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Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio Deep in the Woods.

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Speaker 2: Deep in the Woods, it was ringing real good, ten

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Speaker 2: inches down, ten inches down with a solid sound.

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Speaker 3: That's Nashville based singer, songwriter and memoirist Witthill Wits is

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Speaker 3: a story of love, loss, tenacity, redemption, and the way

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Speaker 3: secrets seep from one generation to the next without our

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Speaker 3: knowing how or why, until the lights finally blink on

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Speaker 3: and we see what had been hiding in the shadows.

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Speaker 3: And while finally knowing doesn't fix everything, it's a hell

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Speaker 3: of a start bay.

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Speaker 2: But you know the one no cod that dog.

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Speaker 3: I'm Danny Shapiro and this is family Secrets, the secrets

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

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Speaker 3: and the secrets we keep from ourselves.

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Speaker 1: I was born in Manhattan in nineteen fifty eight, so

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Speaker 1: the landscape was vertical. A lot of tall buildings and

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Speaker 1: small buildings and hard edges, lots of brick and stone

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Speaker 1: and cement and marble stairs and metal, and lots of

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Speaker 1: noise buses and trucks and honking and screeching of brakes.

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Speaker 1: I was born in Mount Sinai, and they brought me

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Speaker 1: home to this microscopic one bedroom apartment. It's the third floor.

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Speaker 1: The building was on the corner of First Avenue and

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Speaker 1: fifty second Street. My dad moved out, and I was yelling, well,

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Speaker 1: very young, like it's unclear, no one alive remembers when

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Speaker 1: he moved out, so it was either maybe two or

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Speaker 1: four something like that. So I have no memories of

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Speaker 1: my parents together, and so I grew up as an

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Speaker 1: only child. My parents were both from the South. My

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Speaker 1: mother was born in rural Mississippi, very poor family farmers.

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Speaker 1: She picked cotton as a child, and my mother had

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Speaker 1: two sisters, younger sisters, and little by little they moved

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Speaker 1: to Columbus, Mississippi, which was an upgrade from the totally

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Speaker 1: rural setting that she was born into, and then got

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Speaker 1: to go to public school. And she was very, very bright,

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Speaker 1: but also kind of a tortured child. She felt very different,

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Speaker 1: like she had been dropped into an environment that she

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Speaker 1: was not sated for. She had great goals and aspirations.

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Speaker 1: I remember her telling me once that she was in

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Speaker 1: the outhouse, back in the farmhouse that they first lived in,

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Speaker 1: and she picked up a copy of a magazine that

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Speaker 1: they used for other purposes and she saw an article

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Speaker 1: about New York City and delicatessens and decided that that's

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Speaker 1: where she was going to end up. And she just

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Speaker 1: kind of zeroed on that. And she was very bright

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Speaker 1: and got a scholarship to what was then called Mississippi

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Speaker 1: State College for Women. No one had ever said, Marian,

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Speaker 1: you should go to a college, but she got a

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Speaker 1: scholarship and graduated with a degree in speech I think

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Speaker 1: it was, but also did a lot of theater. And

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Speaker 1: the minute she got out of there, she headed north

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Speaker 1: and ended up at a summer stock in Massachusetts where

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Speaker 1: she met my dad, and he likewise was from the South,

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Speaker 1: well from Appalachia. He was the son of Armenian immigrants

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Speaker 1: who had come to this country to escape the genocide.

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Speaker 1: My grandfather opened a saloene called the Sanitary Lunch, and

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Speaker 1: my father was their first son. Then they had twin boys,

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Speaker 1: one of whom died young. And at that point my

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Speaker 1: father's mother disappeared. She was always a troubled woman, according

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Speaker 1: to what little my father remembers of her.

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Speaker 3: How old was your father when she disappeared?

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Speaker 1: I think he was twelve or thirteen, and his little

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Speaker 1: brother was more like eight. My father grew up in

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Speaker 1: cold country with miners in the saline at night and

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Speaker 1: my grandfather selling moonshine and speaking Armenian upstairs in the

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Speaker 1: little apartment that they lived in and English the rest

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Speaker 1: of the time. My dad, like my mom, was very smart,

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Speaker 1: kind of different from everyone else, and was encouraged by

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Speaker 1: a teacher to really go for it. He went to

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Speaker 1: college at Concord College, got a theater degree, and started

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Speaker 1: getting a master's degree, but ended up going to the

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Speaker 1: same summer stock in Plymouth, Massachusetts that my mother went

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Speaker 1: to in nineteen fifty four, and the die was cast.

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Speaker 1: I cannot get any information from my dad about how

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Speaker 1: that happened or what smarked their relationship. But when the

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Speaker 1: summer was over, they moved to New York City and

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Speaker 1: got an apartment together and married, and very very quickly

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Speaker 1: they were a couple. I think they probably got married

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Speaker 1: because there was a cheap apartment that they found out

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Speaker 1: about and they took it. So they married in nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty five, and it was three years before I was born.

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Speaker 3: And you have no memory of the three of you

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Speaker 3: together as a family before your father moved out.

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Speaker 1: No, it's hard to say because even though I would

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Speaker 1: imagine things were a bit tempestuous at the time of

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Speaker 1: the break. They really pulled it together and were quite

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Speaker 1: civil with each other Throughout the rest of my upbringing.

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Speaker 1: My father moved very close just down the block. My

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Speaker 1: mother could lean out her window and look to the right,

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Speaker 1: and my father could lean out his window and look

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Speaker 1: to the left, and I could walk between their buildings,

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Speaker 1: and so they really kept up appearances and were quite

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Speaker 1: civil with each other, which was great, and so we

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Speaker 1: did things together. Sometimes there were times we all vacationed

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Speaker 1: at the same house. Some family friends lived across the

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Speaker 1: hall from my mother. Their names were Tom and Margaret Knight,

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Speaker 1: and they became my godparents, and I thought of them

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Speaker 1: as another set of parents. They were a childless couple,

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Speaker 1: older than my parents, and just the best people, and

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Speaker 1: I loved them so much, and they were very invested

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Speaker 1: in me, and I ended up thinking of my parents

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Speaker 1: and Tom and Margaret as being the four legs of

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Speaker 1: my table in my mind, and that's how I saw them,

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Speaker 1: that they were these four people that supported me and

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Speaker 1: I loved to distraction. And Tom and Margaret had a house,

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Speaker 1: a little tiny cottage on Cape Cod, and when I

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Speaker 1: was three years old, I started going there, sometimes just

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Speaker 1: with Tom and Margaret, sometimes with my mother, sometimes with

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Speaker 1: my father, sometimes all of us together. Was very progressive

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Speaker 1: considering what happened later. My life with my parents very

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Speaker 1: much revolved around theater, but also any kind of creativity.

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Speaker 1: It was quite clear to me from early on I

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Speaker 1: would be some kind of performing artist. It was destined.

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Speaker 1: And I say that from their perspective, and you know,

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Speaker 1: happily I was interested in that. How much of that

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Speaker 1: was because I sensed their investment in me, but there

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Speaker 1: certainly was a lot in me that responded to that.

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Speaker 1: It was very comfortable on stages. They brought me on

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Speaker 1: stages all the time. One of my earliest pictures of

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Speaker 1: me is on a stage with some actors I don't

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Speaker 1: even know who they were. And I loved it, you know.

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Speaker 1: I loved the idea of theater and plays and music

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Speaker 1: and dance. I always had music lessons and dance lessons

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Speaker 1: growing up, and you know, I'm happy about that, of course,

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Speaker 1: and my mother in particular was extremely invested in that.

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Speaker 1: For me, I look back on it and it just

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Speaker 1: seems kind of golden and just so cool. How I

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Speaker 1: was encouraged to do anything. If I didn't want to

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Speaker 1: go to school because I wanted to write a short

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Speaker 1: story about an avocado, I could stay home and do that.

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Speaker 1: She didn't care, and you know, I'd finished the story

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Speaker 1: in like fifteen minutes and watch TV the rest of

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Speaker 1: the day and nobody would know. And the same with

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Speaker 1: my dad. They were just very encouraging of my interests.

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Speaker 1: That said, things in the apartment with my mom were

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Speaker 1: I mean, this is a hackneyed word, but complicated. I

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Speaker 1: mean she was a very anxious person. She was moody.

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Speaker 1: How much she drank, I'm not sure, but there were

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Speaker 1: many trips to the liquor store and she could turn

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Speaker 1: on a dime. There could be you know, bluebirds and

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Speaker 1: rainbows one minute, and then just coldness and an abuse.

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Speaker 1: She was physically really abusive to me at times in

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Speaker 1: ways that it's really difficult for me to even describe.

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Speaker 1: And it was incredibly scarring, emotionally scarring and confusing because

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Speaker 1: this was somebody I loved. I just felt so accepted by.

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Speaker 1: And so I remember going off to college and telling

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Speaker 1: my roommate and my friends at college all my mom

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Speaker 1: and I are so close, it's like we're one person.

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Speaker 1: In two bodies, and I thought that was great, and

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Speaker 1: I thought they'd be jealous of me or something, and

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Speaker 1: everybody just looked at me and like I was there

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Speaker 1: was something wrong, which, of course there was something very

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Speaker 1: wrong with that.

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Speaker 3: It's one of the things that comes up again and

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Speaker 3: again on this show. And you know when we talk

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Speaker 3: about secrecy and family, is that as children, whatever our

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Speaker 3: reality is in our family just seems like it must

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Speaker 3: be the reality, you know, and that surely everybody's family

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Speaker 3: is like this, So right.

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Speaker 1: Yes, when I'd go and visit my friends that had

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Speaker 1: both parents at home and they'd all sit around the

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Speaker 1: dinner table together and read stories while the kids ate,

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Speaker 1: and my eyes were wide open, it was like, Wow,

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Speaker 1: this is this thing happens. And I never was jealous.

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Speaker 1: It just was so different early on. I mean, there

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Speaker 1: were times when it was just so fun and I

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Speaker 1: felt like we were buddies in the apartment, but I

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Speaker 1: was lift alone a lot. When she finally realized she

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Speaker 1: could leave me alone in the apartment, she did and

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Speaker 1: it didn't bother me. I mean, we were just on

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Speaker 1: top of each other all the time in that tiny space.

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Speaker 1: I mean we shared a one bedroom and I remember

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Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time looking out the windows.

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Speaker 1: And if I looked out the living room window, it

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Speaker 1: was on to First Avenue, and I could just watch

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Speaker 1: this river of cars going by, and I would stare

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Speaker 1: at it just for hours. It was like watching the

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Speaker 1: sun on distant mountains or something like that. It was

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Speaker 1: always changed, and it was always fascinating to me, the

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Speaker 1: movement and the fact that it always flowed in one direction.

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Speaker 1: And if I went and looked out my bedroom window,

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Speaker 1: I looked out onto fifty second Street, and it was

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Speaker 1: quieter there, but not much. And there was a building

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Speaker 1: across the street, kind of a large, much nicer building

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Speaker 1: than ours, with many, many windows, and I could stare

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Speaker 1: in those windows at night and just watch all kinds

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Speaker 1: of things happen, which was very instructive to me growing

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Speaker 1: up and fascinating. And I remember I did, I said

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Speaker 1: this thing where I would write notes and I would

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Speaker 1: say I am very happy, I am a very happy child,

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Speaker 1: and I would crumple them up and throw them out

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Speaker 1: the window, and then watch to see if anyone would

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Speaker 1: pick them up. And I look at that now, and

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Speaker 1: I think, what was I doing? Was I trying to

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Speaker 1: be rescued and I didn't even realize it. Basically, what

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Speaker 1: I was doing was littering. Nobody ever picked it up,

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Speaker 1: not one time. And I did that at the bank too.

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Speaker 1: If I went in a bank, I would find a

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Speaker 1: deposit slip at the bottom of the stack of deposit

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Speaker 1: slips and write how happy I was on the deposit

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Speaker 1: slip and slip it in for somebody to read, which

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Speaker 1: was I don't understand that.

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Speaker 3: Do you think that you were trying to convince yourself

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Speaker 3: so that you were a happy childhood? What do you

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Speaker 3: think your motivation was.

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Speaker 1: I think subconsciously it was probably a bit of a

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Speaker 1: message in a bottle kind of thing. But I do

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Speaker 1: say looking back that all the window gazing was I

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Speaker 1: really saw myself as Rapunzel and like the princess in

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Speaker 1: a tower. The only thing I didn't have was the

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Speaker 1: braid because my mother kept my hair chopped really short.

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Speaker 1: I begged her for long hair. I had a long

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Speaker 1: haired wig that I wear around the house because I

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Speaker 1: wanted long hair so badly. She had long hair, but

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Speaker 1: I couldn't, and she would just chop it off with scissors.

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Speaker 1: And throughout my childhood till I was probably about ten

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Speaker 1: until I really laid it down the lawn said, I'm

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Speaker 1: growing my hair out and it's just what it is.

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Speaker 1: Until then I had just this very strange chopped haircut.

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Speaker 3: Why do you think she did that?

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I've never understood why she did that.

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Speaker 1: It looked terrible, I mean, look ridiculous.

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Speaker 3: In pictures, Witt has taken on the role of the observer,

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Speaker 3: as only children often do. She watches and listens. She

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Speaker 3: continues to look out her windows and into the windows

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Speaker 3: of others, and when her mom leaves her home alone,

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Speaker 3: in many ways, things are better, more calm. After all,

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Speaker 3: Witt never knows which version of her mother she's going

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Speaker 3: to get, so in her mom's absence, Wit does her

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Speaker 3: best to connect with herself and with the world. She

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Speaker 3: gazes out at the traffic on the street below and

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Speaker 3: tosses notes to the sidewalk. She blasts the stereo and

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Speaker 3: dances in the living room as hard and as long

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Speaker 3: as she wants. She creates a whole world for herself

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Speaker 3: alone in that apartment. Outside the apartment, she has a

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Speaker 3: world too. She's just gotten accepted to the High School

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Speaker 3: for Performing Arts.

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, when I got into that school. My

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Speaker 1: mother was just over the moon. Everything was going according

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Speaker 1: to plan. I was a drama student that I was

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Speaker 1: also dancing, and midway through my time at Performing Arts,

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Speaker 1: I wanted to switch to the dance department, and my

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Speaker 1: mother was all for it. She wanted me to be

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Speaker 1: a dancer more than anything. I don't know what that

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Speaker 1: was about. The fact that I wanted to switch majors

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Speaker 1: and be a dance major was huge for my mom,

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Speaker 1: and the school said that I could not do that,

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Speaker 1: that I would not get a degree from the High

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Speaker 1: School for Performing Arts if I switched majors. And you

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Speaker 1: would think that the school had sent me to Siberia

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Speaker 1: for the amount of rage that instilled in her.

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Speaker 3: When Wit finishes high school as a drama major, Alas

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Speaker 3: she leaves for college to study dance. She spends her

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Speaker 3: first two years at the State University of New York

254
00:16:04,800 --> 00:16:08,040
Speaker 3: and then transfers to the University of Michigan in ann Arbor.

255
00:16:08,960 --> 00:16:14,400
Speaker 3: Wit flourishes there, excelling academically and creatively. She meets a guy.

256
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Speaker 3: He's a dancer and carpenter, an enticing combination. They begin dating,

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00:16:20,360 --> 00:16:22,800
Speaker 3: and after graduation they moved to New York City together

258
00:16:23,600 --> 00:16:27,560
Speaker 3: with all the changes, their relationship becomes rocky, but they're

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00:16:27,560 --> 00:16:33,080
Speaker 3: in it. Then Wit becomes unexpectedly pregnant. She thinks back

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Speaker 3: on how her mother had always made it very almost

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00:16:35,840 --> 00:16:40,000
Speaker 3: abundantly clear to her that women had abortion rights, but

262
00:16:40,120 --> 00:16:43,720
Speaker 3: Wit doesn't want an abortion. She wants to have the child.

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00:16:45,840 --> 00:16:49,520
Speaker 1: It wasn't an ideal relationship, but I felt like we

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00:16:49,560 --> 00:16:54,120
Speaker 1: could make it work. I had heard from my dad

265
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Speaker 1: and probably from Tom and Margaret, how distressed my mother

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Speaker 1: was when she she got pregnant with me, and I

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00:17:04,320 --> 00:17:08,520
Speaker 1: know that she threatened suicide. My father had to physically

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00:17:08,560 --> 00:17:13,119
Speaker 1: restrain her from throwing herself down the stairs of our

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Speaker 1: apartment building. And I also know that she starved herself.

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Speaker 1: She told me that her doctor said, don't gain too

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Speaker 1: much weight, and so she took that to me to

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Speaker 1: not eat. And they say that by the time I

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Speaker 1: was born, she was skin and bones, and I was fine,

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Speaker 1: you know. I took what I needed and was a

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Speaker 1: healthy baby, a small but healthy baby. And that was

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00:17:41,000 --> 00:17:45,560
Speaker 1: a clue that became really apparent in later years that

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Speaker 1: there was a connection between what happened when she was

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Speaker 1: pregnant and what happened when I got pregnant.

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Speaker 3: When were you told that this was the case and

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Speaker 3: this was the way that your mother was when she

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Speaker 3: was pregnant with you.

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Speaker 1: That's one of those things where you just kind of

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00:18:03,040 --> 00:18:05,480
Speaker 1: always knew it and you don't remember who told you

284
00:18:05,520 --> 00:18:09,040
Speaker 1: were how so it was just part of legend. Ha

285
00:18:09,040 --> 00:18:11,840
Speaker 1: ha Marion tried to throw herself down the stairs, ha ha,

286
00:18:12,280 --> 00:18:16,200
Speaker 1: and oh she was so skinny, as sort of family lore,

287
00:18:16,280 --> 00:18:20,040
Speaker 1: but it was not presented in this within hushed tones.

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Speaker 1: It was just part of family legend.

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Speaker 3: That's so interesting because you'd think that that could be

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00:18:32,280 --> 00:18:37,679
Speaker 3: pretty traumatizing for a child or a teenager, you know,

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00:18:37,840 --> 00:18:42,160
Speaker 3: a young person to hear about the way their mother

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00:18:42,160 --> 00:18:44,840
Speaker 3: felt about being pregnant with them. That you know that

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00:18:44,880 --> 00:18:48,320
Speaker 3: it wouldn't be like, oh, presented with you know, some

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Speaker 3: sense of lightness and hilarity around it.

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Speaker 1: A year or so, right, And in my memory, that's

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Speaker 1: how it was presented, And I don't remember taking it personally.

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Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, she's a little weird. Whatever, I'm here,

298
00:19:00,280 --> 00:19:06,080
Speaker 1: Woo woo, everything's great, We'll be right back.

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00:19:24,440 --> 00:19:28,360
Speaker 3: It's September fourteenth, nineteen eighty, the day of what wit

300
00:19:28,640 --> 00:19:32,440
Speaker 3: now calls the Telling the day she tells her mother

301
00:19:32,560 --> 00:19:36,639
Speaker 3: the news of her pregnancy. It's a beautiful day. And

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00:19:36,680 --> 00:19:40,159
Speaker 3: Wit takes the train up Lexington Avenue and walks the

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00:19:40,200 --> 00:19:43,720
Speaker 3: same blocks she's walked thousands of times from the subway

304
00:19:43,760 --> 00:19:46,359
Speaker 3: station to the apartment she grew up in with her mom.

305
00:19:47,320 --> 00:19:51,320
Speaker 3: But despite the familiar steps, a sense of foreboding weighs

306
00:19:51,359 --> 00:19:51,760
Speaker 3: her down.

307
00:19:54,400 --> 00:19:57,200
Speaker 1: And I told her I was pregnant, and it hung

308
00:19:57,280 --> 00:20:00,240
Speaker 1: there in the space, and all the cars and the

309
00:20:00,280 --> 00:20:03,240
Speaker 1: trucks are zooming by, and the whole world is completely

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00:20:03,320 --> 00:20:08,440
Speaker 1: unconcerned about what's going on in here. And I remember

311
00:20:08,520 --> 00:20:11,000
Speaker 1: she was standing over by the window of the doorway

312
00:20:11,040 --> 00:20:14,080
Speaker 1: to the kitchen and she just turned to me and

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00:20:14,160 --> 00:20:20,720
Speaker 1: she said, get it taken care of. And I knew

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00:20:20,720 --> 00:20:25,040
Speaker 1: what she meant, and I said, no, or, we're not

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Speaker 1: going to do that. I don't want to. It's going

316
00:20:27,720 --> 00:20:30,880
Speaker 1: to be fine. We're going to get married and we're

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00:20:30,880 --> 00:20:33,680
Speaker 1: going to move to Cape Cod. And we had already

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00:20:33,760 --> 00:20:37,840
Speaker 1: planned to move to Cape Cod and renovate this old theater,

319
00:20:38,440 --> 00:20:40,280
Speaker 1: and that plan was in the works and we were

320
00:20:40,320 --> 00:20:42,679
Speaker 1: so excited about it, and so I said, that's what

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00:20:42,680 --> 00:20:44,440
Speaker 1: we're going to do. And it's going to be fine,

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Speaker 1: don't worry. We're going to get married. And she said

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Speaker 1: you're going to be barefoot and pregnant on cape cod.

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Speaker 1: I said, no, I'm not. It's going to be fine,

325
00:20:53,320 --> 00:20:56,800
Speaker 1: you know. And it was just like talking to a

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00:20:58,160 --> 00:21:03,800
Speaker 1: snarling dog. It was terrifying. She was like a frozen human.

327
00:21:04,840 --> 00:21:08,400
Speaker 1: And then she said, then there can be nothing more

328
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Speaker 1: between us. And I don't remember anything after that, I

329
00:21:14,560 --> 00:21:18,200
Speaker 1: guess I grabbed my bag and went to the door

330
00:21:18,359 --> 00:21:22,280
Speaker 1: and went downstairs, and I walked to second Avenue, and

331
00:21:22,320 --> 00:21:24,840
Speaker 1: then I walked to the third avenue and then I

332
00:21:24,840 --> 00:21:27,800
Speaker 1: turned right and I went down in the subway and

333
00:21:28,400 --> 00:21:32,480
Speaker 1: went back to Soho and I remember calling my aunt.

334
00:21:32,640 --> 00:21:37,280
Speaker 1: My mother had these two magnificent sisters who I just loved.

335
00:21:37,280 --> 00:21:40,360
Speaker 1: And I called my aunt Celia, and I was crying

336
00:21:40,440 --> 00:21:44,159
Speaker 1: and saying, you know, telling her what had happened. And

337
00:21:44,200 --> 00:21:47,160
Speaker 1: my aunt Celia said, oh, honey, you know, of course

338
00:21:47,200 --> 00:21:49,520
Speaker 1: she's shocked right now, but she'll be fine. She'll get

339
00:21:49,560 --> 00:21:51,440
Speaker 1: over it and it's going to be fine. And I

340
00:21:51,480 --> 00:21:55,280
Speaker 1: really took that to heart, and it wasn't fine. It

341
00:21:55,400 --> 00:21:56,600
Speaker 1: was never fine after that.

342
00:22:00,920 --> 00:22:04,639
Speaker 3: Perhaps she just needs some space, Wit thinks, and thankfully

343
00:22:04,680 --> 00:22:07,399
Speaker 3: that space is filled with the support and love from others.

344
00:22:08,320 --> 00:22:12,000
Speaker 3: WIT's dad is over the moon, optimistic as he's always been.

345
00:22:12,720 --> 00:22:16,760
Speaker 3: Tom and Margaret are thrilled too, So hard as it is,

346
00:22:17,280 --> 00:22:20,439
Speaker 3: Wit doesn't reach out to her mom, she lets it rest.

347
00:22:21,400 --> 00:22:24,760
Speaker 3: Some weeks later, one of WIT's medical bills of twenty

348
00:22:24,880 --> 00:22:28,080
Speaker 3: dollars is routed to her mom's apartment, as her mom

349
00:22:28,119 --> 00:22:32,240
Speaker 3: still has Wit on her insurance plan. Soon after, Wit

350
00:22:32,359 --> 00:22:36,680
Speaker 3: receives a frosty note from her mom with the bill attached, saying,

351
00:22:37,320 --> 00:22:38,840
Speaker 3: if this is the way things are going to go,

352
00:22:39,320 --> 00:22:42,600
Speaker 3: you're going to have to pay your own bills. Wit

353
00:22:42,760 --> 00:22:46,120
Speaker 3: is struck by her mom's tone, but of course she'll

354
00:22:46,119 --> 00:22:49,159
Speaker 3: take care of the bills. Not a problem, and yet

355
00:22:49,400 --> 00:22:54,280
Speaker 3: the problem. The big problem persists. In the fall, Wit

356
00:22:54,400 --> 00:22:57,120
Speaker 3: and her boyfriend designed to get married, despite the fact

357
00:22:57,160 --> 00:23:01,159
Speaker 3: that their relationship is still unsteady, a small affair just

358
00:23:01,280 --> 00:23:05,040
Speaker 3: friends her dad, Tom and Margaret and her future mother

359
00:23:05,080 --> 00:23:08,440
Speaker 3: in law. After the wedding, the two moved to Cape

360
00:23:08,440 --> 00:23:10,879
Speaker 3: cod to the same town where Tom and Margaret had

361
00:23:10,880 --> 00:23:11,639
Speaker 3: their summer house.

362
00:23:14,080 --> 00:23:17,280
Speaker 1: It's the place that I loved, This town called South Yarmouth.

363
00:23:18,119 --> 00:23:22,399
Speaker 1: We rented this little old house on Main streets from

364
00:23:22,440 --> 00:23:25,000
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundred said it was just beautiful. I love

365
00:23:25,040 --> 00:23:29,120
Speaker 1: old things and old houses, and it had those shiny,

366
00:23:29,440 --> 00:23:33,399
Speaker 1: wide pine floors. And he sold the loft, you know,

367
00:23:33,440 --> 00:23:36,560
Speaker 1: he sold the fixtures, took the loft, and he moved

368
00:23:36,640 --> 00:23:39,920
Speaker 1: up a couple of months after me, and we just

369
00:23:39,960 --> 00:23:43,560
Speaker 1: sort of settled in. In May of that year, I

370
00:23:43,960 --> 00:23:48,840
Speaker 1: had this baby in the house with my husband and

371
00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:53,080
Speaker 1: a college friend who took the train in from Boston.

372
00:23:53,440 --> 00:23:57,639
Speaker 1: And it was fantastic. It was magical, and you know it.

373
00:23:57,760 --> 00:24:03,960
Speaker 1: Through this entire gestation period, I wrote to my mom constantly.

374
00:24:04,600 --> 00:24:07,080
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm just going to keep writing and pretend

375
00:24:07,080 --> 00:24:11,439
Speaker 1: everything's okay. She's got to wonder how I'm doing. I

376
00:24:11,480 --> 00:24:14,119
Speaker 1: wrote all these little, chatty little letters about oh, and

377
00:24:14,119 --> 00:24:15,520
Speaker 1: then we went to the movies, and then we went

378
00:24:15,560 --> 00:24:18,040
Speaker 1: for a walk on the beach. And the baby's growing

379
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:19,840
Speaker 1: and I can feel her kicking. You know, all the

380
00:24:19,840 --> 00:24:24,199
Speaker 1: stuff that you would write to a mother, and I

381
00:24:24,320 --> 00:24:27,600
Speaker 1: just sent them out into the world. And sometimes I'd say,

382
00:24:27,640 --> 00:24:29,800
Speaker 1: you know, I don't even know if you're reading these letters.

383
00:24:30,520 --> 00:24:33,000
Speaker 1: If with a tree falls in the forest, does anyone

384
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:36,119
Speaker 1: hear it? And you know, ha ha, And just keeping

385
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:40,000
Speaker 1: it light and talking about how I felt and how

386
00:24:40,080 --> 00:24:42,480
Speaker 1: much I missed her and that maybe we could work

387
00:24:42,520 --> 00:24:49,120
Speaker 1: it out, and so many letters and she never answered them.

388
00:24:49,760 --> 00:24:53,879
Speaker 3: It's so interesting with the parallel between throwing those notes

389
00:24:53,880 --> 00:24:56,600
Speaker 3: saying I am happy out your window as a kid

390
00:24:57,000 --> 00:24:57,720
Speaker 3: into the void.

391
00:24:58,400 --> 00:25:04,960
Speaker 1: Yes, you're so right. I never thought what about dad.

392
00:25:05,240 --> 00:25:07,840
Speaker 3: After the baby is born, the new family of three

393
00:25:08,000 --> 00:25:11,679
Speaker 3: moves back to Michigan, where WIT's husband goes to graduate school,

394
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:16,960
Speaker 3: and Wit falls absolutely in love with motherhood. She's living

395
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:20,200
Speaker 3: a rich and fulfilling life that combines being a mom,

396
00:25:20,840 --> 00:25:24,560
Speaker 3: the very thing her own mother abhorred was eventually returning

397
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:28,600
Speaker 3: to dance, teaching classes and founding her own dance company.

398
00:25:29,359 --> 00:25:32,359
Speaker 3: She's actively making up for the loss she's experienced with

399
00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:36,919
Speaker 3: her mother, adapting to a new life without her. In

400
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:40,800
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty six, she has another child, a boy named Sam,

401
00:25:42,440 --> 00:25:43,240
Speaker 3: and all.

402
00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:46,320
Speaker 1: Through this, I'm writing to my mom and also going

403
00:25:46,320 --> 00:25:49,400
Speaker 1: to therapy, a lot of therapy. I couldn't afford anything,

404
00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:54,960
Speaker 1: but I paid for that therapy, and the therapists uniformly

405
00:25:55,760 --> 00:26:00,480
Speaker 1: were horrified, which was gratifying to me. Would have been

406
00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:02,439
Speaker 1: upset if they'd said I'd just get over it. No.

407
00:26:02,840 --> 00:26:07,400
Speaker 1: They were like, what happened? She what? And they said, well,

408
00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:10,600
Speaker 1: of course you're having a hard time. You have no closure.

409
00:26:11,080 --> 00:26:14,000
Speaker 1: You have to find out about this. You need to

410
00:26:14,040 --> 00:26:19,919
Speaker 1: reach out. And one of them suggested that I call her.

411
00:26:20,560 --> 00:26:24,320
Speaker 1: And I remember being in the kitchen of my house.

412
00:26:25,040 --> 00:26:29,680
Speaker 1: My kids were asleep, and it was a beautiful day,

413
00:26:30,240 --> 00:26:34,320
Speaker 1: and I just did it. I called my number. This

414
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:38,520
Speaker 1: is the number of my childhood. And to be honest,

415
00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:41,320
Speaker 1: I had called it many times. I had called it

416
00:26:41,760 --> 00:26:43,920
Speaker 1: dozens of times. I would call it and just let

417
00:26:43,960 --> 00:26:47,360
Speaker 1: it ring, and then I'd hang up. I just wanted

418
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:50,760
Speaker 1: to own my home. You know. I didn't just lose

419
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:54,160
Speaker 1: my mom. I lost my home, my apartment where I'd

420
00:26:54,200 --> 00:26:59,360
Speaker 1: lived for eighteen years, and I wanted to own it.

421
00:26:59,440 --> 00:27:02,200
Speaker 1: I wanted to be there. I wanted to see my stuff.

422
00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:06,560
Speaker 1: But I'd always hung up, and this time I let

423
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:09,639
Speaker 1: her answer, and she answered and she said yes. My

424
00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:13,359
Speaker 1: mother never said hello, she always said yes, And I

425
00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:17,640
Speaker 1: just said it's me, and I said, I just need

426
00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:21,160
Speaker 1: to know if this is permanent, is there any chance

427
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 1: for us moving forward? And oh my god, it was

428
00:27:25,320 --> 00:27:30,080
Speaker 1: so bad. She screamed. She screamed into the phone, and

429
00:27:30,119 --> 00:27:33,480
Speaker 1: she screamed, I can't stand it. I can't stand it,

430
00:27:33,600 --> 00:27:38,520
Speaker 1: over and over again, and I just hung up. And

431
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:43,640
Speaker 1: it was, oh the worst, it was so painful. Then

432
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:47,360
Speaker 1: this weird thing happened a few days later. I got

433
00:27:47,359 --> 00:27:51,280
Speaker 1: a card in the mail from her, and she apologized,

434
00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:57,280
Speaker 1: and it was the weirdest note. It said, I'm so sorry.

435
00:27:57,320 --> 00:28:02,040
Speaker 1: I screamed, and she said, none of this is your fault.

436
00:28:02,840 --> 00:28:08,560
Speaker 1: She said, it's my bete noir and mine alone. And

437
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:11,199
Speaker 1: of course, well I took French and that means black beast.

438
00:28:11,560 --> 00:28:16,080
Speaker 1: And she said something about I hope you're as happy

439
00:28:16,080 --> 00:28:19,440
Speaker 1: as you deserve to be, and then she said if

440
00:28:19,480 --> 00:28:22,480
Speaker 1: I was thinking any part of this was warm, She

441
00:28:22,720 --> 00:28:27,679
Speaker 1: closed with, if it ever is profitable to make contact,

442
00:28:27,800 --> 00:28:31,240
Speaker 1: I will contact you, and then she just signed it

443
00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:36,120
Speaker 1: with her initial and that hurt. That just hurt.

444
00:28:37,119 --> 00:28:40,920
Speaker 3: The word profitable is is profitable? What do you think

445
00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:41,760
Speaker 3: she meant by that?

446
00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:49,479
Speaker 1: Well? Profitable for her Throughout this whole experience of losing

447
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:52,720
Speaker 1: someone this way, the parrot that has been so hard

448
00:28:53,320 --> 00:28:58,160
Speaker 1: is that she was never uniformly horrible. I mean, I

449
00:28:58,240 --> 00:29:02,120
Speaker 1: loved her. She's knuggled with me, she rubbed my back.

450
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:05,160
Speaker 1: She said she loved me, and then she'd hit me

451
00:29:05,280 --> 00:29:09,200
Speaker 1: like crazy, and then she'd want to hear my every thought,

452
00:29:09,320 --> 00:29:13,440
Speaker 1: and then she wouldn't speak to me, and then the disowning,

453
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:17,920
Speaker 1: and then this letter that seems apologetic and like she's

454
00:29:17,920 --> 00:29:21,240
Speaker 1: owning her shit. You know it's my fault and mine alone,

455
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:25,520
Speaker 1: and then ending with this. It's so back and forth.

456
00:29:25,880 --> 00:29:28,400
Speaker 1: It's so ambiguous that it's hard. It was always so

457
00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:32,600
Speaker 1: hard for me to know how to feel about her.

458
00:29:32,640 --> 00:29:34,160
Speaker 1: And I'm the kind of person that wants to know.

459
00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:35,720
Speaker 1: I want to know how to feel. I wonder what

460
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:39,880
Speaker 1: my role is. I wonder what your role is. I

461
00:29:39,960 --> 00:29:42,440
Speaker 1: never got that with her, and it just got worse

462
00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:47,720
Speaker 1: and worse. Through this process, and through the years, I

463
00:29:47,840 --> 00:29:53,200
Speaker 1: found that I did get stronger, and I started writing

464
00:29:53,360 --> 00:30:03,920
Speaker 1: less in parts because I was so busy with life.

465
00:30:04,560 --> 00:30:21,400
Speaker 3: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.

466
00:30:22,440 --> 00:30:25,640
Speaker 3: Not only is life busy, but it's also pretty wonderful.

467
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:30,640
Speaker 3: Wit has fantastic kids, a fantastic dance company, and now

468
00:30:30,920 --> 00:30:34,760
Speaker 3: positions teaching dance at universities too. She has a robust

469
00:30:34,800 --> 00:30:38,080
Speaker 3: group of cool, creative friends, and she thinks to herself

470
00:30:38,120 --> 00:30:41,600
Speaker 3: more than once, my mom would love these people. Why

471
00:30:41,640 --> 00:30:44,680
Speaker 3: did this have to happen? Everything would be so different

472
00:30:44,760 --> 00:30:48,000
Speaker 3: if she were still in my life. As she gets

473
00:30:48,040 --> 00:30:51,800
Speaker 3: closer to these friends, inevitably people start to ask her

474
00:30:51,840 --> 00:30:55,760
Speaker 3: about her family. She doesn't know how to handle the

475
00:30:55,840 --> 00:30:57,880
Speaker 3: fact of her estrangement from her mother.

476
00:31:00,240 --> 00:31:03,440
Speaker 1: I really never quite knew what to say, and I

477
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:06,560
Speaker 1: had all these stock answers, none of which were good.

478
00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:10,120
Speaker 1: And one of them was, oh, yes, she lives in

479
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:15,640
Speaker 1: New York. Changed subject immediately. Another one was, yeah, my

480
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:18,360
Speaker 1: parents are divorced and you know we're not terribly close,

481
00:31:18,800 --> 00:31:24,560
Speaker 1: changed subject immediately. And then sometimes I'd say, yeah, she

482
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:27,160
Speaker 1: lives in New York. I guess you could call it

483
00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:30,480
Speaker 1: a living and that would shut the conversation down, and

484
00:31:30,520 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 1: it was a little hostile, and I didn't know which

485
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:35,720
Speaker 1: one was right, and it really put me in this

486
00:31:36,240 --> 00:31:40,400
Speaker 1: kind of awful situation to have to answer that question.

487
00:31:41,520 --> 00:31:45,840
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting too, because the desire to shut it down,

488
00:31:46,520 --> 00:31:49,720
Speaker 3: you know, in the sense of, you know, mothers and daughters,

489
00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:54,880
Speaker 3: you know they're supposed to be together in some fairy

490
00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 3: tale way forever. I mean, to be someone's mother is

491
00:31:58,160 --> 00:32:01,480
Speaker 3: you know, that is an idea shifting thing. Once you

492
00:32:01,520 --> 00:32:05,360
Speaker 3: are somebody's mother. You are always somebody's mother, right, And

493
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:10,320
Speaker 3: I would imagine that, you know, in meeting new people

494
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:13,320
Speaker 3: and making new friends, part of not wanting to talk

495
00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:17,960
Speaker 3: about it is there's something that's so kind of dark

496
00:32:18,080 --> 00:32:21,640
Speaker 3: and secretive that you might have felt that it reflected

497
00:32:21,680 --> 00:32:25,720
Speaker 3: on you and not only on your mother exactly.

498
00:32:26,400 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 1: Those conversations were hard, like if it was somebody and

499
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:31,440
Speaker 1: I just I said, I'm throwing caution to the wind,

500
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 1: and I'm going to tell this nice person what happened.

501
00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:38,400
Speaker 1: They were horrified, they couldn't well, and also filled with disbelief.

502
00:32:38,520 --> 00:32:41,840
Speaker 1: They didn't believe that such a thing could happen. And

503
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:46,120
Speaker 1: I didn't really want to get into the minutia of

504
00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:48,760
Speaker 1: what happened. And I didn't want them to think that

505
00:32:48,800 --> 00:32:52,080
Speaker 1: I was a bad person, because maybe they think I'm

506
00:32:52,120 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 1: a bad person because what mother would do something like that?

507
00:32:56,000 --> 00:33:00,720
Speaker 1: And I did internalize this line of questioning brings this

508
00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:04,920
Speaker 1: around to how I internalized this stuff. I did feel

509
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:10,680
Speaker 1: sometimes like did I do something really bad that I

510
00:33:10,720 --> 00:33:17,280
Speaker 1: don't remember? And that became kind of this sneaky snake

511
00:33:17,720 --> 00:33:23,640
Speaker 1: in my mind. They kind of undermined me in my life.

512
00:33:23,840 --> 00:33:26,160
Speaker 1: You know, I've always been an artist, a performing artist,

513
00:33:27,440 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 1: an actor or a dancer, you know, and now a

514
00:33:30,040 --> 00:33:34,240
Speaker 1: songwriter and writer. And there's an undercurrent in me of

515
00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:39,200
Speaker 1: and I'm just making my little dances. Oh, I'm writing

516
00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:42,160
Speaker 1: my little thing, and it won't make any difference in

517
00:33:42,200 --> 00:33:45,560
Speaker 1: the world. And I'm you know, sort of comparing her

518
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:49,240
Speaker 1: life to mine and undercutting the value that I've put

519
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:51,760
Speaker 1: into the world. I'm not saying I'm the greatest person

520
00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:54,200
Speaker 1: in the world at all, of course not. But I've

521
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:58,320
Speaker 1: looked from the outside at myself and my lack of

522
00:33:58,560 --> 00:34:02,080
Speaker 1: drive and my life of ambition, and my willingness to

523
00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 1: sort of undermine my successes. And now, whether that's because

524
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:10,120
Speaker 1: of what my mom did, or whether that's how I'm wired,

525
00:34:10,239 --> 00:34:13,759
Speaker 1: I don't know. I can't say for sure. While all

526
00:34:13,800 --> 00:34:18,080
Speaker 1: this was happening for me and my little world of

527
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:22,719
Speaker 1: my family and friends in Michigan, this happened to my

528
00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:27,640
Speaker 1: family too, to my mother's family. Before this happened, we

529
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:33,160
Speaker 1: had these fantastic holidays together, Christmas in Easter, and you know,

530
00:34:33,400 --> 00:34:36,120
Speaker 1: we weren't a huge family, but I had four cousins

531
00:34:36,160 --> 00:34:39,600
Speaker 1: that I was very close to, more or less my age.

532
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:42,800
Speaker 1: We adored each other and my two aunts, who I

533
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:45,760
Speaker 1: just absolutely can't even tell you how much I adored

534
00:34:45,840 --> 00:34:50,000
Speaker 1: them and their families, and we got together all, you know,

535
00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:55,080
Speaker 1: every possible chance. And this affected them too, because they

536
00:34:55,280 --> 00:35:00,799
Speaker 1: were forced to take sides. My mother was like the puppeteer,

537
00:35:01,800 --> 00:35:05,480
Speaker 1: and you know, her name was Marian. And it was

538
00:35:06,160 --> 00:35:10,359
Speaker 1: years later when I thought, she's like the Marionette, and

539
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:14,920
Speaker 1: she's like this grand puppeteer telling everybody in our family

540
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:18,440
Speaker 1: how to behave She shut down any mention of me,

541
00:35:18,920 --> 00:35:23,040
Speaker 1: and she's a powerful personality. Everybody felt bad. She's the

542
00:35:23,120 --> 00:35:24,680
Speaker 1: kind of person who walks in the room and you

543
00:35:24,719 --> 00:35:30,400
Speaker 1: feel her power and positive or negative. And everybody was

544
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:35,240
Speaker 1: a little spirit of Marian, and so nobody wanted to

545
00:35:35,280 --> 00:35:38,319
Speaker 1: bring me up. If there was going to be Christmas

546
00:35:38,440 --> 00:35:42,680
Speaker 1: down in Baton Rouge one year, I might get a

547
00:35:42,800 --> 00:35:45,799
Speaker 1: very cautious little phone call saying, just so you know

548
00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:49,319
Speaker 1: your mom's coming down this crispin I play okay, Well,

549
00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:53,960
Speaker 1: I won't call. And that was painful. I hated that

550
00:35:54,040 --> 00:35:57,440
Speaker 1: I didn't even get to go to my grandparents' funerals.

551
00:35:58,120 --> 00:36:00,480
Speaker 1: I mean I volunteered to not go. I didn't want

552
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:04,279
Speaker 1: to make a scene. I thought, oh you know her parents,

553
00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:09,600
Speaker 1: She gets the custody of the funeral. You know, these

554
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:13,920
Speaker 1: tilsees with killus. Decisions that had to be made, and

555
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:17,400
Speaker 1: everybody was just trying their best to keep the peace.

556
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:20,320
Speaker 1: And some of them thought, oh, you know, if we

557
00:36:20,560 --> 00:36:22,920
Speaker 1: just keep the piece long enough, she'll come around.

558
00:36:22,960 --> 00:36:28,360
Speaker 3: And I knew she wouldn't, and of course she didn't.

559
00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 3: But Witt continues to thrive. Her dance company is successful.

560
00:36:34,040 --> 00:36:37,760
Speaker 3: She begins writing songs as well. She's creatively on fire.

561
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:41,839
Speaker 3: She and her first husband divorce, and a few years later,

562
00:36:42,120 --> 00:36:45,000
Speaker 3: Wit marries a musician in ann Arbor and becomes part

563
00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:49,040
Speaker 3: of his wonderful, warm, open family. His mom steps in

564
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:53,239
Speaker 3: and treats Wit like a daughter. Eventually, Witt is ready

565
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:56,040
Speaker 3: to step back from dancing, which has become hard on

566
00:36:56,080 --> 00:36:59,480
Speaker 3: her body after so many years. She and her husband

567
00:36:59,560 --> 00:37:03,799
Speaker 3: relocated to Nashville. She writes more and more music, and

568
00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:06,000
Speaker 3: it's been a long time since she's tried to contact

569
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:09,640
Speaker 3: her mom. Life has great momentum, and she's in the

570
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:13,319
Speaker 3: right place at the right time, in the flow. And

571
00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:17,000
Speaker 3: then comes the pandemic, and though she worries about her mother,

572
00:37:17,280 --> 00:37:20,279
Speaker 3: she doesn't reach out. She's just going to upset an

573
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:22,560
Speaker 3: old woman, there's just no point.

574
00:37:24,280 --> 00:37:27,360
Speaker 1: In June of twenty twenty, my aunt calls me on

575
00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:31,319
Speaker 1: the phone and says she always calls me a little chick, said,

576
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:36,920
Speaker 1: little chick, I can't reach her mother. And there, you know,

577
00:37:37,000 --> 00:37:39,000
Speaker 1: the bottom kind of dropped out of my stomach because

578
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 1: I knew. I figured at some point i'd get a

579
00:37:42,239 --> 00:37:44,520
Speaker 1: call like that, but I didn't know how it would happen.

580
00:37:46,080 --> 00:37:50,000
Speaker 1: And she said, yeah, I've been calling since Wednesday and

581
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:53,680
Speaker 1: there's no response. I leave messages on the machine and

582
00:37:53,719 --> 00:37:59,359
Speaker 1: she doesn't answer. And then we got a hold of

583
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:02,439
Speaker 1: the business office of her apartment building and they said

584
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:05,319
Speaker 1: that she had been taken to a hospital. They didn't

585
00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:08,160
Speaker 1: know which one, and my aunt was like, how are

586
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:10,799
Speaker 1: we going to find out which hospital she's at? And

587
00:38:10,840 --> 00:38:15,360
Speaker 1: I said, I'll call you right back. And I called

588
00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:20,880
Speaker 1: two hospitals nearby and found her at a nearby hospital,

589
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:23,120
Speaker 1: and of course, the operator said, do you want it

590
00:38:23,120 --> 00:38:24,759
Speaker 1: and want me to connect to I said no, thank you,

591
00:38:25,960 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 1: and I called Judy back and gave for the number,

592
00:38:28,520 --> 00:38:32,560
Speaker 1: and the story was that she had broken her leg,

593
00:38:32,680 --> 00:38:36,960
Speaker 1: broken her femur. My mother said, Judy, I've broken my femur.

594
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:41,080
Speaker 1: And I'm going home to die in three weeks, none

595
00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:43,920
Speaker 1: of which made any sense. My mother didn't want anybody

596
00:38:44,120 --> 00:38:46,440
Speaker 1: to have found her. She was furious that Judy had

597
00:38:46,480 --> 00:38:50,520
Speaker 1: tracked her down and didn't want anybody to come up.

598
00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:53,959
Speaker 1: She didn't want any help. But little by little word

599
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:56,680
Speaker 1: came out that she had had cancer for years, nobody

600
00:38:56,760 --> 00:38:59,799
Speaker 1: knew about it, and she had broken her hit for

601
00:38:59,840 --> 00:39:04,760
Speaker 1: her leg, and she probably was in her last weeks

602
00:39:04,840 --> 00:39:10,320
Speaker 1: or months she worsened. She came home to be cared

603
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:13,600
Speaker 1: for by a woman who cleaned her house. That's the

604
00:39:13,640 --> 00:39:18,440
Speaker 1: only person she wanted with her. And I immediately go

605
00:39:18,560 --> 00:39:22,040
Speaker 1: into this. I could help, you know, maybe I could

606
00:39:22,080 --> 00:39:25,120
Speaker 1: help in some way, And just my brain just kept going,

607
00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:27,680
Speaker 1: what can I do? And then you're not involved, You're

608
00:39:27,680 --> 00:39:29,719
Speaker 1: not involved in this, but I want maybe I could.

609
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 1: She loves tomato sandwiches. Maybe I can arrange to have

610
00:39:32,239 --> 00:39:35,480
Speaker 1: a really good tomato sandwich sent to her apartment and

611
00:39:35,640 --> 00:39:38,200
Speaker 1: then stopped. That makes no sense. No one is going

612
00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:40,719
Speaker 1: to send it's a pandemic. No one's going to bring

613
00:39:40,760 --> 00:39:44,600
Speaker 1: her a sandwich, you know. Just these crazy thoughts of

614
00:39:44,760 --> 00:39:53,200
Speaker 1: wanting to ultimately know what happened, be forgiven, be spoken

615
00:39:53,239 --> 00:39:57,480
Speaker 1: to be involved in some way, and it was a

616
00:39:57,600 --> 00:40:03,080
Speaker 1: strange place to be, just liminal place between being a

617
00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:10,120
Speaker 1: daughter and a nobody. And as she worsened, her attorney

618
00:40:10,320 --> 00:40:17,080
Speaker 1: contacted me and he knew about this disowning and he

619
00:40:17,120 --> 00:40:19,279
Speaker 1: didn't have to reach out to me, but he did,

620
00:40:19,719 --> 00:40:23,239
Speaker 1: but didn't really tell me very much. She died on

621
00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:28,399
Speaker 1: July twenty third in her apartment with her housekeeper, and

622
00:40:28,520 --> 00:40:31,920
Speaker 1: my aunt Judy called and told me, and I cried

623
00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 1: a very particular cry. You know, I was in my

624
00:40:35,280 --> 00:40:40,879
Speaker 1: sixties and I just felt like a kid abandoned all over,

625
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:43,520
Speaker 1: which is ridiculous, but you know, you feel what you feel.

626
00:40:44,920 --> 00:40:47,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't strike me as ridiculous at all, because

627
00:40:48,400 --> 00:40:52,160
Speaker 3: you were that kid. You know, all of those selves

628
00:40:52,239 --> 00:40:56,560
Speaker 3: are always alive inside of us, and you never got closure,

629
00:40:56,680 --> 00:41:01,080
Speaker 3: and the you know, the idea that they're could possibly

630
00:41:01,200 --> 00:41:05,320
Speaker 3: be closure was always there, even as this most remote

631
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:09,480
Speaker 3: possibility while she was still alive, and that died with her.

632
00:41:10,200 --> 00:41:15,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the lawyer, he blessed him. He went

633
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:18,480
Speaker 1: over to her apartment and said, you really need to

634
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:21,200
Speaker 1: talk to your daughter, you know, would you like to

635
00:41:21,200 --> 00:41:22,799
Speaker 1: talk to her. She's ready to talk to you if

636
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:24,799
Speaker 1: you like, and she just wouldn't even respond to him.

637
00:41:25,480 --> 00:41:29,840
Speaker 1: And at that point I just said, like that was

638
00:41:29,880 --> 00:41:31,840
Speaker 1: a lawyer. I like, just let it go. It's not

639
00:41:31,880 --> 00:41:35,840
Speaker 1: going to happen. And you know, I had pity for

640
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:38,600
Speaker 1: her at this point. You know, she's suffering and dying,

641
00:41:38,680 --> 00:41:40,600
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to make it worse for her,

642
00:41:40,640 --> 00:41:42,560
Speaker 1: so you know, of course I'm not going to push that.

643
00:41:43,960 --> 00:41:48,719
Speaker 1: And then came the realization that she had remembered me

644
00:41:48,800 --> 00:41:53,759
Speaker 1: in her will and that my aunt and I had

645
00:41:54,040 --> 00:41:58,919
Speaker 1: full custody of all her belongings, her entire apartment, which

646
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:03,960
Speaker 1: was filled with beautiful antiques and art paintings and silver.

647
00:42:04,239 --> 00:42:08,479
Speaker 1: And a few months later, my husband and I were

648
00:42:08,560 --> 00:42:12,480
Speaker 1: in we were visiting my dad, and I got a

649
00:42:12,480 --> 00:42:16,799
Speaker 1: call from the attorney that he had made arrangements with

650
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:19,920
Speaker 1: the superintendent of the building to let me into the apartment.

651
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:24,720
Speaker 1: Could we be there in six hours? I was like, okay,

652
00:42:24,880 --> 00:42:28,839
Speaker 1: we'll be there, and we were actually getting ready to

653
00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:31,560
Speaker 1: return to Nashville, so we just packed up our stuff

654
00:42:31,560 --> 00:42:35,840
Speaker 1: a little early and we drove into Manhattan and parked

655
00:42:35,880 --> 00:42:38,319
Speaker 1: across the street from her building, and we went in

656
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:44,840
Speaker 1: and it was it was like walking into an Egyptian tomb.

657
00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:49,160
Speaker 1: I would imagine where you feel like the world has stopped,

658
00:42:50,320 --> 00:42:55,799
Speaker 1: the world from a different time is preserved. And that

659
00:42:55,960 --> 00:43:00,279
Speaker 1: was just me and with my life experience feeling that.

660
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:03,240
Speaker 1: I mean, it was just an apartment sold with stuff.

661
00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:05,080
Speaker 3: An apartment you'd never been in it before.

662
00:43:05,480 --> 00:43:09,280
Speaker 1: I had never been in this apartment. But there were stings. Oh,

663
00:43:09,320 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 1: there were things that I remembered, and those were the

664
00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:16,560
Speaker 1: things that I looked for and wanted. A certain cabinet

665
00:43:17,200 --> 00:43:21,160
Speaker 1: that our telephone sat on, a tiny little table that

666
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:23,920
Speaker 1: sat in front of the sofa when I was growing up,

667
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:26,839
Speaker 1: and my dad used to turn that table upside down

668
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:29,600
Speaker 1: and I'd get inside it and he'd swing me around.

669
00:43:30,080 --> 00:43:34,760
Speaker 1: I wanted the things for my childhood, and I looked

670
00:43:34,920 --> 00:43:39,000
Speaker 1: for the sculptures. When I was young, my mom went

671
00:43:39,120 --> 00:43:43,880
Speaker 1: and had her bust made by a very good artist,

672
00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:50,319
Speaker 1: a sculptor, and it sat in our living room, the

673
00:43:50,360 --> 00:43:53,440
Speaker 1: head of my mother with these hollowed out eyeballs. It

674
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:57,520
Speaker 1: was very beautiful, bronze, very it was life sized. And

675
00:43:57,560 --> 00:44:01,279
Speaker 1: I remember when I was a child, she said, Oh,

676
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:04,640
Speaker 1: the sculptor would like to do your sculpture too, and

677
00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:07,440
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I don't know about that, and she

678
00:44:07,560 --> 00:44:11,240
Speaker 1: talked me into it, and for a couple of months

679
00:44:12,080 --> 00:44:16,480
Speaker 1: I had to go down to this creepy, cold, filthy

680
00:44:16,880 --> 00:44:20,560
Speaker 1: artists studio in the West twenties somewhere before that was cool,

681
00:44:21,760 --> 00:44:24,600
Speaker 1: and climb up these filthy stairs and put on a

682
00:44:24,680 --> 00:44:27,480
Speaker 1: leotard and stand in front of this sculptor. I mean,

683
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:31,480
Speaker 1: she was with me, but it was cold and uncomfortable,

684
00:44:31,520 --> 00:44:33,560
Speaker 1: and I didn't understand why we were doing this. And

685
00:44:33,600 --> 00:44:36,719
Speaker 1: she sort of had me in similar pose to the

686
00:44:37,440 --> 00:44:39,840
Speaker 1: little ballerina at the Met and so I had my

687
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:42,120
Speaker 1: arms crossed, but I did not look anything like the

688
00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:44,600
Speaker 1: little ballerina at the Met, let me tell you. And

689
00:44:45,160 --> 00:44:48,840
Speaker 1: it was maybe three feet high when it was finished,

690
00:44:48,840 --> 00:44:50,960
Speaker 1: and she had it cast in bronze and put it

691
00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: on the bookshelf next to her. So we were there together,

692
00:44:55,360 --> 00:44:59,040
Speaker 1: cast in bronze, and those were there long after she

693
00:44:59,200 --> 00:45:02,440
Speaker 1: disowned me. I remember relatives seeing, Yeah, we went to

694
00:45:02,480 --> 00:45:05,920
Speaker 1: the apartment, and that sculpture of you is still there.

695
00:45:06,040 --> 00:45:08,839
Speaker 1: And so I went into her apartment after she died,

696
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:11,000
Speaker 1: and I thought maybe I would find those things, and

697
00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:13,120
Speaker 1: they weren't there. And all I can imagine is they

698
00:45:13,160 --> 00:45:16,799
Speaker 1: wound up at goodwill, and I hope wherever has them

699
00:45:17,000 --> 00:45:19,440
Speaker 1: enjoys them. Or if they were melted.

700
00:45:19,040 --> 00:45:21,439
Speaker 3: Down, maybe they were turned into something good, or maybe

701
00:45:21,440 --> 00:45:22,279
Speaker 3: they were separated.

702
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:27,719
Speaker 1: I actually think that the bust she returned to the sculptor,

703
00:45:27,880 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 1: and I saw some paperwork about that she turned the

704
00:45:30,600 --> 00:45:32,600
Speaker 1: bust to the sculpture, But I don't know what happened

705
00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:33,360
Speaker 1: to my sculpture.

706
00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:35,440
Speaker 3: Metaphors abound.

707
00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:37,719
Speaker 1: Metaphor is about absolutely.

708
00:45:40,560 --> 00:45:43,799
Speaker 3: Instead of her mom's sculptures, what Wit does end up

709
00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:48,040
Speaker 3: with are her mom's journals, of which there are many.

710
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:50,920
Speaker 3: She grabs all the notebooks and papers she can find,

711
00:45:51,440 --> 00:45:55,080
Speaker 3: hoping that something must be recorded somewhere that it would

712
00:45:55,120 --> 00:45:59,040
Speaker 3: explain in her mom's eyes, what happened between the two

713
00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:03,840
Speaker 3: of them, something that is perhaps introspective, self aware, some

714
00:46:04,040 --> 00:46:07,320
Speaker 3: snippet that perhaps can provide answers and closure.

715
00:46:09,040 --> 00:46:12,040
Speaker 1: When I got home with all her writing, I remember

716
00:46:12,080 --> 00:46:15,279
Speaker 1: sitting in my room that I often write in and

717
00:46:16,239 --> 00:46:19,000
Speaker 1: just looking around, thinking, there's got to be something in there.

718
00:46:19,160 --> 00:46:24,320
Speaker 1: This got to be the reason. And I started writing

719
00:46:25,239 --> 00:46:29,319
Speaker 1: my own accounts of what had happened and staring at

720
00:46:29,360 --> 00:46:35,200
Speaker 1: these journals, and I suddenly realized one day that in

721
00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:40,640
Speaker 1: her travel journals they were dated, and I had my

722
00:46:40,840 --> 00:46:44,000
Speaker 1: journals that were dated, and I thought, what if I

723
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:50,319
Speaker 1: compare my journals with her journals on specific days, then

724
00:46:50,480 --> 00:46:54,120
Speaker 1: I could answer this question that I'd asked myself so

725
00:46:54,239 --> 00:46:57,839
Speaker 1: many times, and that question was I wonder what she's

726
00:46:57,880 --> 00:47:03,120
Speaker 1: doing right now? And it worked. I was able to

727
00:47:03,320 --> 00:47:09,719
Speaker 1: match up my wife with hers on specific dates. And

728
00:47:10,040 --> 00:47:12,560
Speaker 1: I looked at my journal for April twenty second, nineteen

729
00:47:12,600 --> 00:47:15,880
Speaker 1: eighty six, which was when my son was born, and

730
00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:17,959
Speaker 1: I was in labor in my house at ann Arbor

731
00:47:18,400 --> 00:47:20,960
Speaker 1: and giving birth and all that that entailed, and I

732
00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:23,520
Speaker 1: just I had in kinded this hour by hour account

733
00:47:23,560 --> 00:47:27,120
Speaker 1: of what had happened. And I looked in her travel journals,

734
00:47:27,160 --> 00:47:31,400
Speaker 1: and she was in Kenya at the time at a safari,

735
00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:36,160
Speaker 1: and I accounted for the time change, and I matched

736
00:47:36,239 --> 00:47:40,480
Speaker 1: up what was happening like when I was roaming the

737
00:47:40,520 --> 00:47:43,480
Speaker 1: house in the middle of the night by myself in

738
00:47:43,640 --> 00:47:46,680
Speaker 1: labor and looking out the window at the snow. And

739
00:47:46,719 --> 00:47:49,160
Speaker 1: then I could look at her journal and know that

740
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:53,440
Speaker 1: what she was doing she was having little teacakes for

741
00:47:53,520 --> 00:47:56,279
Speaker 1: breakfast and then going out on her first safari of

742
00:47:56,320 --> 00:47:59,799
Speaker 1: the day and looking for the tigers and the hyenas

743
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:03,000
Speaker 1: and the lions, and she wanted to see the cubs

744
00:48:03,480 --> 00:48:07,200
Speaker 1: and it was fascinating to see. And you know, I

745
00:48:07,239 --> 00:48:10,759
Speaker 1: don't know that there is any psychic relevance to that,

746
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:15,920
Speaker 1: but boy, it sure felt it was so interesting to me.

747
00:48:15,960 --> 00:48:18,000
Speaker 1: And there were more there were more instances of that,

748
00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:21,759
Speaker 1: and I ended up writing about those connections. I called

749
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:25,080
Speaker 1: them connections, but you know, I think they were just

750
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:29,680
Speaker 1: coincidences that I tried to make into connections.

751
00:48:30,440 --> 00:48:33,759
Speaker 3: So one connection that you do make is there's a

752
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:34,520
Speaker 3: letter from her.

753
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:39,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, So my mother's belongings were brought to a storage

754
00:48:39,200 --> 00:48:45,160
Speaker 1: facility in Alabama, and my cousin, while going through a

755
00:48:45,200 --> 00:48:52,040
Speaker 1: desk drawer, found a letter actually more like notes for

756
00:48:52,120 --> 00:48:57,160
Speaker 1: a letter to me, and their dated November of nineteen eighty,

757
00:48:57,640 --> 00:49:02,719
Speaker 1: so just a short pit after the separation, and my

758
00:49:03,120 --> 00:49:07,920
Speaker 1: cousin made a PBF of the document and emailed it

759
00:49:07,960 --> 00:49:11,279
Speaker 1: to me, and in the email, she said, cause this

760
00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:13,400
Speaker 1: is going to be painful, and I'm so sorry, and

761
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:16,520
Speaker 1: I knew that this was going to be bad. And

762
00:49:18,120 --> 00:49:21,799
Speaker 1: in this document, which is born and tattered, and it's

763
00:49:21,880 --> 00:49:27,439
Speaker 1: really just notes scribbled and also typewritten notes, but she's

764
00:49:27,480 --> 00:49:33,520
Speaker 1: trying to explain what happened, And there's a lot, but

765
00:49:33,800 --> 00:49:39,200
Speaker 1: the part that I found really really interesting is this,

766
00:49:39,680 --> 00:49:42,800
Speaker 1: and I'll just quote a little bit of it. She said,

767
00:49:44,280 --> 00:49:48,040
Speaker 1: your recent choices have disappointed me and distressed me acutely.

768
00:49:48,480 --> 00:49:52,080
Speaker 1: But that's none of my business. But that's only one

769
00:49:52,200 --> 00:49:57,200
Speaker 1: level of my problem. The outer crust. My deeper problems

770
00:49:57,239 --> 00:50:00,480
Speaker 1: have to do with, if you will, a psychological wark,

771
00:50:00,880 --> 00:50:04,840
Speaker 1: the origins of which are vague, buried under nearly fifty

772
00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:10,880
Speaker 1: years of fears, denials, confusions, ignorance regarding pregnancy and birth,

773
00:50:11,440 --> 00:50:14,680
Speaker 1: and the bottom line adds up to a response of

774
00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:21,759
Speaker 1: passionate hysterical revulsion since the time of my own pregnancy

775
00:50:22,080 --> 00:50:24,400
Speaker 1: of what yours is turning out to be a replay

776
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:29,360
Speaker 1: emotion wise, I've obviously known something was wrong. Perhaps unconsciously

777
00:50:30,040 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 1: I believed and hoped you would make other sets of

778
00:50:32,719 --> 00:50:35,120
Speaker 1: choices so that I'd not have to deal with it.

779
00:50:36,360 --> 00:50:40,760
Speaker 1: The clincher, I now weighed into the ever deeper, darker

780
00:50:41,440 --> 00:50:44,520
Speaker 1: Maybe I never loved you. All My life with you

781
00:50:44,600 --> 00:50:48,040
Speaker 1: as a mother was a performance designed to atone for

782
00:50:48,200 --> 00:50:52,839
Speaker 1: never having wanted you, an attempt to make good at

783
00:50:52,880 --> 00:50:58,680
Speaker 1: the same time, a desperate attempt to make you so informed, aware, sophisticated.

784
00:50:58,719 --> 00:51:02,000
Speaker 1: If you will, you should never face the nine months

785
00:51:02,040 --> 00:51:05,400
Speaker 1: of sheer hell, my ignorance and fear brought me to

786
00:51:05,480 --> 00:51:07,000
Speaker 1: make you different from me.

787
00:51:08,840 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 3: There's so many layers to that, yeah, so many, you know.

788
00:51:13,560 --> 00:51:16,440
Speaker 3: And one thing that strikes me is that you were

789
00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:19,800
Speaker 3: different from her. Earlier in our conversation when you quoted

790
00:51:19,840 --> 00:51:21,520
Speaker 3: her as saying something like, you know, now you're going

791
00:51:21,560 --> 00:51:23,839
Speaker 3: to be barefoot and pregnant in Cape cod the thought

792
00:51:23,880 --> 00:51:26,680
Speaker 3: that went through my mind was and what's wrong with that?

793
00:51:27,440 --> 00:51:30,560
Speaker 3: Of course right? But for her, for her, it was

794
00:51:30,600 --> 00:51:36,400
Speaker 3: a nightmare. But for you, you weren't her. You weren't her.

795
00:51:37,040 --> 00:51:39,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we had to separate at some point.

796
00:51:39,640 --> 00:51:42,839
Speaker 1: I mean, every therapist I ever have spoken to it said,

797
00:51:43,080 --> 00:51:46,839
Speaker 1: you know, you were incredibly enmeshed with this woman, and

798
00:51:47,520 --> 00:51:50,640
Speaker 1: you knew that in some way that this gave you

799
00:51:50,680 --> 00:51:53,319
Speaker 1: the perfect out. You had to separate so that you

800
00:51:53,360 --> 00:51:55,600
Speaker 1: could be a mom and live the life you were

801
00:51:55,640 --> 00:51:58,080
Speaker 1: intended to live, the life that you wanted to live.

802
00:51:58,239 --> 00:52:01,720
Speaker 1: And so at the end of it, she basically just says,

803
00:52:02,800 --> 00:52:07,080
Speaker 1: I can do you no good except by absenting myself

804
00:52:07,239 --> 00:52:09,879
Speaker 1: from you, which is what she did. And she meant it.

805
00:52:14,719 --> 00:52:18,080
Speaker 3: Witt learns that there is actually a clinical term from

806
00:52:18,160 --> 00:52:22,760
Speaker 3: what her mother suffered from, one that shaped their entire relationship,

807
00:52:23,239 --> 00:52:29,520
Speaker 3: totophobia of fear and revulsion revolving around pregnancy. In her journals,

808
00:52:29,880 --> 00:52:34,120
Speaker 3: WIT's mom writes extensively about her own childhood experience of

809
00:52:34,200 --> 00:52:39,440
Speaker 3: watching her mother give birth and how it terrified her heartbreakingly.

810
00:52:39,960 --> 00:52:43,400
Speaker 3: Wit also discovers all of the letters she wrote to

811
00:52:43,440 --> 00:52:47,200
Speaker 3: her mother over the years, all those letters filled with

812
00:52:47,320 --> 00:52:51,560
Speaker 3: hopeful updates on her life. They were tied together in

813
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:53,560
Speaker 3: a bundle, unopened.

814
00:52:56,360 --> 00:52:58,960
Speaker 1: I figured she would have thrown them out, so I

815
00:52:59,040 --> 00:53:01,919
Speaker 1: thought it was interesting she saved them in a way

816
00:53:02,000 --> 00:53:04,520
Speaker 1: that was a message like I'm just going to save

817
00:53:04,560 --> 00:53:06,319
Speaker 1: these so that when I die, you will know that

818
00:53:06,400 --> 00:53:09,440
Speaker 1: I never even opened your letters. So I thought that

819
00:53:09,600 --> 00:53:15,719
Speaker 1: was that's communication. There's some sort of communication going on there.

820
00:53:15,760 --> 00:53:16,520
Speaker 3: It surely is.

821
00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:21,200
Speaker 1: But it's been fascinating to open them. I could only

822
00:53:21,239 --> 00:53:22,840
Speaker 1: do one or two at a time because it was

823
00:53:22,920 --> 00:53:28,560
Speaker 1: just too much. It's just overwhelming to hear my own

824
00:53:28,640 --> 00:53:33,560
Speaker 1: voice change as I grew older, my written voice. You know.

825
00:53:33,600 --> 00:53:36,719
Speaker 1: She's just so young and so positive, and we're going

826
00:53:36,760 --> 00:53:37,319
Speaker 1: to get through this.

827
00:53:37,440 --> 00:53:39,880
Speaker 4: And oh, it's going to be fine, and oh I

828
00:53:39,920 --> 00:53:43,000
Speaker 4: went and went to the library today, and I wish

829
00:53:43,040 --> 00:53:45,200
Speaker 4: you would respond, but it's okay if you don't, because

830
00:53:45,239 --> 00:53:48,520
Speaker 4: I'm still you know, just that voice compared to the

831
00:53:48,560 --> 00:53:51,440
Speaker 4: one in later years, where in the nineties it's like,

832
00:53:52,440 --> 00:53:55,080
Speaker 4: where are your manners? I sent you a letter, why

833
00:53:55,080 --> 00:53:58,880
Speaker 4: don't you respond? I became a little bit more hard edged.

834
00:54:03,440 --> 00:54:07,520
Speaker 3: Alongside all of these discoveries, Wit makes another one, but

835
00:54:07,640 --> 00:54:10,520
Speaker 3: this time it isn't a secret she discovers or a

836
00:54:10,560 --> 00:54:15,719
Speaker 3: stack of papers. It's a hobby, possibly the most poetic

837
00:54:15,760 --> 00:54:20,600
Speaker 3: hobby you could ever imagine. Wit has taken up metal detecting.

838
00:54:21,520 --> 00:54:24,440
Speaker 3: She finds a metal detector on Craigslist for two hundred

839
00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:26,960
Speaker 3: and fifty dollars and takes the plunge.

840
00:54:29,960 --> 00:54:32,759
Speaker 1: It changed my life. Nashville is a great place to

841
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:36,880
Speaker 1: metal detect There have been people here for centuries and centuries,

842
00:54:36,920 --> 00:54:41,040
Speaker 1: and I've dug Indian artifacts, native artifacts in my garden.

843
00:54:41,880 --> 00:54:45,560
Speaker 1: This is a place where people have lived since before time.

844
00:54:48,160 --> 00:54:52,080
Speaker 1: And so I started metal detecting, and it provided this

845
00:54:52,400 --> 00:54:55,800
Speaker 1: enormous amount of relief for me. Always been a little

846
00:54:55,840 --> 00:55:02,680
Speaker 1: tightly wound, a little anxious, and it is the most meditative,

847
00:55:03,640 --> 00:55:08,360
Speaker 1: meaningful hobby, and anyone who does it knows. I joined

848
00:55:08,360 --> 00:55:11,240
Speaker 1: a club. I joined the Middle Tennessee Metal Detecting Club,

849
00:55:11,280 --> 00:55:13,880
Speaker 1: and I started in the backyard and dug up Civil

850
00:55:13,920 --> 00:55:19,759
Speaker 1: War bullets and musketballs, and I've dug Spanish reals from

851
00:55:19,760 --> 00:55:23,120
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds right in my neighborhood. And yeah, there's

852
00:55:23,239 --> 00:55:26,359
Speaker 1: meaning to it. When you're looking in the dirt and

853
00:55:26,400 --> 00:55:30,359
Speaker 1: it's chaos in the dirt. It's roots and rocks and

854
00:55:30,920 --> 00:55:34,000
Speaker 1: mud and bits of grass, and then all of a sudden,

855
00:55:34,280 --> 00:55:37,880
Speaker 1: you see something shiny and you pull it out and

856
00:55:37,920 --> 00:55:42,600
Speaker 1: it's a Liberty dime from nineteen twenty two, and it's

857
00:55:42,640 --> 00:55:44,640
Speaker 1: as shiny as it was when it fell out of

858
00:55:44,680 --> 00:55:48,120
Speaker 1: someone's pocket and you hold it in your hand and

859
00:55:48,120 --> 00:55:50,080
Speaker 1: you think about the person who dropped it, and there's

860
00:55:50,120 --> 00:55:53,120
Speaker 1: this connection to the past. And not everybody has that,

861
00:55:53,160 --> 00:55:55,719
Speaker 1: but people who metal detect have that. They get this

862
00:55:55,880 --> 00:55:59,360
Speaker 1: history rush. You want to connect with people from the past.

863
00:55:59,360 --> 00:56:03,160
Speaker 1: And I think that's probably one reason this thing with

864
00:56:03,239 --> 00:56:08,000
Speaker 1: my mom has been so painful, because I feel connected

865
00:56:08,040 --> 00:56:10,880
Speaker 1: to her. I felt connected to her even when she

866
00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:15,759
Speaker 1: did terrible things to me, Even remembering the things she

867
00:56:15,840 --> 00:56:19,000
Speaker 1: did when I was a child that were really not good.

868
00:56:20,360 --> 00:56:23,080
Speaker 1: I felt connected to her and I told her that,

869
00:56:23,200 --> 00:56:26,239
Speaker 1: I said, Mom, I feel like we're connected by a

870
00:56:26,280 --> 00:56:29,360
Speaker 1: silver band, and no matter where we are, we have

871
00:56:29,440 --> 00:56:33,640
Speaker 1: a connection with a silver band. She appreciated that. She

872
00:56:33,800 --> 00:56:36,680
Speaker 1: liked that, she liked to know that I loved her.

873
00:56:37,719 --> 00:56:40,560
Speaker 1: But you know, it didn't last. And then she went

874
00:56:40,600 --> 00:56:45,280
Speaker 1: off and had her freedom and saw the world. And

875
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:48,600
Speaker 1: in all the writings, in all the journals, there was

876
00:56:48,640 --> 00:56:51,120
Speaker 1: only one place in all of that writing where she

877
00:56:51,200 --> 00:56:55,520
Speaker 1: mentioned me. And it was the saddest thing I've ever seen.

878
00:56:56,360 --> 00:56:59,040
Speaker 1: And she had written it in the middle of the

879
00:56:59,120 --> 00:57:03,080
Speaker 1: night after having the dream, and she just talked about

880
00:57:03,080 --> 00:57:06,400
Speaker 1: me being a baby. It's too sad to even say that.

881
00:57:06,480 --> 00:57:09,920
Speaker 1: It was very short, just a couple of lines, and

882
00:57:09,960 --> 00:57:14,000
Speaker 1: it showed her ability to self reflect and to look

883
00:57:14,040 --> 00:57:18,280
Speaker 1: at herself and to acknowledge that what had happened was

884
00:57:18,360 --> 00:57:23,760
Speaker 1: really sad. And so you know, I found that, and

885
00:57:23,880 --> 00:57:26,920
Speaker 1: it happened in a hotel in Tokyo, and I just

886
00:57:27,280 --> 00:57:29,080
Speaker 1: I don't really know the meaning of it. I just

887
00:57:29,160 --> 00:57:32,880
Speaker 1: know that she did dream about me. So there was

888
00:57:32,920 --> 00:57:38,040
Speaker 1: that where this lives inside me. Now I will tell

889
00:57:38,080 --> 00:57:41,120
Speaker 1: you that a long time ago, when I was in

890
00:57:41,160 --> 00:57:44,360
Speaker 1: the throes of it and she was still alive, and

891
00:57:44,400 --> 00:57:47,840
Speaker 1: I thought about her a lot, and so often I

892
00:57:47,880 --> 00:57:50,439
Speaker 1: would think, Oh, she woke up today and she's still

893
00:57:50,480 --> 00:57:53,960
Speaker 1: not calling me. Even the thousands and thousands of days later,

894
00:57:54,080 --> 00:57:57,240
Speaker 1: I'd still think that, and it would hurt. She made

895
00:57:57,280 --> 00:58:02,200
Speaker 1: the decision every day to let this happened. And I

896
00:58:02,240 --> 00:58:04,880
Speaker 1: remember sitting with a girlfriend of mine in nan Arbor

897
00:58:05,200 --> 00:58:07,720
Speaker 1: and I was crying and remembering this because it's still hurt,

898
00:58:07,720 --> 00:58:10,800
Speaker 1: and I would still cry, and I said, how am

899
00:58:10,840 --> 00:58:13,600
Speaker 1: I going to feel when she dies? If we haven't

900
00:58:13,600 --> 00:58:17,200
Speaker 1: worked this out? How am I going to feel? And

901
00:58:17,280 --> 00:58:21,360
Speaker 1: my friend looked at me and she said, relieved. You're

902
00:58:21,400 --> 00:58:25,439
Speaker 1: going to feel. Relieved had never occurred to me, And

903
00:58:26,120 --> 00:58:40,080
Speaker 1: that's how I feel. It's over. You're so sweet. I'm

904
00:58:40,120 --> 00:58:43,880
Speaker 1: going to take you home with me. I dug it up.

905
00:58:44,760 --> 00:58:45,680
Speaker 1: I dug it.

906
00:58:45,680 --> 00:58:50,520
Speaker 2: Up from my baby buddy one.

907
00:58:51,200 --> 00:58:56,720
Speaker 1: Now he says, go wash your hands.

908
00:58:58,560 --> 00:59:02,040
Speaker 3: But what about Only Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

909
00:59:02,920 --> 00:59:06,000
Speaker 3: Molly's Acre is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is

910
00:59:06,000 --> 00:59:09,760
Speaker 3: the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd

911
00:59:09,800 --> 00:59:12,240
Speaker 3: like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your

912
00:59:12,280 --> 00:59:15,680
Speaker 3: story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is

913
00:59:15,760 --> 00:59:19,919
Speaker 3: one eight eight eight Secret zero. That's the number zero.

914
00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:24,120
Speaker 3: You can also find me on Instagram at Danny Rider.

915
00:59:24,840 --> 00:59:26,840
Speaker 3: And if you'd like to know more about the story

916
00:59:26,840 --> 00:59:31,160
Speaker 3: that inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance.

917
00:59:39,040 --> 00:59:44,080
Speaker 2: Under the Sand, Under the Sand, Bad Goal, Band.

918
00:59:46,680 --> 00:59:47,000
Speaker 4: Big.

919
00:59:54,120 --> 00:59:58,360
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

920
00:59:58,440 --> 01:00:00,920
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite IT shows.