know, sort of being
Speaker 1: a fish out of water wherever you were, Yes, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But then you do sort of land this really fabulous
Speaker 1: job as CEO of this vineyard, this winery, and you
Speaker 1: moved to the water on the North Fork of Long Island,
Speaker 1: which is very beautiful and kind of somewhat wild and
Speaker 1: desolate place. Even though it's you know, a stone's throw
Speaker 1: from the Hampton's, it's a very different world. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was so reassuring to leave the city, and even though
Speaker 1: it's still Long Island, it does feel the world away
Speaker 1: from New York and you can see the horizon. Living
Speaker 1: on the ocean was such a reassuring thing for me
Speaker 1: because I realized that being among all the tall building
Speaker 1: I kind of would have this claustrophobic feeling like where's
Speaker 1: the horizon? Because in South Dakota, on the ranch, you know,
Speaker 1: you're always confronted with this flat, uninterrupted, horizontal plane in
Speaker 1: front of you. And somehow that's comforting for me, I think,
Speaker 1: because it means I can escape and I know, like
Speaker 1: where all the exits are in the city. I don't
Speaker 1: know where the exits are. And that's where you're living
Speaker 1: at the time that you get the call. And you
Speaker 1: have a dog who you adore, named Caper. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that you write in a book is
Speaker 1: every dog of your childhood, and you you mentioned the
Speaker 1: violence on the ranch and what that life was like,
Speaker 1: that every dog was named Walter, and so like one
Speaker 1: Walter would get run over by a tractor, and then
Speaker 1: another Walter would appear, and I found that so evocative.
Speaker 1: But so you have your own dog, and that dog
Speaker 1: is not named Walter, right, I was determined he's going
Speaker 1: to have a unique name. But yeah, that was the
Speaker 1: sort of brutality of ranch life. Also, like, oh, well
Speaker 1: that dog got run over by the tractor. Here's another one.
Speaker 1: He's also named Walter. Just brutal. So I never really
Speaker 1: formed an attachment to any of our dogs growing up.
Speaker 1: I don't remember even how many we had. Um, they
Speaker 1: were just all one sort of generic Walter. So you
Speaker 1: pack paper in your car and you drive west. Yes,
Speaker 1: I drove back and got there and they had Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: dinner ready, and my dad had asked me to bring
Speaker 1: a bottle of my fancy wine with me. So I
Speaker 1: had this Merlot which was served at President Obama's inauguration.
Speaker 1: And I was so proud of this wine and I
Speaker 1: uncorked it and portous glasses, and you know, I was
Speaker 1: just searching Dad's space for any sort of acknowledgement or
Speaker 1: recognition that he liked it, or that I did a
Speaker 1: good job making it or anything. Um, But his first
Speaker 1: response was that he said, I ain't drinking no Obama wine, um,
Speaker 1: because he's a he was a staunch Republican, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of red state, blue state kind of things
Speaker 1: in our dynamic as well. And but he did take
Speaker 1: a sip and he said it was pretty dang good,
Speaker 1: which was high praise from him. So I got there
Speaker 1: and we had this quiet, awkward Thanksgiving meal and Mom
Speaker 1: seemed exhausted. She had bags under her eyes, and she
Speaker 1: didn't even have time to make a turkey. She was
Speaker 1: kind of a throne together Thanksgiving meal, and Dad looked terrible,
Speaker 1: like his clothes were hanging off of his bony shoulders,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing was so shocking to me. His
Speaker 1: voice had changed, his whole body had changed, and it
Speaker 1: sort of this wave of recognition came over me during
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving dinner that this was yet another secret. His cancer
Speaker 1: was yet another family secret that I didn't know how
Speaker 1: bad it was until I got there, you know, fourteen
Speaker 1: years later and saw it. And years later I would
Speaker 1: ask my mom, why didn't you really level with me
Speaker 1: about how bad his cancer had gotten? And it was, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we didn't want you to worry. But just another example
Speaker 1: of withholding and silence, where in this case, I actually
Speaker 1: hadn't filled the void with anything negative because I've moved
Speaker 1: on with my life and I was had this great
Speaker 1: job in New York and I wasn't filling the void
Speaker 1: with Oh God, what if they're quiet because dad's slowly
Speaker 1: dying of cancer, But turns out that's what was happening.
Speaker 1: I love that expression, filling the void. If silence, shame,
Speaker 1: and secrecy create a void, so often we reflexively feel
Speaker 1: the need to fill it with whatever our own self
Speaker 1: loathing or addiction or guilt. But the distance Trent has
Speaker 1: created between himself and his dad has allowed him the
Speaker 1: deep knowledge that none of this is his doing or
Speaker 1: his fault. He's a grown up, not a child. He's
Speaker 1: built his own war. I think in some ways being
Speaker 1: gay saved my life because I had to get away.
Speaker 1: I had to get away from him and the church
Speaker 1: in South Dakota. I fled to New York, and by
Speaker 1: cutting the apron springs, I did feel like I could
Speaker 1: be my own man and grow up. And in some ways,
Speaker 1: like the pendulum swung in the other direction where I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be like my dad at all, so
Speaker 1: I demonstrably will tell my friends if I loved them,
Speaker 1: because I don't want the people around me to wonder
Speaker 1: how I feel. So sometimes people are like, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: you're really effusive, Like you say how you feel about
Speaker 1: me even though we just met. If I'm on a
Speaker 1: date or with friends, and I say, yes, I don't
Speaker 1: want there to be a mystery. If I feel a
Speaker 1: certain way, I'll tell you. During that Thanksgiving dinner and
Speaker 1: you're realizing that you're data lot sicker than you had known.
Speaker 1: For the first time in thirty seven years of your life,
Speaker 1: he acknowledges that you're gay. Yes, it was like the
Speaker 1: earth shook. He said, whatever happened to that boyfriend of yours?
Speaker 1: And I mean, if I could have dropped my fork
Speaker 1: on the plate for dramatic emphasis, I would have, because
Speaker 1: you know, I'm looking around the room, like did he
Speaker 1: just asked me about my boyfriend? And you know it
Speaker 1: said many things to me. But I had had a
Speaker 1: relationship years before, and I had been married before gay
Speaker 1: marriage was even legal, And clearly Mom had shared all
Speaker 1: that information with him because I had told Mom a
Speaker 1: lot of things about my life, and I didn't think
Speaker 1: she was telling him. Clearly, she was. I expected that
Speaker 1: to be a secret because that's how I'd been conditioned,
Speaker 1: But then that was one time when she chose not
Speaker 1: to keep the secrets, I guess. So yeah, he asked
Speaker 1: me about him, and I kind of said something a
Speaker 1: little bitter, like, why would you want to know? I
Speaker 1: didn't think you cared about my relationships even when I
Speaker 1: faked it and had girlfriends in high school and college.
Speaker 1: He never invesked about the girlfriends either, So it wasn't
Speaker 1: like he was withholding that because of my sexuality necessarily,
Speaker 1: but it was definitely a recognition of me being gay,
Speaker 1: and I was shocked and touched. We'll be back in
Speaker 1: a moment with more family secrets. A week later, Trent's
Speaker 1: father takes a turn for the worse. Perhaps that acknowledgement
Speaker 1: at the Thanksgiving table was a form of reaching out,
Speaker 1: whether consciously or unconsciously, to mend a bridge while mending
Speaker 1: might still be possible. He died about a week later.
Speaker 1: You know, In fact, the more ning after Thanksgiving, on
Speaker 1: Black Friday, I woke up in the house and I
Speaker 1: was all alone. Mom and Dad weren't there, and but
Speaker 1: the TV was on in the living room and the
Speaker 1: lights were all on, and I didn't I was disoriented
Speaker 1: and I didn't know what was going on. But after
Speaker 1: our sort of last supper, he had gotten sick in
Speaker 1: the night and had to go to the hospital, and
Speaker 1: Mom had taken him to Sioux Falls to their cancer unit,
Speaker 1: and I frantically drove there and we spent about a
Speaker 1: day and a half together, and then it was time
Speaker 1: for me to go back to New York because I
Speaker 1: had busy things to do with my job, and we
Speaker 1: had made plans for me to come back and see
Speaker 1: them at Christmas. And so my last words to my
Speaker 1: father were I'll see you at Christmas. And his last
Speaker 1: words to me were drive safe, okay. And I came
Speaker 1: back to New York and and he died. And then you,
Speaker 1: having just made a round trip to South Dakota, some
Speaker 1: thing tells you that you need to drive back there,
Speaker 1: that you're you're not going to fly. You describe it
Speaker 1: as operating on gut instinct, and that that had always
Speaker 1: served you well, something I really understand. And so you
Speaker 1: get back in the car with Caper and you drive back. Yes,
Speaker 1: there was something he had said to me on the
Speaker 1: hospital bed right before I left the first time and
Speaker 1: he said that there were some things in the garage
Speaker 1: that he wanted me to take. And when I had
Speaker 1: gone home for Thanksgiving, I had seen that the garage
Speaker 1: was kind of in disarray and there were boxes everywhere,
Speaker 1: and it looked like he was kind of cleaning it out.
Speaker 1: But I hadn't really put two and two together yet
Speaker 1: that he was trying to give me something, something that
Speaker 1: was important to him. But then after he died and
Speaker 1: I had a split moment to even think about the
Speaker 1: possibility of going back to South Dakota, I thought, I
Speaker 1: have to drive because whatever it was he was trying
Speaker 1: to give me, it's probably something that I'm not going
Speaker 1: to show of in a bag to carry on an airplane.
Speaker 1: So there I was my second cross country road trip
Speaker 1: in a matter of two weeks with my dog in
Speaker 1: the winter. Ah gosh, you know, it's been six years
Speaker 1: and I still reflecting on this. I still just shake
Speaker 1: my head. There's something about family secrets and boxes. Boxes
Speaker 1: revealing secrets have been a motif on this podcast since
Speaker 1: the first season. Trends story contains not one, but two boxes.
Speaker 1: The day after his funeral, Mom and I were kind
Speaker 1: of sitting through some things in the basement, but the
Speaker 1: main priority for us that day we had to apply
Speaker 1: for the federal government's Agent Orange survivor benefit. It was
Speaker 1: also revealed to me at that stage by my mother
Speaker 1: that the doctors thought that he had died from multiple
Speaker 1: forms of cancer that were likely caused by agent orange
Speaker 1: exposure in via numb And I had known that he
Speaker 1: had a service history in Vietnam that wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: a secret. But the funeral was this full military burial
Speaker 1: with like the twenty one gun salute and officers folding
Speaker 1: the flag and presenting it to us, And I was
Speaker 1: baffled by the whole thing that I looked over at
Speaker 1: Mom during the ceremony and said, what is all this for?
Speaker 1: And she kind of shrugged her shoulders. She wasn't sure either.
Speaker 1: She knew that there was going to be like a
Speaker 1: local military sort of representation there, but it was all
Speaker 1: more pageantry than either of us expected. So there we
Speaker 1: were in the basement, she said she needed his discharged
Speaker 1: papers from the army to put his number on this
Speaker 1: Agent orange paperwork. So there was a shoe box that
Speaker 1: was wrapped and taped and duct taped that we brought
Speaker 1: up from the basement, and I slid a nice to
Speaker 1: the tape and opened it, and we did find the
Speaker 1: paperwork discharged papers, so we could finish the Agent Orange application.
Speaker 1: But I took out all the other contents of this
Speaker 1: box and slowly we began to sort of reveal the
Speaker 1: layers of the mystery of my father's history. On the
Speaker 1: top in this black box we found a bronze star,
Speaker 1: metal and commendation papers from the President and the Secretary
Speaker 1: of the Army, and a notation of his heroic acts
Speaker 1: on the field of battle. And I thought, Wow, dad
Speaker 1: had a bronze star. Mom, this is so great. Why
Speaker 1: didn't you ever tell me about this? And she said,
Speaker 1: I never knew. I said, you were married to him
Speaker 1: for forty some years, that you didn't know he had
Speaker 1: a He won a bronze star. While one is a
Speaker 1: terrible work to use in this case, but he had
Speaker 1: earned a Bronzetar. She said she had no idea. So
Speaker 1: I'm sort of reeling from the double secrecy of that
Speaker 1: the dad had kept this a secret from both of
Speaker 1: us forever, and I think there was some shame there, obviously.
Speaker 1: What one has to do in War two earn a
Speaker 1: bronze Star, and we also found security clearance papers for Cambodia,
Speaker 1: and we found Cambodian currency, and we found this just
Speaker 1: one simple sheet of paper from the CIA that just said,
Speaker 1: like I, Leon K. Pressler, once I leave service, will
Speaker 1: not divulge any of the secret information that I've been
Speaker 1: exposed to or any secret aspects of my duty to
Speaker 1: the federal government. And he checked the box and signed
Speaker 1: it at the bottom, and I said it all out
Speaker 1: on the table and I said, Mom, you promised me
Speaker 1: you knew nothing about any of this. And she said no,
Speaker 1: and she kind of, I think, was a little defensive,
Speaker 1: and maybe I felt like I was judging her for
Speaker 1: not knowing, and so she snipped back at me that
Speaker 1: maybe you were both good at keeping secrets. It's one
Speaker 1: of my mom's most cutting lines that she's ever said me.
Speaker 1: And I'll never really know what happened. I wrote a
Speaker 1: letter to the Smithsonian, to the Archives to request more
Speaker 1: information about his service. There's nothing available, so that may
Speaker 1: remain a mystery. Yes, Indeed, the mom after the Vietnam
Speaker 1: revelations at the dining table, and my head is still
Speaker 1: really She takes me by the hand and we go
Speaker 1: into the garage in this dusty corner with cobwebs and
Speaker 1: a single light bulb from the ceiling. And she says,
Speaker 1: he also wanted you to have this. And there were
Speaker 1: two things. There was a taxidermy duck and his old
Speaker 1: beat up wooden toolbox. And you know, it had like
Speaker 1: a broken handle and it look like it had been
Speaker 1: kicked by a few horses. And this was not anything
Speaker 1: to write home about. This is not fancy in any way.
Speaker 1: This is an old rancher's box. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: what am I supposed to do with this? And Mom said, well,
Speaker 1: we thought maybe you'd find a project or you know,
Speaker 1: at the very least, just keep it safe. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: this is it, Like this is what he was trying
Speaker 1: to give me in the hospital. And she said, yes,
Speaker 1: that's your inheritance. And that's it. That's what I got.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the taxider made duck. Well, the last
Speaker 1: time I ever went hunting with my father um I
Speaker 1: had come home from college. We used to go hunting
Speaker 1: a lot. Um It was one of the only true
Speaker 1: ways where ever felt close to my father when we
Speaker 1: were out hunting and exploring nature together. And we had
Speaker 1: gone hunting one day on the Missouri River and or
Speaker 1: a foggy morning, and I had shot this wood duck,
Speaker 1: and it was this beautiful drake wood duck with all
Speaker 1: the beautiful, colorful plumage, and my father had never seen
Speaker 1: one before. South Dakota is not the typical habitat for
Speaker 1: that species. And of the many many animals my father
Speaker 1: had killed over the years hunting or fishing, he never
Speaker 1: had anything taxed or meat except for this one duck.
Speaker 1: And it was I think because I had, in that moment,
Speaker 1: told him that somehow the duck reminded me of mucina,
Speaker 1: of my sister, because the duck wasn't dead when I
Speaker 1: shot at it, kind of only named it, and had
Speaker 1: like a broken wing and a broken leg, and it
Speaker 1: was floundering, and it was terrible. It was suffering, and
Speaker 1: it was up to me to snap its neck and
Speaker 1: to put it out of its misery, but I couldn't
Speaker 1: bring myself to do it. It reminded me of my sister,
Speaker 1: the way her legs would flail out when she was
Speaker 1: having a seizure. It was the same kind of thing
Speaker 1: seeing this poor little duck, and I had kind of
Speaker 1: started crying, and he had roughly like put his arm
Speaker 1: around me and smushed my face into his canvas hunting coat,
Speaker 1: and then he snapped the duck's neck. So getting that
Speaker 1: as my inheritance as well sent all kinds of message.
Speaker 1: It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. But
Speaker 1: I know he was clinging to it, maybe for a
Speaker 1: similar reason that I remember. And there were the sort
Speaker 1: of lighthearted moments that we shared in the outdoors, and
Speaker 1: there was the pain of losing Lucinda, and there was
Speaker 1: sort of a brief moment of affection from him where
Speaker 1: he empathized with my inability to kill something. He remembered
Speaker 1: all that. Yeah, So Trent drives home with Caper, the
Speaker 1: taxidermy duck, and his father's toolbox in tow. He returns
Speaker 1: to his home on the water on the north Fork
Speaker 1: of Long Island. Somewhere along the way on that long
Speaker 1: cross country drive, he comes to the awareness of what
Speaker 1: he's going to do with his father's tools. He's going
Speaker 1: to build a canoe. So he clears out his house
Speaker 1: I mean entirely, because he's going to build this canoe
Speaker 1: in his living room, all of his previous sessions, curtains, furniture, rugs,
Speaker 1: suddenly discussed him. All this accumulated stuff from a lifetime
Speaker 1: that no longer really had meaning to me or reminded
Speaker 1: me of sort of a past that I'd hoped to forget,
Speaker 1: and also reminded me, actually, I think most significantly, of
Speaker 1: living a life hiding my true self and living a
Speaker 1: life of secrecy. And oh, that's the couch that I
Speaker 1: had when I was in grad school, when I was
Speaker 1: still half in the closet, or you know, that's the
Speaker 1: shirt I got from an old girlfriend. Or they were
Speaker 1: each like a little memento of some secret that I
Speaker 1: didn't want to keep anymore, and I had to get
Speaker 1: rid of it all. I purged everything, I've put it
Speaker 1: into U haul and took it to the dump. So
Speaker 1: then you have a year basically, because you've not only
Speaker 1: have you decided that you're going to build a canoe,
Speaker 1: but you want the canoe to be finished and ready
Speaker 1: to be on the water by the anniversary of of
Speaker 1: your dad's death. Yeah, an unrealistic deadline. I suppose I
Speaker 1: didn't really know what I was doing, and if I
Speaker 1: had known, I might not have even started a project.
Speaker 1: I think my blind will was probably a blessing because
Speaker 1: I just started in doing it, and without much regard
Speaker 1: for the enormity of the task. You go to a
Speaker 1: lumber yard and at the at the beginning, because you're
Speaker 1: going to buy the wood um to build the canoe.
Speaker 1: And it's a professional place. I mean, people go there
Speaker 1: who are doing construction and building things to buy lumber.
Speaker 1: And you have to put down the name of your business,
Speaker 1: and out of your mouth comes Pressler wood shop. And
Speaker 1: then like the nature of your business, and you, who
Speaker 1: have never built like one iota of a boat in
Speaker 1: your life, right down boat building. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: such a great fantas aastic lesson in kind of this
Speaker 1: beautiful audacity, because how do these things happen unless there
Speaker 1: is audacity. You have to think of yourself as a
Speaker 1: boat builder before you build a boat, the same way
Speaker 1: I suppose you have to think of yourself as a
Speaker 1: writer before you write a book. That's a great point.
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought of it that way. In some ways,
Speaker 1: it is a manifesting exercise to say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: in this moment, I'm not a boat builder. But if
Speaker 1: I say I am, then maybe I can become one.
Speaker 1: And until you call yourself a boat builder, or an author.
Speaker 1: You won't be one, that's for certain. Walking into that
Speaker 1: lumber yard was like Lilly Wonka's chocolate factory in the
Speaker 1: Land of Oz and I started to dream about it,
Speaker 1: and at least for the first couple of months of
Speaker 1: the project, I did feel this sort of unbridled optimism. Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm really doing this. But then I got into the
Speaker 1: meat of building this thing in the living room, and
Speaker 1: it was like this slow descent into kay us. And
Speaker 1: every time I pulled a tool out of Dad's toolbox
Speaker 1: and tried to think about how I'm going to use
Speaker 1: it or apply it to the boat, it would remind
Speaker 1: me of stories from my childhood, both good and bad.
Speaker 1: Some horrible memories resurfaced, and some sort of teaching moments
Speaker 1: resurfaced with my father, and you know, living with this
Speaker 1: boat for a year, it slowly began to dawn on
Speaker 1: me that I was living with this thing that was
Speaker 1: the manifestation of my grief. But I hadn't thought about
Speaker 1: it that way at all until I was well into
Speaker 1: the process. And then I thought, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: is like a sea monster here and it is taking
Speaker 1: over my life. And I was processing, you know, thirty
Speaker 1: seven years of angst and silence and grief and secrets
Speaker 1: like just banging these out, and the advice from the
Speaker 1: lumberyard gentleman, you know, don't find the grain follow. It
Speaker 1: was one of many the big lesson, I suppose in
Speaker 1: the end, the big realization for me was that I
Speaker 1: was only going to build this boat little and often.
Speaker 1: I could only do this one day at a time,
Speaker 1: and I had tried and failed. I started it and
Speaker 1: kind of in frustration, and once I like hammered it
Speaker 1: all to fit with your father's hammer, Yes, with my
Speaker 1: father's hammer. I mean, I screamed his name and pounded
Speaker 1: this feeble attempt at building the boat. In the first
Speaker 1: let's say, the first month or so. It didn't work
Speaker 1: out right, Like none of the joints matched. It was ugly,
Speaker 1: it fell apart, like clearly I didn't know what I
Speaker 1: was doing, and I was just enraged, enraged it myself,
Speaker 1: but also at my father. And in a sense it
Speaker 1: was like I felt that he had given me these
Speaker 1: tools to torment me and to taught me that I
Speaker 1: wasn't man enough and I would never live up to
Speaker 1: his ideals unless I could really figure out how to
Speaker 1: build something with these tools, and in one manic moment,
Speaker 1: I bashed everything apart, and I ran out to the
Speaker 1: beach and I threw his hammer into the sea and
Speaker 1: I told him to fuck off. And it felt really good.
Speaker 1: It felt so good. It was like a real turning
Speaker 1: point for me in the process that maybe I could
Speaker 1: start anew and I could start fresh and take it
Speaker 1: slower the second time around. It seems like it turned
Speaker 1: into almost a meditation at a certain point. It really did.
Speaker 1: As I got into the summer of that year, the
Speaker 1: summer and going into the fall, I hit kind of
Speaker 1: a rhythm where I had been I think, defeated and
Speaker 1: beaten down by this boat and by the years of
Speaker 1: silence and by the grief and everything else wrapped up
Speaker 1: in this boat. You know, it wasn't just a boat.
Speaker 1: There was so much weight in it with my family.
Speaker 1: That kind of halfway through that year was like my
Speaker 1: shoulders relaxed and I kind of gave into it. Didn't
Speaker 1: give up, but I gave into it and just thought, well,
Speaker 1: this boats in control now, and I have to make
Speaker 1: my life revolve around it. And it became very meditative.
Speaker 1: I've come home from work um and blew up one
Speaker 1: strip of wood and then you know, clean the shop
Speaker 1: and eat dinner and go to bed instead of trying
Speaker 1: to force it, and you know, kind of play Old
Speaker 1: Testament God to the wood. I was more submissive um
Speaker 1: to both the wood and the boat building process, which
Speaker 1: I think is similar to writing a book. But you
Speaker 1: have to just kind of sit your butt down and
Speaker 1: do a little bit every day, and you'll be amazed
Speaker 1: at yourself over the passage of time what you can
Speaker 1: accomplish that way little and often. The title of Trent's
Speaker 1: book can be applied to any discipline, any art form,
Speaker 1: and also and be applied I think to self discovery
Speaker 1: and to healing. None of it happens in a great
Speaker 1: dramatic rush. It happens bit by bit. It was a
Speaker 1: completely unrealistic deadline that you gave to yourself, but you
Speaker 1: did meet it. Yeah. It was exhilarating and maybe the
Speaker 1: biggest relief of my life that the boats floated. First
Speaker 1: of all, I didn't think to the bottom of the bay,
Speaker 1: but that I had come around to the place where
Speaker 1: I realized I didn't need to prove to my father
Speaker 1: that I was man enough. He was already dead, and
Speaker 1: all of the secrets that he kept. We're gone with him,
Speaker 1: and I just had to be comfortable in my own
Speaker 1: skin if I was going to make it through this
Speaker 1: little thing we called life. And finishing the boat. It
Speaker 1: was so gratifying, and I thought I would be a
Speaker 1: mess of tears when I paddled the boat. I thought, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go out. I'm gonna just really cry this out.
Speaker 1: But I didn't. I had gotten all my crying out
Speaker 1: of the way building the boat, and it no longer
Speaker 1: felt like this mournful act of grieving. Once I was
Speaker 1: on the water, it felt like a celebration and sort
Speaker 1: of a liberation for me. I think from the reach
Speaker 1: of my father in a way that I had maybe
Speaker 1: absorbed the good and let go of the bad, and
Speaker 1: that was at peace with that. Here's Trent reading one
Speaker 1: last beautiful passage from his memoir. I nosed alongside the
Speaker 1: Robin's Island dock, and there at last I tethered the
Speaker 1: canoe to the dock with Dad's rope. I had arrived.
Speaker 1: I did it. I felt like i'd cry, though I didn't.
Speaker 1: I only smiled. It seemed like such a little thing
Speaker 1: and such a big thing at once, like a secret
Speaker 1: I would tell myself the rest of my life, though
Speaker 1: I didn't understand the meaning of it all yet. I
Speaker 1: sat there for several minutes, taking everything in, listening to
Speaker 1: the creeks and size of tiny ripples lapping against the hall.
Speaker 1: So much was unknown to me, but I didn't have
Speaker 1: to know everything. It was enough to trust that what
Speaker 1: I did mattered. That I understood the canoe's meaning, without
Speaker 1: yet being able to say precisely how, I could trust
Speaker 1: my hands knowing they built this canoe, and it was enough.
Speaker 1: It was my own sacred and mysterious life, manifested in
Speaker 1: a colorful, floating quilt made of wood. As I untethered
Speaker 1: Dad's rope from the dock and coiled it around my arm,
Speaker 1: I felt his presence there with me. He would always
Speaker 1: be with me, no matter what, embodied in the tools
Speaker 1: and the wood of this canoe. Through his death, Dad
Speaker 1: gave me a new life. He did. It was true.
Speaker 1: I could now rightfully call myself a craftsman and a
Speaker 1: boat builder who lived in communion with nature. My canoe
Speaker 1: was my freedom. With that understanding, some inexplicable pain peep
Speaker 1: inside me evaporated. In its place, I felt a flood
Speaker 1: of gratitude. I felt whole. I was my own man now,
Speaker 1: all of me, and I was ready to paddle home.
Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Molly
Speaker 1: Zukor is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the
Speaker 1: executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like
Speaker 1: to share, please leave us a voicemail and your story
Speaker 1: could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is one
Speaker 1: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 1: find me on Instagram at Danny writer. And if you'd
Speaker 1: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 1: check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.