Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio outwardly. I closed
Speaker 1: the door on the person I'd become and walked away
Speaker 1: into a new world. Even with my wife, even with
Speaker 1: the new friends to whom I owed my life, I
Speaker 1: almost never spoke about what had happened back there. I
Speaker 1: felt I shouldn't because it was so ugly, and I
Speaker 1: felt I didn't have to because I had survived.
Speaker 2: That's Garth risk Hauber, author of the novels City on
Speaker 2: Fire and The Second Coming. Garth's recent essay in the
Speaker 2: Atlantic is a story of fathers, sons, legacy, and the
Speaker 2: long reach of silence and shame that is only shattered
Speaker 2: when we speak the truth of ourselves. I'm Danny Shapiro,
Speaker 2: and this is family Secrets, the secrets that are kept
Speaker 2: from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the
Speaker 2: secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 1: The landscape of my childhood is a swath of land
Speaker 1: that connects Louisiana, where I was born, with North Carolina,
Speaker 1: where we moved when I was two or three, and
Speaker 1: where I grew up. The landscape is hot, humid, dusty,
Speaker 1: not particularly populated, and bisected by railroad tracks that you
Speaker 1: know even in the nineteen eighties. Divide the halves from
Speaker 1: the have nots, and it's a.
Speaker 3: Landscape I didn't feel particularly.
Speaker 1: Well suited to in some way, like, you know, as
Speaker 1: if I had been born without some adaptation that would
Speaker 1: make me be able to get along contentedly there. When
Speaker 1: I was a child, I always had no real way
Speaker 1: of processing this feeling of disconnection that I had from
Speaker 1: my surroundings. As an adult, I kind of go back
Speaker 1: and puzzle it out and try to figure out what
Speaker 1: was that. But one thing that's emerged for me in
Speaker 1: hindsight is just I live in the New York area now,
Speaker 1: and sort of from a distance, I can see how
Speaker 1: deeply conservative the places I grew up were. And I
Speaker 1: don't mean that in a political sense at all. I
Speaker 1: just mean in the way that you were felt to
Speaker 1: have been born into something and your role was to
Speaker 1: accept that thing and perpetuate it. And that seemed to
Speaker 1: kind of cut across class lines. It was like everyone
Speaker 1: was trying to become their their father or their mother
Speaker 1: conservative in that way. The goal wasn't necessarily, you know,
Speaker 1: breaking out or doing something different. So I was not
Speaker 1: particularly well suited for that. I had kind of a
Speaker 1: restless imagination, and I kind of escaped into books. The
Speaker 1: other thing that emerges, you know, in hindsight for me
Speaker 1: is I was a very expressive kid, Like I didn't
Speaker 1: really know how to turn it down. Like I talked
Speaker 1: with my hands if I still do, and I talked
Speaker 1: too much, and I talked about the wrong things. I
Speaker 1: think I knew that I was supposed to be kind
Speaker 1: of toning it down. I think I knew that getting
Speaker 1: along with people meant putting the brakes on, but standing
Speaker 1: off the rough edges of that. I that I kind
Speaker 1: of felt like were who I was, but I I
Speaker 1: just felt like I didn't know how to do that.
Speaker 1: The adaptation I was missing was like I didn't understand
Speaker 1: how to be less who I am. My mother was
Speaker 1: from New Orleans, so she was a Southerner. Her mother
Speaker 1: was from Mississippi, and her father was from Charles. But
Speaker 1: my dad was from Ohio and he was an associate
Speaker 1: professor at the local land Brand College. You know, on
Speaker 1: one side like even more deeply Southern, in another side
Speaker 1: like not Southern at all. My mom was also an
Speaker 1: English teacher, but she I think when we first moved
Speaker 1: to North Carolina, I think she was like an adjunct
Speaker 1: professor at the college, but she couldn't get like a
Speaker 1: full time gig there, so she ended up working as
Speaker 1: a receptionist for a few years, or like an assistant
Speaker 1: to a lawyer, and then she ended up being an
Speaker 1: English teacher in high school. In fact, she was ended
Speaker 1: up being my high school English teacher.
Speaker 4: That's just what you want in high school is for
Speaker 4: your to be so yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nothing, nothing will really, you know, smooth over the
Speaker 1: social awkwardness of the two expressive kid who you know
Speaker 1: does not to fit in, like having it his mother
Speaker 1: be his English teacher and everybody else's in.
Speaker 4: Your father was a novelist.
Speaker 1: You know. When I was a little kid, he was
Speaker 1: publishing short stories if you publish a novel, I think
Speaker 1: when I was eighty or nine. Yeah, he was doing
Speaker 1: it in that very eighties kind of like writing realist
Speaker 1: fiction and trying to get a teaching job somewhere. Way.
Speaker 1: He was a great storyteller, which is interesting because having
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in South I think about
Speaker 1: as being a very Southern thing, but it was in
Speaker 1: fact my Midwestern father who was the great storyteller, and
Speaker 1: he was a very expressive guy that you know that
Speaker 1: may have been some of where I got that from,
Speaker 1: and also never quite comfortable in his own skin. I
Speaker 1: have come to think, I mean, maybe this is just
Speaker 1: growing up. You feel like you're in this garden with
Speaker 1: other people. You know, everybody's a little different, but you
Speaker 1: can still connect and be interested in what makes other
Speaker 1: people different. And then all of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 1: you're eight, nine, ten, eleven, and these walls start to
Speaker 1: go up and packs start to form. I remember the
Speaker 1: packs that roamed my neighborhood on BMX bikes when I
Speaker 1: was like six and seven, were like the Goonies, you know,
Speaker 1: the bad News bears, Like everybody was a misfit, and
Speaker 1: I think I experienced it as you know, a sudden
Speaker 1: falling away of people, like drifting apart from friends, loneliness,
Speaker 1: and then by middle school like getting in a lot
Speaker 1: of fights, just retreating into myself.
Speaker 2: So when you say getting into a lot of fights,
Speaker 2: was that in retrospect do you see that as kind
Speaker 2: of like typical adolescent anger or was there something more
Speaker 2: going on?
Speaker 1: Well, this was the eighties and in the goonies phase
Speaker 1: of rolling around the neighborhoods on bikes, like that's great,
Speaker 1: you know, that's awesome. But by the time I got
Speaker 1: to middle school, I was living through that kind of
Speaker 1: like the high water mark of school integration and then
Speaker 1: the backsliding on that. So the town had attempted to
Speaker 1: deal with this kind of white flight thing that was
Speaker 1: going on by putting eighteen hundred and sixth and seventh
Speaker 1: graders together in a school and giving us three minutes
Speaker 1: to cross the quarter mile wide campus from class to class,
Speaker 1: And it led to a lot of bumping into people
Speaker 1: in the hall and they want to beat your ass,
Speaker 1: and there was no adult around, so you just, you know,
Speaker 1: you just fought. You just fought your way out. You
Speaker 1: had to fight to get people to respect you and
Speaker 1: know they couldn't mess with you. And I just didn't
Speaker 1: know any other way to do it. It was not
Speaker 1: a good scene, And to be honest, I think I
Speaker 1: was having my first taste to come mental health struggle,
Speaker 1: although I think I hit that pretty well. But like,
Speaker 1: you'd have had to have been crazy to not think
Speaker 1: something was going on. So my mom was teaching at
Speaker 1: a public high school. She left to get a job
Speaker 1: at a private school, I think specifically so that I
Speaker 1: could go there where the classes were smaller, the curriculum
Speaker 1: was harder, and there were fewer people for me to
Speaker 1: fight were That was seventh grade.
Speaker 2: So there was a sense on your mom's part, or
Speaker 2: maybe both of your parents' part, that there was something
Speaker 2: going on that needed to be addressed or harnessed in
Speaker 2: some way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then additionally, like my parents were about to
Speaker 1: divorce that year, and I had a very close friend
Speaker 1: who was dying. I just think this was their sort
Speaker 1: of panacea move was I'm not sure which one the
Speaker 1: idea originated with, but there was enough of a sense
Speaker 1: that I needed help to move me.
Speaker 4: So a bit of a perfect storm what was happening.
Speaker 1: Even at the time, I remember kind of being like,
Speaker 1: this is ridiculous. I remember being somewhat philosophical about it,
Speaker 1: being like, this is how it works, Like sometimes things cluster,
Speaker 1: A random distribution is not an even distribution, and I
Speaker 1: was like, these things are clustering. But it was also
Speaker 1: kind of like if one more thing decides to come
Speaker 1: along and join this cluster, like I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm gonna survive. I started drinking toward the end of
Speaker 1: eighth grade, and I started getting high ninth grade, and
Speaker 1: I kind of graduated to well, I never you know,
Speaker 1: I never graduated. It was just kind of like add
Speaker 1: things to the lazy suason. I started taking pills at
Speaker 1: the end of ninth grade and moving on from that
Speaker 1: in tenth grade and feeling by February of eleventh grade
Speaker 1: that I was like really sick.
Speaker 4: Did anyone around you know it?
Speaker 1: I mean the people I was getting high.
Speaker 4: With, Yeah, how about the grown ups.
Speaker 1: It's hard for me to believe that they didn't, but
Speaker 1: apparently they didn't. And I've thought about that a lot.
Speaker 1: And I was very very secretive in a way that
Speaker 1: it's just really hard for me to think about. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't like that side of myself. But I
Speaker 1: was very good, I think, I mean, I felt then
Speaker 1: that I was very good, and I think now as
Speaker 1: a parent, like how can I have been that good?
Speaker 1: But like it seems like perhaps I really was at
Speaker 1: compartmentalizing and I had shoot, you know, I had choo
Speaker 1: houses so I could play those off against each other.
Speaker 1: I mean, I say two houses. I had like a
Speaker 1: million houses. My dad had so many houses, like we
Speaker 1: moved so many times, it was crazy, you know, And
Speaker 1: he was often not where he was supposed to be,
Speaker 1: you know, like he would forget kinda that we were
Speaker 1: coming over or that I was coming over and be out.
Speaker 1: And my parents it was acrimonious enough that they weren't
Speaker 1: you know, keeping in touch with you the other. So
Speaker 1: I could tell one I was at the other's house,
Speaker 1: and I had friends that we're going through the same experience.
Speaker 1: So we had four six, you know, eight houses we
Speaker 1: could say we were at. So there was a lot
Speaker 1: of exploiting of that. I don't know, it's crazy to me.
Speaker 2: Part of what is really striking to me. I mean,
Speaker 2: you say you were really good at being secretive, but
Speaker 2: it's hard to imagine how good could you have been
Speaker 2: at it. You know, it sounds like the adults around
Speaker 2: you were also really swept up in their own lives
Speaker 2: and not paying the kind of parental attention or maybe
Speaker 2: even not just parental attention, just you know, not just
Speaker 2: your parents, but just It's so interesting the way you
Speaker 2: were describing the eighties, because it sounds there have been
Speaker 2: decades like this in modern times of the adults checking
Speaker 2: out and then other times. I think the times that
Speaker 2: we're living in now, where parents are much more checked in.
Speaker 1: In fairness to them. As a parent. Now, I see
Speaker 1: it's really hard to pick apart what's going on with
Speaker 1: middle schoolers in particular. There's hormonal things, just developmental things.
Speaker 1: You're like, you know, does my son look like a
Speaker 1: zombie because these you know, like in withdrawal, or does
Speaker 1: he look like a zombie because he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: not being able to sleep because is you know, as
Speaker 1: hormones are. There's a lot of things it could be.
Speaker 1: And then additionally, like they're dealing with divorce, Like my
Speaker 1: mom was working all the time, Like the money situation
Speaker 1: was not good, my dad had a lot going on,
Speaker 1: a lot of girlfriends, they keeping out for Riven, and
Speaker 1: like I have like come to feel like they were
Speaker 1: doing the best they could with what they had. And
Speaker 1: then additionally, just one other thing is like I was grieving.
Speaker 1: I was grieving my dead friend, and my family culture
Speaker 1: was distinctly terrible at dealing with grief and pain, and
Speaker 1: so it was like there was something about it that
Speaker 1: was so intense, you know, and here's me, the expressive
Speaker 1: hand talker. There was just something about it that I
Speaker 1: think was so hard to look at. And for a
Speaker 1: long time, I think I thought it was ugly. I
Speaker 1: think I thought they found it so ugly that they
Speaker 1: couldn't look at it. And now I realize as a
Speaker 1: parent that it was too painful for them to see
Speaker 1: their child in pain. And I was in a lot
Speaker 1: of pain.
Speaker 4: How old were you when your friend died?
Speaker 1: Eighth grade?
Speaker 2: We'll be right back to out high school, Garth tries
Speaker 2: to numb his pain with huge amounts of drugs and alcohol,
Speaker 2: and even though the adult around him don't seem to
Speaker 2: be clocking it, he himself is alarmed, but he manages
Speaker 2: to keep it all well hidden, not that anyone's really looking.
Speaker 2: When he's seventeen and about to leave home, Garth comes
Speaker 2: up with, as he calls it, the weirdly contrived notion
Speaker 2: that if he just stops doing drugs and instead only
Speaker 2: drinks a lot, that his pain will subside. In retrospect,
Speaker 2: he would have been ripe for a twelve step recovery program,
Speaker 2: but that would have meant he'd have to talk about it,
Speaker 2: that he'd have to tell the truth.
Speaker 1: When I'm, you know, seventeen, I really left to go
Speaker 1: to DC. It's still a year ago in high school,
Speaker 1: but I had exhausted what you know sort of was
Speaker 1: there curricularly for me at my high school. So as
Speaker 1: senior year, I think I took a few college classes
Speaker 1: at the local college. I went to this one week
Speaker 1: poetry camp one summer. It was the only like, you know,
Speaker 1: summer thing I ever did that wasn't just getting a job,
Speaker 1: because my mom was like starting to panic about like
Speaker 1: what I was going to put in my college application,
Speaker 1: and to myself, I was like, ah, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to college. But I went to this poetry camp and
Speaker 1: I fell in with this kid from DC who just
Speaker 1: was like good energy. Like I was like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like I feel good when I'm around that guy. I
Speaker 1: feel safe. And I started going up to DC on
Speaker 1: weekends and the summers, you know, summer after senior year
Speaker 1: of high school, I got a job up there. That
Speaker 1: was really where I felm with this group of friends
Speaker 1: who were people who were just like not in the darkness,
Speaker 1: you know, they just weren't doing the stuff I've been doing.
Speaker 1: And I felt like if I could become part of that,
Speaker 1: then that would help me, like I would like insulate me.
Speaker 1: I didn't necessarily know like who to connect with to
Speaker 1: get dope up there. That's an interesting part of the whole,
Speaker 1: like early adolescent thing like actually scoring can be challenging.
Speaker 1: So anyway that was like I was ready. I gotta
Speaker 1: do something different or I'm not going to make it.
Speaker 4: You were ready.
Speaker 2: And also, I mean, I'm always amazed by the way
Speaker 2: that someone can come along. It can be a mentor,
Speaker 2: it can be a teacher, it can be a friend,
Speaker 2: it can be a relative, but someone can come along.
Speaker 2: That's that's sort of like just outside of our accustomed
Speaker 2: usual emotional experience and just blow it wide open.
Speaker 1: You know, the story of Roomy and Chams of Tabriz,
Speaker 1: No tell me Chams of Tabriz with Rumi's like muse
Speaker 1: and mentor and friend and in some weird spiritual sense
Speaker 1: of waste lover, and he like rides into Roomy's town. Rumy,
Speaker 1: I think it is already at this point like a
Speaker 1: good poet. But they just the way that the story goes,
Speaker 1: it's like they look at each other's faces and they
Speaker 1: just instantly are like you're for me, you know, you're
Speaker 1: my people and everything Roomy writes after that, you know,
Speaker 1: he's constantly talking about the friend, and the friend means God.
Speaker 1: But the friend also means cham's you know, his friend,
Speaker 1: and it's a mystery. It's like I think about it
Speaker 1: all the time, Like what happens in those moments when
Speaker 1: you you know, whether it's someone that you end up marrying,
Speaker 1: you know, you fall in love, or you fall in friendship,
Speaker 1: or you fall in intellectual you know, fascination with It's like,
Speaker 1: it's such a mystery, what's happening there. But yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's the great avenue for change that I found, like
Speaker 1: exists in the universe. Like I definitely, you know, wouldn't
Speaker 1: have made it on that the moment when I was ready.
Speaker 1: The first time I went to DC to visit this friend,
Speaker 1: I had been really sick immediately beforehand, and I remember
Speaker 1: talking to him and being like, I need to stop.
Speaker 1: I had never said that to anyone before. Friendship has
Speaker 1: been everything. I mean, it's just been everything to me.
Speaker 1: And I should say around my friend in DC, we're
Speaker 1: five six, seven other people who are my favorite people,
Speaker 1: and we just got really, really close. It was a
Speaker 1: culture that too, was a culture in the same way
Speaker 1: that my family had been a culture. There was something
Speaker 1: very healthy about it.
Speaker 2: Sometimes a chance meeting can alter the entire trajectory of
Speaker 2: a life and of other lives as well. In Garth's case,
Speaker 2: the friend who he met in poetry camp, who is
Speaker 2: a year older than Garth, is already at Washington University
Speaker 2: in Saint Louis, so Garth applies, is accepted, and follows
Speaker 2: him there. Seven weeks into college, when he's eighteen going
Speaker 2: on nineteen, Garth meets the woman who will become his wife.
Speaker 2: They marry in two thousand and four, when Garth is
Speaker 2: twenty five, and one thing among many they agree upon
Speaker 2: is that they don't want to have kids. Both of
Speaker 2: them have divorced parents, and they don't want to replicate
Speaker 2: the cycle. They moved to DC, where Garth's wife goes
Speaker 2: to graduate school and Garth holnes his craft as a writer.
Speaker 2: Then they moved to New York. Now it's two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven and Garth and his wife are standing on
Speaker 2: a Brooklyn Street corner waiting for the light to change,
Speaker 2: and she says, let's have kids.
Speaker 1: And know her well enough that it wasn't surprising, Like
Speaker 1: I could feel her evolving. If I say something when
Speaker 1: I'm eighteen, I feel like I must never recan't. And
Speaker 1: she's much more She exists in the world and in
Speaker 1: time were naturally than I do. And I was feeling
Speaker 1: her like evolved at the point which I was like
Speaker 1: surprised that she would have ever said. She didn't what
Speaker 1: It's like we had a dog, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: you love caring for things, but she did. It was there.
Speaker 1: There was no preamble. The herds me like, let's have well.
Speaker 2: And the way you describe it, which I love, is
Speaker 2: you know, by the time you had crossed the street,
Speaker 2: in the amount of time that it took for the
Speaker 2: two of you to cross the street, you were on board,
Speaker 2: you know, and it was like, yeah, yeah, we're going
Speaker 2: to do that.
Speaker 1: And this case also I was like I don't want
Speaker 1: to lose you, Like this is important to you. This
Speaker 1: was important to my wife, you know, like I don't
Speaker 1: want to lose her. And this has been really good
Speaker 1: so far. And it's an adventure and like, however, crazy kid,
Speaker 1: you know, having kids is I've been a crazy place.
Speaker 1: That's the mystery that you were talking about, right, Like,
Speaker 1: when you're not a parent, this isn't an experience exclusive
Speaker 1: to parents. It comes in many forms. It's about friendship,
Speaker 1: it's about any life change you just literally can't imagine
Speaker 1: what it's going to be like like you think you can.
Speaker 1: You can read novels about it, but there is a
Speaker 1: true mystery, like something that you could not imagine existed
Speaker 1: a minute ago suddenly is. And if that keeps happening
Speaker 1: to you enough, you know and it's good for you,
Speaker 1: you learn to just kind of go with it.
Speaker 2: It was Gerta who once said, whatever you think you
Speaker 2: can do, or believe you can do, begin it. Action
Speaker 2: has magic, grace and power in it. When Garth and
Speaker 2: his wife take action in starting a family, indeed they
Speaker 2: find magic, grace and power. And while this wasn't part
Speaker 2: of their plan at the onset, they end up having
Speaker 2: not just one child, but four. Garth's whole world has changed.
Speaker 2: He's a husband, a father, and he's stopped drinking.
Speaker 1: The things that had magic, grace and power in them
Speaker 1: had expanded to take up so much room that they
Speaker 1: were like squeezing out the space for the things that
Speaker 1: were bad for me. And it was like, why am
Speaker 1: I doing this stuff that's bad for me? I know
Speaker 1: it's bad. I mean I know I'm gonna feel bad later.
Speaker 1: I know I'll feel good later if I do all
Speaker 1: this other stuff, like, you know, why not bring the
Speaker 1: same discipline to doing the stuff that makes me feel
Speaker 1: good that I used to bring to doing the stuff
Speaker 1: that makes me feel bad. And I still will have
Speaker 1: a beer, but I'll you know, I'll stop it to
Speaker 1: you because there's no such thing as a third beer
Speaker 1: for me. It's like one two nine. You know.
Speaker 2: One of the things that really struck me in your
Speaker 2: piece is that you didn't really want to talk about it.
Speaker 2: It just it was something that you were internally, you know,
Speaker 2: grappling with and getting to a good place with.
Speaker 1: And I was deeply, deeply ashamed, right and remain.
Speaker 2: So kind of like your own private burden, I guess
Speaker 2: I would say, I think I.
Speaker 1: Didn't think of it as a burden, but as a
Speaker 1: consequence or even like a penance, like you did the crime,
Speaker 1: now do the time.
Speaker 2: Will be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 2: Garth's eldest son is entering into middle school age, a
Speaker 2: fraught time for most when our world enters into a
Speaker 2: front time as well the pandemic. Of course, people of
Speaker 2: all ages are struggling during this time, but Garth notices
Speaker 2: a particularly concerning shift in his son.
Speaker 1: My son has always been a beautiful child. I mean physically,
Speaker 1: although he is that to me too, but he just is.
Speaker 1: It was a really and I can say this my
Speaker 1: sample size is four, right, so I could compare him
Speaker 1: to other babies who I've lived in my house, Like
Speaker 1: he has a very He just is a smiler. He's
Speaker 1: like a light, you know. He brings kind of this
Speaker 1: a lightness into a room that is very compelling for
Speaker 1: the people in it. And he's always been that way.
Speaker 1: His favorite thing is a baby, was to look in
Speaker 1: people's faces. Just think about that in the context of
Speaker 1: like we're to go into this thing where people's faces
Speaker 1: are going to be covered for two years. Like he's
Speaker 1: just a connector. He just wants to connect and if
Speaker 1: he can do that, he's like so happy and probably
Speaker 1: out of personal cowardice. I also had, you know, managed
Speaker 1: to get to you know, the border in middle school
Speaker 1: with out thinking too hard about what's going to happen
Speaker 1: when he's at a party and like someone offers him
Speaker 1: a joint or some blow or what's that going to
Speaker 1: look like. And I hadn't really thought about the fact
Speaker 1: that I really struggled at that age and my father
Speaker 1: really struggled, and some of that's probably genetic. There are
Speaker 1: other people in my family who struggle when there are
Speaker 1: other addicts in my family. And so in the pandemic experience,
Speaker 1: when he got back into school after a year and
Speaker 1: a half of computer school, which is you know, like
Speaker 1: I could save my thoughts on for another podcast, he
Speaker 1: was in sixth grade, and I just felt like a
Speaker 1: light had gone out of him and he started to
Speaker 1: be really angry. And I think now that a lot
Speaker 1: of that is just middle school. Like I again with
Speaker 1: the sample size, I can you know, I can see
Speaker 1: my second son at the same age, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: and it's so much easier for me now to be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's developmental, Like that's blood sugar, that's something bad happened
Speaker 1: at school today. But with my oldest I was just like,
Speaker 1: what am I looking at? Like this is you know,
Speaker 1: he just seemed so different. And I, you know, had
Speaker 1: also been working on a book about addiction and about
Speaker 1: fatherhood and childhood, and so I was kind of in
Speaker 1: the midst of immersing myself in some of where I
Speaker 1: had been, and I just got really worried. I was
Speaker 1: just like, I don't know if I should be talking
Speaker 1: to him about whether he's depressed, as someone certainly should
Speaker 1: have been doing to me. But when I was that
Speaker 1: age and you know, manifesting some of the same symptoms, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't think he was drinking or anything, but I
Speaker 1: was like, what if that's where this gets? What if
Speaker 1: that's what I'm looking at? Like whatever made me start?
Speaker 1: What if that's rearing its head in him? I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time second guessing myself. I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time living through what perhaps my own parents
Speaker 1: like what am I looking at? You know, And they
Speaker 1: came to answers, I think. But I did a lot
Speaker 1: of that kind of like private you know in my head,
Speaker 1: like no, no, over reacting, this is about you. You're
Speaker 1: making this about you, you know, Let it be about him.
Speaker 1: But it was talking to my wife and getting her
Speaker 1: sense also of like I'm worried. I feel like something's
Speaker 1: happening to my child, and I just was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've never really let myself think about having this talk
Speaker 1: with my kid, and I don't know what it's supposed
Speaker 1: to look like, but I just know it's just like
Speaker 1: that I need to open the door and walk through
Speaker 1: it and start acting before it's too late, and the
Speaker 1: rest will figure itself out. And I say that like
Speaker 1: it sounds like, you know, this kind of like confidence,
Speaker 1: but in fact it's like naked terror. But it is
Speaker 1: someone who's like their whole everything that's good in their
Speaker 1: life has come out of that process, that same set
Speaker 1: of steps. You know you need to do this. It
Speaker 1: seems impossible, you don't know how you're going to do it.
Speaker 1: Just start, Just throw yourself off the cliff and trust
Speaker 1: that that's what's supposed to happen. So I thought, let's
Speaker 1: go into the woods. Let me take him somewhere where
Speaker 1: we can't be seen. That will make it easier for me.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I want to talk to him,
Speaker 1: but I need to remember to listen to him.
Speaker 4: In those woods.
Speaker 2: On that walk, Garth takes a terrifying leap.
Speaker 1: I was determined that I was not going to walk
Speaker 1: out of those woods without telling him two things that
Speaker 1: I owed him that And the first was that I
Speaker 1: struggle with depression, which I needed my son to hear
Speaker 1: that because I needed to not be hiding something from him.
Speaker 1: He's a very sensitive for a very intuitive person, and
Speaker 1: I think he in hindsight, I think that some of
Speaker 1: what was bothering him was that I was going through
Speaker 1: this intense experience of writing about all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: it was like he felt that I had this secret
Speaker 1: that was really wrestling with in my study every day,
Speaker 1: but he didn't know what it was. And the other
Speaker 1: thing is that I was a drug addict, and I
Speaker 1: thought I wasn't gonna walk out of those words without
Speaker 1: saying that. I knew that that was somehow going to
Speaker 1: be where the conversation had to go. And I knew
Speaker 1: that he needed to to know that because I knew
Speaker 1: that he needed to be able to make informed choices
Speaker 1: in his own life, and I knew that he needed
Speaker 1: to have some things he could compare what was going
Speaker 1: on with him with. So like, you know, at that age,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what the hell was going on with me,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? If my father had said,
Speaker 1: look like I struggle with mental illness or you know,
Speaker 1: in mood disorder or you know, something like that, I
Speaker 1: might have been able at that age to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe that's what's going on with me. Let me is
Speaker 1: that feel?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: That kind of does feel like what's going on with me?
Speaker 1: Maybe I should you know, maybe I need help. But
Speaker 1: as I said, I wanted to really listen to him.
Speaker 1: I felt like what was more important was to make
Speaker 1: a space for whatever was inside him to come off.
Speaker 1: And it ended up being like less. He wasn't really
Speaker 1: looking for chapter and verse from me. He was looking,
Speaker 1: you know, to be able to talk about his experience
Speaker 1: of you know, what's going on drug wise and drinking
Speaker 1: wise among his friends, and what hows you feel about it.
Speaker 1: I was kind of just drawing him out on those things.
Speaker 1: You know, he seemed like you've been angry, and he
Speaker 1: seemed like you've been that. What does that feel like?
Speaker 1: He what is that about? And what's going on in school?
Speaker 1: And then at some point I said something like the
Speaker 1: reason I'm asking is, here's my experience at that age.
Speaker 1: And you know, I said I I had a problem
Speaker 1: with drugged and it started when I was your age.
Speaker 1: And he was basically like, you know, just put his
Speaker 1: arm around me, and I was like, I'm sorry that
Speaker 1: Like it was really simple, like it wasn't like you know,
Speaker 1: like cue the Angelic chorus. It was just like a
Speaker 1: very natural human like a good friend would do. And
Speaker 1: then I think we kind of like moved right back
Speaker 1: on to like his stuff, which is important, Like, which
Speaker 1: is the point of what we were talking about.
Speaker 2: How would you characterize what has felt different in the
Speaker 2: time after that walk in the woods.
Speaker 1: It sounds preposterous, it's a plausible for.
Speaker 3: Me to say, but I just feel like it has
Speaker 3: changed everything in our relationship.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like now gets solved all his problems. But it's
Speaker 3: like the thing about keeping it inside just seemed to
Speaker 3: go away. Like he like trusts me with stuff that
Speaker 3: I never never would have trusted anyone with. He's a
Speaker 3: trusting kid, and that's a very good quality.
Speaker 1: But you know, he'll come to me with stuff important,
Speaker 1: stuff that's going on with him just then just talk
Speaker 1: to me about it, you know, not even like what
Speaker 1: do you think, but just like I wanted you to know,
Speaker 1: like this is what's going on. And I mean it's crazy,
Speaker 1: like I you know, whenever that he walks out of
Speaker 1: the room after those inductions, you know, I'm just like
Speaker 1: I feel so honored, you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 1: I'm like, I can't believe you would bring that to me.
Speaker 1: And it's really important that I like respect that trust.
Speaker 1: I feel like that really started then and and it
Speaker 1: makes me, honestly, just makes me think like that it
Speaker 1: was me. It makes me think I was doing something
Speaker 1: I was so afraid. I was so afraid to be
Speaker 1: found out or you know, to disappoint him or to
Speaker 1: let him see that I've got problems, and that he
Speaker 1: felt that and was kind of like I was alienating him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so it's so interesting because when you said
Speaker 2: what you just said about him feeling like he didn't
Speaker 2: have to keep things bottled up anymore. When you said it,
Speaker 2: I thought you were, for a moment, talking about yourself.
Speaker 2: And so I mean it seems like that in doing
Speaker 2: that and in modeling that for him, and in showing
Speaker 2: him that you're human and you know me, one of
Speaker 2: the things I think that happens so often with our
Speaker 2: parents is that they're not supposed to have histories, or
Speaker 2: we think as parents that we're not supposed to have histories,
Speaker 2: or certainly that we're not supposed to share anything that's
Speaker 2: rough with our kids.
Speaker 1: Like they'll model themselves on the worst parts of us.
Speaker 1: Is the fear, you know.
Speaker 2: When in fact it can really be the opposite, when
Speaker 2: there's you know, sort of error led into the room of.
Speaker 1: All that it's also it's very like recovery with people
Speaker 1: who go through this experience tend to arrive at some
Speaker 1: point at this sense that if there's something that you
Speaker 1: need or there's something that you want, go give it
Speaker 1: to someone else and then I'll come back to you.
Speaker 1: I find like my son, you know, I feel like
Speaker 1: my son's not trusting me, Like, wait a minute, go
Speaker 1: trust him and trust him with something. It's wild. I
Speaker 1: mean I knew that intellectually. It's wild, Like see how
Speaker 1: much it can mean to someone you love so much
Speaker 1: in action.
Speaker 2: Here's Gars reading a brief final passage from his moving
Speaker 2: essay in The Atlantic.
Speaker 1: I was no longer sure which of us would the
Speaker 1: other his life, or who had been changed by whom.
Speaker 1: So little about fatherhood these days offered that kind of clarity,
Speaker 1: much less promise any lasting resurrection. But that was okay.
Speaker 1: I thought we didn't have to be miracles. As long
Speaker 1: as we kept talking, we could simply be two guys.
Speaker 2: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly's Acre is
Speaker 2: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 2: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 2: please leave us a voicemail, and your story could appear
Speaker 2: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 2: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 2: find me on Instagram at Danny Rider. And if you'd
Speaker 2: like to know more about the story I'd inspired this podcast,
Speaker 2: check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.