WEBVTT - Let’s Go Into the Woods 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:10.719 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio outwardly. I closed 0:00:10.760 --> 0:00:14.160 the door on the person I'd become and walked away 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:18.919 into a new world. Even with my wife, even with 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:22.400 the new friends to whom I owed my life, I 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:26.520 almost never spoke about what had happened back there. I 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:31.080 felt I shouldn't because it was so ugly, and I 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:34.760 felt I didn't have to because I had survived. 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:40.800 That's Garth risk Hauber, author of the novels City on 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:45.120 Fire and The Second Coming. Garth's recent essay in the 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:50.120 Atlantic is a story of fathers, sons, legacy, and the 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:53.920 long reach of silence and shame that is only shattered 0:00:54.200 --> 0:01:07.760 when we speak the truth of ourselves. I'm Danny Shapiro, 0:01:08.200 --> 0:01:11.080 and this is family Secrets, the secrets that are kept 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:13.959 from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:19.000 secrets we keep from ourselves. 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:26.160 The landscape of my childhood is a swath of land 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:32.119 that connects Louisiana, where I was born, with North Carolina, 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:36.200 where we moved when I was two or three, and 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:42.880 where I grew up. The landscape is hot, humid, dusty, 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:50.920 not particularly populated, and bisected by railroad tracks that you 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:55.120 know even in the nineteen eighties. Divide the halves from 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:58.080 the have nots, and it's a. 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:03.280 Landscape I didn't feel particularly. 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:06.160 Well suited to in some way, like, you know, as 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:09.919 if I had been born without some adaptation that would 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:13.880 make me be able to get along contentedly there. When 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:16.760 I was a child, I always had no real way 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:22.680 of processing this feeling of disconnection that I had from 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:25.320 my surroundings. As an adult, I kind of go back 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:27.760 and puzzle it out and try to figure out what 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:30.560 was that. But one thing that's emerged for me in 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:35.520 hindsight is just I live in the New York area now, 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:38.920 and sort of from a distance, I can see how 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:43.840 deeply conservative the places I grew up were. And I 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:46.320 don't mean that in a political sense at all. I 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:49.480 just mean in the way that you were felt to 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:55.360 have been born into something and your role was to 0:02:56.160 --> 0:02:59.840 accept that thing and perpetuate it. And that seemed to 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:05.480 kind of cut across class lines. It was like everyone 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:07.919 was trying to become their their father or their mother 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:13.160 conservative in that way. The goal wasn't necessarily, you know, 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:16.960 breaking out or doing something different. So I was not 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:20.360 particularly well suited for that. I had kind of a 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:25.360 restless imagination, and I kind of escaped into books. The 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:27.840 other thing that emerges, you know, in hindsight for me 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:31.440 is I was a very expressive kid, Like I didn't 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:34.080 really know how to turn it down. Like I talked 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:36.760 with my hands if I still do, and I talked 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:40.000 too much, and I talked about the wrong things. I 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:44.280 think I knew that I was supposed to be kind 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:48.160 of toning it down. I think I knew that getting 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:53.120 along with people meant putting the brakes on, but standing 0:03:53.120 --> 0:03:56.200 off the rough edges of that. I that I kind 0:03:56.240 --> 0:04:00.240 of felt like were who I was, but I I 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:02.760 just felt like I didn't know how to do that. 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:06.840 The adaptation I was missing was like I didn't understand 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:13.280 how to be less who I am. My mother was 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:17.080 from New Orleans, so she was a Southerner. Her mother 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:20.000 was from Mississippi, and her father was from Charles. But 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:24.440 my dad was from Ohio and he was an associate 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:27.960 professor at the local land Brand College. You know, on 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:31.080 one side like even more deeply Southern, in another side 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:34.760 like not Southern at all. My mom was also an 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:38.360 English teacher, but she I think when we first moved 0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:41.080 to North Carolina, I think she was like an adjunct 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:44.039 professor at the college, but she couldn't get like a 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:46.880 full time gig there, so she ended up working as 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:50.200 a receptionist for a few years, or like an assistant 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:52.320 to a lawyer, and then she ended up being an 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:55.280 English teacher in high school. In fact, she was ended 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:57.239 up being my high school English teacher. 0:04:58.160 --> 0:04:59.839 That's just what you want in high school is for 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:01.120 your to be so yeah. 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:05.880 Yeah, nothing, nothing will really, you know, smooth over the 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:09.200 social awkwardness of the two expressive kid who you know 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:11.920 does not to fit in, like having it his mother 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:14.320 be his English teacher and everybody else's in. 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:20.200 Your father was a novelist. 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:21.800 You know. When I was a little kid, he was 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:24.720 publishing short stories if you publish a novel, I think 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:27.760 when I was eighty or nine. Yeah, he was doing 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:32.400 it in that very eighties kind of like writing realist 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:36.360 fiction and trying to get a teaching job somewhere. Way. 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:40.880 He was a great storyteller, which is interesting because having 0:05:41.000 --> 0:05:43.000 spent a lot of time in South I think about 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:44.520 as being a very Southern thing, but it was in 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:48.760 fact my Midwestern father who was the great storyteller, and 0:05:48.920 --> 0:05:51.440 he was a very expressive guy that you know that 0:05:51.520 --> 0:05:53.960 may have been some of where I got that from, 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:57.719 and also never quite comfortable in his own skin. I 0:05:57.760 --> 0:05:59.960 have come to think, I mean, maybe this is just 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:03.919 growing up. You feel like you're in this garden with 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.599 other people. You know, everybody's a little different, but you 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:09.440 can still connect and be interested in what makes other 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:13.200 people different. And then all of a sudden, you know, 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:19.039 you're eight, nine, ten, eleven, and these walls start to 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:21.560 go up and packs start to form. I remember the 0:06:21.640 --> 0:06:25.400 packs that roamed my neighborhood on BMX bikes when I 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:30.279 was like six and seven, were like the Goonies, you know, 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:33.039 the bad News bears, Like everybody was a misfit, and 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:35.400 I think I experienced it as you know, a sudden 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:41.600 falling away of people, like drifting apart from friends, loneliness, 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:44.120 and then by middle school like getting in a lot 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:47.239 of fights, just retreating into myself. 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:49.919 So when you say getting into a lot of fights, 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:52.840 was that in retrospect do you see that as kind 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:57.919 of like typical adolescent anger or was there something more 0:06:58.360 --> 0:06:58.840 going on? 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:03.159 Well, this was the eighties and in the goonies phase 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:05.839 of rolling around the neighborhoods on bikes, like that's great, 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:09.000 you know, that's awesome. But by the time I got 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:11.920 to middle school, I was living through that kind of 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:14.880 like the high water mark of school integration and then 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:19.400 the backsliding on that. So the town had attempted to 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:22.640 deal with this kind of white flight thing that was 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:25.360 going on by putting eighteen hundred and sixth and seventh 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:28.640 graders together in a school and giving us three minutes 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:32.960 to cross the quarter mile wide campus from class to class, 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:35.920 And it led to a lot of bumping into people 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:37.920 in the hall and they want to beat your ass, 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:41.760 and there was no adult around, so you just, you know, 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:44.280 you just fought. You just fought your way out. You 0:07:44.360 --> 0:07:47.360 had to fight to get people to respect you and 0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:50.880 know they couldn't mess with you. And I just didn't 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:53.320 know any other way to do it. It was not 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:57.640 a good scene, And to be honest, I think I 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:02.040 was having my first taste to come mental health struggle, 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:04.880 although I think I hit that pretty well. But like, 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:07.760 you'd have had to have been crazy to not think 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:10.320 something was going on. So my mom was teaching at 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:13.760 a public high school. She left to get a job 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:18.160 at a private school, I think specifically so that I 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:22.120 could go there where the classes were smaller, the curriculum 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:24.040 was harder, and there were fewer people for me to 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:26.000 fight were That was seventh grade. 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:29.080 So there was a sense on your mom's part, or 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:32.080 maybe both of your parents' part, that there was something 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:34.880 going on that needed to be addressed or harnessed in 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:35.320 some way. 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:40.760 Yeah, and then additionally, like my parents were about to 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:45.560 divorce that year, and I had a very close friend 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:49.320 who was dying. I just think this was their sort 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:53.200 of panacea move was I'm not sure which one the 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:57.840 idea originated with, but there was enough of a sense 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:00.120 that I needed help to move me. 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:03.680 So a bit of a perfect storm what was happening. 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:06.560 Even at the time, I remember kind of being like, 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:10.480 this is ridiculous. I remember being somewhat philosophical about it, 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:14.080 being like, this is how it works, Like sometimes things cluster, 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:17.160 A random distribution is not an even distribution, and I 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:20.520 was like, these things are clustering. But it was also 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:22.560 kind of like if one more thing decides to come 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:24.560 along and join this cluster, like I don't know if 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:30.000 I'm gonna survive. I started drinking toward the end of 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:36.120 eighth grade, and I started getting high ninth grade, and 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:41.120 I kind of graduated to well, I never you know, 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:43.600 I never graduated. It was just kind of like add 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:48.400 things to the lazy suason. I started taking pills at 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:53.040 the end of ninth grade and moving on from that 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:59.120 in tenth grade and feeling by February of eleventh grade 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:01.520 that I was like really sick. 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:03.199 Did anyone around you know it? 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:05.680 I mean the people I was getting high. 0:10:05.559 --> 0:10:07.160 With, Yeah, how about the grown ups. 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:10.640 It's hard for me to believe that they didn't, but 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:14.400 apparently they didn't. And I've thought about that a lot. 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:20.800 And I was very very secretive in a way that 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:23.240 it's just really hard for me to think about. I 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:27.000 don't I don't like that side of myself. But I 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:31.360 was very good, I think, I mean, I felt then 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:33.160 that I was very good, and I think now as 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:35.120 a parent, like how can I have been that good? 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:39.040 But like it seems like perhaps I really was at 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:41.320 compartmentalizing and I had shoot, you know, I had choo 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:44.600 houses so I could play those off against each other. 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:47.920 I mean, I say two houses. I had like a 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:50.560 million houses. My dad had so many houses, like we 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:53.440 moved so many times, it was crazy, you know, And 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:57.280 he was often not where he was supposed to be, 0:10:57.840 --> 0:11:02.280 you know, like he would forget kinda that we were 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:07.160 coming over or that I was coming over and be out. 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:10.400 And my parents it was acrimonious enough that they weren't 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:13.200 you know, keeping in touch with you the other. So 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:15.320 I could tell one I was at the other's house, 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:18.040 and I had friends that we're going through the same experience. 0:11:18.080 --> 0:11:21.760 So we had four six, you know, eight houses we 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:23.959 could say we were at. So there was a lot 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:26.920 of exploiting of that. I don't know, it's crazy to me. 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:29.520 Part of what is really striking to me. I mean, 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:32.760 you say you were really good at being secretive, but 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:36.040 it's hard to imagine how good could you have been 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:38.680 at it. You know, it sounds like the adults around 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:42.840 you were also really swept up in their own lives 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:48.480 and not paying the kind of parental attention or maybe 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:51.160 even not just parental attention, just you know, not just 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:53.400 your parents, but just It's so interesting the way you 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:56.319 were describing the eighties, because it sounds there have been 0:11:56.320 --> 0:12:00.600 decades like this in modern times of the adults checking 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:03.080 out and then other times. I think the times that 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:07.560 we're living in now, where parents are much more checked in. 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:10.360 In fairness to them. As a parent. Now, I see 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:14.080 it's really hard to pick apart what's going on with 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:18.520 middle schoolers in particular. There's hormonal things, just developmental things. 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:22.079 You're like, you know, does my son look like a 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:26.719 zombie because these you know, like in withdrawal, or does 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:28.959 he look like a zombie because he's like, you know, 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:31.520 not being able to sleep because is you know, as 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:33.760 hormones are. There's a lot of things it could be. 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:37.480 And then additionally, like they're dealing with divorce, Like my 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:40.640 mom was working all the time, Like the money situation 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:44.720 was not good, my dad had a lot going on, 0:12:45.360 --> 0:12:49.040 a lot of girlfriends, they keeping out for Riven, and 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:51.520 like I have like come to feel like they were 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:54.679 doing the best they could with what they had. And 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:58.440 then additionally, just one other thing is like I was grieving. 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:03.560 I was grieving my dead friend, and my family culture 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:11.400 was distinctly terrible at dealing with grief and pain, and 0:13:11.480 --> 0:13:14.280 so it was like there was something about it that 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:17.119 was so intense, you know, and here's me, the expressive 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:20.679 hand talker. There was just something about it that I 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:23.800 think was so hard to look at. And for a 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:26.760 long time, I think I thought it was ugly. I 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:29.120 think I thought they found it so ugly that they 0:13:29.120 --> 0:13:32.240 couldn't look at it. And now I realize as a 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:35.400 parent that it was too painful for them to see 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:37.719 their child in pain. And I was in a lot 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:38.120 of pain. 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:40.520 How old were you when your friend died? 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:47.640 Eighth grade? 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:59.160 We'll be right back to out high school, Garth tries 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:02.719 to numb his pain with huge amounts of drugs and alcohol, 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:06.040 and even though the adult around him don't seem to 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:10.160 be clocking it, he himself is alarmed, but he manages 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:13.600 to keep it all well hidden, not that anyone's really looking. 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:18.120 When he's seventeen and about to leave home, Garth comes 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:21.640 up with, as he calls it, the weirdly contrived notion 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:25.560 that if he just stops doing drugs and instead only 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:30.520 drinks a lot, that his pain will subside. In retrospect, 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:33.600 he would have been ripe for a twelve step recovery program, 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:36.400 but that would have meant he'd have to talk about it, 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:38.120 that he'd have to tell the truth. 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:42.120 When I'm, you know, seventeen, I really left to go 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:45.320 to DC. It's still a year ago in high school, 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:49.000 but I had exhausted what you know sort of was 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:52.880 there curricularly for me at my high school. So as 0:14:52.960 --> 0:14:56.040 senior year, I think I took a few college classes 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:58.880 at the local college. I went to this one week 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:03.320 poetry camp one summer. It was the only like, you know, 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:05.840 summer thing I ever did that wasn't just getting a job, 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:09.760 because my mom was like starting to panic about like 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:12.360 what I was going to put in my college application, 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:15.080 and to myself, I was like, ah, I'm not going 0:15:15.120 --> 0:15:16.920 to college. But I went to this poetry camp and 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:19.960 I fell in with this kid from DC who just 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:23.200 was like good energy. Like I was like, I don't know, 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:26.200 like I feel good when I'm around that guy. I 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:29.920 feel safe. And I started going up to DC on 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:33.720 weekends and the summers, you know, summer after senior year 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:35.920 of high school, I got a job up there. That 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:37.920 was really where I felm with this group of friends 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:42.720 who were people who were just like not in the darkness, 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:45.360 you know, they just weren't doing the stuff I've been doing. 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:48.720 And I felt like if I could become part of that, 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:52.440 then that would help me, like I would like insulate me. 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:56.680 I didn't necessarily know like who to connect with to 0:15:56.840 --> 0:15:59.400 get dope up there. That's an interesting part of the whole, 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:03.400 like early adolescent thing like actually scoring can be challenging. 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:06.800 So anyway that was like I was ready. I gotta 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:08.800 do something different or I'm not going to make it. 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:10.120 You were ready. 0:16:10.160 --> 0:16:13.160 And also, I mean, I'm always amazed by the way 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:17.880 that someone can come along. It can be a mentor, 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:19.600 it can be a teacher, it can be a friend, 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:21.920 it can be a relative, but someone can come along. 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:26.880 That's that's sort of like just outside of our accustomed 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:31.080 usual emotional experience and just blow it wide open. 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:34.480 You know, the story of Roomy and Chams of Tabriz, 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:40.080 No tell me Chams of Tabriz with Rumi's like muse 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:44.640 and mentor and friend and in some weird spiritual sense 0:16:44.640 --> 0:16:48.040 of waste lover, and he like rides into Roomy's town. Rumy, 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:49.400 I think it is already at this point like a 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:53.520 good poet. But they just the way that the story goes, 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:56.960 it's like they look at each other's faces and they 0:16:57.080 --> 0:16:59.600 just instantly are like you're for me, you know, you're 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:03.760 my people and everything Roomy writes after that, you know, 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:06.800 he's constantly talking about the friend, and the friend means God. 0:17:06.840 --> 0:17:10.840 But the friend also means cham's you know, his friend, 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:14.000 and it's a mystery. It's like I think about it 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:16.479 all the time, Like what happens in those moments when 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:20.280 you you know, whether it's someone that you end up marrying, 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:23.760 you know, you fall in love, or you fall in friendship, 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:29.000 or you fall in intellectual you know, fascination with It's like, 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:31.360 it's such a mystery, what's happening there. But yeah, that's 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:36.280 that's the great avenue for change that I found, like 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:40.000 exists in the universe. Like I definitely, you know, wouldn't 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:43.480 have made it on that the moment when I was ready. 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:46.920 The first time I went to DC to visit this friend, 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:54.399 I had been really sick immediately beforehand, and I remember 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:56.560 talking to him and being like, I need to stop. 0:17:56.920 --> 0:18:00.680 I had never said that to anyone before. Friendship has 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:05.960 been everything. I mean, it's just been everything to me. 0:18:06.440 --> 0:18:11.359 And I should say around my friend in DC, we're 0:18:11.640 --> 0:18:14.720 five six, seven other people who are my favorite people, 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:17.359 and we just got really, really close. It was a 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:19.640 culture that too, was a culture in the same way 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:21.639 that my family had been a culture. There was something 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:23.360 very healthy about it. 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:30.680 Sometimes a chance meeting can alter the entire trajectory of 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:34.840 a life and of other lives as well. In Garth's case, 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:37.560 the friend who he met in poetry camp, who is 0:18:37.600 --> 0:18:41.040 a year older than Garth, is already at Washington University 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:45.119 in Saint Louis, so Garth applies, is accepted, and follows 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:49.040 him there. Seven weeks into college, when he's eighteen going 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:52.439 on nineteen, Garth meets the woman who will become his wife. 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:56.040 They marry in two thousand and four, when Garth is 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:59.880 twenty five, and one thing among many they agree upon 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:03.040 is that they don't want to have kids. Both of 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:05.800 them have divorced parents, and they don't want to replicate 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:09.440 the cycle. They moved to DC, where Garth's wife goes 0:19:09.480 --> 0:19:12.560 to graduate school and Garth holnes his craft as a writer. 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:16.560 Then they moved to New York. Now it's two thousand 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:19.080 and seven and Garth and his wife are standing on 0:19:19.119 --> 0:19:21.520 a Brooklyn Street corner waiting for the light to change, 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:24.040 and she says, let's have kids. 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:29.040 And know her well enough that it wasn't surprising, Like 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:33.040 I could feel her evolving. If I say something when 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:37.480 I'm eighteen, I feel like I must never recan't. And 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:41.960 she's much more She exists in the world and in 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:44.360 time were naturally than I do. And I was feeling 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:46.960 her like evolved at the point which I was like 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:49.919 surprised that she would have ever said. She didn't what 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:53.119 It's like we had a dog, you know, it's like 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:56.239 you love caring for things, but she did. It was there. 0:19:56.560 --> 0:20:01.200 There was no preamble. The herds me like, let's have well. 0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:03.560 And the way you describe it, which I love, is 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:06.520 you know, by the time you had crossed the street, 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:07.960 in the amount of time that it took for the 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:10.359 two of you to cross the street, you were on board, 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:12.760 you know, and it was like, yeah, yeah, we're going 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:13.159 to do that. 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:19.000 And this case also I was like I don't want 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:21.399 to lose you, Like this is important to you. This 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:23.640 was important to my wife, you know, like I don't 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:25.920 want to lose her. And this has been really good 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:28.960 so far. And it's an adventure and like, however, crazy kid, 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:31.119 you know, having kids is I've been a crazy place. 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:34.080 That's the mystery that you were talking about, right, Like, 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:37.680 when you're not a parent, this isn't an experience exclusive 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:40.840 to parents. It comes in many forms. It's about friendship, 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:44.920 it's about any life change you just literally can't imagine 0:20:44.920 --> 0:20:47.200 what it's going to be like like you think you can. 0:20:47.320 --> 0:20:49.960 You can read novels about it, but there is a 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:54.880 true mystery, like something that you could not imagine existed 0:20:55.840 --> 0:21:01.400 a minute ago suddenly is. And if that keeps happening 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:04.520 to you enough, you know and it's good for you, 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:10.800 you learn to just kind of go with it. 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:14.119 It was Gerta who once said, whatever you think you 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:18.119 can do, or believe you can do, begin it. Action 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:22.359 has magic, grace and power in it. When Garth and 0:21:22.400 --> 0:21:25.840 his wife take action in starting a family, indeed they 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:30.120 find magic, grace and power. And while this wasn't part 0:21:30.160 --> 0:21:33.399 of their plan at the onset, they end up having 0:21:33.440 --> 0:21:38.560 not just one child, but four. Garth's whole world has changed. 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:43.000 He's a husband, a father, and he's stopped drinking. 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:47.800 The things that had magic, grace and power in them 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:51.680 had expanded to take up so much room that they 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:54.680 were like squeezing out the space for the things that 0:21:54.760 --> 0:21:57.760 were bad for me. And it was like, why am 0:21:57.760 --> 0:22:01.000 I doing this stuff that's bad for me? I know 0:22:01.080 --> 0:22:03.520 it's bad. I mean I know I'm gonna feel bad later. 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:05.320 I know I'll feel good later if I do all 0:22:05.359 --> 0:22:09.240 this other stuff, like, you know, why not bring the 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:13.200 same discipline to doing the stuff that makes me feel 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:14.760 good that I used to bring to doing the stuff 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:18.679 that makes me feel bad. And I still will have 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:21.439 a beer, but I'll you know, I'll stop it to 0:22:21.480 --> 0:22:23.399 you because there's no such thing as a third beer 0:22:23.720 --> 0:22:26.879 for me. It's like one two nine. You know. 0:22:26.920 --> 0:22:29.520 One of the things that really struck me in your 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:33.520 piece is that you didn't really want to talk about it. 0:22:33.560 --> 0:22:36.439 It just it was something that you were internally, you know, 0:22:36.480 --> 0:22:38.960 grappling with and getting to a good place with. 0:22:39.560 --> 0:22:43.360 And I was deeply, deeply ashamed, right and remain. 0:22:43.160 --> 0:22:46.920 So kind of like your own private burden, I guess 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:48.760 I would say, I think I. 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:51.520 Didn't think of it as a burden, but as a 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:55.520 consequence or even like a penance, like you did the crime, 0:22:55.640 --> 0:22:56.679 now do the time. 0:23:04.200 --> 0:23:18.560 Will be back in a moment with more family secrets. 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:24.720 Garth's eldest son is entering into middle school age, a 0:23:24.800 --> 0:23:28.760 fraught time for most when our world enters into a 0:23:28.800 --> 0:23:33.080 front time as well the pandemic. Of course, people of 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:36.720 all ages are struggling during this time, but Garth notices 0:23:36.760 --> 0:23:39.400 a particularly concerning shift in his son. 0:23:42.280 --> 0:23:49.560 My son has always been a beautiful child. I mean physically, 0:23:50.320 --> 0:23:53.480 although he is that to me too, but he just is. 0:23:53.600 --> 0:23:56.040 It was a really and I can say this my 0:23:56.080 --> 0:23:58.960 sample size is four, right, so I could compare him 0:23:58.960 --> 0:24:01.159 to other babies who I've lived in my house, Like 0:24:01.240 --> 0:24:04.960 he has a very He just is a smiler. He's 0:24:05.040 --> 0:24:07.320