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Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio Things. I want

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Speaker 1: to know? Where did you grow up? How did you

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Speaker 1: grow up? Did your father hurt you? Did your mother

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Speaker 1: hurt you? Where did you go to high school? What

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Speaker 1: did you like to wear as a little girl? What

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Speaker 1: did you like to wear as a teenager? Did you

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Speaker 1: like being a sister? What was your favorite book as

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Speaker 1: a kid? Did you pick at your skin? Are you

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Speaker 1: glad you had kids? Why didn't we stop the New

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Speaker 1: Orleans in nineteen ninety six? Were you afraid to die?

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Speaker 1: Where was your ropa vieja recipe from Do You Miss Me?

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Speaker 1: Are you still Mad at Me?

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Speaker 2: That's e A Hanks journalist and author of the recent

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Speaker 2: memoir The Ten, a memoir of family and the Open Road.

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Speaker 2: Eas is a story of contrasts. As a child, she

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Speaker 2: was exposed to the depths of mental illness and the

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Speaker 2: heights of Hollywood celebrity. As she learned to navigate her

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Speaker 2: place in the world. As an adult, she goes on

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Speaker 2: a journey to understand those contrasts, buried secrets, and to

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Speaker 2: make peace with the generations who came before her. I'm

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Speaker 2: Danny Shapiro and this is Family Secrets. The secrets that

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Speaker 2: are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,

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Speaker 2: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. So I always

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Speaker 2: begin with this question, but in your case it feels

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Speaker 2: even more like the place to begin. So much of

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Speaker 2: your story is about place and how it informs us.

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Speaker 2: So tell me about the earliest place that you remember, the.

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Speaker 1: Earliest place that I remember. My childhood memories of location

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Speaker 1: are as bifurcated and bipolar, as my adult sort of

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Speaker 1: identity conundrums were because I was born in Burbank, California,

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Speaker 1: which is a suburb of Los Angeles, part of the

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Speaker 1: pulsing megalopolis that is LA. You can't tell when you've

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Speaker 1: left LA and entered Burbank for people who don't live here.

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Speaker 1: I was born in southern California, and I ended up

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Speaker 1: in Sacramento around the age of five. So I had

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Speaker 1: a typical childhood of divorce, which is that I went

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Speaker 1: between cities. The arrangement was that I lived with my

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Speaker 1: mom and I visited my dad, so my winters and

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Speaker 1: the bulk of my life was in Sacramento. Sacramento is

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Speaker 1: as maybe it's the most famous citizen. Johan Didean describes

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Speaker 1: it the ubiquitous valley town. It's extremely flat. The air

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Speaker 1: kind of sits on it in between the Pacific and

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Speaker 1: the Sierra Nevadas, so the heat really lays on the city.

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Speaker 1: The summers or kind of one hundred winters, are very rainy.

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Speaker 1: I grew up a horse girl, and so the bulk

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Speaker 1: of my time was spent out in this area that

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Speaker 1: unfortunately doesn't really exist anymore. It's all been built over

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Speaker 1: by track homes and fulfillment centers and god knows what else.

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Speaker 1: But when I close my eyes and I say, what

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Speaker 1: is the landscape of your childhood? I toggle back and

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Speaker 1: forth between the rice patties outside of Sacramento, because there's

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Speaker 1: a huge Japanese American community in Sacramento that used to

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Speaker 1: grow the bulk of rice for the world outside of Sacramento,

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Speaker 1: and it was just as far as the eye could see,

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Speaker 1: these kind of like emerald fields that are water logged

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Speaker 1: because rice is grown in water, and so the sun

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Speaker 1: would hit the water and the green rice shoots, and

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Speaker 1: I just remember the sense that this green could go

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Speaker 1: on forever, and between the ocean and the mountains. It

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Speaker 1: was not a hidden valley, but a place that was

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Speaker 1: separate from the rest of the world. And then the

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Speaker 1: opposite side of that is my childhood memories of southern

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Speaker 1: California during the weekends and the summers i'd be with

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Speaker 1: my dad when he wasn't on location shooting. Those are

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Speaker 1: all of Malibu, which at the time certainly had money

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Speaker 1: and stature, but was not quite as built up and

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Speaker 1: fancy as it is now, kind of run down, a

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Speaker 1: lot of old hippies, and the sort of beach esthetic

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Speaker 1: of early nineties Malibu was baywatch and breakfast burritos and

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Speaker 1: the smell of a warm wetsuit and it's called sex wax,

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Speaker 1: what you rub onto your surfboard. So I had these

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Speaker 1: very classic Californian landscapes of the valley farming town and

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Speaker 1: the southern California beach, and I'm of both of them equally.

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Speaker 1: I can't prioritize one over the other because my childhood

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Speaker 1: is so rooted in both of those places.

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Speaker 2: That makes so much sense and such a beautiful answer.

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Speaker 2: It seems the way that you're describing this sort of

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Speaker 2: split screen of these two very different landscapes is also

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Speaker 2: mirrored in these two very different experiences of being a

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Speaker 2: kid with a parent. Tell me a bit about your

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Speaker 2: mom from those Sacramento years when you were little, and

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Speaker 2: then a little bit about your dad as well.

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Speaker 1: My mom, even when I was an adolescent, was this

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Speaker 1: sort of romantically tragic figure to me. And it's strange

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Speaker 1: that when I think back about her in my childhood

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Speaker 1: to realize how young she was at the time. Your

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Speaker 1: parents are just perpetually middle aged to you, but I

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Speaker 1: it's very strange to look back at these memories and

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Speaker 1: realize I'm describing someone who's twenty nine years old, thirty

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Speaker 1: three years old, thirty six years old. At that age

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Speaker 1: when I was a child, my mom had this failure

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Speaker 1: to launch in a way that there was something about

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Speaker 1: her life that had never You know, when you're learning

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Speaker 1: how to ride a bike and you're trying to get

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Speaker 1: your sense of balance and then you wobble a little bit,

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Speaker 1: but then you find that center and you find your

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Speaker 1: balance and you can take off, or you know, like

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Speaker 1: the surfboard, when you pop up you funny hit your

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Speaker 1: stride and you can glide. My mom just never hit that.

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Speaker 1: Everything was always difficult with her. Friendships were difficult, Parenting

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Speaker 1: was difficult, making sure the kitchen sink was empty and

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Speaker 1: the fridge was full, was difficult. Everything was a struggle,

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Speaker 1: and this sense that she had already been benched by

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Speaker 1: my father's fame, by her lack of a career as

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Speaker 1: a stage artist, which is how she thought of herself.

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Speaker 1: And in the background of this varying degrees of dysfunction

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Speaker 1: was the art that she so valued and cherished. I

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Speaker 1: grew up in a house with many books and newspapers

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Speaker 1: and being told this weekend, we're going to watch Churrosawa

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Speaker 1: films because they're important to watch. And there was classical

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Speaker 1: music because my mom's mom listened to quite a lot

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Speaker 1: of classical music, and so did my mom, and so

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Speaker 1: do I. Now my mom was romantic to me in

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Speaker 1: the way that romance is tragic, and this sense that

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Speaker 1: her relationship with reality was never obviously a defense mechanism.

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Speaker 1: It was something she was not in control of. I'm

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Speaker 1: trying to describe the depths of my mom's evangelical fervor.

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Speaker 1: Because my mother was, as she would say, washed in

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Speaker 1: the blood of the Lamb, and she had accepted Jesus

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Speaker 1: Christ as her personal Lord and savior. Her dependence on

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Speaker 1: her faith was such and it loomed so large for

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Speaker 1: her that you know, as a child, I once said,

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Speaker 1: why is the date ten sixty six important? And maybe

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Speaker 1: another parent would start explaining the Anglo Saxons and the

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Speaker 1: Battle of Hastings, But my mom's answer started, when you

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Speaker 1: don't have the love and light of Jesus Christ in

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Speaker 1: your heart, which is an interesting approach to teaching medieval history.

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Speaker 1: So she was baffling to me in a way that

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Speaker 1: all parents are baffling to their children. But even as

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Speaker 1: a child, I had a sense that something was not

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Speaker 1: adding up about her life, that her interpretations of events

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Speaker 1: that happened days previously never matched mine. But that also

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Speaker 1: the barometers of adulthood that I was aware of even

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Speaker 1: as a child, that a house should be clean, that

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Speaker 1: you should have help with your homework, that there should

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Speaker 1: be regular meals, that your life should be populated with

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Speaker 1: friends and loved ones who pop in. That was all absent,

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Speaker 1: and I was able to sort of clock that at

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Speaker 1: a very early age.

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Speaker 2: No, that's so interesting because our childhoods are so often

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Speaker 2: these kinds of echo chambers, where the reality that we

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Speaker 2: are contending with is the only reality we know. And

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Speaker 2: you did not have that because of your parents' divorce,

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Speaker 2: you had two different realities that you were to some

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Speaker 2: degree in those early years toggling back and forth between.

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Speaker 1: This word has kind of fallen out of use in

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Speaker 1: this capacity, But I had a very Catholic childhood in

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Speaker 1: the small sea of like very high highs, very low lows.

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Speaker 1: My existence with my mom verged on the gray gardens.

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Speaker 1: There weren't quite raccoons, but it was two crazy biddies

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Speaker 1: knocking around this house with stacks of newspaper and petae everywhere.

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Speaker 1: And then my life with my dad came equipped with

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Speaker 1: not just my dad, the whole cast of characters that

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Speaker 1: was my Greek step family. Because my dad married I

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Speaker 1: call her my other mother, Rita Wilson. They married when

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Speaker 1: I was around five or six, and she came with

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Speaker 1: cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, and so I

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Speaker 1: had the view of what family could be like, and

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Speaker 1: I was aware that my mom was not up for

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Speaker 1: any of that. I just knew that my mom was

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Speaker 1: not like other parents, but I didn't understand how deeply

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Speaker 1: strange and off putting she was to other people. That

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Speaker 1: stuff I thought was normal when she would speak to herself,

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Speaker 1: because from her perspective, she was in a conversation with

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Speaker 1: the voice of God, the way that she could not

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Speaker 1: take care of her hygiene and clothing, all of those

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Speaker 1: things I mistook for normal because that was all I knew,

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Speaker 1: and the blueprint had already been laid before I would

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Speaker 1: start going back and forth between my two different families.

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Speaker 1: Really strange blend of being aware that something isn't quite

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Speaker 1: adding up. And then also you only know the aquarium

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Speaker 1: you're swimming around in, you think the castle is supposed

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Speaker 1: to be that size. It's an odd sort of chamber

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Speaker 1: of mirrors of what is normal. And for every friend

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Speaker 1: I had that was not allowed to come to my

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Speaker 1: house and certainly was never allowed to spend the night.

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Speaker 1: I had other friends, non school friends, for whom my

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Speaker 1: mom was the cool mom who said, Oh, dinner will

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Speaker 1: be cookie dough, and you can dye your hair whatever

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Speaker 1: color you want, and I will drive you all over

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Speaker 1: the state to compete in horse Things can be hard

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Speaker 1: to pin down with that childhood experiences because it was

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Speaker 1: in its nature different every day. So my dad, for listeners,

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Speaker 1: is a man you might have heard of. His name

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Speaker 1: is Tom Hanks, and my dad has his own sort

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Speaker 1: of family struggles in that my dad's parents divorced, and

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Speaker 1: then his mom and his dad each had a succession

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Speaker 1: of failed marriages, which meant step parents would show up

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Speaker 1: and step siblings, and then a couple years later they'd

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Speaker 1: be gone again. I think his dad married two more times,

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Speaker 1: and my grandmother remarried four times. So they worked that courthouse.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot of people coming and going. So my

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Speaker 1: dad had a very lonely childhood of being an artist

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Speaker 1: in his bedroom, working out jokes to make the kids

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Speaker 1: at school laugh. And by the time he bumps into

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Speaker 1: my mom, their college students at sax State in Sacramento,

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Speaker 1: and their theater kids, and they're not really friends. They

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Speaker 1: don't really know each other, and they're not particularly close.

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Speaker 1: But my mom had just had her heart broken by

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Speaker 1: a guy I think she thought she was gonna marry,

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Speaker 1: and he was certainly on paper, more of what she

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Speaker 1: was looking for. And my dad was funny and charming,

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Speaker 1: but he was awkward and very sensitive, and she let

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Speaker 1: him take a crack because she was on the rebound.

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Speaker 1: My dad was twenty two when my brother Colin was born,

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Speaker 1: and my mom was only twenty four or twenty five,

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Speaker 1: and so these are kids, they're young adults who have

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Speaker 1: no concept of how to be parents, to have a home,

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Speaker 1: how to raise people, and so they're both working with

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Speaker 1: what they've got. The difference between them is my dad

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Speaker 1: lives in reality and my mom is already starting to

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Speaker 1: show signs of significant mental health struggles. She's already lying

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Speaker 1: and stealing from people that she loves and who love her,

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Speaker 1: and has different versions of events.

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Speaker 3: She has rage, she has all of these sort of

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Speaker 3: issues that are disquieting to my dad, but coming from

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Speaker 3: a broken hon himself.

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Speaker 1: He has a young son now, and he has a

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Speaker 1: burgeoning career, so he's gonna make it work for as

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Speaker 1: long as he can, and as long as he can

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Speaker 1: goes till around nineteen eighty five, nineteen eighty six. Colin's

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Speaker 1: born in seventy seven. I'm born in eighty two, and

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Speaker 1: the best part about having famous parents is being able

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Speaker 1: to google their birthdays and anniversaries. So I can't remember

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Speaker 1: when Dad and Rita got married. I think they got

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Speaker 1: married in eighty eight. So that's where all of the

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Speaker 1: cast of characters are coming from, which are funny, talented,

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Speaker 1: ambitious young people who have no concept of stability of

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Speaker 1: parents who will be there every Day of How to

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Speaker 1: Be a Family on the regular, and they find themselves

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Speaker 1: with two young kids. When Colin is born, my parents

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Speaker 1: are living in a hellhole apartment in Hell's Kitchen in

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Speaker 1: New York in nineteen seventy seven. They don't get married

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Speaker 1: until Colin's already two years old, so around seventy nine,

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Speaker 1: and that is around when the second season of Bosom Buddies,

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Speaker 1: everyone's favorite television show. So Bosom Buddies had happened, and

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Speaker 1: my parents are still married. When my dad shoots Splash,

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Speaker 1: which is his big breakout moment, but it's not until

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Speaker 1: Big which I think is eighty nine or ninety. I

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Speaker 1: know there's going to be a Tom Hanks fan who

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Speaker 1: is listening who is so deeply disappointed in me that

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Speaker 1: I do not have this IMDb in front of me.

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Speaker 1: In the grand tradition of show business, we'll fix it

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Speaker 1: in the post. I think it's accurate to say that

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Speaker 1: in terms of my dad's fame, I was not born

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Speaker 1: on third base, but we certainly moved there in the

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Speaker 1: mid nineties. Colin and I have a sort of verbal

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Speaker 1: marker for when things get crazy, and we call it

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Speaker 1: beg and ag, which is my dad's fame is one

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Speaker 1: thing before Forrest Gump, and it's a completely different thing

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Speaker 1: after Forrest Gump. He was famous, and he had made

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Speaker 1: movies and was out of the significant and crushing financial

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Speaker 1: stress that he had been in his young adulthood. Basically,

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Speaker 1: my mom kidnapped us, Colin and I and took us

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Speaker 1: to Sacramento without telling my dad, and they were in

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Speaker 1: the middle of divorce proceedings by the time we end

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Speaker 1: up in Sacramento. My Dad's kind of on his way.

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Speaker 1: He is not Tom Hanks's global movie star, but he

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Speaker 1: is Tom hanks promising actor who's going to do big things.

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Speaker 1: I'm like twelve years old when the full sort of

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Speaker 1: experience kicks in.

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Speaker 2: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.

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Speaker 2: In February nineteen ninety six, at the age of thirteen,

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Speaker 2: Ea makes the pivotal move from Sacramento to Los Angeles,

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Speaker 2: a shift set in motion by escalating tensions and abuse

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Speaker 2: in her mother's home. The realization that she needs to

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Speaker 2: escape is validated by lawyers, police, teachers, and neighbors, all

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Speaker 2: finally storming the bestiale of the custody arrangement, which now

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Speaker 2: needs to be changed. She leaves mid school year and

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Speaker 2: lands in a very different world, her father directing his

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Speaker 2: first film, a newly blended family, and the beginning of

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Speaker 2: a new chapter. That summer, in the emotional wake of

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Speaker 2: her departure, Ba's mother comes back into focus. She wants

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Speaker 2: to take her on a sprawling, enigmatic road trip, one

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Speaker 2: that seems to aim at connecting the dots of a

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Speaker 2: fractured family history. EA barely knows.

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Speaker 1: So it's in the thick of all of this that

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Speaker 1: my mom announces that we're going to buy Owennebago and

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Speaker 1: drive to Florida, where my grandmother lives. And that's really

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Speaker 1: the only thing I know about my mom's family. I

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Speaker 1: know that my grandmother at some point lived in Sacramento

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Speaker 1: with us, and then she moved back to her hometown,

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Speaker 1: which is Palatka, Florida, which is a central Florida town

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Speaker 1: not too far from the Okaala National Forest, which is

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Speaker 1: sizable and impressive. And I know that my mom's father

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Speaker 1: is a military man who is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

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Speaker 1: And all I know about him is that when I

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Speaker 1: told my mom that I had peeled off from an

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Speaker 1: eighth grade school trip to Arlington to see his grave.

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Speaker 1: She looked at me. I finished my sentence. She went

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Speaker 1: up to her bedroom. She closed the door and did

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Speaker 1: not come out for I think about a week. She

293
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Speaker 1: would not speak to me and did not acknowledge my questions.

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Speaker 1: So I did not know where my mom was born.

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Speaker 1: I did not know where she went to high school.

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Speaker 1: I had no idea where she grew up, or who

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Speaker 1: her friends were, or what her relationship was like with

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Speaker 1: her parents. I had not met two of my uncles.

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Speaker 1: And so she buys this Winnebago and we hit the

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Speaker 1: road because we're going to Florida and then we will

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Speaker 1: eventually continue on to the nineteen ninety six Olympics in Atlanta.

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Speaker 2: Was Colin on that road trip as well, or was

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Speaker 2: it you and your mom?

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Speaker 1: No, it was just me and my mom. Colin had

305
00:19:35,880 --> 00:19:39,600
Speaker 1: a coterie of incredibly close friends. We grew up in

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Speaker 1: a neighborhood of East Sacramento. It's very idyllic, it's really beautiful,

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Speaker 1: and there was just a pack of boys all around

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Speaker 1: the same age, and they all hung out at the

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Speaker 1: same place. It's misleading to call it a country club.

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Speaker 1: It is a country club, but it's small and very

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Speaker 1: ramshackle and old, very waspy. It's like the nice it

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00:20:00,280 --> 00:20:03,040
Speaker 1: is falling apart around the edges. And it was a

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Speaker 1: place for all of these boys to eat chips and

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Speaker 1: watch Brend and Stimpy reruns and occasionally play water polo

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Speaker 1: or tennis on the one tennis court that they have.

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Speaker 1: These boys became family to the extent that at some

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Speaker 1: point before I had left my mother's house, he had

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Speaker 1: already moved out and was living with a family that

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Speaker 1: had seen what was going on and just very casually said,

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Speaker 1: you can spend the night on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and

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Speaker 1: then it was you can spend the night on Tuesdays

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Speaker 1: and Wednesdays. So it got to the point where essentially

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00:20:37,840 --> 00:20:41,879
Speaker 1: Colin had already moved out, and that is in part

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00:20:41,920 --> 00:20:45,639
Speaker 1: what precipitated things really starting to fall apart with my

325
00:20:45,720 --> 00:20:48,600
Speaker 1: mom because there was no one watching the store. Colin,

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Speaker 1: as older siblings very often are, was the great protector

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Speaker 1: and had kept an eye on my mother's increasingly fragile

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Speaker 1: mental state. And so when once he wasn't around is

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00:21:02,359 --> 00:21:07,840
Speaker 1: kind of when everything started to go pear shaped. And

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Speaker 1: that summer he was not on the road because he

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Speaker 1: had really started to individuate and to begin his own life,

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Speaker 1: and he was headed off to college.

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Speaker 2: It's so interesting the way that two siblings or multiple

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00:21:22,600 --> 00:21:27,720
Speaker 2: siblings can have such different experiences depending on luck of

335
00:21:27,880 --> 00:21:30,359
Speaker 2: this posse of boys in the neighborhood. And you just

336
00:21:30,400 --> 00:21:32,480
Speaker 2: didn't have your version of that. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I remember I had my friends who were my horseback

338
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Speaker 1: riding sort of friends, but they knew my mom was

339
00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:41,199
Speaker 1: the cool mom. They didn't see the other stuff that

340
00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:45,280
Speaker 1: was going on. They were not an avenue out. They

341
00:21:45,320 --> 00:21:48,040
Speaker 1: were about staying in one place. So when we hit

342
00:21:48,080 --> 00:21:51,320
Speaker 1: the road, I had just moved to Los Angeles and

343
00:21:51,359 --> 00:21:54,720
Speaker 1: my mother was barely speaking to me. And because it

344
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Speaker 1: was just the two of us, we move into this

345
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Speaker 1: Winnebago barely saying a thing to each other, and I

346
00:22:02,440 --> 00:22:04,840
Speaker 1: don't think we had really had a conversation until we

347
00:22:04,880 --> 00:22:07,320
Speaker 1: got on the far side of Texas. And if anybody's

348
00:22:07,400 --> 00:22:11,679
Speaker 1: driven the tent through Texas, hits a long road with

349
00:22:11,880 --> 00:22:16,040
Speaker 1: very little on the horizon. It got very faulkner. It

350
00:22:16,080 --> 00:22:20,119
Speaker 1: got very as I lay dying very quickly until we

351
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Speaker 1: got to Florida. By that time things had warmed up

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Speaker 1: a little bit.

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Speaker 2: You're stuck You're in this Winnebago with your mom, who

354
00:22:27,880 --> 00:22:30,159
Speaker 2: you're very much not getting along with and who has

355
00:22:30,160 --> 00:22:33,640
Speaker 2: a loose grip on reality, and you're making this journey.

356
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Speaker 2: How would you characterize your inner state during that time?

357
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Speaker 1: It was surreal. Basically, I leave my mother's house because

358
00:22:42,320 --> 00:22:48,840
Speaker 1: her sort of usually vague threats of violence had become concrete.

359
00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:51,919
Speaker 1: My mom had been physically intimidating for as long as

360
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Speaker 1: I could remember. She spanked, but she also pulled hair

361
00:22:55,680 --> 00:22:59,280
Speaker 1: and dragged and shooked and shoved, but she had never

362
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Speaker 1: just hul doubt and started hitting me across the face.

363
00:23:02,720 --> 00:23:05,240
Speaker 1: But that's what had happened, and that's why I was

364
00:23:05,280 --> 00:23:09,960
Speaker 1: finally able to leave. And now suddenly I've had to

365
00:23:09,960 --> 00:23:15,800
Speaker 1: give depositions, and I've talked to lawyers and court appointed psychotherapists,

366
00:23:16,440 --> 00:23:20,160
Speaker 1: and we've had screaming fights where she does not remember

367
00:23:20,320 --> 00:23:24,359
Speaker 1: hitting me, or if she does, she remembers that I

368
00:23:24,520 --> 00:23:29,600
Speaker 1: deserved it. And now we're in a van, stuck in

369
00:23:29,640 --> 00:23:33,959
Speaker 1: a very small space together, barely speaking and trying to

370
00:23:34,160 --> 00:23:40,600
Speaker 1: cross Texas the hours of silence or having my headphones

371
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Speaker 1: on while my mom just chain spokes because she really

372
00:23:44,920 --> 00:23:47,239
Speaker 1: wanted to get to Florida as quickly as possible. So

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Speaker 1: it was just this unrelenting pace of just driving for

374
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Speaker 1: hours and hours and hours until she would finally pass out.

375
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Speaker 1: Because I was too young to drive at this point.

376
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Speaker 1: We would drive as far as we could, and then

377
00:23:59,359 --> 00:24:02,240
Speaker 1: we'd try the inn too, some campground of America, and

378
00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:05,040
Speaker 1: she would just go to the back bed and completely

379
00:24:05,080 --> 00:24:07,240
Speaker 1: pass out. There was no Okay, what are we going

380
00:24:07,320 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 1: to do for dinner or where are we It was

381
00:24:10,720 --> 00:24:12,919
Speaker 1: I paid for a spot, I'm going to park it

382
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:15,520
Speaker 1: and fall asleep, and then me, fourteen year old, I'd

383
00:24:15,560 --> 00:24:18,240
Speaker 1: have to set up the gray water tank and the

384
00:24:18,280 --> 00:24:21,800
Speaker 1: poop shoot and the electricity and get the generator going.

385
00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:25,719
Speaker 1: So it was just this very bizarre month and a

386
00:24:25,760 --> 00:24:31,280
Speaker 1: half of this surreal experience of being on the open

387
00:24:31,400 --> 00:24:35,119
Speaker 1: road with a woman who we love each other more

388
00:24:35,200 --> 00:24:39,440
Speaker 1: than anything, but also I'm terrified of her. She's furious

389
00:24:39,480 --> 00:24:43,840
Speaker 1: and broken hearted with me. And the worst thing that

390
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:48,160
Speaker 1: can happen is the batteries on my discman get worn

391
00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:51,880
Speaker 1: out because I've just listened to my four CDs too

392
00:24:51,880 --> 00:24:55,880
Speaker 1: many times as a way of filling the silence of

393
00:24:56,840 --> 00:25:00,480
Speaker 1: these miles on the highway and the vast expanse the

394
00:25:00,520 --> 00:25:05,360
Speaker 1: American South. There was a bunch of trips that kind

395
00:25:05,400 --> 00:25:09,400
Speaker 1: of I only found out after much much later, were

396
00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:14,120
Speaker 1: actually sort of court appointed mother daughter things. I remember

397
00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:17,040
Speaker 1: we went to Disneyland in the middle of all of

398
00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:19,600
Speaker 1: the court proceedings. It was absolutely hilatious. It was a

399
00:25:19,600 --> 00:25:23,000
Speaker 1: horrible trip, and I didn't know until years and years

400
00:25:23,080 --> 00:25:27,400
Speaker 1: later that we went because some judge or some lawyer said,

401
00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:30,840
Speaker 1: you guys should have some quality time together, go to Disneyland.

402
00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:32,760
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, I guess we're going to Disneyland.

403
00:25:33,400 --> 00:25:36,360
Speaker 1: I think there had been maybe some sort of conversation

404
00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:39,160
Speaker 1: about there needs to be a trip this summer, and

405
00:25:39,200 --> 00:25:42,800
Speaker 1: maybe that was what was the thinking behind the Atlanta Olympics,

406
00:25:43,119 --> 00:25:45,399
Speaker 1: because my mother certainly did not have it together to

407
00:25:45,400 --> 00:25:48,760
Speaker 1: be like, I'm going to research Olympic tickets and airplane

408
00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:51,199
Speaker 1: costs and book the hotel and all of that. That

409
00:25:51,280 --> 00:25:54,320
Speaker 1: was just all of that was way beyond her. She's

410
00:25:54,359 --> 00:25:57,720
Speaker 1: not agoraphobic, but she's not leaving the house because she

411
00:25:57,720 --> 00:26:00,239
Speaker 1: doesn't have anywhere to go or anyone to see. And

412
00:26:00,320 --> 00:26:02,960
Speaker 1: suddenly we're at the Olympics and stuff like that. So

413
00:26:03,040 --> 00:26:06,639
Speaker 1: I think there might have been something around that and

414
00:26:06,720 --> 00:26:09,679
Speaker 1: the Olympics, and thinking that was a good idea, But

415
00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:13,120
Speaker 1: there was no sort of stated narrative around I want

416
00:26:13,160 --> 00:26:15,000
Speaker 1: you to see where we're from, and I want you

417
00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:17,879
Speaker 1: to know your grandmother better, and I want you to

418
00:26:17,920 --> 00:26:20,720
Speaker 1: see the South. That's how she would conceive of it

419
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:23,720
Speaker 1: after the fact, But I think it was just that's

420
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:26,160
Speaker 1: actually a very good question that I have never thought of.

421
00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:29,000
Speaker 1: Why did my mother want to go on the trip?

422
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:31,639
Speaker 1: I was just kind of part and parcel. But I

423
00:26:31,720 --> 00:26:35,880
Speaker 1: wonder if after the trauma of the year and now

424
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:38,119
Speaker 1: both of her children being out of the house, and

425
00:26:38,200 --> 00:26:42,000
Speaker 1: the stress of the court case and everything around the

426
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:46,160
Speaker 1: custody agreement, if there was some level of she wanted

427
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:48,480
Speaker 1: to see her mom. I would not be surprised if

428
00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:50,840
Speaker 1: that was a deep desire for her at the time.

429
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:55,919
Speaker 2: Did you return from that trip feeling like you knew

430
00:26:55,960 --> 00:27:00,520
Speaker 2: anything more about your family history or your mother's than

431
00:27:00,560 --> 00:27:02,960
Speaker 2: you did before you set out.

432
00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:06,360
Speaker 1: No, I didn't learn anything on that trip because my grandmother,

433
00:27:06,800 --> 00:27:10,159
Speaker 1: much like my mother, refused to talk about anything. That

434
00:27:10,240 --> 00:27:12,840
Speaker 1: trip was the first time I'd even seen a picture

435
00:27:12,880 --> 00:27:16,280
Speaker 1: of my grandfather. So it's very shocking to walk by

436
00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:19,399
Speaker 1: and be like who's this man who looks like me?

437
00:27:20,359 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 1: And realizing that it's my mother's father. My grandmother lived

438
00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:27,919
Speaker 1: in reality, my grandmother was not mentally ill, but she

439
00:27:29,040 --> 00:27:31,440
Speaker 1: was maybe as I would go on to discover the

440
00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:35,600
Speaker 1: true Southerner in the family, and that came out in

441
00:27:35,640 --> 00:27:37,400
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways. And one of the ways

442
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:40,040
Speaker 1: it came out was we don't talk about that. So

443
00:27:40,080 --> 00:27:42,359
Speaker 1: when I asked her, I think that was the first

444
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:46,520
Speaker 1: time I had anyone to ask explicitly who was my grandfather?

445
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:48,840
Speaker 1: What was your marriage like, and why did it end?

446
00:27:49,040 --> 00:27:52,040
Speaker 1: And what did he do? That was my first experience

447
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:55,000
Speaker 1: being told to my face, we don't talk about that,

448
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 1: and furthermore, you shouldn't ask what I do remember thinking

449
00:27:59,359 --> 00:28:03,560
Speaker 1: that I had finally seen and understood was the South

450
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:08,880
Speaker 1: and being called, oh, you're Harriet's Yankee granddaughter. I've heard

451
00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:11,760
Speaker 1: about you. Being called a Yankee to your face for

452
00:28:11,840 --> 00:28:15,240
Speaker 1: the first time is a bracing experience. And that was also,

453
00:28:15,320 --> 00:28:18,840
Speaker 1: you know, my first time at Waffle Hut and Cracker

454
00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:23,200
Speaker 1: Barrel and Pigley Wiggly and seeing drive through dackery shops

455
00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:27,320
Speaker 1: in Louisiana and seeing the emptiness of West Texas and

456
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:30,720
Speaker 1: seeing the desert and seeing the swamps of like, Oh,

457
00:28:30,760 --> 00:28:34,359
Speaker 1: I think my family is southern, and now I know

458
00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:38,600
Speaker 1: what that is. I know enough to be curious, but

459
00:28:38,680 --> 00:28:41,000
Speaker 1: I don't know enough to understand anything.

460
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:47,280
Speaker 2: It's now the spring of EA's senior year in high school,

461
00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:49,000
Speaker 2: and her mother is dying.

462
00:28:50,840 --> 00:28:53,160
Speaker 1: My mom did not trust doctors because she thought they

463
00:28:53,200 --> 00:28:58,040
Speaker 1: were all She thought my dad was sending people to

464
00:28:58,160 --> 00:29:01,400
Speaker 1: kill her or to hasten her death. Sometimes it was

465
00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:04,680
Speaker 1: that remarkable, and sometimes she just didn't trust doctors, and

466
00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:07,960
Speaker 1: she thought that they were crooks who would say something

467
00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:11,200
Speaker 1: and take your money, or that they would be so

468
00:29:11,360 --> 00:29:15,040
Speaker 1: blindsided by the name of her ex husband that they

469
00:29:15,040 --> 00:29:18,640
Speaker 1: would somehow not have their priorities in line. So she

470
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:21,880
Speaker 1: put off going to the doctors for many, many years,

471
00:29:21,920 --> 00:29:24,240
Speaker 1: and finally she was in such crippling pain because her

472
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:27,440
Speaker 1: arm hurt, and so she finally went to the doctor

473
00:29:27,800 --> 00:29:31,600
Speaker 1: and discovered that, in fact, she had stage three, stage

474
00:29:31,640 --> 00:29:35,440
Speaker 1: four lung cancer that had completely taken over one of

475
00:29:35,440 --> 00:29:37,760
Speaker 1: her lungs and had spread to her bones. And actually

476
00:29:37,800 --> 00:29:40,280
Speaker 1: the reason why her arm hurt is because she had

477
00:29:40,320 --> 00:29:42,680
Speaker 1: bone cancer and it had spread to her rib cage

478
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: and headed into her endercin system and her brain stem.

479
00:29:46,800 --> 00:29:50,040
Speaker 1: So she was diagnosed right around Christmas of my senior

480
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:53,200
Speaker 1: year of high school, which is right before two thousand,

481
00:29:53,440 --> 00:29:58,240
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, two thousand and she dies my spring

482
00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:01,360
Speaker 1: break of my freshman year of college, which is two

483
00:30:01,400 --> 00:30:05,320
Speaker 1: thousand and two, so it was brief. She lasted about

484
00:30:05,320 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 1: a little over a year.

485
00:30:09,200 --> 00:30:13,400
Speaker 2: After EA's mother's death, EA and Colin returned to Sacramento

486
00:30:13,760 --> 00:30:16,760
Speaker 2: and put all her mother's stuff into storage. And she

487
00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:21,360
Speaker 2: has a lot, a lot of stuff. It's nineteen ninety

488
00:30:21,440 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 2: nine and some people are experiencing panic about Y two K.

489
00:30:26,320 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 2: EA's mom is one of them. EA calls her a

490
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:34,120
Speaker 2: Y two K aficionado. She has enough canned goods to

491
00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 2: survive the apocalypse. It's all too much to deal with,

492
00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:41,640
Speaker 2: so the siblings put everything into storage, figuring they'll deal

493
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:42,680
Speaker 2: with it sometime soon.

494
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:48,080
Speaker 1: I think it was Haley Ephron, one of Nora Ephron's

495
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:52,560
Speaker 1: talented sisters, and I remember on NPR she was asked,

496
00:30:52,640 --> 00:30:55,360
Speaker 1: why write about your childhood when you're much more famous

497
00:30:55,400 --> 00:30:59,600
Speaker 1: sibling already did just a toozy of a question and

498
00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:03,240
Speaker 1: lot more empathy for that question now, And the answer

499
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 1: was genius, which was that no sibling grows up in

500
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:10,600
Speaker 1: the same house. Exactly Colin's experience of that is he

501
00:31:10,960 --> 00:31:14,560
Speaker 1: was already a working actor. He was already in the

502
00:31:14,600 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 1: grand tradition of Hanks's. He had not finished college because

503
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:20,200
Speaker 1: he got cast in something, and so he was already

504
00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:24,200
Speaker 1: on his way. And so he had really wrangled the

505
00:31:24,240 --> 00:31:27,840
Speaker 1: bureaucracy of my mom's death, putting the house on the market,

506
00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:31,800
Speaker 1: dealing with the last will and testament, paying for all

507
00:31:31,880 --> 00:31:35,120
Speaker 1: the little things that a crewe and by the time

508
00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:38,560
Speaker 1: all of that was handled, he had nothing in the tank,

509
00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 1: and I had nothing to offer. So it became let's

510
00:31:43,040 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 1: just get all of this stuff into storage and we

511
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:47,880
Speaker 1: can deal with it quote unquote in a couple months,

512
00:31:48,480 --> 00:31:52,600
Speaker 1: and that becomes a full decade. My mom gets put

513
00:31:52,680 --> 00:31:55,800
Speaker 1: on the back shelf as it pertains to her stuff

514
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:58,120
Speaker 1: and also the woman herself. It's like, well, we'll deal

515
00:31:58,160 --> 00:32:00,680
Speaker 1: with that when we have the bandwidth, and we didn't

516
00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:05,120
Speaker 1: have the bandwidth. Arguably I still don't, but we cracked

517
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:06,920
Speaker 1: open the locks about ten years on.

518
00:32:07,480 --> 00:32:11,160
Speaker 2: And during those years, you're working as a journalist for

519
00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:13,600
Speaker 2: Vanity Fair. You were trying to get on with your life,

520
00:32:14,080 --> 00:32:18,320
Speaker 2: but there was also this detritus of a life that's

521
00:32:18,360 --> 00:32:21,120
Speaker 2: like sitting there. It's like it's got a heartbeat, it's ticking.

522
00:32:22,080 --> 00:32:26,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's waiting. Yeah. I had graduated college, which was

523
00:32:26,520 --> 00:32:32,640
Speaker 1: absolutely devastating, and hit the ground running because I wanted

524
00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:35,440
Speaker 1: to be a writer and I wanted to work at

525
00:32:35,480 --> 00:32:38,080
Speaker 1: magazines and that meant living on as I call it,

526
00:32:38,160 --> 00:32:41,440
Speaker 1: work Booze Island. So I had a series of really

527
00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:46,160
Speaker 1: high stress and demanding jobs that kept me in the

528
00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:51,360
Speaker 1: Manhattan run around. And I was also very clearly not

529
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:53,360
Speaker 1: just trying to get my career started, but I was

530
00:32:53,360 --> 00:32:56,719
Speaker 1: also trying to see how long I could go without

531
00:32:56,800 --> 00:32:58,720
Speaker 1: dealing with it all on any level.

532
00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:01,680
Speaker 2: No makes so much sense. So then it's ten years

533
00:33:01,760 --> 00:33:05,200
Speaker 2: later and was there a reason or a moment?

534
00:33:05,920 --> 00:33:08,520
Speaker 1: So by the time Colin and I go back to

535
00:33:08,520 --> 00:33:12,280
Speaker 1: Sacramento to finally deal with everything, Colin is in the

536
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:16,600
Speaker 1: middle of working on his first documentary, the most excellent

537
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:19,520
Speaker 1: All Things Must Pass, The Rise and Fall of Tower Records,

538
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:23,959
Speaker 1: which is a Sacramento story, and so Colin and his

539
00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:27,760
Speaker 1: producing partner, one of the boys from East Sacramento, that

540
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 1: posse we were all going to be back, and it

541
00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:32,040
Speaker 1: was the sense of, Okay, we're all going to be

542
00:33:32,040 --> 00:33:35,080
Speaker 1: in Sacramento, so maybe this is the time to do this.

543
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:39,160
Speaker 1: At that point, I had left New York, I was

544
00:33:39,480 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 1: living in Los Angeles and was pretty lost in that

545
00:33:44,080 --> 00:33:48,160
Speaker 1: late twenties to mid thirties. Oh God, I have a

546
00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:51,840
Speaker 1: diminishing runway to get my act together and figure out

547
00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:55,160
Speaker 1: if I'm going to have a good life post college.

548
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:58,040
Speaker 1: You have a horrific realization of it might not be

549
00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:00,400
Speaker 1: just a bad summer. It could be like a bad life.

550
00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:03,480
Speaker 1: I don't want to be my mom. I don't want

551
00:34:03,520 --> 00:34:05,760
Speaker 1: to have this failure to launch. I want to succeed

552
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:09,719
Speaker 1: in being a whole person. So what did that mean?

553
00:34:09,840 --> 00:34:14,960
Speaker 1: That meant starting some pretty serious therapy and saying, whatever

554
00:34:15,120 --> 00:34:17,920
Speaker 1: is sitting there in storage, I think I'm ready to

555
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:22,280
Speaker 1: start going through it. And up goes that clanging metal door,

556
00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:27,360
Speaker 1: and what we see is essentially a life frozen in time,

557
00:34:27,600 --> 00:34:30,680
Speaker 1: because when we threw everything in there, it was really

558
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:34,640
Speaker 1: like we didn't edit anything or go through anything. One

559
00:34:34,640 --> 00:34:38,040
Speaker 1: of the things I found was this bag of maggots

560
00:34:38,200 --> 00:34:40,960
Speaker 1: because we had thrown all of these boxes not knowing

561
00:34:41,000 --> 00:34:43,440
Speaker 1: what they were. And part of it was my mom's

562
00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:47,880
Speaker 1: y two K like food hoard that next to six

563
00:34:47,960 --> 00:34:52,040
Speaker 1: boxes of horseshow ribbons and romance novels. Who's a real

564
00:34:52,120 --> 00:34:55,760
Speaker 1: grab bag of a confusing life.

565
00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:59,880
Speaker 2: And in that storage also there's a white binder of

566
00:35:00,080 --> 00:35:04,960
Speaker 2: poetry that your mother had written, and a dozen reporters notebooks.

567
00:35:05,360 --> 00:35:08,480
Speaker 2: But that's like a bridge too far. You don't look

568
00:35:08,480 --> 00:35:11,319
Speaker 2: at those for a few years.

569
00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:15,799
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I find essentially these huge sort of storage

570
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:20,799
Speaker 1: tupperware boxes of all of her papers, and there were

571
00:35:20,920 --> 00:35:23,279
Speaker 1: a handful of things that I'd been looking for, and

572
00:35:23,320 --> 00:35:24,880
Speaker 1: then there were a couple of things that I just

573
00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:30,279
Speaker 1: grabbed with that sort of journalistic idea, that hunch of

574
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:35,960
Speaker 1: maybe there's something in there. My journalistic predilection is I

575
00:35:36,040 --> 00:35:40,800
Speaker 1: will go through your trash and piece together shredded facts

576
00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:43,000
Speaker 1: if it's going to help me put the story together.

577
00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:45,319
Speaker 1: So when I saw that there was some version of

578
00:35:45,320 --> 00:35:47,279
Speaker 1: a paper trail, I was like, I don't even know

579
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:52,440
Speaker 1: what would be in there. And there were these notebooks

580
00:35:52,480 --> 00:35:56,960
Speaker 1: of cars that she thought were following her, or numbers

581
00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:00,840
Speaker 1: that she was convinced were the CIAH tracking her phone

582
00:36:00,840 --> 00:36:03,000
Speaker 1: calls as opposed to like people trying to sell you

583
00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:08,160
Speaker 1: a set of encyclopedias or something. And this binder of

584
00:36:08,200 --> 00:36:10,360
Speaker 1: her poetry, which I knew that she wrote, but I

585
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:13,600
Speaker 1: had never read. And at this point I had become

586
00:36:13,640 --> 00:36:17,040
Speaker 1: an aunt, so I had an eye on trying to

587
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:23,040
Speaker 1: find something of my mother to share with my three nieces.

588
00:36:23,880 --> 00:36:26,279
Speaker 1: That was an instinct as well. And what I end

589
00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:29,400
Speaker 1: up with ultimately is this white binder of my mom's

590
00:36:29,800 --> 00:36:34,440
Speaker 1: poetry and this red journal of hers, which is the

591
00:36:34,520 --> 00:36:35,959
Speaker 1: thing that kicks it all off.

592
00:36:36,960 --> 00:36:39,560
Speaker 2: So tell me a little bit about what you started

593
00:36:39,600 --> 00:36:44,839
Speaker 2: to read. You're like piecing together a puzzle, but it's

594
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:48,680
Speaker 2: not just a puzzle. It's like aasmagorical puzzle, Like it's

595
00:36:48,719 --> 00:36:50,719
Speaker 2: putting together a puzzle when you don't actually know whether

596
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:54,280
Speaker 2: the pieces you hold in your hands are actually pieces.

597
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:58,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, or even from the same puzzle. Yeah. So I'm

598
00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:01,880
Speaker 1: reading this sort of red journal and it was like

599
00:37:02,200 --> 00:37:08,080
Speaker 1: the sort of stream of consciousness images very often written

600
00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:13,360
Speaker 1: as prayers. Dear Jesus, thank you for showing us where

601
00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:17,200
Speaker 1: to find the dead Sea scrolls, Oh, my beautiful Lord

602
00:37:17,280 --> 00:37:21,120
Speaker 1: and Savior, thank you for getting all of the drug

603
00:37:21,160 --> 00:37:25,320
Speaker 1: dealers out of Sacramento. And then, just in the middle

604
00:37:25,360 --> 00:37:29,200
Speaker 1: of it, almost as an aside, I read, thank you

605
00:37:29,560 --> 00:37:34,439
Speaker 1: for protecting me and keeping me from going insane when

606
00:37:34,600 --> 00:37:44,120
Speaker 1: I remembered my father raping, murdering, and cannibalizing a little girl.

607
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:50,960
Speaker 1: And when I read it, it is the best example

608
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:54,560
Speaker 1: I have personally in my life and also in my

609
00:37:54,760 --> 00:38:00,640
Speaker 1: body of being deeply shocked and not at all surprised.

610
00:38:02,080 --> 00:38:05,480
Speaker 1: This is the first thing I've heard about my grandfather

611
00:38:05,719 --> 00:38:10,520
Speaker 1: from my mother. I barely know his real name, which

612
00:38:10,560 --> 00:38:14,280
Speaker 1: is John Raymond Dillingham. I don't know where he was born.

613
00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:15,120
Speaker 2: Well.

614
00:38:15,160 --> 00:38:17,439
Speaker 1: I know when he died, in part because my father

615
00:38:17,520 --> 00:38:19,719
Speaker 1: told me that. I had asked my dad, was I

616
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:22,480
Speaker 1: save the marriage, baby, and he said no, but you

617
00:38:22,640 --> 00:38:26,279
Speaker 1: were a someone died, and I feel the urge to

618
00:38:26,360 --> 00:38:29,560
Speaker 1: create life baby. And that's because my grandfather died in

619
00:38:29,680 --> 00:38:32,840
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, and it's his death that made my

620
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 1: mom want to have another child in a marriage that

621
00:38:36,280 --> 00:38:40,000
Speaker 1: was already failed. So all I know about this man

622
00:38:40,120 --> 00:38:42,520
Speaker 1: is that my mom won't speak about that. No one

623
00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:45,120
Speaker 1: will speak about him. I've met three of my uncles

624
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:48,640
Speaker 1: in passing. I've asked my grandmother about him, and she's

625
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:51,720
Speaker 1: explicitly said, we don't talk about that. And now here's

626
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:57,440
Speaker 1: my mom just offhandedly describing what I can only say

627
00:38:57,560 --> 00:39:03,759
Speaker 1: is like a podcast worthy cry of rape, murder, dismemberment,

628
00:39:03,960 --> 00:39:05,200
Speaker 1: and cannibalization.

629
00:39:06,200 --> 00:39:09,400
Speaker 2: Just for clarity's sake, was this This is the grandfather

630
00:39:09,520 --> 00:39:13,799
Speaker 2: who is buried at Arlington Arlington. Yeah, and when you

631
00:39:14,239 --> 00:39:16,640
Speaker 2: peeled off from the class trip to visit his grave

632
00:39:16,680 --> 00:39:19,680
Speaker 2: and you told your mother about that, and so that

633
00:39:19,760 --> 00:39:23,800
Speaker 2: must have also been this kind of callback to that moment.

634
00:39:24,400 --> 00:39:28,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember reading it. Suddenly, of the very few

635
00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:32,279
Speaker 1: pieces of information, I have this memory of saying, hey,

636
00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:36,480
Speaker 1: I went to go see Grandpa John's gravestone. And the

637
00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:40,680
Speaker 1: response is, oh, that's so incredible, or isn't it remarkable

638
00:39:40,680 --> 00:39:43,840
Speaker 1: that he's buried at Arlington, or let me show you

639
00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:47,280
Speaker 1: some pictures of him. It's to look at me blankly

640
00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:51,480
Speaker 1: and then shut herself in a room in silence and

641
00:39:51,560 --> 00:39:54,120
Speaker 1: refuse to come out for a week. And it's my

642
00:39:54,200 --> 00:39:58,440
Speaker 1: grandmother refusing to even say his name. So suddenly it's okay,

643
00:39:58,719 --> 00:40:03,319
Speaker 1: I have person experience of how bad my mom is

644
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:08,239
Speaker 1: at keeping reality straight of this is what we did yesterday,

645
00:40:08,360 --> 00:40:10,320
Speaker 1: This is what this person said to me. This is

646
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:13,400
Speaker 1: how my marriage ended. This is why my ex husband

647
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:17,120
Speaker 1: is famous. This is why my son lives with another family.

648
00:40:17,200 --> 00:40:21,240
Speaker 1: Those are all things that my mom could not hold

649
00:40:21,520 --> 00:40:29,680
Speaker 1: the truth of And yet here's this accusation or this

650
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:35,440
Speaker 1: bit of information that suddenly makes all these very disparate

651
00:40:35,640 --> 00:40:41,239
Speaker 1: and strange memories of mine kind of make sense. And

652
00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:44,080
Speaker 1: it becomes what I know about mom is there's always

653
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:48,440
Speaker 1: a grain of truth in her version of events. It

654
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:53,600
Speaker 1: just ends up deformed and hard to follow. How much

655
00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:58,239
Speaker 1: of any of this is true? Is it possible that

656
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 1: the whole thing is true? And what does that mean

657
00:41:02,920 --> 00:41:06,719
Speaker 1: for the way my mother was raised and the lessons

658
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:12,719
Speaker 1: that she taught me about God, everything, men and women, marriage,

659
00:41:13,600 --> 00:41:17,360
Speaker 1: parents and children, what a family is, what should be

660
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:20,720
Speaker 1: discussed and what shouldn't be discussed? How do we feel

661
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:27,400
Speaker 1: about the concept of justice or sex? The chasm of

662
00:41:27,600 --> 00:41:30,839
Speaker 1: how in the dark I was about who my mother

663
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:34,000
Speaker 1: was and what card she was playing with, and what

664
00:41:34,120 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 1: is the hand that she in turn dealt me? It

665
00:41:36,600 --> 00:41:39,000
Speaker 1: all opened up in front of me in a very

666
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:43,080
Speaker 1: obvious way. It was as the sort of adventure and

667
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:48,040
Speaker 1: question and deep emotional process appeared to me with as

668
00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:53,640
Speaker 1: much nuance as the yellow brick road in front of Dorothy.

669
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:55,920
Speaker 1: It became very clear to me that I had an

670
00:41:55,960 --> 00:41:59,839
Speaker 1: opportunity to do all of that work around my mother

671
00:42:00,200 --> 00:42:04,399
Speaker 1: and our relationship and her death and my concept of

672
00:42:04,520 --> 00:42:07,279
Speaker 1: who she is and who I am. That was all

673
00:42:07,520 --> 00:42:09,800
Speaker 1: suddenly the work presented itself.

674
00:42:12,840 --> 00:42:32,959
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. Two decades after her mother's death,

675
00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 2: Ea feels not only an opportunity but also a profound

676
00:42:37,719 --> 00:42:41,840
Speaker 2: urgency to understand the woman who shaped her and in turn,

677
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:45,480
Speaker 2: the roots of her own identity. She has an idea

678
00:42:46,040 --> 00:42:50,280
Speaker 2: a road trip. Driving a trusty old Mini van named Minnie,

679
00:42:50,800 --> 00:42:55,319
Speaker 2: her father's indestructible, well worn vehicle, Ea sets out to

680
00:42:55,360 --> 00:42:59,000
Speaker 2: retrace the journey her mother once took her on. What

681
00:42:59,160 --> 00:43:02,480
Speaker 2: starts as a drive down to ten quickly becomes something

682
00:43:02,640 --> 00:43:06,560
Speaker 2: far more layered, a search for meaning, memory, and the

683
00:43:06,560 --> 00:43:10,560
Speaker 2: elusive pieces of her past. This is the story she's

684
00:43:10,600 --> 00:43:14,640
Speaker 2: meant to investigate, to write.

685
00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:19,120
Speaker 1: So by the time I discover the journals, I'm in

686
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:24,160
Speaker 1: a creative and professional rut, which is when I leave

687
00:43:24,239 --> 00:43:26,920
Speaker 1: New York. I have a book deal, I've worked for

688
00:43:27,040 --> 00:43:30,279
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair, I've worked for the Huffington Post. I am

689
00:43:30,280 --> 00:43:34,680
Speaker 1: officially on my way, and then, as so often happens,

690
00:43:34,880 --> 00:43:38,080
Speaker 1: getting everything that you want makes everything completely blow up

691
00:43:38,120 --> 00:43:41,840
Speaker 1: in your face, and the anxiety and the stress around

692
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:43,920
Speaker 1: this book deal and how I have actually no idea

693
00:43:43,960 --> 00:43:45,839
Speaker 1: how to write a book, because at that point I've

694
00:43:45,880 --> 00:43:48,200
Speaker 1: been living on a four hour news cycle for three

695
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:50,759
Speaker 1: years and had the beginnings of an ulcer before the

696
00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:54,000
Speaker 1: age of twenty five. I had no idea how to

697
00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:56,279
Speaker 1: write a novel. And yet here I am with an

698
00:43:56,320 --> 00:43:59,160
Speaker 1: opportunity to not just write one, but to write two

699
00:43:59,239 --> 00:44:02,120
Speaker 1: with an option for a third, and I don't have

700
00:44:02,160 --> 00:44:05,360
Speaker 1: any time to do it, and I choke so hard

701
00:44:05,880 --> 00:44:11,120
Speaker 1: and so completely that it quickly becomes a writer's block

702
00:44:11,239 --> 00:44:15,040
Speaker 1: that is a decade in the making. And because I

703
00:44:15,040 --> 00:44:19,719
Speaker 1: can't write, I'm teaching at preschools, I'm teaching at bookstores.

704
00:44:20,360 --> 00:44:24,880
Speaker 1: I'm trying to claw my way out of this block

705
00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:27,920
Speaker 1: that I'm so deeply ashamed of that everyone ten years

706
00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:30,920
Speaker 1: on is saying things like, so, how's the book, And

707
00:44:30,960 --> 00:44:35,040
Speaker 1: I'm like, almost done, and of course is not anywhere.

708
00:44:35,320 --> 00:44:38,759
Speaker 1: I can't even write a paragraph, let alone finish to

709
00:44:39,160 --> 00:44:42,640
Speaker 1: possibly three books in six months. And that sort of

710
00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:46,000
Speaker 1: struggle is what happens during that ten years where everything

711
00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:50,480
Speaker 1: is sitting in storage. When Colin and I start going

712
00:44:50,560 --> 00:44:55,399
Speaker 1: through everything, is when I have basically I've had six

713
00:44:55,480 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 1: months of creative recovery. At this point, I'm living in

714
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:02,800
Speaker 1: La so I'm back around show business, and I start

715
00:45:02,840 --> 00:45:06,880
Speaker 1: writing jokes for other people's scripts, which doesn't make me

716
00:45:06,960 --> 00:45:09,520
Speaker 1: anxious because it's not my script and I won't have

717
00:45:09,560 --> 00:45:13,040
Speaker 1: to tell the joke. So I start writing for other

718
00:45:13,120 --> 00:45:15,719
Speaker 1: stand ups, and I start ghostwriting speeches for people who

719
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:17,879
Speaker 1: I used to edit at the Huffington Post, and I'm

720
00:45:17,920 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 1: kind of clogging my way back into being able to

721
00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:24,239
Speaker 1: write and being how I pay the bills, and I

722
00:45:24,400 --> 00:45:29,120
Speaker 1: start being able to live this Los Angeles existence, which

723
00:45:29,160 --> 00:45:33,799
Speaker 1: is for show business civilians. There are many very creative

724
00:45:34,160 --> 00:45:37,759
Speaker 1: and successful writers in Los Angeles, and you've never seen

725
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:42,319
Speaker 1: anything they've made, because you can write television shows and

726
00:45:42,400 --> 00:45:45,040
Speaker 1: movies and sell them for a lot of money and

727
00:45:45,040 --> 00:45:48,400
Speaker 1: they will never get made. And I found myself in

728
00:45:48,680 --> 00:45:54,200
Speaker 1: that writer experience where I'm successful but nothing's actually getting made,

729
00:45:54,800 --> 00:45:59,080
Speaker 1: and I start thirsting for something. And so I had

730
00:45:59,120 --> 00:46:06,479
Speaker 1: started wildly unsuccessfully pitching this story that was the ten.

731
00:46:06,960 --> 00:46:09,160
Speaker 1: But it had nothing to do with myself. It was

732
00:46:09,239 --> 00:46:12,480
Speaker 1: just a political story because I wanted a big swing

733
00:46:12,560 --> 00:46:16,520
Speaker 1: about America and who we are and these issues that

734
00:46:16,560 --> 00:46:19,360
Speaker 1: were coming to the forefront and I knew that I

735
00:46:19,440 --> 00:46:22,280
Speaker 1: knew the Ten and I could report on it because

736
00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:24,560
Speaker 1: I had been there. If I needed to hit the road,

737
00:46:24,600 --> 00:46:27,240
Speaker 1: I would know where to go. I tried for five

738
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:31,160
Speaker 1: years to sell that magazine story, and everyone was just

739
00:46:31,200 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 1: sort of like, no one knows you as a political reporter,

740
00:46:34,160 --> 00:46:37,200
Speaker 1: No one trusts your take on what any of this means,

741
00:46:37,239 --> 00:46:40,239
Speaker 1: and why should they. What we're interested in is you.

742
00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:42,919
Speaker 1: So if you have a story you want to pitch

743
00:46:43,000 --> 00:46:47,839
Speaker 1: us that's about you and your story, then come back.

744
00:46:48,440 --> 00:46:53,759
Speaker 1: So when I read the journal, I had already had

745
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:55,880
Speaker 1: this idea about doing a trip on the Ten. I

746
00:46:55,880 --> 00:46:59,719
Speaker 1: had already had the idea about America and the South

747
00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 1: and the Southwest that I want to talk about. I

748
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:04,920
Speaker 1: had already been told the only way anyone's going to

749
00:47:05,080 --> 00:47:07,400
Speaker 1: want to hear from you is if it's something about

750
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:13,360
Speaker 1: you and extension your family. And in that cutthroat, deeply

751
00:47:13,440 --> 00:47:17,400
Speaker 1: ambitious journalist part of my brain looked at their a

752
00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:22,279
Speaker 1: journal and immediately knew that's the ticket. This is the

753
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:25,120
Speaker 1: personal aspect of the story that's been missing. And I

754
00:47:25,120 --> 00:47:29,880
Speaker 1: think it was also a very helpful psychological relief, like

755
00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:34,680
Speaker 1: a tool to inject emotional distance. I'm not dealing with this.

756
00:47:34,840 --> 00:47:38,920
Speaker 1: I'm reporting on this, which is very different and certainly

757
00:47:38,960 --> 00:47:41,760
Speaker 1: gave me a permission structure for getting into that work.

758
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:45,920
Speaker 2: It's so interesting because my sort of hot take on

759
00:47:46,000 --> 00:47:50,319
Speaker 2: that is that when you were out there pitching the

760
00:47:50,360 --> 00:47:54,360
Speaker 2: story of the ten, the journalistic story, this was already

761
00:47:54,640 --> 00:47:59,640
Speaker 2: somewhere hovering, and then like a thunderclap when you read

762
00:47:59,640 --> 00:48:02,880
Speaker 2: the Red Notebook, it came together, but you had already

763
00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:05,040
Speaker 2: been paving the way for it, without knowing that you

764
00:48:05,040 --> 00:48:07,520
Speaker 2: were paving the way for it. Yeah.

765
00:48:07,600 --> 00:48:10,600
Speaker 1: I don't have kids, so I have no experience of

766
00:48:10,680 --> 00:48:14,799
Speaker 1: there's a soul waiting to enter the family, or there's

767
00:48:14,840 --> 00:48:17,440
Speaker 1: an apple and there's a gleam in my eye that

768
00:48:17,520 --> 00:48:20,359
Speaker 1: will one day be my progeny. I don't have any

769
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:22,960
Speaker 1: personal experience of that. What I do have experience with

770
00:48:23,239 --> 00:48:28,520
Speaker 1: is that sort of the bizarre mysticism of creativity and

771
00:48:28,560 --> 00:48:31,120
Speaker 1: how the work comes to us when we need it.

772
00:48:31,280 --> 00:48:35,839
Speaker 1: Maybe the deepest cynics become the most fervent mystics. And

773
00:48:36,000 --> 00:48:38,680
Speaker 1: I can say that my experience of creative block and

774
00:48:38,840 --> 00:48:42,680
Speaker 1: creative recovery from block made me a deep believer in

775
00:48:42,880 --> 00:48:46,160
Speaker 1: when the work presents itself, say yes, and the work

776
00:48:46,400 --> 00:48:49,640
Speaker 1: entered the chat with tap dance shoes on and a

777
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:52,640
Speaker 1: cone brawl on fire. It was just like this is happening.

778
00:48:52,640 --> 00:48:58,359
Speaker 2: Buckle up, and so Ea tries to follow the map

779
00:48:58,440 --> 00:49:03,120
Speaker 2: of notes as burning questions and no way of knowing

780
00:49:03,200 --> 00:49:07,240
Speaker 2: whether or where she might find answers. She and Minnie

781
00:49:07,680 --> 00:49:11,880
Speaker 2: make stops in Phoenix, Tucson, White Sands National Park in

782
00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:16,920
Speaker 2: New Mexico. They go to Marfa, Texas, New Orleans, until

783
00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:21,840
Speaker 2: they finally arrive in her mother's hometown of Palatka, Florida,

784
00:49:22,440 --> 00:49:25,440
Speaker 2: And though she doesn't find exactly what she was looking for,

785
00:49:26,080 --> 00:49:30,440
Speaker 2: she finds something infinitely more meaningful, a way of understanding

786
00:49:30,560 --> 00:49:34,759
Speaker 2: her mother and her history and therefore herself.

787
00:49:36,920 --> 00:49:40,120
Speaker 1: So my mother's family is one girl, three boys. My

788
00:49:40,320 --> 00:49:45,680
Speaker 1: family is one girl, three boys. My father's family one girl,

789
00:49:46,080 --> 00:49:50,000
Speaker 1: three boys. The biggest significant difference between my life when

790
00:49:50,040 --> 00:49:52,120
Speaker 1: I wrote the book and my life now is I

791
00:49:52,160 --> 00:49:57,000
Speaker 1: have a partner and their family one girl, three boys.

792
00:49:57,719 --> 00:50:01,160
Speaker 1: Have no idea the significance or meaning of that, And

793
00:50:01,200 --> 00:50:04,120
Speaker 1: I think meaning is usually what we decide to place

794
00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:06,680
Speaker 1: on things. I have no idea what the meaning of

795
00:50:06,719 --> 00:50:09,160
Speaker 1: one girl, three boys is for me, but it's a

796
00:50:09,200 --> 00:50:11,320
Speaker 1: pattern of significant presence in my life.

797
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:14,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, it calls to mind this quote from Alice Miller

798
00:50:14,960 --> 00:50:18,239
Speaker 2: that you highlight fairly deep in the narrative near the

799
00:50:18,360 --> 00:50:21,560
Speaker 2: end of your story. Experience has taught us that we

800
00:50:21,600 --> 00:50:24,720
Speaker 2: have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness,

801
00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:29,040
Speaker 2: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in

802
00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:32,719
Speaker 2: the individual and unique history of our childhood. And so

803
00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:37,440
Speaker 2: you by making this trip and by coming to understand

804
00:50:38,719 --> 00:50:42,880
Speaker 2: holding the cognitive dissonance of all these things, being unable

805
00:50:42,920 --> 00:50:45,840
Speaker 2: to prove that your mother was assaulted by her father,

806
00:50:46,200 --> 00:50:49,360
Speaker 2: but knowing that violence was definitely a part of her childhood,

807
00:50:49,680 --> 00:50:53,360
Speaker 2: quite possibly sexual violence, and knowing that your grandfather was

808
00:50:53,400 --> 00:50:57,600
Speaker 2: a successful army man and also was a drunkard, a charmer,

809
00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:01,120
Speaker 2: and a dark presence who was expelled from his own family. Like,

810
00:51:01,280 --> 00:51:05,760
Speaker 2: both of these truths can be held in the same palm.

811
00:51:05,840 --> 00:51:10,760
Speaker 2: And this journey, to me feels like your journey to

812
00:51:10,800 --> 00:51:14,200
Speaker 2: be able to do that in a way that you

813
00:51:14,239 --> 00:51:15,080
Speaker 2: can make peace with.

814
00:51:16,120 --> 00:51:18,839
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think the book. I really love

815
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:23,279
Speaker 1: that Alice Miller quote because I find it fascinating that

816
00:51:23,360 --> 00:51:29,560
Speaker 1: people think that the therapeutic process is an inherently egotistical process,

817
00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:32,279
Speaker 1: the concept of like, oh, you're just going to sit

818
00:51:32,320 --> 00:51:34,799
Speaker 1: there and talk about yourself. Don't you ever get tired

819
00:51:34,840 --> 00:51:38,320
Speaker 1: of talking about yourself? And I actually find that therapy

820
00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:44,720
Speaker 1: is ego destructive because your problems are so common, so basic,

821
00:51:45,280 --> 00:51:48,840
Speaker 1: that they are in a book called the DSM, and

822
00:51:48,920 --> 00:51:54,160
Speaker 1: that in fact, the process of sitting and sharing with

823
00:51:54,200 --> 00:51:57,240
Speaker 1: someone who you trust and who is capable of meeting

824
00:51:57,280 --> 00:51:59,680
Speaker 1: you in that space, you tell them a series of

825
00:51:59,760 --> 00:52:02,600
Speaker 1: stores reason they help you connect the dots so that

826
00:52:02,640 --> 00:52:05,319
Speaker 1: the dot of what happened last week at brunch with

827
00:52:05,360 --> 00:52:09,800
Speaker 1: your girlfriends is connected to the dot of what happened

828
00:52:09,840 --> 00:52:12,120
Speaker 1: between you and your mother when you were six years old,

829
00:52:12,520 --> 00:52:16,600
Speaker 1: and how you're just recreating the moment over and over

830
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:20,840
Speaker 1: in an unconscious attempt to resolve the dynamic. I find

831
00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:27,040
Speaker 1: that this idea that the therapeutics process and the creative

832
00:52:27,080 --> 00:52:30,640
Speaker 1: process about being ego driven comes from a place where

833
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:34,640
Speaker 1: it's like, you must acknowledge the unconscious and the subconscious

834
00:52:34,680 --> 00:52:37,120
Speaker 1: and the fact that we do things for reasons that

835
00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:41,040
Speaker 1: we are not aware of ourselves. I think the therapeutic

836
00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:44,480
Speaker 1: process is a permission structure for acknowledging that we are

837
00:52:44,520 --> 00:52:48,680
Speaker 1: not always aware of why we do things and the

838
00:52:48,719 --> 00:52:52,480
Speaker 1: repercussions not only on ourselves but of the people that

839
00:52:52,520 --> 00:52:58,879
Speaker 1: we love. And my mother made many references to being

840
00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:03,759
Speaker 1: very wary of psychiatry and psychologists, and the language that

841
00:53:03,800 --> 00:53:08,319
Speaker 1: she uses is always like entrapment. But the idea that

842
00:53:08,360 --> 00:53:11,799
Speaker 1: there is grace to be found in the realization that

843
00:53:11,840 --> 00:53:14,920
Speaker 1: we are not always in control of why we do things,

844
00:53:15,520 --> 00:53:18,680
Speaker 1: which meant that holds space or creates even more space

845
00:53:18,719 --> 00:53:21,080
Speaker 1: for the understanding that my mother loved me to the

846
00:53:21,120 --> 00:53:25,280
Speaker 1: best of her abilities, and that everything that she did

847
00:53:25,440 --> 00:53:29,440
Speaker 1: to me in that power dynamic of mother and child,

848
00:53:30,080 --> 00:53:32,560
Speaker 1: she was not aware of why she was doing them.

849
00:53:32,880 --> 00:53:35,359
Speaker 1: She was not making the connections, she had no one

850
00:53:35,520 --> 00:53:38,080
Speaker 1: to share the data points with, She could not see

851
00:53:38,120 --> 00:53:43,279
Speaker 1: the patterns, and that allows me to understand her and

852
00:53:43,360 --> 00:53:47,640
Speaker 1: to hold primarily the memories of the good days and

853
00:53:47,719 --> 00:53:50,640
Speaker 1: not so much the bad days. And that is as

854
00:53:50,680 --> 00:53:53,359
Speaker 1: I think anybody who is buried someone with whom they

855
00:53:53,360 --> 00:53:57,600
Speaker 1: have a complicated relationship with, it's easier on the other

856
00:53:57,719 --> 00:54:00,960
Speaker 1: side of loss to prioritize the good day, I would say.

857
00:54:01,400 --> 00:54:04,840
Speaker 1: Joan Didion says that basically her entire life is determined

858
00:54:04,840 --> 00:54:07,440
Speaker 1: by the fact that she's from Sacramento, in the Sacramento Valley.

859
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:10,759
Speaker 1: It determined everything about her and everything she ever was

860
00:54:11,280 --> 00:54:15,520
Speaker 1: that she'll ever do. And Georgia O'Keefe basically says, it

861
00:54:15,560 --> 00:54:18,319
Speaker 1: could not matter less who I am or where I'm from.

862
00:54:18,360 --> 00:54:22,000
Speaker 1: It's what I do that determines the course of my life.

863
00:54:22,480 --> 00:54:27,760
Speaker 1: And I think these are really about meaning that Didion,

864
00:54:27,840 --> 00:54:31,040
Speaker 1: in her drive for narrative is a form of control.

865
00:54:31,360 --> 00:54:34,200
Speaker 1: What she's really trying to figure out is not what happened,

866
00:54:34,560 --> 00:54:38,520
Speaker 1: but what does it mean? And Georgia O'Keefe is someone

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Speaker 1: who says, you can tell me that for you, my

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00:54:42,120 --> 00:54:47,440
Speaker 1: paintings of flowers mean vaginas, but I do not co

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00:54:47,600 --> 00:54:50,520
Speaker 1: sign that you get to tell me what my paintings mean.

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00:54:51,280 --> 00:54:59,880
Speaker 1: And I think that when you're talking about family secrets journalistically, emotionally, poetically,

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00:55:00,480 --> 00:55:03,840
Speaker 1: the follow up is not what is the secret? But

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00:55:03,960 --> 00:55:07,680
Speaker 1: what does the secret mean? What does it mean for

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00:55:07,800 --> 00:55:10,759
Speaker 1: your family? What does it mean for your relationships, what

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00:55:10,800 --> 00:55:13,960
Speaker 1: does it mean for your self? Concept And what I

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00:55:14,120 --> 00:55:17,680
Speaker 1: realized is that not having a clean ending did not

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00:55:18,000 --> 00:55:22,279
Speaker 1: signify a lack of meaning. What it meant was that

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00:55:22,480 --> 00:55:27,640
Speaker 1: I had much more flexibility to determine the meaning of

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00:55:27,680 --> 00:55:30,000
Speaker 1: what I discovered about my mother. That it was not

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00:55:30,120 --> 00:55:33,320
Speaker 1: going to be something external. I wasn't going to find

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00:55:33,440 --> 00:55:36,959
Speaker 1: the meaning outside. The meaning was always going to come

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00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:42,120
Speaker 1: from inside, inside the house, inside the journal, inside the dynamic,

882
00:55:42,480 --> 00:55:43,440
Speaker 1: inside the process.

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00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:52,479
Speaker 2: Here's Ea reading one last passage from her memoir, The ten.

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00:55:58,160 --> 00:56:01,240
Speaker 1: I think there must be something between truth and narrative.

885
00:56:01,840 --> 00:56:04,520
Speaker 1: As much as narrative can give us meaning, it can

886
00:56:04,680 --> 00:56:08,239
Speaker 1: just as easily deceive. I took to the road in

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00:56:08,280 --> 00:56:11,360
Speaker 1: an attempt to find out what really happened, to try

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00:56:11,400 --> 00:56:15,080
Speaker 1: to divide truth and narrative. Back home in my own

889
00:56:15,120 --> 00:56:18,000
Speaker 1: big bed with music on my own radio, I look

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00:56:18,040 --> 00:56:21,239
Speaker 1: over the white binder one last time before setting it

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00:56:21,280 --> 00:56:24,760
Speaker 1: on the shelf next to Yates and Whitman and Plath.

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00:56:25,640 --> 00:56:28,680
Speaker 1: Reading my mother's words was a conversation with her on

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00:56:28,800 --> 00:56:31,960
Speaker 1: her own terms, and she told me that she lived

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00:56:32,000 --> 00:56:35,800
Speaker 1: honestly in accordance with the story she needed to survive.

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Speaker 2: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly's Acur is

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00:56:51,120 --> 00:56:54,320
Speaker 2: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.

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Speaker 2: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,

898
00:56:57,960 --> 00:57:00,440
Speaker 2: please leave us a voicemail and your story appear on

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00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:04,040
Speaker 2: an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight eight

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Speaker 2: Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also find

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00:57:08,520 --> 00:57:13,040
Speaker 2: me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd like

902
00:57:13,080 --> 00:57:15,440
Speaker 2: to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,

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00:57:15,840 --> 00:57:17,720
Speaker 2: check out my memoir Inheritance.

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Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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00:57:37,240 --> 00:57:39,280
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.