WEBVTT - Prisoner of History 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:08.879 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. It's 0:00:08.880 --> 0:00:11.840 funny how so often those secrets get passed down, and 0:00:11.920 --> 0:00:15.840 some smuggled down secretly. It's like he'd clapped me out 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:17.400 in the back and then slipt it into my pocket 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:21.799 and I didn't notice. He's like the artful dodger. And 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:24.360 maybe his mom did the same thing to him. You 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:26.840 don't know where you're getting it, you know. I would 0:00:26.840 --> 0:00:28.760 have said if I'd had to guess that he had 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:31.400 been unfaithable, But I didn't know that, and we've never 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:33.640 talked about it, and I never, certainly would never have thought, 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:36.400 like I want to model myself. I'm that guy who 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:39.560 I can't get it you enough love from That would 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:40.919 be a mistake. Why would I want to do that. 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:45.680 I was trying to be the opposite. That's Tad Friend, 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:48.600 staff writer for The New Yorker, an author of the 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:52.040 memoir Cheerful Money, as well as the recent In the 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:58.000 Early Times, A Life Reframed. Tad's is a story about stoicism, silence, 0:00:58.240 --> 0:01:02.320 and shame. It's also a story about a complex emotional 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:07.320 legacy passed from generation to generation. A father, a son, 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:11.440 a shared history of marital infidelity, that leaves a great 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:14.440 deal of damage in its wake until the cycle is 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:31.560 finally broken. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:34.200 the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we 0:01:34.280 --> 0:01:37.240 keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:47.120 The first house I grew up and was in Buffalo, 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:50.360 New York, it felt very dark. Um. I don't think 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:53.560 it actually objectively was. I mean, there's probably just as 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:56.400 much son in Buffalo um and in most other parts 0:01:56.440 --> 0:01:59.320 of the world. But it felt like the house felt dark. 0:01:59.360 --> 0:02:01.600 And that's because I spent most of my time when 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:04.720 I was young on the sun porch, which is all 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:08.880 entirely mullioned. Last windows looking out on those days were 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:11.760 still this sort of avenue of elm trees before Dutch 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:14.320 elm disease took them all down. The reason I think 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:17.080 the house felt dark is because I was alone. I 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:19.480 was the first child and for four years, the only child. 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:23.200 And also because the living room felt to me and 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:27.880 maybe actually was dark, and my mom was beyond it 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:30.280 in the kitchen, usually doing something, and it felt like 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:32.799 that sort of almost like a moat between me and 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:34.560 the sunlight and the rest of the house and her 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:37.920 and my dad wasn't around much. He was a Southeast 0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:41.440 Asian history professor at the University of Buffalo. And those 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:44.119 first four years of darkness and isolation are pretty tough 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:47.760 to shape. That's a fairly important time in anyone's life. 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:51.000 And I blamed my mom bar without having any understanding 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:54.400 of her own difficulties or what she was going through, 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:58.919 or her postpartum depression or her filling left alone a 0:02:58.919 --> 0:03:01.200 bout my dad to with this baby that she hadn't 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:03.200 really wanted, which, on the one hand to make you 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:05.360 feel worse, like who wants to be the unwanted child? 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:09.840 But on the other hand, you know, like, hey, here 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:12.400 I am. And she started to do her best, and 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:15.240 she became a lot better mom later, and I felt 0:03:15.280 --> 0:03:18.600 like so many of the things that I like about 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:22.160 myself actually come from her. I like my sense of whimsy, 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:24.720 I like missions of humor, I like my playfulness, and 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:29.680 that's all straight from her. Soon, though, the darkness begins 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:33.040 to lift. When Tad's brother and sister come along. The 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:38.040 house becomes livelier, more jolly. His parents are warming to parenthood, 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:41.160 becoming better at the job, and raising their proverbial game. 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:45.960 When Tad is almost eleven, the family relocates from Buffalo 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:51.120 to Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. My dad became the president of wealthmart 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:55.400 College in nineteen seventy three, and we were lived in 0:03:55.440 --> 0:04:01.000 a gigantic, colossal field stone house called Overstone, what wasn't 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:03.680 really called Overtold by anyone, but technically was his name. 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:07.040 And that sort of tokei nish name UM felt right 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:11.080 because it had a sort of goblin ish feel somehow, 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:16.320 Um and my parents were both always super busy. I 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:17.800 felt like that was sort of the end of my 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:20.560 childhood with my dad in some ways. You know, we 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:23.800 all had our own bedroom, you know, in this new 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:28.320 big president's house, and there were three floors and just 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:31.200 endless rooms, and it was gigantic and a nice place 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:33.960 to run around and play, but a lot of it 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:36.240 was sort of also felt off limits because there were 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:40.200 constant cocktail parties and dinner parties for the college of 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:43.839 events which we were not invited to and basically shoot 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:47.359 away from. And also because you know, we just didn't 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:49.599 see much of my parents. And you know, with the 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:52.200 benefit of Hindstein and being help myself now, I realized 0:04:52.240 --> 0:04:55.960 that they're both just insanely busy. And overworked and doing 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:59.360 their best, but it felt like that we were we 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:01.600 can sort of weaving but drowning a bit in terms 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:07.279 of trying to get their attention. Describe your father, who 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:12.800 you called Day, described Day both Buffalo Day and then 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:17.640 slothmore Day. How did he change and what was that like? 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:24.560 Buffalo Day coached my soccer team, the Panthers UM and 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:30.160 was excitable and enthusiastic about kicking soccer ball with me 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:33.320 and coaching our team and taking me out for a 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:36.599 Hamburg actor practice. And he felt like his dad. You know, 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:39.960 you could look from the dad on TV, you know, 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:42.960 in a family show, and then turn my dad and 0:05:42.960 --> 0:05:46.120 I kind of nod that yet that dad he felt engaged. 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:55.080 And then swathmore Day felt disengaged and preoccupied with faculty 0:05:55.160 --> 0:05:59.599 treachery and board uprisings and students camping out in his 0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:02.440 office and protesting to Vietnam War, which he himself was against. 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:06.920 UM and he gave a lot of weight, and he 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:11.960 felt harried and harassed and like he wasn't doing a 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:13.800 very good job, which he probably wasn't in the first 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:15.440 couple of years, but I think he got better at it, 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:19.640 and it just felt like we were another claim on 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:21.760 his time, so I had never felt I felt that 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:26.120 he would hit baseballs to me in the yard sometimes 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:30.200 for like twenty minutes after he got home, but not 0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:32.560 And it always felt like he had a sense of 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:34.120 like you know, a surgeon who was about to go 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:37.000 into surgery, and he was kind of like mentally cutting 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:38.719 the minutes until you know, he's got to go and 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:41.719 do it. It had a feeling of like forbearance to 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:45.440 him rather than a joy in it. My mom she'd 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:48.599 had like nine billion conversations with him about over the years, 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:50.880 beginning probably on like the second day against wat More. 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:55.119 That was a big source of their strife during that period. 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:57.760 It was just that he was never home and never available, 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:00.640 so I think she didn't say too much. It was 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:04.680 mostly the kids who were now growing up saying it, 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:07.359 and which we hadn't like that before because we weren't 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:11.640 asked to and we're sort of psychically discouraged from delivering 0:07:11.640 --> 0:07:13.679 a word. It done the unhappiness, and I was probably 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:18.120 the most unhappy. I'm thinking about my sister maybe giving 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:20.320 me a good race for it. Our brother in the 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:23.120 middle has always seemed very equable and able to get 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:26.080 along anywhere and thinking the best of everyone. And he 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:27.960 has sort of somehow, you know, grew up under a 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:30.920 cabbage sleeve in some different, slightly different universe than we did. 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:35.520 So but I think, yeah, my sister helps neglected, and 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:40.200 I certainly did. I think their marriage appeared to friends 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:42.640 and people on the outside to be magical, and they 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:46.360 seem to in public always be attentive to each other, 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:50.120 taking cues from each other. They were married for more 0:07:50.160 --> 0:07:53.400 than forty years. They had a really rough patch in 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:59.640 swathamore where they were in therapy together, and I think, 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:02.240 I'm they just felt neglected. And she wrote him a 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:04.440 letter one point saying like, you know, I'm not having 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:07.720 any fun? Are you having any fun? And neither one 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:09.200 of them was having a whole lot of fun. And 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:11.400 I think she felt like he becomes sort of a 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:16.680 pompous ass, and he felt that she was always nagging him, 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:20.520 and I didn't understand all the challenges you faced. You know, 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:23.040 they were reasonably good about not blowing up at each 0:08:23.080 --> 0:08:26.080 other in front of us, because their wasps and they 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:29.000 would go blow up each other, you know, you know, 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:31.920 just a region of the house or take a walk 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:34.680 or do something. But we still got the general drift 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:38.080 of a kind of current of mutual unhappiness, and I 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:40.720 think think things sort of get get her sort of 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:43.560 by and large. Once my dad left that job, I 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:45.200 think my mom made her peace with sort of being. 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:48.160 We carved out her own life a bit. She started 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:51.199 to become a painter. Um she didn't feel like an appendage, 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:54.079 which she was clearly as the wife of the president Blosmore. 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:56.560 I mean there's a lot of just social duties of 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:58.720 smiling to people and saying on what a nice frock. 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:02.840 And when she started to paint, and she became a 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:06.720 board member in high school and took on more project 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:10.120 where people, he was using more of her years and 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:13.439 not just sitting around whenning to phone to ring. So 0:09:14.040 --> 0:09:17.960 that helped in the course of becoming a parent myself 0:09:18.200 --> 0:09:22.559 and growing older. And I think kind of understanding my parents, 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:26.760 I hope better than I did. I feel much closer 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:30.560 to them and much more forgiving is probably the word, 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:36.440 or grateful too. Time has a way of allowing us 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:39.800 a different understanding of the complicated people who raise us. 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:44.199 As we evolve, our sense of our parents often evolves too. 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:48.240 In midlife, Ted learns to think of his parents not 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:53.439 just as parents, but as people too, complex and multifaceted people. 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:57.480 But before he reaches this point, when he's in college, 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:02.160 something else strikes him about evolution. It was something I 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:06.280 was reading about a primatology class, and it was about 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:11.199 this experiment that he's insane. But scientists had done with 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:14.880 baby monkeys by taking them away from their mothers and 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:17.199 then giving them the surrogate mothers, who were these sort 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:20.360 of as I imagine it anyway, like and I think 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:23.520 they describe it as sort of a metal armorature covered 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:26.720 with some cloth, but in a very rudimentary way. She 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:30.840 was like the bare minimum of monkey nous. And then 0:10:31.320 --> 0:10:35.720 they had these these sort of mother contraption monkeys, and 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:38.200 of course the baby monkeys would kind of try swarm 0:10:38.200 --> 0:10:42.720 all over this, you know, sort of numbly inert mom 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:45.560 looking for comfort. And then they had all these things 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:48.400 where they would they would blast like air out of 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:52.800 the monkey mothers nipples at the baby to see how 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:55.400 strong the instinct to go back to the mom was. 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:58.160 And they had spikes to chat out of the abdomen, 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:00.760 and it was like all these sort of insane, horrifying 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:04.880 torture things that I almost couldn't read about them, but 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:07.120 it actually reading about it plunged me back into that 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:09.960 state of being on the sun porch. And obviously my 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:13.960 mom was not a metallic monster with hair shooting at 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:17.440 nipples as part, and I know, but the experience, the 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:21.400 sense of like desperately trying to swarm towards my mother 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:24.960 for comfort and being rebuffed was very strong beneath that, 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:27.680 and that it invoked in such a way that I 0:11:27.760 --> 0:11:30.320 kind of was intrusive. I kept sort of thinking about 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:32.960 the bathing monkeys when I was going to class or 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:36.760 eating lunch and we're talking to friends in college and 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:38.440 I and it. I had to kind of almost like 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:42.040 just push it all away with a great effort of 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:43.840 will to not think about it, because it kind of 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:46.760 took me over. I never talked about it with my 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:50.600 mom for obvious reasons, but um, but it definitely stayed 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:55.040 with me as a weird and unpleasant reminder of the 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:57.839 weird and unpleasant four years that I had spent kind 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:03.600 of trying to get more affection and maternal cuddling from 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:09.160 her than um she was capable. Also, while Tad is 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:12.680 in college, he tries, as many college students do, to 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:14.760 decide on what he'd liked to do with his future. 0:12:15.480 --> 0:12:18.640 He considers pursuing law that he keeps returning to the 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:21.560 idea of becoming a writer. He had seen both his 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:25.400 parents right professionally and otherwise, and it's a world that 0:12:25.480 --> 0:12:31.480 seems both familiar and appealing to him. I had been 0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:34.040 working in a magazine called The American Lawyer my first 0:12:34.600 --> 0:12:37.559 year after college, because I thought that I would be 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:40.680 a great way to both right and also get exposure 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:43.040 to what lawyers actually did all day. And that turned 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:45.559 out to be true. Um, and the result was that 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:47.280 I realized I did not want to be a lawyer. 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:51.560 My dad had was a historian, and he'd written his 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:55.720 first big history book at One's Big Prize, and he'd 0:12:55.720 --> 0:12:59.480 written a novel that came out eight scurity seven and 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:01.880 got pretty good reviews, and he thought it would started 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:04.040 thinking himself as like someone who could write more novels, 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:05.480 and he did, but of course he couldn't get any 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:07.960 of them published. But I didn't necessarily think of him 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:11.480 as a writer when I was kind of in high 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:14.800 school and college, because he had written one book and 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:16.360 then his second book had been kind of put on 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:20.560 a hold. Well, he was running Swathmore College. So he 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:23.160 wasn't really writing, and so I didn't feel I think 0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:25.400 he still I think he he thought of himself a writer. 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:27.839 He had turned out he'd years later I discovered that 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:31.560 he'd been writing like lots of poetry and in the 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:37.319 sixties and um, and they'd been keeping these very extensive journals, 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:43.839 um And I think he communicated with himself most effectively 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:45.640 by writing down what he was feeling, and then he 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:47.520 could sort of know what he was feeling. But if 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:49.120 he didn't write it down, and almost was like he 0:13:49.120 --> 0:13:51.480 didn't feel it or he didn't understand it. So he 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:53.719 was almost writing to an audience of one a lot 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:56.560 of the time, which later became an audience of two 0:13:56.600 --> 0:14:00.160 because I read all the stuff that he wrote. That's 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:02.240 what I was just thinking, is that he he was 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:05.360 writing as a way of knowing himself. You know, he 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:09.480 was elusive to himself. He was also ellusive to you. Yeah. 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:11.040 But the thing I didn't know was that he was 0:14:11.120 --> 0:14:13.960 listening to himself. I thought he was keeping it from 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:18.240 us on purpose. But I had sort of intuitive that 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:24.720 he somehow was reserving his inmost self for reasons unknown, 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:27.680 and that we were not getting it. My sister and I. 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:32.600 My sister Timmy and I both for sometime sort of 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:34.680 thought there's sort of a bit of a child's fable 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:37.000 quality to it. Where would we just say the right phraise, 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:39.120 the rock will spring open and the you know, like 0:14:39.360 --> 0:14:40.960 and the steps will go down and to the basement 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:43.080 with the sects of gold. There was something he was 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:46.240 sort of like, maybe we can this time, and you know, like, oh, 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:48.560 what if we do this or what if we asked 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:51.760 him about that? And I gave up at a certain point, 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:56.880 probably about twenty five years ago, and my sister really 0:14:56.880 --> 0:14:59.040 didn't you know, and I can we I would talk 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:01.640 with her about it, and and I would say a because 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:04.160 she would often end a conversation, a bad phone conversation 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:05.960 with him and be really kind of stricken by it. 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:08.400 And I would At that point, I was like, if 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:10.520 you go to the potato store and they say they're 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:12.800 out of potatoes, they don't have any podatos, Like I 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:15.160 was like they you know, just thinking like it's not 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:18.120 going to happen. But there were some podatos there. We 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:21.360 just didn't know. And I remember, you know, there was 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:23.840 a point late in my dad's life when I was 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:27.480 somehow the one who was as Signs who asked him 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:29.600 about his plans for his memorial service, which was sort 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:32.880 of a tricky conversation. Um he seemed to welcome it. 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:35.240 He was like, he loved the idea of people celebrating 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:36.960 his life, and he had all these ideas, none of 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:40.240 which seemed to involve any of his children speaking about him. 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:43.400 But there were some eminent Southeast Asian historians we had 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:45.800 in mind would be old to really eat sum them up. 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:48.640 And then that's once you sort of talked about all 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:50.720 the some of the details of this and that who 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:53.000 could talk. And I started asked him to some other 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:55.760 questions about this this phase of his life and what 0:15:55.880 --> 0:15:58.080 was difficult and what was the best part, and he 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:01.640 said something like, you know, the best part is getting 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:05.360 the time an opportunity to really to reconsider something and 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:07.520 make up my mind in a different way about things. 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:09.160 And I was thinking, like, wow, this could be the 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:11.800 moment where he says, you know I always really loved you, 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:15.200 or you know, I'm sorry that I didn't always express 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:16.920 the deep feelings I have or some version of that. 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:18.600 I was kind of like poised and like just like 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:20.880 I'm blame, thinking this is going to be it, and 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:23.120 I said, you know, well, you know, do you have 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:25.840 any examples? And he said, well, I might be just 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:30.000 about ready to change my mind about Franklin Roosevelt. And 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:31.920 I was started like, yeah, all right, I still no 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:51.200 petitause we'll be right back. In the mid nineties, Tad 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:53.360 is in his thirties when his mom is diagnosed with 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:58.120 breast cancer. It metastasizes and she becomes very, very sick. 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:01.880 At this point, Tad's father is no longer president of 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:05.879 Swarthmore College. He's running the Eisenhower Foundation. But when his 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:09.080 wife gets sick, he steps down from his position and 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:13.439 steps up as her caretaker. He's attentive, staunch, and loving. 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:17.679 It's in this phase of their relationship that Tad's parents 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:21.439 can reconnect and find joy with one another, even in 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:25.280 the face of grave illness. And then my mom unfortunately 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:28.639 died to them and three so that cut short what 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:31.960 would have been I think a great late My mother 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:35.679 lives you know the West fifteen or twenty years, and 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:38.800 you know, it turned out later on my dad had 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:40.840 made me his literary executor, and when I was reading 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:44.400 there's papers that he had been faithful to her. Once 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:49.320 in the sixties in Indonesia we told her about, which 0:17:49.520 --> 0:17:52.639 precipitated her big storm honestly in their marriage, and then 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:56.440 later on a couple of other times which he didn't 0:17:56.440 --> 0:17:58.560 tell her about. As far as I can tell, I 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:00.840 think he felt like she once he told her about 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:03.479 the first time that he was unfaibled or kind of 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:08.280 cut off that part of their relationships, the intimate part 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:12.720 in some way, that intimate physical part, and none of 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:14.560 this was you know, they weren't talking about this with us, 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:18.720 believe me. But this was again just something I didn't 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:21.879 really know about it until after he died. If someone 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:25.240 had asked you before he died, do you think that 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:27.560 your father was unfaithful to your mother? What would you 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:30.600 have said? Yeah, I would have guessed that he was 0:18:31.080 --> 0:18:35.399 with no evidence, no actual evidence. I could sort of 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:38.360 feel some kind of in some sub sonic frequency kind 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:41.880 of weighed his sense of dissatisfaction and the way he 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:45.400 would sometimes laid up around other women. So I would 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:47.480 have guessed that. You know, if you said she had 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:50.720 been unfaithful, I would have been really shocked. She could 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:53.159 be flirty, but it was it wasn't clearly that was 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:55.440 like just in a kind of like didner party hostess 0:18:55.480 --> 0:19:00.880 kind of way in the role of his father's literary executor. 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:05.280 As Tad pours over Day's writings, he discovers the specificity 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:10.760 with which Day recounted his extramarital affairs three women, five nights, 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:15.240 forty one years. Day had done the math. There was 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:19.800 writing two of Day's mother's many affairs which had impacted Day. 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:24.760 But even before Tad discovers the scope of this generational infidelity, 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:28.080 he spends his early adulthood with a nagging and persistent 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:32.199 fear of intimacy and a fear of being vulnerable. He 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:35.520 has a desire to be known, but also to be hidden. 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:40.240 These fears cause him to stress test his relationships, to 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:43.159 test the loyalty of the women he dates. During the 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:46.960 same period of his life, he's also searching for father figures, 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:49.800 though at the time he doesn't realize that's what he's doing. 0:19:52.480 --> 0:19:55.000 I think I was doing both things without knowing them, 0:19:55.119 --> 0:19:57.359 without understanding. It wasn't like I said, I shall stress 0:19:57.440 --> 0:20:01.080 test this relationship. Observed there is also right a you 0:20:01.119 --> 0:20:05.480 know new hypothesis. Because I was dimly aware of how 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:09.200 fragile and insufficient I felt in a relationship how I 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:12.160 felt like when you know, if someone really needed me 0:20:12.520 --> 0:20:14.959 to be there for them, or you know, like if 0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:18.120 I had to be get married or and be around 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:20.199 with someone all the time and they could see me, 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:25.639 and you know, like I was extremely closed off. I 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:28.520 could kind of I can't remember what that term is 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:31.160 on the Myers Briggs thing, but whatever it is, where 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:35.360 you can be an extrovert for like two minutes at 0:20:35.359 --> 0:20:37.520 a party and then exhaust you and then you have 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:39.920 to like go lie down with a compress over your eyes. 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:42.520 That was that I wasn't quite lying now the compress, 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:44.840 but I was like, I can engage with people, but 0:20:44.880 --> 0:20:48.480 then I really needed or wanted space because I think 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:51.639 I felt like they're getting too close. You know. The 0:20:51.640 --> 0:20:54.800 the hounds are the hounds of people who actually want 0:20:54.840 --> 0:20:58.040 to know who I am are being, and therefore, you know, 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:02.320 time to run away. I would like to retroactively apologize 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:06.679 to all all of my friends and particularly any girlfriends 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:12.120 from my teens through my early thirties, and um, I 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:16.720 was terrible, and I apologize because I only later on 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:18.639 began to realize how terrible it was. I did you know, 0:21:18.680 --> 0:21:21.240 it was like the stress testing was just sort of 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:24.359 like more of almost like pushing up pressure relief style 0:21:24.480 --> 0:21:26.919 of like you know, well, you know I won't be 0:21:27.000 --> 0:21:29.679 endangered into a see if I I'm also presenting this 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:32.240 other person. And the way that I think I think 0:21:32.280 --> 0:21:37.760 that was linked to my equally unknowing search for other figures, 0:21:38.160 --> 0:21:40.479 is that I was looking for some kind of model 0:21:40.560 --> 0:21:42.600 for what I should be doing with my life and 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:44.679 how I should be a man. He felt like my 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:47.480 dad wanted to be some kind of version of him 0:21:47.600 --> 0:21:51.320 where everything was processed through your brain and nothing was 0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:55.400 processed in your heart too, And I felt like, even 0:21:55.400 --> 0:21:57.159 though I wasn't very good at processing these things in 0:21:57.280 --> 0:22:00.080 my heart, that's what I wanted to do. Um So 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:03.600 I was looking for people who it seemed better at it, 0:22:03.840 --> 0:22:07.080 and it seemed to have access to their feelings and 0:22:07.200 --> 0:22:10.120 you know, who either took joy and daily life or 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:15.840 who seemed savvy about you know, other people's feelings. And 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:17.400 I sort of thought, well, it could be savvy about 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:21.040 other people's feelings, and maybe there's a way of locating 0:22:21.080 --> 0:22:25.080 my own triangulating you know, where I am by seeing 0:22:25.080 --> 0:22:27.320 where everyone around me is. It was a kind of 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:30.719 me blindly groping my way towards as it turned out, 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:35.159 towards decades of misery. I didn't as I did. I 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:38.320 was hoping it would work out better. I think objectively, 0:22:38.400 --> 0:22:43.080 my dad seemed like, you know, he was a decent husband. 0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:46.800