Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: I never thought I would tell this story. For years,
Speaker 2: I deflected and demurred when people asked me questions about
Speaker 2: where I grew up and what my parents did. Guarding
Speaker 2: secrets was so ingrained in me that I could not
Speaker 2: imagine a world where I actually discussed them, let alone
Speaker 2: put them down on paper. But as my comics have
Speaker 2: become more personal, there has been a small and persistent
Speaker 2: voice growing within me that has insisted, this is my life,
Speaker 2: my story to tell. But these stories and secrets also
Speaker 2: belong to all the other people who share my history,
Speaker 2: some of whom have devoted their lives to protecting such secrets.
Speaker 2: At the early stages of this project, I would tie
Speaker 2: myself up in knots over what to say and how
Speaker 2: to say it. Would my parents approve what I embarrass
Speaker 2: my family? Would I hurt someone's feelings? But sometimes the
Speaker 2: trick to writing is giving up the pretense of pleasing
Speaker 2: anyone at all.
Speaker 3: So I began to right.
Speaker 1: That's Sophia Glock, a cartoonist who lives in Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: and author of the recent graphic memoir Passport. Sophia's is
Speaker 1: a story of a childhood spent moving around a lot
Speaker 1: to some exotic, dangerous places. And the reason for all
Speaker 1: those moves, well, that, of course is the family secret.
Speaker 1: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets
Speaker 1: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 2: The landscape in my childhood was pretty evert changing, but
Speaker 2: the majority of it was tropical to subtropical.
Speaker 3: I lived in very kind of.
Speaker 2: Verdant, overgrown type of places.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of flowers.
Speaker 2: The landscape in my childhood were the kind of places
Speaker 2: where fruit was falling off the trees almost year round.
Speaker 1: And there were any number of these different tropical and
Speaker 1: subtropical places in your childhood.
Speaker 2: Yes, the majority of the places I lived in would
Speaker 2: have a rainy season and a less rainy season, not
Speaker 2: all of them.
Speaker 3: But the countries I lived.
Speaker 2: In as a child were warm, and I craved like winter.
Speaker 2: I wanted four seasons. You know, A lot of the
Speaker 2: literature I read as a kid was based more sort
Speaker 2: of like northern climates, so I definitely thought I was
Speaker 2: missing out on snowy adventures. But of course now I
Speaker 2: realized that I was living in like really gorgeous weather
Speaker 2: year round.
Speaker 3: I should not have been sad about it. I was
Speaker 3: actually born in the States.
Speaker 2: I am the only one of my siblings who was
Speaker 2: born stateside, but.
Speaker 3: I have no memory of it, and my very early
Speaker 3: years were spent in Europe.
Speaker 1: Actually, if you, as a child, if somebody had said
Speaker 1: to you, where do you consider home is, what would
Speaker 1: you have said?
Speaker 3: I would have said the USA.
Speaker 2: I might have, you know, claimed the city of my birth,
Speaker 2: which is New York City, But I, as I like
Speaker 2: to say, born, not raised. It wasn't until I got
Speaker 2: older that I comprehended the United States in all of
Speaker 2: its sort of regional glory. It was just the States,
Speaker 2: good roads, great malls, and possibly snow. In early childhood,
Speaker 2: I was very deeply in love with my mom, and
Speaker 2: I think that we all were, including my dad. My
Speaker 2: father was more of a sort of like intimidating, frustrating
Speaker 2: presence in my life. I think that I tim I
Speaker 2: was a very sort of headstrong kid, and I resented
Speaker 2: him being in charge, if.
Speaker 3: That makes sense.
Speaker 2: But sort of the central fact my parents, like the
Speaker 2: first and foremost thing about my parents in our lives
Speaker 2: was that they were in love with each other and
Speaker 2: that nothing was better than the experience.
Speaker 3: They were having been married.
Speaker 2: They were very much not just genuinely attached to each other,
Speaker 2: they were also invested in their own love story. And
Speaker 2: that's kind of how I always imagine them as a
Speaker 2: unified sort of pair.
Speaker 1: What did you know about their love story?
Speaker 3: Very little, because they've met at work, and they didn't
Speaker 3: talk to us about work. That was very grapotent.
Speaker 2: They were very sensitive to the fact that, like, you know,
Speaker 2: I guess they didn't want us to eavor to say
Speaker 2: anything even in confidence, that we might then repeat to
Speaker 2: the wrong person or speak about casually in public. They
Speaker 2: even to people. You know, we socialized with other Americans,
Speaker 2: but not all Americans that we socialized with overseas were
Speaker 2: doing what my parents were doing, So, you know, I
Speaker 2: kind of just thought like any American overseas was kind
Speaker 2: of doing the same sort of work, but I didn't
Speaker 2: know what that work was. I remember asking my mom
Speaker 2: once where she met my father, and she said in
Speaker 2: a parking lot, And we were literally walking in a
Speaker 2: parking lot when I'd asked her, and I think that's
Speaker 2: why she said that. So I didn't have details about
Speaker 2: their love story. Until much later in life, I was
Speaker 2: less aware of my mother's work. They kind of hid
Speaker 2: that from me, and I'm not even really sure why.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that she made more sacrifices in
Speaker 2: her career. My father's career sort of took the center stage,
Speaker 2: and we were going around on his assignments, and she
Speaker 2: had five children altogether, so there was a lot of
Speaker 2: childcare to contend with. So it wasn't really until later
Speaker 2: that I began to appreciate that she was working as well.
Speaker 3: I think she also once told me.
Speaker 2: That when I kind of like confronted her and asked
Speaker 2: her why she hadn't let me know where she was
Speaker 2: going for huge chunks of time, she said she didn't
Speaker 2: want to hurt my feelings. And I don't know if
Speaker 2: that's true or not, if she was just being like
Speaker 2: very circumspect, or if she really thought that her child
Speaker 2: would be like hurt if they realized that their mother
Speaker 2: had a job. My parents also did a really good
Speaker 2: job of selling us this lifestyle as totally normal, you know,
Speaker 2: inasmuch as we were ever in danger or ever had
Speaker 2: to be on the lookout for danger. When I was
Speaker 2: a small child, I took it for granted that everybody
Speaker 2: kind of like looks over their shoulder, So I never
Speaker 2: felt scared. It was either my own disposition or they
Speaker 2: did a really good job of sort of protecting me
Speaker 2: from the idea that I should be scared.
Speaker 3: It was more that we should always be aware.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that when we're children, we just
Speaker 1: assumed that whatever our lives are are just quote unquote normal,
Speaker 1: or everybody's life is like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until I was eight years old and I
Speaker 2: asked my friend where she was born and she said here.
Speaker 3: And I was like, no, what country were you born in?
Speaker 2: And she said here in, not just this country, this town,
Speaker 2: like around the corner, you know. And I was like, wait,
Speaker 2: I thought everybody in the world was just born in
Speaker 2: a different country.
Speaker 3: And moved constantly.
Speaker 2: And then that's when I fully appreciated that our lifestyle
Speaker 2: was special.
Speaker 1: Nine apartments, eight schools, seven uniforms, six countries, five quote
Speaker 1: unquote best friends, and the list goes on. This is
Speaker 1: the kind of motion and disruption that defines Sophia's childhood,
Speaker 1: picking up, then settling down, then picking up again, going
Speaker 1: to a new school, making new friends, then leaving them.
Speaker 1: Soon thereafter. How's a child supposed to act during all
Speaker 1: this change? What's she supposed to say? According to her parents,
Speaker 1: not much. She's told not to volunteer too much information
Speaker 1: about herself. At one point, her mom tells her to
Speaker 1: stop broadcasting to strangers that they're American.
Speaker 2: I was a friendly kid, and it wasn't in step
Speaker 2: with my parents' objectives.
Speaker 3: To be too obvious.
Speaker 2: They modeled and often instructed me on how to draw
Speaker 2: people out, and sometimes that was by like acting guylus
Speaker 2: and you know, seemingly open. But we were Americans. There
Speaker 2: was no hiding that we looked like Americans. We sounded
Speaker 2: like Americans. When I was five year olds around that age,
Speaker 2: I was approached constantly on the street by men who
Speaker 2: wanted to talk to me about being an American. And
Speaker 2: I don't know if those were casual people. I don't
Speaker 2: know if those were people with bad motives. But I
Speaker 2: tended to answer honestly, and I had to be instructed
Speaker 2: out of that habit as a pretty small kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a word that you were taught about that,
Speaker 1: which is deflect.
Speaker 3: Yes, you ask them questions, right, I.
Speaker 1: Was about to say, it's an interesting social skill. To
Speaker 1: learn as a kid.
Speaker 2: My dad gave me this piece of advice and it
Speaker 2: was very free. And you know, this came to me
Speaker 2: in many ways. I watched my parents do it. I
Speaker 2: was often instructed specifically to do it. My mother always
Speaker 2: wanted to know what all my friends' fathers did, why
Speaker 2: they were there, why was ex child's family And she
Speaker 2: might be coming from a country in southeag Asia, what
Speaker 2: was she doing in this particular country in Europe? You know,
Speaker 2: and usuallybe I'm sure, I doubt I passed anything useful
Speaker 2: on to my mother, you know. Oh, he's an engineer,
Speaker 2: you know, But that was her remo, that was the
Speaker 2: machine that made her work. She was literally collecting information,
Speaker 2: even if it felt, you know, haphazard, even if it
Speaker 2: was about like her children's classmates, and both by like
Speaker 2: sort of modeling it and often just instructing it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Told me that if you're uncomfortable, if somebody's asking you
Speaker 2: too many questions, you can always turn those questions.
Speaker 3: Back around on them and begin the.
Speaker 2: Process of redirecting it to them. Because one, people love
Speaker 2: talking about themselves, and two they're not paying too much attention.
Speaker 2: People probably aren't going to notice that you deflect. And
Speaker 2: it was one of the most freeing.
Speaker 3: Things that my father ever told me was that people aren't.
Speaker 2: Usually paying too much attention, which is of course ironic
Speaker 2: because they were paying attention to everything, but it is wonderful,
Speaker 2: Like we're all pretty, you know, narcissistic and as a
Speaker 2: teenager when you're kind of want to crawl out of
Speaker 2: your own skin and you're for self conscious and you
Speaker 2: feel like the ugliest, strangest, weirdest creature that has ever
Speaker 2: dared to exist, to truly internalize the idea that people
Speaker 2: aren't caring as much as you think was deeply freeing
Speaker 2: and you know, opens you up to a world's possibility.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would imagine too, Because you were in a
Speaker 1: situation where you had to make new friends over and
Speaker 1: over again. That must have been a pretty useful tool
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 2: I had all sorts of useful tools. Ask people questions.
Speaker 2: People love being asked questions. I know I do, so
Speaker 2: this is a treat. These were tips my mom gave me.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean, use people's names. People love
Speaker 2: the sound of their own name.
Speaker 3: Yeah, things like that.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, these are people's skills, right, And
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that I was actually even very good
Speaker 2: at it. I had made success moving as stressful moving.
Speaker 2: It's hard, it's hard to start over. But there's again
Speaker 2: something very freeing about knowing, like, oh, is it not
Speaker 2: working out here? Guess what you're going to get another
Speaker 2: go in about a year, and maybe it'll be better
Speaker 2: next time.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Sophia is not alone in her
Speaker 1: deflection training. She's in solidarity with her siblings Christopher and Julia,
Speaker 1: who Sophia calls the perfect one, who are older than
Speaker 1: she is, and Byron and Patrick, who are younger than
Speaker 1: she is. And then there's Michael, the mysterious half brother
Speaker 1: from her dad's first marriage.
Speaker 3: The subject of my father's first marriage was fairly tabboo
Speaker 3: in the house. Nobody ever told me about it.
Speaker 2: It was information that was shared with me by my
Speaker 2: older siblings kind of in secret again when I was
Speaker 2: about eight years old, and nobody ever doubled check to
Speaker 2: make sure I knew.
Speaker 3: It.
Speaker 2: Was just kind of assumed that it had gone through
Speaker 2: the grapevine my younger brothers because I never talked about
Speaker 2: it with them, they didn't find out until they were.
Speaker 3: Teenagers about the existence.
Speaker 2: Of this other brother, and it was one of the
Speaker 2: great preoccupations of my adolescence because when I was around
Speaker 2: twelve years old, I realized that I had a dad,
Speaker 2: and I'd always had a dad, and my dad was
Speaker 2: in my life, and I really took it in that
Speaker 2: my dad hadn't been in my brother's life, and he
Speaker 2: was my brother. You know, he's my half brother, but
Speaker 2: that's my brother. You know, I'm surrounded by these siblings, so.
Speaker 3: I adore we were all really close.
Speaker 2: And there was somebody else out there who's a part
Speaker 2: of me who I didn't know who he was.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's interesting because there's this thread of
Speaker 1: the unspoken or the unseid or what can be said
Speaker 1: that runs throughout your story in a whole variety of ways.
Speaker 1: You know, I was struck by your saying when your
Speaker 1: dad would go to work that he was going out,
Speaker 1: you know, and if you pressed, you know, like where
Speaker 1: you're going, what are you doing, he'd say, to see
Speaker 1: a man about a horse, And that was like his deflection.
Speaker 1: He was practicing what he preached. When Julia the perfect
Speaker 1: One goes off to college, this now makes Sophia the
Speaker 1: newly appointed eldest sibling at home with her two younger brothers.
Speaker 1: Sophia's in high school, a chaotic and dramatic time for
Speaker 1: most of us. I mean, would any of us really
Speaker 1: want to go back? But Sophia's peculiar family life certainly
Speaker 1: doesn't make matters easier. Plus she really misses Julia, her
Speaker 1: north star. One day, a letter from Julia arrives in
Speaker 1: the mail. It isn't addressed to Sophia though, it's for
Speaker 1: her parents, and they don't want Sophia to read it,
Speaker 1: but she does, and in it she reads Julia's confession
Speaker 1: that she's told friend in school what their dad does
Speaker 1: for work. She writes, in abject apology, that she's spilled
Speaker 1: the beans.
Speaker 2: She very rarely wrote me, and I had express permission
Speaker 2: to read all of her letters. So when my mother
Speaker 2: hid this letter from me, I lost my mind. I
Speaker 2: couldn't believe that they were denying me this basic need
Speaker 2: that I had to be in touch with my sister,
Speaker 2: and I felt like I had a write to it.
Speaker 3: So I just waited until the letter wasn't guarded.
Speaker 2: I'd seen that my mother had put it away in
Speaker 2: her purse, and like I said, I felt I had
Speaker 2: the right to know what my sister was talking about,
Speaker 2: and it was all coded. Basically, she told the secret.
Speaker 2: She was so disappointed in herself. She was begging my
Speaker 2: parents for forgiveness. She was clearly alarmed. And what had
Speaker 2: happened was there was a boy at school who found
Speaker 2: out how often she moved and began to say, your
Speaker 2: dad's a spy. Your dad's a spy, and he was
Speaker 2: harassing her at school. And I don't know how long
Speaker 2: she sort of tolerated the harassment from this kid, who
Speaker 2: I'm sure thought he was being incredibly clever, but she
Speaker 2: snapped and kind of more or less confirmed his suspicions
Speaker 2: and then felt compelled to confess to my folks. So
Speaker 2: I find the letter, and he just all clicked into place,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, like that one thing and another.
Speaker 2: It was all just like these little tiny things. It
Speaker 2: was like realizing Santa Claus doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: That's right, the moves, the secrecy, the need to keep
Speaker 1: their nationality under wraps. Sophia's dad is a spy and
Speaker 1: her mom is too.
Speaker 2: You don't necessarily need to find the closet full of toys.
Speaker 2: It's a random comment that your grandmother makes about where
Speaker 2: she bought the headband and your stocking, and you go.
Speaker 3: Wait a second, none of this makes sense. So yeah,
Speaker 3: and I just knew.
Speaker 2: And then I couldn't even tell them that I knew,
Speaker 2: because then I'd have to confess this, you know, this
Speaker 2: sin of going through their stuff.
Speaker 3: So it became this.
Speaker 2: Kind of like double ended lie that I had to balance.
Speaker 2: And the greatest tragedy was that I had to pretend
Speaker 2: to be amazed when they told me.
Speaker 1: That's just fascinating. So that was the moment that you
Speaker 1: put it together for yourself, like all of the little
Speaker 1: pieces added up. So then you're keeping a secret about
Speaker 1: a secret.
Speaker 2: Yes, I couldn't tell my sister that I knew. It's
Speaker 2: easy to speculate about it now, but I might speculate
Speaker 2: that the information on some level also was as well green,
Speaker 2: and that it gave me permission to have a double life,
Speaker 2: for whatever life, to have a secret life, to have
Speaker 2: any sort of amount of secrets. I didn't really feel
Speaker 2: guilty about, you know, pursuing friends or activities or interests
Speaker 2: that weren't lining up with what my parents you know,
Speaker 2: thought was appropriate for me, because clearly they felt fully
Speaker 2: justified to have, you know, a deeply secret.
Speaker 3: Life, and you know that it was official.
Speaker 2: They were doing it out of deep sense of like
Speaker 2: conviction and patriotism.
Speaker 3: But you know, I just felt like, if they can,
Speaker 3: so can I.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so interesting. So it kind of gave you
Speaker 1: carte blanche to have a teenage rebellion and feel no guilt.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: So once I figured out that, you know, and I
Speaker 2: knew it was CII how one, it was really the
Speaker 2: only intelligence organization that I knew of, And this is like,
Speaker 2: this is the way I conceived of it, you know, spy,
Speaker 2: like technically officially and unofficially.
Speaker 3: Cover, you know, uncovert.
Speaker 2: This word spy's like it's a bit of an euphemism,
Speaker 2: you know, for all sorts of intelligence work.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Also even things like the fact that, you know, I
Speaker 2: loved the movie Patriot Games as a kid, and we
Speaker 2: thought that my dad looked like Harrison Ford. We always like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's just like daddy.
Speaker 3: It's just like daddy.
Speaker 2: And my parents were just delighted in that. They would
Speaker 2: laugh too hard.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And I just knew it was agency because it was
Speaker 2: the only acronym that I was actually familiar with at
Speaker 2: the time, and I just happened to be right, and
Speaker 2: then yeah, No, it was strange to keep the fact
Speaker 2: that I knew that they were quote unquote spies from
Speaker 2: them because I'd been.
Speaker 3: Spine on them and the irony wasn't lost on me.
Speaker 2: But it just wasn't worth the risk, you know, I
Speaker 2: knew that if they wanted me to know, they would
Speaker 2: have told me.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: things are also fraught outside the home. There is the
Speaker 1: ever present sense of instability and danger. A massive historic
Speaker 1: hurricane hits where they're living at the time, it's international news.
Speaker 1: People are being evacuated, but not Sophia's family. Her parents
Speaker 1: aren't going to leave. There are city curfews and rationed
Speaker 1: food and all sorts of restrictions, but Sophia's parents stay put.
Speaker 1: And against this backdrop, Sophia is courting danger herself. She's
Speaker 1: in the midst of a teenage rebellion and in a
Speaker 1: third world country in the midst of a crisis. She
Speaker 1: sometimes finds herself in unsafe situations.
Speaker 2: Maybe what I was doing was more risky than the
Speaker 2: average teenage rebellion for a number of reasons. Like I said,
Speaker 2: I was conspicuously American. My parents were pretty convinced that
Speaker 2: we were easy targets for all sorts of things. Kidnappings
Speaker 2: were fairly common in many of.
Speaker 3: The countries I lived in.
Speaker 2: A few years before I started at the school I attended,
Speaker 2: one of the student body had been murdered during his
Speaker 2: kidnapping ordeal, and it was a horrifying shock to the community,
Speaker 2: which was a very sort of privileged, ensconced type of
Speaker 2: community like this was definitely like the elite of the
Speaker 2: country attended the school I ultimately attended in high school,
Speaker 2: you know, in that sense, it was risky. In the
Speaker 2: other sense, I think that my parents used their perceived
Speaker 2: risks of living in a third world country during a
Speaker 2: crisis or not during a crisis, as a way to
Speaker 2: keep me under wraps. I think that being a teenage
Speaker 2: girl was just simply a lot for them to handle.
Speaker 2: The fact that I was a teenage girl rather just
Speaker 2: petrified them. They, like many parents, thought that there was
Speaker 2: something inherent in my girlness that made me vulnerable, and
Speaker 2: perhaps they were right. But you know, there's another side
Speaker 2: to it where you can like actually repress someone. So
Speaker 2: I did do it with very little guilt in the
Speaker 2: sense that I also felt like they put me here,
Speaker 2: like they put me in that country. They took me
Speaker 2: to all of these countries, and then in the end,
Speaker 2: we're literally asking me to stay behind a wall, and
Speaker 2: I definitely.
Speaker 3: Sort of carrying their secret around with me.
Speaker 2: I felt deeply justified in ignoring that advice because you
Speaker 2: gave this.
Speaker 3: To me, You gave me. They literally gave me the world.
Speaker 2: I decided to try my best to experience it as
Speaker 2: much as I could.
Speaker 3: Being a girl, I think was a point against me.
Speaker 2: I just felt like all of these restrictions were deeply arbitrary, so,
Speaker 2: you know, on a day to day basis, I we
Speaker 2: resented them and wanted to do whatever I could to
Speaker 2: trick them.
Speaker 3: Into letting me do what I wanted.
Speaker 2: There was a point in my relationship with my parents
Speaker 2: in high school where I told myself that I was
Speaker 2: only pretending to love them so that they would leave
Speaker 2: me alone, which is a horrible feeling.
Speaker 3: It's horrible to say that out loud.
Speaker 2: Now, and I think it was a defense mechanism on
Speaker 2: my part because I was young and I did want
Speaker 2: to get away, and I was about to go to college,
Speaker 2: and I think that was something I told myself to
Speaker 2: soften the burden. But also, teenagers do desperately, at least I,
Speaker 2: as a teenager, desperately was ready to start my life independently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, and to separate. But I'm thinking too, that
Speaker 1: you were carrying around the knowledge that they had this
Speaker 1: huge secret that they were keeping from you and from
Speaker 1: everybody else, but from you. Did you feel betrayed at
Speaker 1: that time?
Speaker 2: I think it would have been far more poetic if
Speaker 2: I'd been personally aggrieved by the fact that they were
Speaker 2: keeping it from me. But once I figured out what
Speaker 2: it was, I understood.
Speaker 3: It's covert work. It's called being undercover.
Speaker 2: And maybe they'd done a really good job throughout my
Speaker 2: whole life of indoctrinating me to the merits of covert
Speaker 2: work and the necessity of it. But I understood why,
Speaker 2: and whatever sort of personal feelings I had more anger
Speaker 2: that my sister knew before me, like I was more
Speaker 2: jealous of my sister, I think I must have processed
Speaker 2: it by the time they told me.
Speaker 3: So when they did tell.
Speaker 2: Me at this sort of like appropriate age, which I
Speaker 2: believe was fifteen or sixteen years old, not only did
Speaker 2: I have to pretend that, like I was amazed and impressed,
Speaker 2: I'd also processed any sort of like bitterness I might
Speaker 2: have had around it. They told me after breakfast one
Speaker 2: Sunday morning, at the table, my little brothers had gone
Speaker 2: off to play, and they were there was a little
Speaker 2: bit of a ceremony around it. They were like, we
Speaker 2: have something very important to tell you. We believe you're
Speaker 2: old enough, you're mature enough.
Speaker 3: You know. They built it up as this like a
Speaker 3: great privilege of.
Speaker 2: Being grown up enough to keep the secret along with them,
Speaker 2: along with my elder siblings, and you know, I think
Speaker 2: that's something else. Whether I felt it in the moment,
Speaker 2: I definitely felt it as the years went on, that
Speaker 2: to be brought in on a secret after I was
Speaker 2: officially even though I had already known, even though I
Speaker 2: had to like literally pretend and act and hope they
Speaker 2: didn't figure out that I had already figured it out.
Speaker 2: You know, all of a sudden, you're part.
Speaker 3: Of a team.
Speaker 2: And it's actually the problem with secrets is that they
Speaker 2: corrode intimacy. But if you want to build intimacy, the
Speaker 2: quickest way to get there is to share a secret.
Speaker 3: So I felt very close to them.
Speaker 1: Actually I love that. So they tell you and you
Speaker 1: say your spies, and I believe it's your dad says no,
Speaker 1: so intelligence officers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that officially they were not spies.
Speaker 2: I not supposed to characterize it like that.
Speaker 3: And yeah, there's all sorts of official.
Speaker 2: Categories to intelligence work, and there are many different parts
Speaker 2: of it and different.
Speaker 3: Ways that you can like work with it. But yeah,
Speaker 3: that's kind of the way he would have characterized it
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 2: And my father even double checked with me and asked,
Speaker 2: you know, so you're not mad.
Speaker 3: You know a lot of kids apparently get really mad,
Speaker 3: and I genuinely, I genuinely didn't feel that way.
Speaker 1: Well, you had this sort of like intermetso exactly, you
Speaker 1: had a couple of years there, you know, from fourteen
Speaker 1: to sixteen or so, of knowing and of having your
Speaker 1: own secret, which is that you knew.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there might have been some guilt in there too.
Speaker 1: Sophia has a conversation with her father in which she
Speaker 1: asks him, so you lied because you had to write,
Speaker 1: and he responds not exactly by answering, but by telling
Speaker 1: her that their work depends on people seeing only what
Speaker 1: they expect to see, and he also imparts this bit
Speaker 1: of wisdom. He tells her that this strategy only works
Speaker 1: because most of the time things are just as they seem,
Speaker 1: except when they're not.
Speaker 2: This sort of was a sort of essential understanding between
Speaker 2: me and my dad, but it heads a lot. But
Speaker 2: we also had this sort of understanding. He believed in privacy.
Speaker 2: He believed in my privacy. I think on some he
Speaker 2: knew obviously on some level, what I was up to,
Speaker 2: and I think he had a lot of trust in
Speaker 2: me as well. I think that we related to each other.
Speaker 2: So that conversation where I basically, you know, confirm you
Speaker 2: lied because you had to again is me seeking permission
Speaker 2: in my own lives because I felt that I lied
Speaker 2: because I had to, you know, it was the only
Speaker 2: way to get what I wanted. Again, like a human
Speaker 2: being can justify anything, but that's how I justified to
Speaker 2: myself at that age. And that that was also just
Speaker 2: something that he always drilled home that people will fill
Speaker 2: in the blanks, and if they think they know the story,
Speaker 2: you can sort of control the narrative of what details
Speaker 2: they fill in.
Speaker 1: And then he asked, would you ever consider a career
Speaker 1: in the CIA.
Speaker 3: I think my parents thought that I would be very
Speaker 3: good at it.
Speaker 2: Actually, I think they were minorly disappointed when none of
Speaker 2: their children followed in their footsteps exactly. And there was
Speaker 2: a time that I considered it very seriously. Actually, I
Speaker 2: saw my parents had each other, and I think they
Speaker 2: created a very sort of like secure and you know,
Speaker 2: in many ways like beautiful, interesting life together, but it
Speaker 2: sort of depended on the other person being in on
Speaker 2: it and otherwise. I think that the sacrifices people who
Speaker 2: do undercover work do, and in all sorts of realms
Speaker 2: in the world, you know, when you purposefully have to
Speaker 2: hide a massive part of your life, it isolates you.
Speaker 2: It's deeply isolating. It affects all of your relationships. I
Speaker 2: knew that it would be lonely for somebody like me,
Speaker 2: who was a great chatter, you know, like who was
Speaker 2: still that five year old who wants to chat up
Speaker 2: strangers on the street and doesn't mind sharing all of
Speaker 2: my stuff too. The oversharer and me perhaps knew that
Speaker 2: it wouldn't ultimately be a good fit.
Speaker 3: I did work briefly at the agency.
Speaker 2: I don't talk about it very much, but I did
Speaker 2: consider it very seriously interesting.
Speaker 1: Well, family business, the family So, now, after this childhood
Speaker 1: and adolescence and young adulthood of not being able to
Speaker 1: talk about what it was that your parents did for work,
Speaker 1: or to be able to explain the truth of your life,
Speaker 1: what does it feel like now to have been able
Speaker 1: to tell the story and to have it be a
Speaker 1: part of your story. Now that is you know, that's
Speaker 1: in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the fact that it's known is something that I
Speaker 2: still don't even know how I feel about. Sometimes there's
Speaker 2: a lot of relief. I'm relieved to put it down.
Speaker 2: It was something that I was asked to carry, and
Speaker 2: I think was a great privilege to carry. But I'm
Speaker 2: glad that I don't have to anymore. But I don't know,
Speaker 2: secrets die hard, even when they're not secret anymore. The
Speaker 2: muscle memory of deflecting, you know, skipping over huge central
Speaker 2: details of my life so that people don't ask too
Speaker 2: many questions, so because I don't feel like lying to
Speaker 2: them that day, you know, having that same conversation.
Speaker 3: Over and over again at a party.
Speaker 2: If somebody asks me why I grew up overseas and
Speaker 2: I don't feel like talking about the CIA, I'll just
Speaker 2: sort of skip over it and say, oh, I kind
Speaker 2: of had an interesting childhood.
Speaker 3: What do you do?
Speaker 2: I took my mother to a Christmas party though this year,
Speaker 2: and somebody, a friend of mine who you know, also
Speaker 2: had a very interesting childhood overseas, mentioned it enthusiastically and
Speaker 2: gestured towards my mother, Well, you were in the CIA,
Speaker 2: and my mother's poor face. Somebody who's knows that.
Speaker 3: I've written this book, who's proud of me, has supported me,
Speaker 3: gave me, you know, passit permission to.
Speaker 4: Do it her face, their poor face. I knew that
Speaker 4: I'd witnessed the first time in her entire life where
Speaker 4: somebody casually said this at a party and mixed company,
Speaker 4: and like the blood drained out of her face because
Speaker 4: she wasn't.
Speaker 3: Used to it, just because she wasn't used to it.
Speaker 2: Intellectually, she knows it's not really a secret anymore, but
Speaker 2: she was so uncomfortable and shocked for a moment before
Speaker 2: she acclimated and remembered that the book exists in the world.
Speaker 2: So I felt bad for her in that moment, But
Speaker 2: I kind of feel like that too.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, it's free that I.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't say I'm totally comfortable with it yet maybe I
Speaker 2: will be one Day.
Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly z Acur
Speaker 1: is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 1: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 1: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 1: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 1: find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd
Speaker 1: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 1: check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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