WEBVTT - Bonus: A New Conversation with Jennifer Senior 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:05.400 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:06.440 --> 0:00:09.600 It is extraordinary what we hide from ourselves, and even 0:00:09.680 --> 0:00:13.520 more extraordinary that we once had her, my mother's sister, 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:17.120 and so many like her from everyone. Here are all 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:22.439 these pictures of nonverbal children, so pulsingly alive, their parents, 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:28.160 describing their pleasures, their passions, their strengths and styles and tastes. Well, 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:32.840 I know nothing, absolutely nothing of my aunt's life at all. 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:38.559 She is a thinning shadow, an aging ghost. Strange hosell them. 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:41.000 We think about who our parents were as people before 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:44.440 we made their acquaintance, all the dynamics and influences that 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:48.519 shape them, the defining traumas and triumphs of their early lives, 0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:53.080 and show them compassion and understanding as they age. I 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:55.440 was twelve when I learned. My mother and I were 0:00:55.480 --> 0:00:58.320 sitting at the kitchen table when I wondered aloud what 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:01.480 I would do if I'd ever had a desild. This 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:04.960 provided her with an opening. Her name is Adele. 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:13.399 That's Jennifer, senior staff writer at the Atlantic. Listeners of 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:16.840 this podcast might remember her from a previous Bonus episode, 0:01:17.120 --> 0:01:20.679 in which we discussed her remarkable Atlantic cover story. What 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:24.440 Bobby mcelvain Left Behind, for which she won the twenty 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:28.440 twenty two Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Now she's back 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:31.800 to talk about her latest Atlantic cover story, in which 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:35.319 she excavates her own family secret in a piece called 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:39.679 Those We Sent Away. Jennifer had an aunt, her mother's 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:43.080 younger sister, who was sent away to a mental institution 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:46.640 as a young child. This is a story that many 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:51.680 families share, one of hiddenness, shame, and silence that casts 0:01:51.720 --> 0:02:04.880 an invisible net over generations. I'm Danny Shapiro and this 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:08.720 is a special bonus episode of family secrets, the secrets 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:11.360 that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:17.840 and the secrets we keep from ourselves. My first question 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:21.880 is you were twelve when you learned, But if you 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:27.640 look back, was there anything that you felt was there 0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:31.120 sort of hovering in the air in your family's home, 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:37.400 or anything that you know, obviously supplying retrospect and knowledge 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:41.840 to this, but still where you would say there was 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:43.880 a sense that there was something that you didn't know. 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:47.280 I have thought about this, and like you said, there 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:52.280 is this huge temptation to sort of assign and reprospect, like, oh, yes, 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:55.360 of course, I was aware of this, and now it 0:02:55.360 --> 0:02:57.600 all makes sense. But there are two things that I 0:02:57.639 --> 0:03:01.200 wrote about that did, of course lead lock into place, 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:06.960 which was that my grandfather volunteered at the Westchester Association 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:11.400 for Retarded Citizens. They use the word retarded anymore, we 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:14.080 should not, but that's what it was called at the time. 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:18.080 And oh, of course he was trying to parent in 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:21.160 a daily way indirectly. This is all he did every 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:24.800 day of his retirement because his daughter was not living 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:29.520 with him, So that made sense. My grandmother running off 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:32.240 to the local department store and buying Christmas presents when 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:37.000 we were Jewish suddenly made sense because my aunt was 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:42.720 taken to church and every Sunday and only understood Christmas. 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:48.440 I think something else that may have locked into place was, oh, 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:53.200 so my grandparents did want more kids. I knew there 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:56.400 was something sort of unusual about my mom being the 0:03:56.440 --> 0:03:59.640 one and only, like there was never any good explanation 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:07.040 for it's very rare to comfort across only baby boomers, right, like, 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:09.760 that's not a thing. And my grandparents were young when 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:13.280 they had her. I guess in Hinze. One thing I 0:04:13.280 --> 0:04:18.360 will say is that my mother's perfectionism and her control 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:22.920 and I read about this, but it had some other explanation, right, 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:29.359 that maybe she really did feel this immense pressure to 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:32.400 be good enough for two because her own grandmother very 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:37.359 artlessly said to her one day, you have to be 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:40.480 good enough for two your parents lost a child. 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:45.080 I was very struck by that detail. Your great grandmother, 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:47.800 who you referred to as you know, she meant well, 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:51.600 I suppose, and had all the subtlety of a light swatter. 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:55.640 And you know, your mother's thirteen years old, and your 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:58.640 great grandmother tells her that she had to be good 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:02.320 enough for two children, smart enough for two children. And 0:05:02.360 --> 0:05:06.800 your great grandmother is, on the one hand, telling your 0:05:06.839 --> 0:05:08.720 mother something right, which. 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:10.359 Was a gift because my mother was in the dark. 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:14.240 My great grandmother was truly the first person to explain 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:18.200 to her what had happened. Like that was, in some 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:22.479 weird way, its own perverse gift. It wasn't perverse. My 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:25.040 great grandmother leveled with her, and she was the first 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:28.000 person to say, this is what happened. You know, you 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:31.080 have an profoundly retarded sister. That was the terminology of 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:35.240 the day she was institutionalized. It was a family of secrets. 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:37.479 No one came through the front door and said this, 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:41.920 and then she laid this immense burden on her right and. 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:46.800 Also the burden, I mean, your mother was told that 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:51.360 her sister had gone away first to quote unquote walking 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:55.480 school because she was severely delayed in terms of her 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:57.680 ability to walk. And then you know, when is she 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:00.559 coming back? We don't know. And this is very much 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:05.240 something that happened in that time, and you know, you 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:08.479 write about that so beautifully in your story, but writing 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:11.680 about medical professionals saying it's better if people don't know, 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:18.880 the instinct to protect the family, the child from knowledge, 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:22.119 but in fact it's there. Your mother was working over 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:26.880 time to try to figure out where her sister had gone, 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:28.599 what was the age difference between them. 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:31.600 Born after years, I mean nearly five, so. 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:34.880 Your mom was a five year old. There's a baby sister. 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:37.640 That's the most wonderful thing in the whole world. And 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:39.480 as far as your mother was concerned, this was her 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:41.520 sister who she adored and could do no wrong. It 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:45.359 was perfect and there was no reason to think anything otherwise, 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:49.760 because whatever your grandparents were going through was being done 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:53.119 quietly and a kind of you know, keeping it from 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:55.640 keeping it from your mother. You know, keeping it from 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:59.479 the child, which was what happened across the board in 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:01.440 those days, but it will leaves the child in that 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:06.440 situation is not knowing what's up, what's going on, and 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:09.359 sort of attempting to put together pieces of a puzzle. 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:14.480 Yes, I mean, And the question is whether it was 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:17.960 even that active. What I wonder about, like, how hard 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:20.400 was she actively trying to piece this together or was 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:24.640 it more like that she walked around in something between 0:07:25.520 --> 0:07:29.920 a fog of bewilderment punctuated by stretches of overwhelming pain. 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:33.000 You know, she would sort of because at first, as 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:35.400 you point out, and as I say, you know, she 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:38.680 didn't have any inkling that anything was different about her sister. 0:07:39.080 --> 0:07:39.640 How could she? 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:42.040 A five year old knows nothing. And for the first 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:45.480 year of my aunt's life, the doctors were insisting, the 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:48.960 pediatrician insisted that nothing was different about her. So it 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:52.000 took an outside pediatrician to even look at my aunt 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:55.840 and bluntly declared to my grandmother that she was and 0:07:55.880 --> 0:08:00.160 this is a direct quote, a microcephalitic idiot. Right, My 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:03.040 aunt had just turned about one, and from that moment on, 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:05.880 my grandparents were doing a frantic circuit of all of 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:10.280 the cities specialists trying to figure out what could be done. 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:12.680 But my mother was kept out of this. And all 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:16.520 my mother knew was that there was adorable baby girl 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:19.640 in the playpen in the living room or in the 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:22.760 crib in her parents' bedroom, and that she had special 0:08:22.800 --> 0:08:26.720 responsibilities visa her little baby sister. She had to go 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:31.360 in and see if she was napping. She wasn't. She'd 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:34.480 keep my grandmother company as she was making bottles. She 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:37.120 invented games to play with her while she was in 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:40.480 her crib. I mean, what five and a half year 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:41.880 old or six year old or six and a half 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:47.600 year old is going to have any understanding of developmental milestones. 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:47.880 In a child? 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:52.959 Like they're just not. So this all caught her totally 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:57.800 by surprise when one day my grandparents said, we're taking 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:02.880 Adele toa walking school. But I think for she just went, oh, okay, 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:04.439 walking school. 0:09:04.720 --> 0:09:05.640 I guess that's the thing. 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:10.400 But you know, as a month's drag by, and she 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:13.080 keeps saying well when she's coming home, and then as 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:17.000 the years dragged by, and she one day got hysterical 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:20.040 and said, how long can it possibly take for Adele 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:22.600 to learn? How to walk. This was about a year 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:26.200 and a half in and my grandparents, I mean, there 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:30.080 were no books to consult, there was no language for 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:33.360 them to recruit from to explain to my poor mother 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:35.920 what was going on. I didn't look at my mother 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:39.959 and say, how actively were you trying to piece this together? 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:44.000 Like how aggressive were you in your slothing. You know, 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:46.760 my mother every time she mentions it, first of all, 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:51.600 it's very pained, and second of all, there's so much 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:55.720 confusion in her voice when she relives it for me 0:09:56.559 --> 0:09:59.480 that it just sounds to me, frankly, like it was very, 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:03.120 very over whelming. And also that she sensed on some 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:09.640 level that asking the question was causing her parents' pain. 0:10:10.600 --> 0:10:13.959 And I think she intuited early on that this is 0:10:14.000 --> 0:10:15.839 a painful subject and I am going to be a 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:20.000 good kid. I'm not going to create any trouble. I 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:24.240 am going to behave impeccably. And even before my great 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:27.439 great grandmother very clumsily said to her, you have to 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:28.080 be good enough for. 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:30.040 Two, you have to be perfect for two. I think 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:31.000 even before. 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:35.880 That my mother probably had some sense that she was 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:37.720 going to stand sideways and get. 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:38.080 Out of the way. 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:41.840 Well, I mean, it's fascinating. First of all, what children 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:50.040 are capable of absorbing without necessarily knowing or consciously knowing, 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:53.400 or certainly intellectually knowing. You know, we talk a lot 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:58.280 on this podcast about the phrase psychoanalytic phrase, the unthought known. 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:03.640 You know that with is so dangerous to think that 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:06.960 you never actually think it, but on some deep level 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:09.360 you know it. And you know, you used a phrase 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:14.880 a little while ago, the fog of bewilderment, And you know, 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:20.200 that makes so much sense to me, that fog, and 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:23.559 that's what you're describing in a way. You know, I 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:27.200 don't know, but I would doubt that your mother ever 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:29.200 sort of sat down and had a little talk with 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:33.120 herself at age nine or ten or seven of you know, 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:37.120 I'm going to be a good girl, but she internalized 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:37.920 that memo. 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:39.800 I think that's right, and I think if you want 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:42.960 to go to the unsought known, the question is like, Okay, 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:46.640 this is my grandparents felt like what they had to 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:49.719 do because it's a source of shame to have a 0:11:49.800 --> 0:11:53.440 child like this. Right, it means that either there's something 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:57.080 wrong with your genes, it's some kind of religious punishment, right, 0:11:57.160 --> 0:12:00.360 whatever it is, for whatever reasons, and I'll you know, 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:06.680 it's the nineteen fifties. There's some imperative to assimilate. Among Jews, 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:10.600 there was probably a double imperative to assimilate. My guess 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:12.760 is that, like, what did they do? They nailed this 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:17.880 beneath the floorboards, right, So for my own mom, what 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:21.560 was scratching underneath the floorboards of her consciousness? Right? Like 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:23.640 what unthought known was there? 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:28.600 Right? Like she probably on some level knew something she 0:12:28.720 --> 0:12:29.080 had to. 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:33.360 I mean, she did have other families to compare her 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:39.360 own to. And I just found out from my mother's 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:45.800 first cousin that somebody else in their family was pregnant 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:51.240 and at around the same time as my grandmother. I 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:53.000 wish i'd known this before I wrote the story. It 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:55.079 kind of kills me that I didn't. But someone else 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:57.240 in my family was pregnant at the same time, and 0:12:57.240 --> 0:12:59.000 they gave birth the practically at the same time, and 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:02.440 that little girl was born and grew up in a 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:07.199 perfectly kind of typical trajectory, right, hitting all the milestones 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:09.760 and all the beat's never left house. My mother must 0:13:09.760 --> 0:13:13.120 have put something together. And at some point the kids 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:16.880 in the neighborhood were gossiping and being cruel and saying 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:19.560 I heard that your sister was at reform school, right, like, 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:23.400 so who knows what kind of I didn't ask her 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:26.080 about the unthought known either. It's funny I was getting 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:29.000 my own cues from my mother about what was safe 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:29.400 to ask. 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:30.680 Truly. 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:33.000 It's not that I'm not a thorough going, you know, 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:36.240 interlocutor or you know. I asked a lot of questions, 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:39.360 but like I obviously was like being very delicate with 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:41.360 my own mom when I was talking to her. 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:44.720 Well, it makes perfect sense. I mean, it struck me 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:47.880 that there's, first of all, a really kind of uncanny 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:53.960 parallel age wise from when she found out, you know, 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:56.960 and then what I found out and when you yes, yeah, 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:01.600 I mean you were twelve when you learned and you 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:05.040 asked the right question, I mean, or you it wasn't 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:08.920 really a question. You were musing about what you would 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:11.440 ever do if you were to have a disabled child, 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:15.160 and it was like a seam opened, you know, within 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:18.360 your mother at that particular moment, and she just said it. 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:24.040 And that's somewhat different from whatever damn burst in your 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:27.400 great grandmother to have said that to your mother. But 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:29.240 you do find that out at the same age. And 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:33.800 there also is I think that feeling of where there's 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:37.880 great pain in a family, or a child senses that 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:41.800 about a parent, including a grown child sensing that about 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:45.840 a parent. There's this delicacy or this feeling of I 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:47.320 love you and I don't want to cause you pain, 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:49.400 so I'm not going to go there. So, for instance, 0:14:50.360 --> 0:14:55.680 when you go with your mother to visit Adele, I 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:57.200 don't think it was the first time that you went, 0:14:57.280 --> 0:15:01.240 but the more recent time, because you the more recent 0:15:01.280 --> 0:15:04.000 time you were going both as a daughter and a 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:07.360 niece and a reporter. The first time you were that's right, 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:09.640 you were a daughter and a niece and just wanted 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:11.680 to see for yourself what was you. 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:14.720 Know, right, I was only twenty eight, right. 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:18.160 So but this time you had your recorder on and 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:19.960 one of the things that you note in your piece 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:23.680 is how much silence there was in the car. 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:26.360 Yep, so much. 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:33.800 Silence and also so much I mean I would have said, 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:37.640 like not denial, but God, what would be the right 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:43.120 word deflection? Maybe that's the very various two things to 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:45.240 pull me in on. And it's like the perfect transition 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:49.440 because exactly there I am. We have a ninety minute 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:53.560 car ride, and my mother at any point can be like, wow, 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:55.280 I wonder what this is going to be. Like, I 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:58.760 have not seen her in twenty one years, and I've 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:02.960 only seen her three times ever in my adult life. 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:06.680 You know, my mom went forty years with not seeing 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:09.520 her sister again. She went from age six to age 0:16:09.600 --> 0:16:14.120 forty six and then saw her only three times, not 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:18.960 particularly successfully. You know, the visits were awkward. My Anna 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:20.720 was living in a different group home at the time, 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:23.480 so this is a brand new group home, and she's 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:26.880 not wondering a lot about In fact, not only she 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:30.160 not wondering a lot about this, she is talking about 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:34.200 something else entirely. She is telling me all about the 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:37.840 new necklace making project that she is embarked on. And 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:42.560 I am kind of sitting there in disbelief, like, and 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:44.680 my tape recorder is running, and it's not a lot 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:47.200 of like I eventually like turn it off because it's 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:49.280 just like stuff about necklaces. 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:49.680 Right. 0:16:50.760 --> 0:16:51.480 It was crazy. 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:54.720 I only had about fifteen minutes conversation. 0:16:54.240 --> 0:16:57.600 With her about this, right, and so I have always 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:00.400 known and I was very nervous about as seking my 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:04.480 mom whether to do this. Right, Like I said to her, 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:07.280 you don't have to come with me. I just truly 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:09.040 want to meet her. I really want to see her. 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:13.080 I want to write about her. I hope this is okay. 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:15.359 Please don't feel like this because I want to go. 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:18.199 It means that you have to go. I understand that 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:22.080 you have all of these reasons that you have decided 0:17:22.119 --> 0:17:25.159 that you are going to. You know, I don't judge 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:28.400 at all, like the kind of decisions you've made around this. 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:30.840 This is like a defining trauma for you as a kid. 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:35.000 But you know, and she's surprised me by being very 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:37.040 open to it and saying, no, let's go, let's go together, 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:40.000 you know, almost like some part of her I thought 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:41.960 wanted it, But then when we got in the car, 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:44.280 I thought, no part of her wants this. I think 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:47.520 she was just this portrait of ambivalence, right, And it 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:51.840 made it made the reporting really us, you know, and 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:53.280 really hard. And I think it's one of the reasons 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:55.520 that like I did it as a reporter, because I 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:59.520 felt emboldened to ask slightly more challenging questions. 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:01.640 We'll be right back. 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:09.040 You know. 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:12.359 It strikes me that your mother, once she knew as 0:18:12.560 --> 0:18:16.320 a thirteen year old, and also once the sort of 0:18:16.320 --> 0:18:19.000 whisper campaign that must have always been there, that game 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:22.240 of telephone that happens in suburban neighborhoods or all neighborhoods 0:18:22.280 --> 0:18:23.119 or among all people. 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:24.919 This is Flatbush. 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:26.960 We're talking about a serious city neighborhood. 0:18:27.040 --> 0:18:30.000 Yeah, yeah, you know. So eventually the kids are cruel 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:34.960 and your mother begins to say to tell people that 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:39.640 she's an only child. And it just strikes me that 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:45.040 the work emotionally and psychologically that had to go into, 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:49.800 you know, like the heartbreak of that this is what 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:51.640 I'm going to say, and this is how I'm going 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:54.480 to live. It is how I'm going to live my 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:58.399 life moving forward, because there didn't really seem to be 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:02.720 any other option. And so then all of these years later, 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:05.960 there she is, you know, in the car driving with you, 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:12.239 and yeah, she's talking about necklaces because it's it's like 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:15.560 the thirteen year old saying I'm an only child. The 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:20.440 degree to which we have to work over time to 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:25.560 put something that won't be easily boxed up in a 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:28.320 box or under the floorboards, as you say, and the 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:34.840 courage that it takes to confront it, which it struck 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:38.800 me reading your piece, and the sort of trajectory emotionally 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:43.560 that your mother goes through. Over the course of the story, 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:46.840 it reaches a point where it is no longer in 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:50.440 any way Adele is not in a box for her anymore. 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:54.880 Adele is not a person with a diagnosis, a person 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:58.440 who was sent away and who isn't able to recognize 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:02.920 her own parents, her own sister. It becomes something else entirely. 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:07.160 Well, my mother said something very interesting to me at 0:20:07.160 --> 0:20:10.040 one point, which is that she was led to believe 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:18.080 that Adele was so intellectually compromised that she was essentially 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:22.840 a vegetable. That's almost verbatim what my mother said to me, and. 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:25.200 So I think. 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:32.120 It was almost giving her permission to say, I don't 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:35.840 have a sister. My sister is not sentient, you know, 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:39.080 in the way that you can like make the decision, Oh, 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:42.119 if somebody's a vegetable, you know, like end of life care, Like, 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:44.800 why would we want to, you know, sustain some I 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:48.200 mean I really think on some level, that is the 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:50.800 way my mother was trying to think about her, even 0:20:50.880 --> 0:20:53.680 though what's fascinating is that she had plenty of evidence 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:58.600 to the contrary. She saw this little girl who was 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:03.520 scooching or out in her own platepen following her when 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:05.840 my mother, you know, well, as my mother shouted here, 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:09.600 baby Adele would scooch to different corners of the crib 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:17.440 and smile or acknowledge her. So Adele was plenty interactive, 0:21:17.760 --> 0:21:21.840 or certainly interactive enough, but yet at some point she 0:21:23.600 --> 0:21:27.679 allowed that story, a different story to kind of become 0:21:28.400 --> 0:21:31.240 the story. And my god, I don't think she was 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:32.160 a thirteen year old. 0:21:32.080 --> 0:21:33.600 When she told people she was an only child. 0:21:33.680 --> 0:21:35.919 I think it was starting from the time she was 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:38.639 like six and a half or seven, her her sister 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:42.720 gets sent away, and I having being completely bewildered by 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:46.680 it when people started asking, she just said, I'm an 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:49.120 only child because no one else was in the house. 0:21:49.200 --> 0:21:51.040 And my suspicion is. 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:55.479 That my grandparents encouraged her to say it. You know, 0:21:55.720 --> 0:21:59.199 the only question if somebody asked me this recently, and 0:21:59.280 --> 0:22:01.760 I was embarrassed to not know the answer, it was 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:04.720 a great question. I can't believe I didn't think to 0:22:04.720 --> 0:22:10.240 ask my mother. In my grandmother's obituary, how many kids 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:13.639 says it say she has? And my grandmother was not 0:22:13.680 --> 0:22:14.600 a person of any note. 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:15.320 I'm sure the. 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:18.960 Obituary that ran was the little squib that you paid 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:21.080 for right in the New York Times or in the 0:22:21.119 --> 0:22:24.120 local paper. And I'm sure my mom paid for the squib, 0:22:25.560 --> 0:22:27.359 and it would have been my mom who was in charge. 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:29.720 And the question is what decision would my mom would 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:30.880 have made? Would have made? 0:22:30.920 --> 0:22:33.320 Would She has said that my grandmother had one kid 0:22:33.359 --> 0:22:38.760 or two And I sat there, like completely unable to 0:22:38.760 --> 0:22:41.400 answer that question. For the life of me, I could 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:44.679 not tell you. Years ago when she saw her sister 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:49.080 with her mother when she was already in her forties, 0:22:49.080 --> 0:22:51.080 and it was like the first time she saw her 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:55.440 sister as an adult. Forty years later, she came home 0:22:55.480 --> 0:23:00.000 and she wrote like this little mini essay for herself, 0:23:00.200 --> 0:23:03.679 was saying, I have a sister. And I asked her, 0:23:03.720 --> 0:23:04.600 why did you write that? 0:23:04.760 --> 0:23:05.000 Was it? 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:07.480 Because it was almost like this sense of unreality and 0:23:07.520 --> 0:23:09.720 you just wanted to make it real. And she said, 0:23:09.960 --> 0:23:12.959 I wanted to admit it to myself. This is some 0:23:13.160 --> 0:23:16.320 secret that I had been hiding for all these years. 0:23:16.840 --> 0:23:20.160 She used the word admit, which I think is so fascinating, 0:23:21.200 --> 0:23:23.520 you know, like it was a confession of some kind. 0:23:23.480 --> 0:23:27.639 To herself in a way. I mean the tagline for 0:23:27.680 --> 0:23:30.400 this show is the secrets we keep, the secrets sircut 0:23:30.440 --> 0:23:33.159 from us, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. And 0:23:33.200 --> 0:23:40.720 I always find the most fascinating, strange, uncanny, resonant kind 0:23:40.760 --> 0:23:44.119 of secrets, the ones that we are somehow able to 0:23:44.200 --> 0:23:46.600