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Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Every family has a core legend, a cone, a defining, foundational,

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Speaker 2: sometimes cryptic, narrative around which its generations are coiled. Left unresolved,

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Speaker 2: it will pomp relentlessly back to the surface like a

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Speaker 2: rubber bath toy. It is the story that appears when

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Speaker 2: we least expect it in primary relationships, both successful and failed,

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Speaker 2: in parenthood, at work, in recovery meetings, and the patterns

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Speaker 2: that our therapists tell us they see. It is an

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Speaker 2: endless loop, a thin mobius strip that vibrates like a

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Speaker 2: guitar string.

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Speaker 3: That's Alyssa Autman Award winning author, most recently of a

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Speaker 3: memoir of the writing life titled Permission. Permission figures centrally

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Speaker 3: in Alyssa's story, which is at its core about the

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Speaker 3: necessity of telling our own stories, the ones that hurt,

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Speaker 3: the ones that haunt, in order to fully discover and

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Speaker 3: understand who we are, and sometimes often that telling has

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Speaker 3: a cost. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets.

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Speaker 3: The secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we

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Speaker 3: keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.

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Speaker 2: I grew up in Queens and Forest Hills, a little

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Speaker 2: bit outside of the city in the late sixties and

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Speaker 2: into the seventies, and had no siblings, and lived in

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Speaker 2: an apartment with two very much New Yorker parents, both

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Speaker 2: very creative and my dad was a creative director at

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Speaker 2: a large advertising agency in the city. And my mom

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Speaker 2: had been a model and a singer and gave that

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Speaker 2: up when she married my dad. And they were both

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Speaker 2: really beautiful people and also tortured. My dad and I

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Speaker 2: were very, very close. We were I think, probably more

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Speaker 2: friends than not. And my mother and I were none

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Speaker 2: of those things. And as I always like to say,

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Speaker 2: I frame it in that she did not know that

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Speaker 2: she was pregnant with me for six months. How that happens,

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Speaker 2: I don't know what it did. She was on television

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Speaker 2: and that loomed large in our home.

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Speaker 3: What year did they get married?

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Speaker 2: They got married in sixty two and I arrived nine

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Speaker 2: months later, almost to the day.

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Speaker 3: And you were their only child? Was that the intention?

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Speaker 3: I think as an only child myself born in the

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Speaker 3: same era, it was a pretty unusual thing to be

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Speaker 3: an only child.

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Speaker 2: I definitely think that it was an unusual thing in

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Speaker 2: most of the people I knew, and most of my

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Speaker 2: friends had siblings and at least one sibbling. I know

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Speaker 2: that my dad very much wanted more children and my

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Speaker 2: mother very much did not. My father was very clear

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Speaker 2: about that with me. And whether that was appropriate or

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Speaker 2: not for him to be clear on that, I don't know.

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Speaker 2: But that kind of openness and transparency was really very

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Speaker 2: much a part of the way I was raised.

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Speaker 3: Tell me a bit about your mother in your childhood

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Speaker 3: and your youth.

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Speaker 2: She was this until very recently, this sort of very tall,

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Speaker 2: spelt in love with fashion. That was very much a

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Speaker 2: part of my growing up. And there are not a

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Speaker 2: whole lot of pictures of the two of us. I

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Speaker 2: have boxes and boxes of photos, and I've gone through

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Speaker 2: them pretty much with a fine toothcomb over the years,

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Speaker 2: and I can count maybe five photos of the two

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Speaker 2: of us from the time that I was born really

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Speaker 2: until the present day. I always say that our relationship

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Speaker 2: changed when I was eleven because I learned how to

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Speaker 2: say no when I was eleven, and she didn't like that.

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Speaker 2: We were like oil and water. I mean, my mother

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Speaker 2: was the sort of quintessential fashion yeasta. I describe her

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Speaker 2: often as a hyper heterosexual glam queen, and I knew

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Speaker 2: pretty much pretty early on that I was different from

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Speaker 2: my other friends and the other kids I was growing

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Speaker 2: up with, But I didn't have any words for what

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Speaker 2: I was feeling, which was appropriate, of course, I think.

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Speaker 2: And it was also the seventies and being gay was

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Speaker 2: just nobody really talked about it. It was still really

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Speaker 2: what we would call a shonda. It was just not

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Speaker 2: something that we would ever talk about. And the idea

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Speaker 2: that my mother, who was this glamorouss would have this short,

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Speaker 2: chubby lesbian for a daughter, I think that she had

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Speaker 2: no words for it, and so that really set the

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Speaker 2: stage for a lot of acrimony.

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Speaker 3: What was your parents' relationship like and when did you

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Speaker 3: start to have a sense of them as being these

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Speaker 3: radically different people with very different histories.

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Speaker 2: They were both very funny people, and they were either

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Speaker 2: fighting loudly or laughing. There was no discussion, no past

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Speaker 2: the salt, no mondanity at the dinner table. They went

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Speaker 2: from one ex dream to the other. They were always

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Speaker 2: fighting or intermittently fighting and laughing at something. There was

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Speaker 2: a lot of hyper sexualization of jokes at the time,

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Speaker 2: and I attribute that to it being the seventies and

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Speaker 2: growing up in a fairly wild community. Although I grew

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Speaker 2: up in an apartment building, it was attached to another

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Speaker 2: apartment building, and there were tons of newly married, young

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Speaker 2: couples with kids, and there were parties every Saturday night,

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Speaker 2: and I wound up knowing probably a lot more than

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Speaker 2: I should have about what went on at those parties.

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Speaker 2: And my dad was really proud to walk around with

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Speaker 2: my mother on his arm, and she was proud to

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Speaker 2: be married to this creative director who was going into

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Speaker 2: the city every day and doing great things in advertising.

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Speaker 2: But then when they were at home in their own apartment,

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Speaker 2: and I, of course was present, a lot of very

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Speaker 2: rage would come bubbling to the surface. My dad was

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Speaker 2: not quick to fight, but when he did, it was

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Speaker 2: like tossing a match into gasoline, and so the two

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Speaker 2: of them it could be really audibly terrifying, terrifying certainly

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Speaker 2: for a kid to witness and to hear. And I

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Speaker 2: grew up in a lot of ways. I grew up

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Speaker 2: thinking that that was normal. That behavior became normalized in

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Speaker 2: my home. And when I went out to visit friends

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Speaker 2: or I stayed over at France houses and their parents

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Speaker 2: were like straight out of the Waltons. You know, everybody

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Speaker 2: was pleasant and calm and happy and kind, and of

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Speaker 2: course that's not always the truth, but I was very

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Speaker 2: happy to make myself scarce at a certain point.

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Speaker 3: How did the stories of your family history come to you?

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Speaker 3: I think as an only child, the extended family was

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Speaker 3: really important to you. The idea that there were cousins,

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Speaker 3: and that you were part of this kind of gang,

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Speaker 3: of a larger family than this trio of you and

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Speaker 3: your mother and your father. What did that look like.

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Speaker 2: We had a family on my mom's side who we

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Speaker 2: never saw, so we spent all of our holidays with

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Speaker 2: my father's sister and brother in law, and they had

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Speaker 2: two daughters who were significantly older than I, So the

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Speaker 2: younger one who was twelve years older than I, and

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Speaker 2: the older one was sixteen years older than I. So

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Speaker 2: when I was very little, they were off in college

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Speaker 2: in the sixties and living through that drama that was

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Speaker 2: college in the sixties in this country. So I didn't

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Speaker 2: really see them except on Thanksgiving and Passover and other

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Speaker 2: family birthdays, big celebrations, and they were mostly very doting.

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Speaker 2: I mean my younger cousin, and by younger I mean

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Speaker 2: twelve years older than I, younger of the two, and

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Speaker 2: I were very very close, and she became sort of

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Speaker 2: a big sister figure to me and was very kind

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Speaker 2: and loving and warm and affectionate. And she eventually brought

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Speaker 2: home a guy she met at Cornell, and we all

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Speaker 2: kind of knew that he was going to be part

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Speaker 2: of the group, and they eventually got married in the

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Speaker 2: early seventies, and he was very much the same, just

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Speaker 2: very sweet and gentle and kind. And conversely, her sister

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Speaker 2: was definitely a little bit standoff, as I got the

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Speaker 2: sense that she really didn't like kids so much. I mean,

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Speaker 2: children know when people don't like them. And I had

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Speaker 2: a vivid memory of driving home to Forest Hills with

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Speaker 2: my parents after a big function at their house and

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Speaker 2: I leaned forward, I must have been maybe five or six,

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Speaker 2: and I leaned forward in my father's car, and I said,

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Speaker 2: why does she hate me so much? And my father said,

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Speaker 2: don't worry, she hates everybody. And that was the beginning

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Speaker 2: of my sense that she and her sister were very

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Speaker 2: very different people, with definitely very different ways of maneuvering

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Speaker 2: through the world and what their world views were. Her

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Speaker 2: older sister and I were not terribly close until I

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Speaker 2: was a little bit older, and that all changed after

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Speaker 2: my parents' divorce in nineteen seventy eight. I was sort

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Speaker 2: of sucked into this whirlwind of cousins and parties and

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Speaker 2: traveling and dinners, and it was great. It was something

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Speaker 2: that I'd never had before, and I loved it made

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Speaker 2: me feel very safe. Why do you.

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Speaker 3: Think that you're getting pulled into their orbit in that

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Speaker 3: way coincided with your parents' divorce or was it just

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Speaker 3: that you were reaching an age of you know, teenage ornests,

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Speaker 3: you know, where you weren't this little kid anymore.

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Speaker 2: I think that when my parents divorced in nineteen seventy eight,

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Speaker 2: I knew in my heart of hearts that my mother

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Speaker 2: was I don't want to stay playing the field, but

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Speaker 2: maybe playing playing the field.

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Speaker 4: I mean.

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Speaker 2: She was coming home from work later and later every day,

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Speaker 2: and it was no shock to me that she was

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Speaker 2: not happy with my dad and they were fighting all

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Speaker 2: the time about money and about expectations and family. That

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Speaker 2: we were spending so much time with my father's family

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Speaker 2: and not really any time with her family, which was

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Speaker 2: really her doing. She didn't really like her family that

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Speaker 2: much either, But I think that because of the divorce,

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Speaker 2: I felt very much alone. I felt very isolated, and

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Speaker 2: I lived with my mother after the divorce. She was

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Speaker 2: not coming home until about two o'clock in the morning.

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Speaker 2: Every day. My grandmother was staying with me. My grandmother

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Speaker 2: would pick me up from the school bus, my grandmother

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Speaker 2: would make me dinner, and so I didn't really see

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Speaker 2: a whole lot of my mother. So when my father

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Speaker 2: showed up on the weekends, because he had part time

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Speaker 2: custody of me, we always went to his sister's house

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Speaker 2: and my cousins were home from the various places they'd

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Speaker 2: wound up in the country, And eventually everybody moved closer

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Speaker 2: to each other and it was just great. And as

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Speaker 2: I got older, I was an avid tennis player and

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Speaker 2: they were avid tennis players, so that, you know, I

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Speaker 2: always had somebody to play with. They became golfers. I

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Speaker 2: was a golfer, and there was definitely sort of like

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Speaker 2: a tribal feeling about it. It was really wonderful. I

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Speaker 2: felt safe. I felt secure. When I had to go

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Speaker 2: home back to Queens at the end of every weekend,

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Speaker 2: I just looked forward to the following weekend when I

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Speaker 2: knew I could see everybody again.

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Speaker 3: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.

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Speaker 3: All this flux and instability leaves Alyssa to become an

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Speaker 3: anxious child, fearful of being abandoned. Movies like Chitty Chitty

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Speaker 3: Bang Bang and Oliver stories of abandoned children definitely don't help.

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Speaker 3: And then there's the story of how her father and

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Speaker 3: his sisters had been abandoned. Not a movie, not fiction.

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Speaker 3: This happened to them in real life.

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Speaker 2: I think the way to describe it really is like wallpaper.

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Speaker 2: It was just always there. I know that I said

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Speaker 2: that my father was a very funny man, and he

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Speaker 2: really was. He was also easily moved to tears, to

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Speaker 2: like body racking, sobbing tears that would just often come

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Speaker 2: out of the clear They seemed to me as a child,

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Speaker 2: to come out of the clear blue sky, and that's

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Speaker 2: terrorizing for a child to see that in their parents.

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Speaker 2: I knew early on I had the strong sense that

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Speaker 2: there was some sort of deeply rooted sadness and I

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Speaker 2: certainly didn't know the word trauma back then, but a

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Speaker 2: deeply rooted sadness and trauma that he was carrying around

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Speaker 2: with him, and he could go from laughing to weeping

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Speaker 2: very quickly. He didn't sit me down, but he would

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00:14:37,480 --> 00:14:42,800
Speaker 2: talk about the time that my grandmother walked out, and

221
00:14:43,080 --> 00:14:46,520
Speaker 2: when Grandma left is the way he put it. And

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00:14:46,720 --> 00:14:50,080
Speaker 2: I didn't know his mother very well. I mean, she

223
00:14:50,200 --> 00:14:53,440
Speaker 2: was a little bit distant. She and my grandfather lived

224
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Speaker 2: out near Coney Island. They were devoutly religious. My grandfather

225
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Speaker 2: was an Orthodox cancer, so so they felt, I think,

226
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Speaker 2: very old country to my mother, who didn't like that,

227
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Speaker 2: and so I didn't have a whole lot of exposure

228
00:15:08,040 --> 00:15:11,480
Speaker 2: to them. But he would talk about when Grandma left,

229
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Speaker 2: and it was almost as though he was ruminating. He

230
00:15:16,640 --> 00:15:22,480
Speaker 2: would sort of metabolize it, metabolized this pain by talking

231
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Speaker 2: about being a border with my grandfather and my aunt

232
00:15:27,920 --> 00:15:31,840
Speaker 2: becoming a surrogate mother to him. My aunt was five

233
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Speaker 2: years older than my dad.

234
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Speaker 3: What were their ages when your grandmother walked out?

235
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Speaker 2: My dad was three and my aunt was eight, and

236
00:15:42,680 --> 00:15:49,440
Speaker 2: this was in nineteen twenty six. She apparently was gone

237
00:15:49,680 --> 00:15:53,680
Speaker 2: for anywhere from three to four years. But he would

238
00:15:53,760 --> 00:15:57,400
Speaker 2: talk about this matter of factly, and he would talk

239
00:15:57,400 --> 00:15:59,560
Speaker 2: about it while we were walking the dog. He would

240
00:15:59,600 --> 00:16:03,200
Speaker 2: talk about out it over dinner. When my parents fought,

241
00:16:03,920 --> 00:16:07,040
Speaker 2: my mother's like down shift, it was sort of like

242
00:16:07,120 --> 00:16:10,840
Speaker 2: the switch blade was your mother didn't love you, your

243
00:16:10,920 --> 00:16:14,080
Speaker 2: mother left, So my mother could really go for the

244
00:16:14,160 --> 00:16:17,200
Speaker 2: you know, the jugular, and my father often you know,

245
00:16:17,320 --> 00:16:20,160
Speaker 2: flew out of the house in a rage when she

246
00:16:20,240 --> 00:16:22,800
Speaker 2: did that, and I of course was standing there and

247
00:16:22,840 --> 00:16:27,920
Speaker 2: hearing all of this, and so the story about grandma leaving,

248
00:16:28,000 --> 00:16:34,320
Speaker 2: about Grandma abandoning the family loomed very large in my life.

249
00:16:34,520 --> 00:16:37,760
Speaker 2: And when I was left, from a very young age

250
00:16:37,760 --> 00:16:40,400
Speaker 2: and from when I was left with a babysitter, on

251
00:16:40,600 --> 00:16:44,040
Speaker 2: any average Saturday night, I was sure that my parents

252
00:16:44,080 --> 00:16:48,480
Speaker 2: were not coming home, because that was a possibility. What

253
00:16:48,560 --> 00:16:53,880
Speaker 2: would have been normal separation anxiety became this almost paralyzing

254
00:16:53,960 --> 00:16:57,200
Speaker 2: fear that I was going to lose them in some way.

255
00:16:57,440 --> 00:16:59,440
Speaker 2: They were just going to go out and not come back.

256
00:16:59,640 --> 00:17:04,400
Speaker 2: And all of the movies of the time had abandonment

257
00:17:04,520 --> 00:17:09,600
Speaker 2: themes built into them, and so they kind of reinforced

258
00:17:09,600 --> 00:17:12,800
Speaker 2: this idea that you know, oh my god, Mom could

259
00:17:12,800 --> 00:17:15,560
Speaker 2: go out to have her hair done and not come back,

260
00:17:16,119 --> 00:17:18,120
Speaker 2: or you know, Dad could go on a business trip

261
00:17:18,160 --> 00:17:21,000
Speaker 2: to Chicago and not come back, and where are we

262
00:17:21,080 --> 00:17:22,600
Speaker 2: going to go or what are we going to do?

263
00:17:22,680 --> 00:17:24,920
Speaker 2: And I used to think if they were going out

264
00:17:25,200 --> 00:17:27,840
Speaker 2: on our weekend night and leaving me behind with a

265
00:17:27,840 --> 00:17:30,840
Speaker 2: babysitter or with my grandmother, where was I going to live?

266
00:17:31,040 --> 00:17:33,080
Speaker 2: And who was going to take care of me? How

267
00:17:33,119 --> 00:17:34,360
Speaker 2: was I going to feed myself?

268
00:17:35,040 --> 00:17:40,000
Speaker 3: Do you think that when your parents got divorced, which

269
00:17:40,040 --> 00:17:42,920
Speaker 3: also was when you were a teenager, did that diminish

270
00:17:42,960 --> 00:17:45,920
Speaker 3: it all that kind of anxiety or did that continue

271
00:17:46,200 --> 00:17:47,000
Speaker 3: or did it shift?

272
00:17:47,680 --> 00:17:52,119
Speaker 2: Actually it shifted. I've actually never really considered that, And

273
00:17:52,160 --> 00:17:57,000
Speaker 2: it's really interesting. My parents had such a discombobulated marriage

274
00:17:57,040 --> 00:18:01,960
Speaker 2: and so acrimonious that they was just anger and fury

275
00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:05,200
Speaker 2: and rage hanging in the air all the time. And

276
00:18:05,280 --> 00:18:10,000
Speaker 2: so when my mother in nineteen seventy eight, I was fifteen,

277
00:18:10,240 --> 00:18:13,680
Speaker 2: my mother announced that my father was leaving that day

278
00:18:14,000 --> 00:18:16,400
Speaker 2: in front of him. I mean, she had already asked him,

279
00:18:16,440 --> 00:18:20,760
Speaker 2: and that was what the agreement was. I usually hear

280
00:18:20,800 --> 00:18:22,880
Speaker 2: stories like this, and you hear stories about kids being

281
00:18:23,000 --> 00:18:25,520
Speaker 2: very upset, and I was. I mean I was upset,

282
00:18:25,560 --> 00:18:29,280
Speaker 2: but I was not inconsolable. I knew that they were

283
00:18:29,320 --> 00:18:33,320
Speaker 2: miserable together. I knew that I was being exposed to

284
00:18:33,480 --> 00:18:35,560
Speaker 2: a lot of anger that I didn't need to be

285
00:18:35,640 --> 00:18:39,800
Speaker 2: exposed to. I wanted my father to be happy, and

286
00:18:39,880 --> 00:18:41,639
Speaker 2: I knew that he was not going to be happy

287
00:18:41,680 --> 00:18:44,520
Speaker 2: as long as he stayed in that house. My mother

288
00:18:44,720 --> 00:18:48,879
Speaker 2: took up with her boss, who was a furrier, really

289
00:18:48,880 --> 00:18:51,640
Speaker 2: lovely guy who I came to know really well and

290
00:18:51,960 --> 00:18:54,639
Speaker 2: really loved very much, and who was very kind to me.

291
00:18:55,280 --> 00:18:59,680
Speaker 2: But I spent my weekends with my dad and his family,

292
00:18:59,760 --> 00:19:03,760
Speaker 2: and so I was sort of sucked into this whirlwind

293
00:19:03,960 --> 00:19:07,680
Speaker 2: of dinners and family dinners and going to the movies

294
00:19:07,760 --> 00:19:11,280
Speaker 2: with five, six, seven people, and it was really wonderful,

295
00:19:11,280 --> 00:19:15,880
Speaker 2: and I didn't have that level of that abandonment anxiety

296
00:19:16,160 --> 00:19:18,560
Speaker 2: that i'd had when we were all living together.

297
00:19:19,280 --> 00:19:22,840
Speaker 3: Well, that makes so much sense, because suddenly now you

298
00:19:23,000 --> 00:19:28,000
Speaker 3: have a safety net of people of family that you know,

299
00:19:28,160 --> 00:19:32,520
Speaker 3: even if something terrible were to happen, there's this support

300
00:19:32,600 --> 00:19:35,600
Speaker 3: system of this group of people that you're suddenly having

301
00:19:35,680 --> 00:19:37,840
Speaker 3: this different kind of life experience with.

302
00:19:38,240 --> 00:19:41,280
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, That's exactly what it felt like. I

303
00:19:41,359 --> 00:19:45,120
Speaker 2: had gone to Sleepway Camp for many, many years over

304
00:19:45,119 --> 00:19:48,200
Speaker 2: the summer for eight weeks at a time, and spent

305
00:19:48,400 --> 00:19:51,200
Speaker 2: I want to say, the first two summers crying desperately

306
00:19:51,240 --> 00:19:54,680
Speaker 2: because again I thought my parents were dumping me in Honesdale,

307
00:19:54,720 --> 00:19:57,679
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania and never coming back for me. And then I

308
00:19:57,720 --> 00:20:00,000
Speaker 2: realized that there were things that I was really good.

309
00:20:00,400 --> 00:20:03,240
Speaker 2: I was a really good athlete. I was a really

310
00:20:03,240 --> 00:20:07,840
Speaker 2: good musician, really good guitarist. And although I was also

311
00:20:08,040 --> 00:20:13,200
Speaker 2: very shy and often withdrawn and worried, I could turn

312
00:20:13,240 --> 00:20:16,119
Speaker 2: to one of those two things, or both of those things,

313
00:20:16,600 --> 00:20:18,880
Speaker 2: and they were sort of like pressure valves. They were

314
00:20:18,960 --> 00:20:22,719
Speaker 2: like an escape route for me. What I didn't really

315
00:20:23,520 --> 00:20:27,480
Speaker 2: realize until much later was that I knew that I

316
00:20:27,520 --> 00:20:31,200
Speaker 2: felt different. I knew that, you know, everybody was cooing

317
00:20:31,280 --> 00:20:33,560
Speaker 2: over the boys on boys campus and like, you know,

318
00:20:33,640 --> 00:20:35,640
Speaker 2: running over to boys campus in the middle of the night,

319
00:20:35,760 --> 00:20:37,800
Speaker 2: and I was expected to do the same thing. And

320
00:20:37,840 --> 00:20:40,120
Speaker 2: I remember doing that and then being like, Okay, now

321
00:20:40,119 --> 00:20:43,440
Speaker 2: what am I supposed to do? I knew that. But interestingly,

322
00:20:43,560 --> 00:20:47,760
Speaker 2: I had a lot of counselors who, in hindsight I

323
00:20:47,800 --> 00:20:50,920
Speaker 2: recognized now that they were lesbians, and it was kept

324
00:20:51,040 --> 00:20:53,639
Speaker 2: very quiet. They would have been fired. It was the seventies,

325
00:20:53,680 --> 00:20:57,280
Speaker 2: it was still really a shonda and I was like,

326
00:20:57,480 --> 00:21:00,959
Speaker 2: I think I recognized myself in these women. So by

327
00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:04,480
Speaker 2: the time I went away to college, I had a

328
00:21:04,520 --> 00:21:08,160
Speaker 2: sense of it, and I absolutely buried it. I didn't

329
00:21:08,200 --> 00:21:14,280
Speaker 2: want to be the disappointment to the family. No one

330
00:21:14,359 --> 00:21:17,439
Speaker 2: in my family brought home someone of the same sex.

331
00:21:18,080 --> 00:21:22,760
Speaker 2: Whatever was there, I sort of quelled it and didn't

332
00:21:22,800 --> 00:21:26,480
Speaker 2: think about it. And I graduated in nineteen eighty five

333
00:21:26,840 --> 00:21:30,399
Speaker 2: and moved home to New York to live with my

334
00:21:30,480 --> 00:21:34,119
Speaker 2: mother and my stepfather on the Upper West Side, and

335
00:21:34,440 --> 00:21:38,200
Speaker 2: immediately went to work for a random house two weeks later.

336
00:21:38,760 --> 00:21:40,560
Speaker 2: There was a lot of partying. There were a lot

337
00:21:40,600 --> 00:21:43,360
Speaker 2: of drugs. I did some of them and not others,

338
00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:48,720
Speaker 2: and those of us who worked together were close enough

339
00:21:48,720 --> 00:21:51,159
Speaker 2: that we would also then go out after work. And

340
00:21:51,800 --> 00:21:56,240
Speaker 2: I still was sort of just burying any sense of

341
00:21:56,280 --> 00:21:59,760
Speaker 2: attraction that I had to women and just didn't really

342
00:21:59,800 --> 00:22:02,320
Speaker 2: think about it. I had a lot of gay male

343
00:22:02,400 --> 00:22:06,520
Speaker 2: friends and was certainly, you know, not an issue at all,

344
00:22:07,160 --> 00:22:10,760
Speaker 2: but I noticed that whenever I came home to my

345
00:22:10,840 --> 00:22:15,120
Speaker 2: father's sister's house for holidays, they always tried to fix

346
00:22:15,160 --> 00:22:18,000
Speaker 2: me up with you know, some poor guy was like

347
00:22:18,359 --> 00:22:23,000
Speaker 2: the son of the bridge partner from the country club.

348
00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:26,440
Speaker 2: You know, and he would show up at Thanksgiving and

349
00:22:26,480 --> 00:22:29,119
Speaker 2: I was like, now this is not it's not working

350
00:22:29,160 --> 00:22:31,280
Speaker 2: for me. And my father's sister tried and tried and

351
00:22:31,320 --> 00:22:35,199
Speaker 2: tried to fix me up with any number of one

352
00:22:35,280 --> 00:22:38,760
Speaker 2: hundred men, and it just was not going to happen,

353
00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:41,359
Speaker 2: and they kind of started looking at me like, what's

354
00:22:41,440 --> 00:22:43,520
Speaker 2: the deal with you? You know, what's up with you.

355
00:22:44,119 --> 00:22:47,600
Speaker 2: I moved out of my mother's apartment into a walk

356
00:22:47,680 --> 00:22:50,600
Speaker 2: up on the Upper East Side in the East nineties

357
00:22:50,720 --> 00:22:56,760
Speaker 2: and just fell stupidly head over heels matt for my roommate.

358
00:22:57,240 --> 00:23:01,000
Speaker 2: She was straight, I was quote straight on quote, and

359
00:23:01,080 --> 00:23:06,000
Speaker 2: we were together for I would say three and a

360
00:23:06,080 --> 00:23:09,520
Speaker 2: half years. Her family didn't know, My family didn't know.

361
00:23:10,119 --> 00:23:13,400
Speaker 2: I brought her to every family function when she wasn't

362
00:23:13,440 --> 00:23:16,280
Speaker 2: going home, and everyone was like, oh, how nice. She

363
00:23:16,280 --> 00:23:18,600
Speaker 2: seems very nice, but nobody put two and two together,

364
00:23:18,680 --> 00:23:21,800
Speaker 2: or at least they didn't tell me they did. Eventually

365
00:23:22,040 --> 00:23:23,639
Speaker 2: came home from work one day and she said, I

366
00:23:23,680 --> 00:23:28,760
Speaker 2: can't do this. So our relationship came to a bitter

367
00:23:29,040 --> 00:23:32,879
Speaker 2: end and I moved out and I had nowhere to go.

368
00:23:32,960 --> 00:23:34,600
Speaker 2: I was certainly not going to move back in with

369
00:23:34,600 --> 00:23:37,320
Speaker 2: my mother and my stepfather, and I was not going

370
00:23:37,359 --> 00:23:39,280
Speaker 2: to move in with my father, who lived on Long

371
00:23:39,280 --> 00:23:43,040
Speaker 2: Island at that point with his second wife, who was

372
00:23:43,080 --> 00:23:47,120
Speaker 2: a therapist, thank god, because we all needed one. And

373
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:50,320
Speaker 2: my father said, you know, why don't you move into

374
00:23:50,560 --> 00:23:55,000
Speaker 2: grandma and Grandpa's apartment. And my grandmother had died in

375
00:23:55,119 --> 00:23:59,440
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety, and my grandfather had died much earlier, in

376
00:23:59,480 --> 00:24:02,520
Speaker 2: nineteen seven six, and my father and my aunt made

377
00:24:02,520 --> 00:24:06,200
Speaker 2: the decision to keep paying the one hundred and forty

378
00:24:06,240 --> 00:24:10,920
Speaker 2: two dollars a month rent on this two bedroom apartment

379
00:24:11,080 --> 00:24:14,399
Speaker 2: near Coney Island. It was my father's childhood apartment. He

380
00:24:14,400 --> 00:24:16,520
Speaker 2: had lived there from the time that I want to

381
00:24:16,520 --> 00:24:19,359
Speaker 2: say he was nine or ten, and I grew up

382
00:24:19,440 --> 00:24:22,720
Speaker 2: on Sundays going out to grandma and Grandpa's for lunch,

383
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:24,720
Speaker 2: so I knew the apartment really well.

384
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:28,080
Speaker 3: What do you think was the reason that your father

385
00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:31,920
Speaker 3: and his sister decided to hold onto that apartment after

386
00:24:31,960 --> 00:24:35,960
Speaker 3: your grandmother died. Was it just financial, just keep this

387
00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:38,639
Speaker 3: apartment because it's so inexpensive and we'll keep it in

388
00:24:38,640 --> 00:24:43,359
Speaker 3: the family, or was there also this is after all,

389
00:24:43,480 --> 00:24:46,760
Speaker 3: this is the grandmother who had abandoned them both as children.

390
00:24:47,440 --> 00:24:51,240
Speaker 2: Yeah. Ostensibly it was financial. It was one hundred and

391
00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:54,679
Speaker 2: forty two dollars a month. It was on the F

392
00:24:54,760 --> 00:24:56,560
Speaker 2: train line, so you could get in and out of

393
00:24:56,560 --> 00:24:59,760
Speaker 2: the city really easily. And my father used to say

394
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:02,920
Speaker 2: that the had kept it in the event that any

395
00:25:02,960 --> 00:25:06,680
Speaker 2: family member needed it, and so that was this sort

396
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:09,760
Speaker 2: of party line, and that's what I believed. Even though

397
00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:13,560
Speaker 2: my cousin and her husband, the younger one lived in

398
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:17,280
Speaker 2: the DC area and the other one lived in Great Neck,

399
00:25:17,400 --> 00:25:19,720
Speaker 2: so they weren't going to be moving many time soon

400
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:23,480
Speaker 2: out to Coney Island. And I really didn't want to

401
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:26,600
Speaker 2: move into this apartment. It just gave me the willies.

402
00:25:26,720 --> 00:25:29,960
Speaker 2: It just made my hair stand on end. It felt

403
00:25:30,080 --> 00:25:35,480
Speaker 2: very ghostly and complicated. But I had nowhere else to go,

404
00:25:36,080 --> 00:25:39,280
Speaker 2: so I moved in. The day that I moved in,

405
00:25:40,119 --> 00:25:43,160
Speaker 2: my father brought me into the apartment with my stuff,

406
00:25:43,480 --> 00:25:46,280
Speaker 2: and the moving van came with the rest of my stuff.

407
00:25:47,240 --> 00:25:50,920
Speaker 2: Everything was exactly in the same place that it had

408
00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:54,280
Speaker 2: been when my grandmother died. It was in the same

409
00:25:54,320 --> 00:25:57,359
Speaker 2: place that it had been when I was a child

410
00:25:57,440 --> 00:26:02,400
Speaker 2: going there on Sundays. Everything looked the same, everything smelled

411
00:26:02,440 --> 00:26:07,040
Speaker 2: the same. This was a community of very religious Jews,

412
00:26:07,080 --> 00:26:09,399
Speaker 2: so you know, you would walk into the apartment and

413
00:26:09,440 --> 00:26:12,560
Speaker 2: it just smelled like chicken fat, you no, from like

414
00:26:12,600 --> 00:26:17,600
Speaker 2: a thousand Sabbaths. I tried to unpack, and I couldn't

415
00:26:18,080 --> 00:26:22,879
Speaker 2: because my father and my aunt never took my grandmother's

416
00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:28,880
Speaker 2: stuff out of the apartment. So everything that she owned,

417
00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:32,760
Speaker 2: her clothes, there was food in the refrigerator, there was

418
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:35,400
Speaker 2: her stuff in the medicine cabinet. It was like she'd

419
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:37,560
Speaker 2: gone out to run an errand when I was coming

420
00:26:37,600 --> 00:26:41,639
Speaker 2: back any minute, but didn't. That was a really shocking experience.

421
00:26:42,480 --> 00:26:46,320
Speaker 3: The echo of she was going out for a quick

422
00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:49,960
Speaker 3: errand and then just simply never came back exactly is

423
00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:51,120
Speaker 3: pretty profound.

424
00:26:51,680 --> 00:26:56,040
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, when I called my father and I said, Dad,

425
00:26:56,280 --> 00:26:59,919
Speaker 2: you've got to come back over here and get grandma's stuff,

426
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:01,480
Speaker 2: and I don't know what you want to do with it,

427
00:27:01,600 --> 00:27:05,680
Speaker 2: but he was actually annoyed. And I didn't talk about

428
00:27:05,680 --> 00:27:07,720
Speaker 2: it with my aunt, but I can imagine that she

429
00:27:07,760 --> 00:27:10,960
Speaker 2: would have been annoyed also. It was like the first

430
00:27:11,240 --> 00:27:14,200
Speaker 2: real rift that my father and I had in our relationship,

431
00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:16,639
Speaker 2: and it was a big one. It was like I

432
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:20,160
Speaker 2: was demanding that he'd make a break from his past,

433
00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:22,960
Speaker 2: and he had a very hard time doing that.

434
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:29,840
Speaker 3: Alyssa spends her mid twenties and early thirties in this

435
00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:34,600
Speaker 3: crazy relic of an apartment, nursing her broken heart. During

436
00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:37,359
Speaker 3: this time, she's writing, becoming involved in the world of

437
00:27:37,359 --> 00:27:40,480
Speaker 3: food and cooking too. All the while, the story of

438
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:43,760
Speaker 3: her father's abandonment and the fear it instilled in her

439
00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:47,479
Speaker 3: looms large. She lives with a sense that danger and

440
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:51,239
Speaker 3: loss are always lurking. But what can she do with

441
00:27:51,320 --> 00:27:54,560
Speaker 3: this sense? She does the best thing she can for now.

442
00:27:55,320 --> 00:27:56,880
Speaker 3: She tucks it away.

443
00:27:57,640 --> 00:28:02,359
Speaker 2: I definitely tucked away. As I said, my father's second

444
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 2: wife was a ironically trauma therapist and just wonderful, an

445
00:28:08,359 --> 00:28:12,919
Speaker 2: amazing woman, really incredible. I know that over time she

446
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:17,400
Speaker 2: got him to talk a lot about what had happened,

447
00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:20,879
Speaker 2: and carrying the weight of this three year old little

448
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:26,000
Speaker 2: boy whose mother had abandoned him and his sister, the

449
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:31,320
Speaker 2: story was re emerging in my life. I had buried it.

450
00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:33,600
Speaker 2: I thought, well, you know, this is a terrible thing,

451
00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:35,359
Speaker 2: but I need to move on and I need to

452
00:28:35,400 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 2: make my own life. I can't carry the same burden

453
00:28:39,120 --> 00:28:42,320
Speaker 2: of sadness and trauma that he did, and I just

454
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:45,320
Speaker 2: need to live in a different mindset in a different way.

455
00:28:46,480 --> 00:28:49,880
Speaker 2: She dragged him to therapy. I wouldn't say he brought

456
00:28:49,920 --> 00:28:52,320
Speaker 2: it up a lot, but he did bring it up

457
00:28:52,720 --> 00:28:54,680
Speaker 2: more than he had when I was in college and

458
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:58,320
Speaker 2: high school, and so I knew it was in the air.

459
00:28:58,440 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 2: The story of abandonment was in the air for whatever reason.

460
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:03,920
Speaker 2: My father used to say that I learned how to

461
00:29:03,920 --> 00:29:05,880
Speaker 2: cook out of self defense because my mother was such

462
00:29:05,880 --> 00:29:10,400
Speaker 2: a horrendous cook. I started to become really really interested

463
00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:14,520
Speaker 2: in food stories. And you know, I can write a

464
00:29:14,560 --> 00:29:17,960
Speaker 2: recipe and I have many times, but I was really

465
00:29:18,040 --> 00:29:21,280
Speaker 2: interested in I guess you could call it food anthropology,

466
00:29:21,320 --> 00:29:25,560
Speaker 2: culinary anthropology. Why people ate the way they ate, Why

467
00:29:25,600 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 2: people do certain things at the table that other people

468
00:29:28,840 --> 00:29:33,040
Speaker 2: don't do at the table. What does funeral food look like?

469
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:36,880
Speaker 2: What does celebratory food look like? And when I was

470
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:40,200
Speaker 2: working as the book buyer at the original Diana Dluca

471
00:29:40,280 --> 00:29:42,640
Speaker 2: on Prince Street, and I was managing the book department

472
00:29:43,320 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 2: and falling in love with the writing of people like

473
00:29:46,040 --> 00:29:49,360
Speaker 2: Fisher and Patients Gray and you know, a lot of

474
00:29:49,600 --> 00:29:53,960
Speaker 2: Elizabeth David, a lot of British food writers, and I

475
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:57,480
Speaker 2: took to it immensely and started going to cooking school

476
00:29:57,520 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 2: at night and loved that. I also realized that I

477
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:04,080
Speaker 2: never wanted to be a chef because chef hours were insane.

478
00:30:04,560 --> 00:30:07,440
Speaker 2: I was offered a job at a restaurant in Chelsea,

479
00:30:08,080 --> 00:30:11,760
Speaker 2: and I was thinking about taking it, and I was

480
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:14,200
Speaker 2: told that the hours were two in the afternoon until

481
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 2: two in the morning, and I was like, Yeah, that's

482
00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:19,240
Speaker 2: not happening. I'll sit at my computer and write about

483
00:30:19,280 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 2: food instead, and so I did. I found myself writing

484
00:30:24,240 --> 00:30:29,920
Speaker 2: stories about my family and celebrations that we had and

485
00:30:30,040 --> 00:30:33,520
Speaker 2: trips that we'd taken, and Thanksgiving dinners that we'd had.

486
00:30:33,880 --> 00:30:37,240
Speaker 2: And I wrote about my mother's mother, who was also

487
00:30:37,320 --> 00:30:40,400
Speaker 2: a lesbian closeted, you know, in the same relationship with

488
00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:44,680
Speaker 2: someone for sixty years, but closeted. And she was a

489
00:30:44,840 --> 00:30:47,880
Speaker 2: wonderful cook, and if I got any cooking talent at all,

490
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:53,880
Speaker 2: it was through her. And these stories really began to

491
00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:57,920
Speaker 2: inhabit my work, my day to day. I mean, I

492
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:01,560
Speaker 2: was still doing a lot of editing, very connected to

493
00:31:01,640 --> 00:31:06,200
Speaker 2: the publishing community. There was and remains a sizeable sort

494
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:08,600
Speaker 2: of food publishing world in New York, and I was

495
00:31:08,760 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 2: very much a part of that, but I didn't want

496
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:13,520
Speaker 2: to write recipes. I was not interested in that. I

497
00:31:13,600 --> 00:31:18,760
Speaker 2: was interested in telling family stories through what went on

498
00:31:18,880 --> 00:31:19,479
Speaker 2: at the table.

499
00:31:23,280 --> 00:31:34,000
Speaker 3: We'll be right back in the year two thousand, Alyssa

500
00:31:34,080 --> 00:31:38,120
Speaker 3: meets Susan, the love of her life. When they're first together,

501
00:31:38,280 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 3: Alissa lives in New York and Susan is in Connecticut.

502
00:31:41,800 --> 00:31:43,920
Speaker 3: It becomes clear that one of them is going to

503
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:46,320
Speaker 3: have to move, and Susan's the one with a house.

504
00:31:47,280 --> 00:31:51,160
Speaker 3: So Alyssa goes from a diehard urbanite to a life

505
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:55,720
Speaker 3: in a Connecticut countryside. Her father is completely supportive of

506
00:31:55,760 --> 00:31:58,080
Speaker 3: this move and of this new relationship.

507
00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:03,120
Speaker 2: Had met Susan, and my stepmother had met Susan, and

508
00:32:03,160 --> 00:32:07,760
Speaker 2: they fell in love with her instantly, and they could

509
00:32:07,800 --> 00:32:10,640
Speaker 2: see and I remember my father saying this to me,

510
00:32:10,960 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 2: that he could see that I felt safe, that I

511
00:32:13,920 --> 00:32:16,840
Speaker 2: had sort of dropped my anchor and I was sort

512
00:32:16,840 --> 00:32:21,200
Speaker 2: of carrying a certain amount of safety. I was wearing

513
00:32:21,280 --> 00:32:25,120
Speaker 2: safety where I had never worn it before. That anxiety

514
00:32:25,440 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 2: were either gone or napping. And so I moved up

515
00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:35,120
Speaker 2: full time in two thousand and one, and I had

516
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:38,560
Speaker 2: a job waiting for me up here as the editorial

517
00:32:38,600 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 2: director of a small publisher, and we just had a

518
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:45,520
Speaker 2: wonderful first year, first couple of years, and I learned

519
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:47,880
Speaker 2: how to garden, and we were cooking all the time,

520
00:32:48,200 --> 00:32:52,240
Speaker 2: and my father and Shirley would come up from Long

521
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:56,080
Speaker 2: Island and they'd stay over and we'd go walking, we'd

522
00:32:56,120 --> 00:32:58,800
Speaker 2: go hiking with the dog. It was just really wonderful.

523
00:32:59,680 --> 00:33:05,320
Speaker 2: And in August of two thousand and two, I talked

524
00:33:05,320 --> 00:33:07,840
Speaker 2: to my dad probably three or four times a week.

525
00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:10,400
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a lot, but we were that close

526
00:33:11,000 --> 00:33:13,160
Speaker 2: and if we didn't get each other, we just left messages.

527
00:33:13,360 --> 00:33:18,320
Speaker 2: That was fine. And one night, Susan was working in

528
00:33:18,360 --> 00:33:21,320
Speaker 2: the Hartford area and I was home alone with the dog,

529
00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 2: and we had this terrible storm that knocked out power,

530
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:29,240
Speaker 2: knocked out cable, but I was still able to call

531
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:32,640
Speaker 2: on the landline because we all still had landlines back then.

532
00:33:33,320 --> 00:33:35,239
Speaker 2: And I called him and I left a message and

533
00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:38,800
Speaker 2: I said, you know, we've lost power. The thunder is

534
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:42,000
Speaker 2: booming and the house is shaking, dog is crying, and

535
00:33:42,280 --> 00:33:44,440
Speaker 2: you know, call me when you get a chance. And

536
00:33:44,520 --> 00:33:48,120
Speaker 2: he didn't, and Sue came home. The storm was over,

537
00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:51,479
Speaker 2: and the next morning we went out into the garden.

538
00:33:51,600 --> 00:33:55,320
Speaker 2: We were working up to our ankles and composts, and

539
00:33:55,400 --> 00:33:58,320
Speaker 2: it was very messy and gross. We decided to go

540
00:33:58,320 --> 00:34:00,920
Speaker 2: into the house for a glass of water. We went

541
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:04,040
Speaker 2: into the house, the phone rang and it was my

542
00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:07,640
Speaker 2: stepbrother and he said the words that no one wants

543
00:34:07,680 --> 00:34:12,240
Speaker 2: to hear. Lizzy. There was an accident and we dropped

544
00:34:12,360 --> 00:34:15,720
Speaker 2: everything and jumped into the car raced down to Long Island.

545
00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:20,120
Speaker 2: My father lingered for a week. They were in a

546
00:34:20,320 --> 00:34:24,759
Speaker 2: really terrible car accident in Roslyn, Long Island. They had

547
00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:28,600
Speaker 2: taken him to one hospital and his second wife to

548
00:34:28,680 --> 00:34:32,279
Speaker 2: another hospital, so they never saw each other again. Completely

549
00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:36,560
Speaker 2: heartbreaking and tragic. And after a week I had to

550
00:34:36,600 --> 00:34:39,600
Speaker 2: take him off of life support, which was the most

551
00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:43,440
Speaker 2: devastating thing that I've ever had to do. The day

552
00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 2: of the accident, I expected this tribe to come together

553
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:51,040
Speaker 2: around me. That was what I expected to happen, because

554
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 2: I essentially had been told my whole life that was

555
00:34:55,560 --> 00:34:58,080
Speaker 2: what would happen if there was ever any kind of

556
00:34:58,120 --> 00:35:03,279
Speaker 2: a tragedy. And and instead they didn't. They sort of

557
00:35:03,360 --> 00:35:05,560
Speaker 2: walked away from me, and I was sort of made

558
00:35:05,560 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 2: into an outsider. My cousin, the older one, was so

559
00:35:10,840 --> 00:35:15,080
Speaker 2: cruel that I mean it's almost comical, how cool. I mean,

560
00:35:15,080 --> 00:35:16,880
Speaker 2: it was like something out of Larry David. It was

561
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:22,840
Speaker 2: so ridiculous, everything from asking me for the keys to

562
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:27,640
Speaker 2: her house the day of the accident to refusing to

563
00:35:27,640 --> 00:35:32,040
Speaker 2: give me his obituary the day of his funeral because

564
00:35:32,320 --> 00:35:34,759
Speaker 2: Susan and I were staying with her and didn't have

565
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 2: a paper of our own, And that was like the

566
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:44,160
Speaker 2: first indication to me that, Okay, there's definitely a very

567
00:35:44,280 --> 00:35:47,120
Speaker 2: large dent in this relationship.

568
00:35:48,120 --> 00:35:49,640
Speaker 3: Did you have any idea why?

569
00:35:49,840 --> 00:35:53,560
Speaker 2: At that point, not a clue, And I remember saying

570
00:35:53,640 --> 00:35:56,680
Speaker 2: to her, you know, saying to all of them, why

571
00:35:56,719 --> 00:35:59,319
Speaker 2: are you treating me this way? Why are you doing this?

572
00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:04,120
Speaker 2: It was no response, There was no answer, and it

573
00:36:04,239 --> 00:36:10,880
Speaker 2: made me take a giant step back and wonder if

574
00:36:11,320 --> 00:36:16,600
Speaker 2: everything that I had thought was true about our group,

575
00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:22,640
Speaker 2: about our clan, in fact wasn't. And maybe it had

576
00:36:22,680 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 2: been my imagination, or maybe it was just out of

577
00:36:25,560 --> 00:36:28,560
Speaker 2: obligation to my dad, And it took me a long

578
00:36:28,640 --> 00:36:31,319
Speaker 2: time to be able to get to that place. It

579
00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:35,160
Speaker 2: probably seems fairly obvious, but it wasn't to me. And

580
00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:38,359
Speaker 2: you know, either it wasn't or I just wouldn't let

581
00:36:38,360 --> 00:36:43,680
Speaker 2: myself go down that road, the realization that perhaps my

582
00:36:43,800 --> 00:36:47,759
Speaker 2: relationship with these people was not as strong as I

583
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:51,160
Speaker 2: thought it had been for you know, at that point,

584
00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:56,520
Speaker 2: thirty nine years, I was almost forty at that point.

585
00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:01,680
Speaker 3: In the years following her father's death and in her

586
00:37:01,800 --> 00:37:06,319
Speaker 3: wonderfully stable and supportive relationship, Alyssa begins to blossom as

587
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:10,160
Speaker 3: a writer. It's the early aughts and blogging is popular.

588
00:37:10,680 --> 00:37:14,800
Speaker 3: Alyssa starts a culinary narrative blog called poor Man's Feast,

589
00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:18,719
Speaker 3: which at first, she says, was about cheap food recipes.

590
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:21,920
Speaker 3: But the more she wrote, the more she found herself

591
00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:25,640
Speaker 3: drawn to narratives about family and less about how to

592
00:37:25,719 --> 00:37:29,800
Speaker 3: boil an egg. These family stories heavily featured her father

593
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:33,960
Speaker 3: and his family. Eventually they became her first book of

594
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:37,919
Speaker 3: the same name, and in that book, Alyssa writes about

595
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:41,800
Speaker 3: what she describes as a secret not secret, a story

596
00:37:41,960 --> 00:37:45,120
Speaker 3: her father had shared with her all her life.

597
00:37:47,880 --> 00:37:52,880
Speaker 2: I was writing about the table and my family's need

598
00:37:53,040 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 2: for sustenance and need for nurturing through the generations. Then

599
00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:02,839
Speaker 2: I started to write the book, and that repeats itself

600
00:38:03,280 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 2: in the book and in you know, my meeting Susan.

601
00:38:07,640 --> 00:38:10,520
Speaker 2: We came together as food people. She was a really

602
00:38:10,640 --> 00:38:13,640
Speaker 2: wonderful home cook, and I was working in food and

603
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:17,000
Speaker 2: thinking about food all the time. And the question that

604
00:38:17,160 --> 00:38:21,080
Speaker 2: was always there was why, how did this happen? You know,

605
00:38:21,120 --> 00:38:24,480
Speaker 2: my mother is a terrible cook. My mother is afraid

606
00:38:24,520 --> 00:38:27,520
Speaker 2: of food. My mother was always afraid of food. But

607
00:38:27,680 --> 00:38:30,400
Speaker 2: my father loved it. And my father was a great cook.

608
00:38:30,640 --> 00:38:35,520
Speaker 2: He enjoyed restaurants, he enjoyed feeding people, He enjoyed having

609
00:38:35,560 --> 00:38:38,359
Speaker 2: people around his table, and so did I. We were

610
00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:42,360
Speaker 2: like directly linked by that. And you know, I tried

611
00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:45,000
Speaker 2: to understand and unravel. You know what we say is,

612
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:47,520
Speaker 2: you know, I tried to peel the onion and get

613
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:51,799
Speaker 2: to an understanding of where that need for nurturing and

614
00:38:51,880 --> 00:38:55,120
Speaker 2: sustenance came from. And that was when I told the

615
00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:58,800
Speaker 2: story in eight lines in the book eight lines. Yes,

616
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:02,360
Speaker 2: here's Alyssa reading those eight lines.

617
00:39:03,640 --> 00:39:07,880
Speaker 5: When he was three, his mother had famously mythically walked

618
00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:10,960
Speaker 5: out on the family, leaving my grandfather to care for

619
00:39:11,080 --> 00:39:13,920
Speaker 5: him and his eight year old sister, who took it

620
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:16,560
Speaker 5: upon herself to never let him out of her sight.

621
00:39:17,560 --> 00:39:21,680
Speaker 5: His mother did return eventually, but for my father, things

622
00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:26,000
Speaker 5: were never the same those easy, youthful days of feeling

623
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:29,040
Speaker 5: nothing can harm you, that the world was perfect and

624
00:39:29,120 --> 00:39:30,759
Speaker 5: delicious for him.

625
00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:31,960
Speaker 2: Those days were.

626
00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:36,440
Speaker 4: Gone forever as my grandmother came back. My father and

627
00:39:36,520 --> 00:39:38,840
Speaker 4: my aunt spent much of the rest of their lives

628
00:39:39,200 --> 00:39:43,080
Speaker 4: trying to somehow ensure that she would never leave them again,

629
00:39:43,800 --> 00:39:48,080
Speaker 4: draping a thin DeMar of imaginary perfection over her. She

630
00:39:48,200 --> 00:39:51,720
Speaker 4: was a good, no a great mother, they would say,

631
00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:55,360
Speaker 4: and trying to fix whatever they had done wrong that

632
00:39:55,520 --> 00:39:58,200
Speaker 4: might have compelled her to walk out in the first place.

633
00:40:00,080 --> 00:40:06,720
Speaker 3: And what happened in the aftermath of poor Man's Feast

634
00:40:07,400 --> 00:40:08,160
Speaker 3: combing out.

635
00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:12,120
Speaker 2: I was completely cut out of my family.

636
00:40:13,080 --> 00:40:17,120
Speaker 3: Where were things prior to the publication, because the way

637
00:40:17,120 --> 00:40:22,080
Speaker 3: you've described it, there was already, you know, some really

638
00:40:22,640 --> 00:40:27,200
Speaker 3: inexplicable behavior. And how had you been feeling in those years, say,

639
00:40:27,560 --> 00:40:32,359
Speaker 3: post your father's death and before the publication of your

640
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:33,040
Speaker 3: first memoir?

641
00:40:33,680 --> 00:40:37,440
Speaker 2: I wanted our relationship, my relationship with my older cousin

642
00:40:37,560 --> 00:40:40,719
Speaker 2: to be what it had always in my mind been,

643
00:40:41,160 --> 00:40:45,840
Speaker 2: which was doting and kind and funny and warm and

644
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:53,000
Speaker 2: all of those things. And when my father died and

645
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:57,279
Speaker 2: her behavior really changed, and my aunt's behavior towards me

646
00:40:57,360 --> 00:41:01,160
Speaker 2: really changed as well, and I thought, initially this my imagination.

647
00:41:01,440 --> 00:41:04,120
Speaker 2: Is it grief? Is it a weird manifestation of grief?

648
00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:07,439
Speaker 2: And I remember Susan saying, no, it's definitely there. I'm

649
00:41:07,440 --> 00:41:12,440
Speaker 2: feeling it as well. But we were still able to

650
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:17,839
Speaker 2: overcome that, whatever that was. Susan and I were still

651
00:41:17,840 --> 00:41:21,320
Speaker 2: being invited to family functions. We were going to weddings

652
00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:25,799
Speaker 2: and bar mitzvah's and Thanksgiving and Passover. We had Thanksgiving

653
00:41:25,840 --> 00:41:28,600
Speaker 2: here at one point for all of my cousins and

654
00:41:28,680 --> 00:41:31,520
Speaker 2: my aunt, and so we were still seeing each other.

655
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:34,560
Speaker 2: Susan and I were going down to Florida to visit

656
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:40,239
Speaker 2: the cousins, and so that kept going. That kept happening.

657
00:41:40,960 --> 00:41:45,359
Speaker 2: In hindsight, it's sort of mystifying to me. I guess

658
00:41:45,400 --> 00:41:49,279
Speaker 2: that when we have a relationship that is sort of

659
00:41:49,320 --> 00:41:51,920
Speaker 2: going down the tubes, you know, with a family member.

660
00:41:53,160 --> 00:41:58,000
Speaker 2: I won't say that it's easy to kid oneself or

661
00:41:58,080 --> 00:42:03,400
Speaker 2: to you know, to confuse the issue, but I did,

662
00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:06,400
Speaker 2: and I think that they did too. And when the

663
00:42:06,400 --> 00:42:11,280
Speaker 2: book came out, though, it was as though a wire

664
00:42:11,360 --> 00:42:17,040
Speaker 2: had been snipped and any connection to them or most

665
00:42:17,080 --> 00:42:21,040
Speaker 2: of them, was gone, and Susan and I were never

666
00:42:21,239 --> 00:42:24,960
Speaker 2: included in a family function ever. Again. We had been

667
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:31,800
Speaker 2: god parents to my older cousin's grandchild and that ended.

668
00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:37,960
Speaker 2: We never saw anybody again. And it has been how

669
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:39,279
Speaker 2: many years twelve years now?

670
00:42:40,120 --> 00:42:44,000
Speaker 3: Was it explained to you why this was happening.

671
00:42:44,280 --> 00:42:46,920
Speaker 2: You know, my hal to cousin loves a good battle.

672
00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 2: She's fairly skilled at it. But we emailed back and

673
00:42:54,080 --> 00:42:58,440
Speaker 2: forth over the course of probably six months or so,

674
00:42:58,480 --> 00:43:03,440
Speaker 2: and those emails were started by me, and they began with,

675
00:43:03,960 --> 00:43:07,319
Speaker 2: please tell me what's happening. Please tell me what I've

676
00:43:07,360 --> 00:43:09,840
Speaker 2: done to upset you. Please let me know, you know,

677
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:12,680
Speaker 2: I want to have a conversation about this. That beca

678
00:43:12,880 --> 00:43:14,960
Speaker 2: was like going through the five stages of grief, which

679
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:17,640
Speaker 2: I think are probably more than five stages, but it

680
00:43:17,800 --> 00:43:21,360
Speaker 2: started with that, and then I would get angry, like,

681
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:24,640
Speaker 2: why the hell aren't you responding to me? You know,

682
00:43:24,880 --> 00:43:27,480
Speaker 2: we've been so close all these years, maybe on and

683
00:43:27,520 --> 00:43:30,759
Speaker 2: on and on, And when she responded to me, she

684
00:43:31,080 --> 00:43:39,879
Speaker 2: was sending me shrieking emails that were so witheringly painful

685
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:42,719
Speaker 2: that in many cases I just couldn't read them. I

686
00:43:42,760 --> 00:43:44,160
Speaker 2: saw them come in and I would just send them

687
00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:46,319
Speaker 2: to Susan just so that we had them. I don't

688
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:49,560
Speaker 2: even know why I saved them, but I think it

689
00:43:49,719 --> 00:43:56,160
Speaker 2: was when Susan finally said to her, can you please

690
00:43:56,280 --> 00:44:01,239
Speaker 2: tell us what this is about? And she said that

691
00:44:01,880 --> 00:44:06,200
Speaker 2: I knew, and that of course I knew, and it

692
00:44:06,239 --> 00:44:08,520
Speaker 2: had to do with telling the secret, telling the story.

693
00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:15,440
Speaker 2: It was not my story to tell. And she pretty

694
00:44:15,520 --> 00:44:21,040
Speaker 2: much ended our relationship by saying to Susan that they

695
00:44:21,160 --> 00:44:24,360
Speaker 2: had decided that their lives were better off without me

696
00:44:24,520 --> 00:44:24,799
Speaker 2: in it.

697
00:44:26,160 --> 00:44:32,880
Speaker 3: Were you able to come to understand where that story

698
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:40,200
Speaker 3: resided in your aunt's family. So here you have your

699
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:42,880
Speaker 3: father at age three and your aunt at age eight,

700
00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:47,600
Speaker 3: going through this trauma of their mother abandoning them and

701
00:44:47,719 --> 00:44:49,920
Speaker 3: everything that happened to them in those years where their

702
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:55,800
Speaker 3: mother was gone. Your father chose to share that story

703
00:44:56,680 --> 00:45:00,399
Speaker 3: and in many ways be emotionally defined by it, and

704
00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:03,320
Speaker 3: your aunt went in a different direction.

705
00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:06,440
Speaker 2: Yes, and you didn't know this, which I.

706
00:45:06,360 --> 00:45:09,560
Speaker 3: Think is really key when it comes to telling stories

707
00:45:09,680 --> 00:45:13,080
Speaker 3: on this podcast. You know about family secrets, what is

708
00:45:13,160 --> 00:45:17,360
Speaker 3: secret to one member of the family and not to another,

709
00:45:17,960 --> 00:45:21,880
Speaker 3: and how that all gets played out over time I

710
00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:24,600
Speaker 3: think is so central. I mean, let me ask you this.

711
00:45:25,080 --> 00:45:29,759
Speaker 3: Had you known that this was a secret in your

712
00:45:29,800 --> 00:45:33,360
Speaker 3: aunt's family and that she had never spoken of it

713
00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:35,680
Speaker 3: to her kids, that was it was just something that

714
00:45:36,080 --> 00:45:38,360
Speaker 3: didn't exist for them, which of course we know that

715
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:41,560
Speaker 3: does not how secrets work. But for all intents and purposes,

716
00:45:41,560 --> 00:45:43,799
Speaker 3: on the surface of things did not exist for them.

717
00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:45,800
Speaker 3: Would you have written those eight lines?

718
00:45:47,040 --> 00:45:53,680
Speaker 2: I probably would have written those eight lines, but I

719
00:45:53,840 --> 00:45:57,160
Speaker 2: likely would have had a sit down with my cousins

720
00:45:57,280 --> 00:46:02,160
Speaker 2: and said, Okay, so here's the situation. We need to

721
00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:07,359
Speaker 2: talk about this. This has informed my life, I think that,

722
00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:11,319
Speaker 2: and it had completely informed my father's life, and I'm

723
00:46:11,440 --> 00:46:14,719
Speaker 2: led to think that it probably informed your lives as

724
00:46:14,760 --> 00:46:18,560
Speaker 2: well to some degree. And in the writing of this book,

725
00:46:18,960 --> 00:46:21,400
Speaker 2: this is what I've come to, and I need to

726
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:24,880
Speaker 2: be able to write this, and I'd like to think

727
00:46:24,960 --> 00:46:26,759
Speaker 2: that that is what I would have done.

728
00:46:27,520 --> 00:46:30,759
Speaker 3: I wonder, too, do you think that would have made

729
00:46:30,760 --> 00:46:35,080
Speaker 3: any difference. Do you think that if there had been

730
00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:38,800
Speaker 3: that sit down that the outcome would have been any different,

731
00:46:39,040 --> 00:46:40,799
Speaker 3: or do you think that the estrangement would have been

732
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:41,200
Speaker 3: the same.

733
00:46:41,560 --> 00:46:44,120
Speaker 2: I think that with one of my cousins, the outcome

734
00:46:44,160 --> 00:46:47,719
Speaker 2: would have been different, and that's the younger cousin, and

735
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:52,520
Speaker 2: we have I don't even want to say rebuilt most

736
00:46:52,560 --> 00:46:56,760
Speaker 2: of our relationship. I think it took her a while

737
00:46:57,400 --> 00:47:00,520
Speaker 2: to realize that I was not the demon that her

738
00:47:00,560 --> 00:47:04,080
Speaker 2: older sister made me out to be, that I was

739
00:47:04,120 --> 00:47:08,759
Speaker 2: still you know, Lissie, and still loved her and was

740
00:47:08,800 --> 00:47:11,560
Speaker 2: the same person I was before the book came out,

741
00:47:11,840 --> 00:47:14,480
Speaker 2: and so I talked to her. I don't really see

742
00:47:14,480 --> 00:47:19,560
Speaker 2: her very much anymore, But knowing what I know now,

743
00:47:20,200 --> 00:47:23,440
Speaker 2: I am not sure that it would have made a

744
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:27,800
Speaker 2: difference with my older cousin. I think that my older cousin,

745
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:32,320
Speaker 2: when my father died all those years before the book

746
00:47:32,360 --> 00:47:37,800
Speaker 2: came out, was pulling me out of the central circle

747
00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:41,200
Speaker 2: of the family, little by little. And you know, Susan

748
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:46,120
Speaker 2: likens my family to rings inside of each other, and

749
00:47:47,160 --> 00:47:50,759
Speaker 2: you know, it's like Dante, right, So which circle are

750
00:47:50,760 --> 00:47:53,040
Speaker 2: you in? Are you in the inner circle? Are you

751
00:47:53,160 --> 00:47:57,480
Speaker 2: in the outer circle? And before my father's accident, I

752
00:47:57,520 --> 00:48:00,520
Speaker 2: was in the inner circle, and then after my father's accident,

753
00:48:00,560 --> 00:48:04,600
Speaker 2: I was moved to the outer circle, and that became

754
00:48:04,840 --> 00:48:10,360
Speaker 2: very clear to me. But to your question, I don't

755
00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:13,560
Speaker 2: know that it would have made any difference with the

756
00:48:13,640 --> 00:48:18,319
Speaker 2: older cousin. And the reason why is I think that

757
00:48:18,440 --> 00:48:26,200
Speaker 2: every family has a keeper of the narrative, keys keeper

758
00:48:26,239 --> 00:48:30,240
Speaker 2: of the stories, and the person who controls the stories,

759
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:34,239
Speaker 2: who controls the narrative and politics and pr they call

760
00:48:34,280 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 2: it spin. And I don't know that she understood or

761
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:44,640
Speaker 2: was able to understand, and certainly is not still not

762
00:48:44,760 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 2: able to understand that every person in every family has

763
00:48:50,760 --> 00:48:54,600
Speaker 2: their own truth. And I often tell the story about

764
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:58,720
Speaker 2: You can ask five siblings, five adult siblings sitting around

765
00:48:58,719 --> 00:49:01,600
Speaker 2: the table, what happened in eighteen seventy five when Dad

766
00:49:01,640 --> 00:49:03,719
Speaker 2: got drunk on the jim beam at Christmas, And you'll

767
00:49:03,760 --> 00:49:07,719
Speaker 2: get five different versions of that story, and they will

768
00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:10,239
Speaker 2: fight to the death to prove that their version is

769
00:49:10,239 --> 00:49:13,200
Speaker 2: the right version. And I think that that is human nature.

770
00:49:13,480 --> 00:49:15,640
Speaker 2: But then they'll get up and get on with their day.

771
00:49:16,680 --> 00:49:21,120
Speaker 2: The fact is that every one of those truths is valid.

772
00:49:21,920 --> 00:49:24,680
Speaker 2: There can only be one empirical fact, but every one

773
00:49:24,719 --> 00:49:27,640
Speaker 2: of those truths is valid because we all see the

774
00:49:27,640 --> 00:49:35,280
Speaker 2: world through our own lenses, through our own screens. Every

775
00:49:35,320 --> 00:49:39,000
Speaker 2: writer who writes memoir is confronted with the question of

776
00:49:39,040 --> 00:49:42,040
Speaker 2: what right they have to publicly tell a story that

777
00:49:42,120 --> 00:49:46,600
Speaker 2: involves other people after all, there are multiple truths within

778
00:49:46,719 --> 00:49:53,319
Speaker 2: every relationship, especially family relationships. The poet and memoirst Honor Moore,

779
00:49:53,800 --> 00:49:56,320
Speaker 2: a guest on this podcast a couple of seasons back,

780
00:49:56,880 --> 00:50:00,279
Speaker 2: once remarked that we do not choose our stories. They

781
00:50:00,360 --> 00:50:03,680
Speaker 2: choose us, and if we walk away from them or

782
00:50:03,760 --> 00:50:10,360
Speaker 2: ignore them, we are somehow diminished. I think the word

783
00:50:10,600 --> 00:50:14,560
Speaker 2: diminished is the right word. At one point when I

784
00:50:14,600 --> 00:50:17,759
Speaker 2: was writing this new book, I was reliving this, I

785
00:50:17,840 --> 00:50:22,399
Speaker 2: was reliving this experience of loss. And I talk about abandonment,

786
00:50:23,000 --> 00:50:27,640
Speaker 2: begat abandonment. And that's the theme, that's the chord that

787
00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:32,440
Speaker 2: ties our generations together. That's the family story, that's the

788
00:50:32,480 --> 00:50:36,200
Speaker 2: family fear. And it plays out in all sorts of ways.

789
00:50:36,239 --> 00:50:39,360
Speaker 2: And it played out in my life as a young person,

790
00:50:40,200 --> 00:50:43,000
Speaker 2: day in and day out. And it played out in

791
00:50:43,080 --> 00:50:45,640
Speaker 2: my father's life, both in real time when he was

792
00:50:45,680 --> 00:50:49,720
Speaker 2: three and again as an adult until the day he died.

793
00:50:49,760 --> 00:50:55,719
Speaker 2: I'm sure of that. To not tell this story would have,

794
00:50:56,200 --> 00:51:02,160
Speaker 2: I think, felt to me like trying to rewrite my DNA.

795
00:51:03,280 --> 00:51:07,240
Speaker 2: It would have felt like trying to change my height,

796
00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:09,960
Speaker 2: or trying to change the texture of my hair or

797
00:51:10,000 --> 00:51:15,000
Speaker 2: the way my voice sounds. This story made me who

798
00:51:15,120 --> 00:51:19,920
Speaker 2: I am without question, and I considered while I was

799
00:51:19,960 --> 00:51:22,920
Speaker 2: writing this book, you know what would have happened if

800
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:24,920
Speaker 2: I didn't tell, if I just glossed over it and

801
00:51:24,920 --> 00:51:29,040
Speaker 2: went through life happily. And the fact is that I

802
00:51:29,120 --> 00:51:33,360
Speaker 2: would have felt, I think, without sounding you know, hyperbolic

803
00:51:33,560 --> 00:51:37,480
Speaker 2: or dramatic. I think that I would have felt in

804
00:51:37,600 --> 00:51:42,360
Speaker 2: some way inauthentic and like I was wearing a costume

805
00:51:43,360 --> 00:51:48,560
Speaker 2: that benefited someone else. I believe that memoirists that we

806
00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:53,120
Speaker 2: tell our stories because they are who we are. It's

807
00:51:53,160 --> 00:51:56,000
Speaker 2: like a ben diagram. They are who we are. We

808
00:51:56,040 --> 00:52:00,640
Speaker 2: are our stories, and not telling the story would have

809
00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:05,440
Speaker 2: been asking me to not be who I am. And

810
00:52:05,520 --> 00:52:10,040
Speaker 2: I couldn't do that anymore than I could be a straight,

811
00:52:10,200 --> 00:52:15,120
Speaker 2: tall person who is not at all myself. I would

812
00:52:15,160 --> 00:52:16,520
Speaker 2: have had to have been another person.

813
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:21,839
Speaker 3: What your cousin said to you in the wake of

814
00:52:22,800 --> 00:52:27,520
Speaker 3: your having written those eight lines was I don't love

815
00:52:27,520 --> 00:52:31,480
Speaker 3: you anymore. Do you think that it is possible to

816
00:52:32,600 --> 00:52:39,640
Speaker 3: actually genuinely love someone and then be hurt by them

817
00:52:39,920 --> 00:52:43,759
Speaker 3: or feel betrayed by them, and then sort of decide

818
00:52:44,600 --> 00:52:46,879
Speaker 3: that you don't love them anymore? As if love could

819
00:52:46,880 --> 00:52:48,919
Speaker 3: be sort of switched on or off.

820
00:52:49,800 --> 00:52:53,040
Speaker 2: I don't think love is a binary thing. I don't

821
00:52:53,080 --> 00:52:56,320
Speaker 2: think that you know it's a switch that you flip.

822
00:52:57,160 --> 00:53:02,680
Speaker 2: I think that you certainly true For myself, my feelings

823
00:53:02,800 --> 00:53:08,720
Speaker 2: may have changed about this person, but she is still

824
00:53:08,719 --> 00:53:11,200
Speaker 2: in my heart, and she's always going to be in

825
00:53:11,200 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 2: my heart and is always going to be a part

826
00:53:13,719 --> 00:53:17,680
Speaker 2: of my life. Whether I see her again or I

827
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:26,560
Speaker 2: don't likely won't. In terms of how she feels, I

828
00:53:26,600 --> 00:53:32,840
Speaker 2: think that for some people who have been raised with

829
00:53:33,280 --> 00:53:39,080
Speaker 2: the threat of abandonment themselves, I mean, I do believe

830
00:53:39,480 --> 00:53:43,919
Speaker 2: somewhere inside, I believe that she is the cousin who

831
00:53:44,040 --> 00:53:48,160
Speaker 2: knew a little bit about what had happened. And I

832
00:53:48,239 --> 00:53:51,799
Speaker 2: also believe that it was her mother, my aunt who

833
00:53:51,880 --> 00:53:56,359
Speaker 2: told her never to tell anyone because the family had

834
00:53:56,400 --> 00:54:01,560
Speaker 2: to be perceived as perfect. And I came along and

835
00:54:01,640 --> 00:54:06,200
Speaker 2: I blew the lid off that perfection, and that was

836
00:54:06,200 --> 00:54:08,200
Speaker 2: a very hard thing I think for her to swallow.

837
00:54:08,760 --> 00:54:14,520
Speaker 2: I think she felt betrayed, and for her, betrayal could

838
00:54:14,560 --> 00:54:17,760
Speaker 2: be equated to the loss of love, to the loss

839
00:54:17,760 --> 00:54:22,520
Speaker 2: of connection, to the loss of familial connection. That's who

840
00:54:22,560 --> 00:54:26,399
Speaker 2: she in part is personally. For me, as I said,

841
00:54:26,400 --> 00:54:30,399
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know that love is binary. It's

842
00:54:30,440 --> 00:54:33,359
Speaker 2: not like you love somebody who you've known your whole

843
00:54:33,400 --> 00:54:35,799
Speaker 2: life and then one day you don't. I don't think

844
00:54:35,840 --> 00:54:41,719
Speaker 2: love works that way. But I think that she, in

845
00:54:41,800 --> 00:54:47,200
Speaker 2: her own mind, had to effectively remove me from the tribe,

846
00:54:47,520 --> 00:54:49,879
Speaker 2: and that was the only way for her to do it.

847
00:54:54,640 --> 00:54:59,880
Speaker 3: Here's Alyssa reading one last passage from her powerful memoir Permission.

848
00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:07,040
Speaker 2: I did not know that it was a secret, and

849
00:55:07,120 --> 00:55:11,600
Speaker 2: this not knowing changed my world, tilted it on its axis,

850
00:55:12,040 --> 00:55:15,600
Speaker 2: spun it like a top. It broke my life and

851
00:55:15,680 --> 00:55:19,360
Speaker 2: broke my health, and it broke my spirit. It threatened

852
00:55:19,400 --> 00:55:22,839
Speaker 2: my marriage. I began to stutter the way I had

853
00:55:22,880 --> 00:55:27,800
Speaker 2: as a child. It altered my creative course, took my humor,

854
00:55:28,400 --> 00:55:33,040
Speaker 2: rendered me silent for almost a decade. It left me

855
00:55:33,160 --> 00:55:37,880
Speaker 2: sleepless and afraid. It inflated my ego, the narcissism of

856
00:55:37,920 --> 00:55:43,040
Speaker 2: self preservation, and then burnt it to ash. It unraveled

857
00:55:43,080 --> 00:55:46,880
Speaker 2: my understanding of love and tribe and the meaning of grace.

858
00:55:48,280 --> 00:55:50,960
Speaker 2: Toward the end, when I could no longer do the

859
00:55:51,040 --> 00:55:54,640
Speaker 2: things that breathe air and light into my days, I

860
00:55:54,680 --> 00:55:58,720
Speaker 2: couldn't write or work. I couldn't play guitar. I couldn't

861
00:55:58,719 --> 00:56:02,160
Speaker 2: feed or support myself or the woman I love. I

862
00:56:02,200 --> 00:56:05,320
Speaker 2: couldn't care for my health or my spirit. These things

863
00:56:05,360 --> 00:56:08,839
Speaker 2: are gravy, Raymond Carver might have said, and I came

864
00:56:08,960 --> 00:56:12,319
Speaker 2: close enough to the edge to peer over it. The

865
00:56:12,440 --> 00:56:14,640
Speaker 2: Non Secret Secret Save Me.

866
00:56:27,760 --> 00:56:31,840
Speaker 3: Family Secret is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly's Acre is

867
00:56:31,840 --> 00:56:35,040
Speaker 3: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.

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Speaker 3: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,

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Speaker 3: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear

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Speaker 3: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight

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Speaker 3: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also

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Speaker 3: find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd

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Speaker 3: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,

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Speaker 3: check out my memoir Inheritance.

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Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.