WEBVTT - Trastiendas 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.360 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. What 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:11.320 if this letter contained my father's final confession? What if 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:14.720 it was a compendium of his Trustiendas, the word my 0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:17.799 Cuban mother had adapted as a more resonant way to 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:22.919 describe secrets. According to her, every person carries at least 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:26.280 one frstenda from a place in the heart, or such 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:29.760 secrets thrill the day and deep in the night. Perhaps 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:32.479 these plastenders were more like dark thoughts that had been 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:35.959 in the cobdwead corners of his mind. Once I knew 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:38.879 about these truss standers, would it make me like Icarus 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:41.680 flying too close to the sun and dropping from the sky. 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:45.400 Would it be like opening Pandora's jar, or, as it 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:49.240 was later mistranslated, her box of woes and releasing them 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:52.640 to the world. Reading about my father's troubles in his 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:55.640 hand might make them my own. I was afraid to 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:58.639 know everything about him, and yet I was too curious 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:05.720 to leave his secrets alone. That's Judy Bolton Fasman, journalist, 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:09.920 essayist and author of the memoir Asylum, a Memoir of 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:14.640 Family Secrets. Imagine receiving a letter from a parent, A 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:19.200 thick envelope that might just explain everything, a letter that 0:01:19.280 --> 0:01:22.679 might answer a lifetime's worth of questions, and the persistent 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:25.520 sense that there are mysteries and secrets at the core 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:30.160 of your family's life. And then imagine what happened to Judy. 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:33.120 Before she had a chance to open the letter, she 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:37.160 received an urgent request from her father. Please destroy the letter, 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:42.720 I sent Burnett without reading, and she did. She respected 0:01:42.720 --> 0:01:45.839 his wishes and watched his words go up and smoke. 0:01:57.240 --> 0:02:01.000 I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:03.480 that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:16.200 and the secrets we keep from ourselves. Asylum was the 0:02:16.480 --> 0:02:21.200 iconic address of my childhood. Everything revolved around there. It 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:23.400 was a small house. It was a three small, three 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:26.280 bedroom colonial. It sat on the corner of Asylum Avenue 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:28.720 and Ballard Drive, and I want to say that it 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:31.480 sort of sat on the corner of desperation and dreams 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:36.400 as well, my father's desperation, my mother's dreams, and vice versa, 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:40.000 and those two were often in competition and often clashed, 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:43.560 those two aspirations. I also lived across the street from 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:49.080 a magnificent field that belonged to a small Catholic women's college, 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:52.800 and I would watch and this was in the nineties sixties, 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:55.240 and nuns were still in their habits, and I would 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:58.280 watch the nuns mostly in pairs. They were, they were 0:02:58.320 --> 0:03:02.639 never alone, kind of almost float across the field. And 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:05.840 of course there's my mother's, you know, total dream of 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:09.160 an American house. And she was so proud of Asylum 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:12.200 Avenue for having a built in vacuum cleaner. I mean, 0:03:12.240 --> 0:03:14.280 this is something that she would have never dreamed of 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:19.280 back in Cuba. This is a West Harford, Connecticut. Describe 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:25.160 your father, Harold. Harold was much older than my mother Matile. 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:29.960 He was intimidating, he was strict. He had been in 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:32.520 the navy for five years during the Second World War, 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:37.160 and uh, he sort of treated his kids like little soldiers. 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:41.080 Sometimes he had his very quirky ways about him. He 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:43.720 was also very smart, and I knew that even at 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:47.240 a young age. And I also intoud that he had 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:50.240 done a lot of living, although I don't know if 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:52.800 I would have articulated it that way back then, but 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:55.320 he had done a lot of living before I was born. 0:03:56.160 --> 0:03:58.720 How old was he when you were born? He was 0:03:58.800 --> 0:04:01.960 forty two, which is not old by today's standards. But 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:04.680 I was born at the end of nineteen sixty and 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:08.240 my mother was twenty five, so there was quite an 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:11.120 age difference. There was even a cultural gap. There was 0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:14.160 a generational gap, you know. He was always much older 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:16.680 than all the other fathers when I was growing up. 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:19.279 But I didn't feel that lad. I didn't. You know, 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:22.359 he wasn't tired, he was energetic, but he was very 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:25.360 stern when he went to teach night school. I mean, 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:27.080 it was like a party in our house. You know. 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:30.159 My mother would put on Cuban dance music. We would dance, 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:33.479 we would have a TV dinners, you know, the whole thing. 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:36.800 It was almost like a celebration. And he was very 0:04:36.800 --> 0:04:39.719 strict about our bedtimes. He was, you know, he even 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:42.720 at one point would shout to eight year old me, 0:04:43.080 --> 0:04:46.119 would bang on the door, Navy shower, don't waste water, 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.559 Navy shower. And the navy shower was that you would rinse, 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:52.080 you would turn it off and then you would soap up, 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:55.240 and then you would rinse again. That was the navy shower. 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:58.120 And it was actually terrifying to think my father was 0:04:58.160 --> 0:05:00.760 on the other side of the door screaming Navy shower. 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:04.160 He also served in the Navy during World War Two. 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:07.120 He was an officer, and uh, I think that that 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:10.200 gave him some gravitas and it, you know, made him 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:13.760 very American. He had served his country and he was 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:16.320 very proud of that. I should also say he was 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:21.840 also a rabid Yale football fan. I mean, his his 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:25.920 life revolved around Yale football games. He had a very 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:30.640 prodigious memory and he memorized every single fact about Yale football. 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:34.040 He was also in alum Yale football almost defined him 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:37.520 and almost defined my childhood in many ways. And also 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:41.280 his father, Your grandfather was right, yes, which was very 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:45.920 unusual because my grandfather graduated with the class of nineteen 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:50.240 the Sheffield School of Engineering and he was an immigrant 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:54.159 and he my grandfather basically fiddled his way through Yale 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:56.679 in that he had he got a musician's Union card 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.719 and he played in a lot of society the orchestras 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:04.000 as a student to earn his tuition. What do you 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:07.520 think your father's obsession with Yale football was about. I 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:10.360 think that it was it came down a bit from 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:15.680 my grandfather. My grandfather wanted nothing more than to leave 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:19.120 behind Ukraine where he was from. Here he came and 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:21.120 he was two years old, so he was very, very yad. 0:06:21.200 --> 0:06:24.640 He probably didn't really have a memory of Ukraine, but 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:29.200 he wanted to be an American. Our name was americanized Bolton. 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:33.720 He himself, after graduating from Yale and working as the 0:06:34.360 --> 0:06:37.599 city engineer city civil engineer for the town of Behaven, 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:42.279 had a society orchestra with another Yale graduate. But you know, 0:06:42.400 --> 0:06:46.080 my grandfather was always on the other side of the door, 0:06:46.279 --> 0:06:48.760 looking in, so to speak, like I always picked to 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:51.080 him being on the other side of a glass store 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:53.960 looking in on parties that he would have never been 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:58.120 invited to unless he was actually playing the music for 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:04.840 the parties. My mother, she came from Havana. She immigrated 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:08.760 to the United States in and she came here as 0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:13.000 a twenty three year old young woman looking to finish 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:16.880 her schooling because the University of Havannah had closed, and 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:20.200 she came to Brooklyn and nted her room from some 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:23.840 cousins of her father's and had a hard time of it. 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:27.800 She wanted very much to work at the United Nations 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:30.640 as a translator, and that didn't pan out for her, 0:07:30.720 --> 0:07:33.280 so she typed forms and she typed invoices at a 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:38.040 watch factory, and the first winter that she was in Brooklyn, 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:41.200 she caught pneumonia because she just you know, she she 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:44.440 came from a tropical climate and was not used to 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:48.520 the bad weather. My mother was also a person who 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:52.520 lived in her fantasies, and living in her fantasy she 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:55.360 missed a lot of what was happening in real life. 0:07:55.920 --> 0:08:00.120 And one of the stories that she told was that 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:03.280 when she was a student at the University of Havana, 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:07.680 she was taking a test and she heard gunshots and 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:11.600 this president of the student body had died of the gunshots. 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:15.960 Battista's henchman got him. Well, she was telling this story 0:08:16.120 --> 0:08:18.480 to a friend of mine who was doing a project 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:22.920 on immigration. And mind you, I'm over forty years old 0:08:22.920 --> 0:08:26.720 when she's telling this story, and suddenly something clicks and 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:30.400 I start as she's as she's talking, I'm googling dates, 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:33.840 and I realized that her dates don't line up, none 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:37.360 of it lines up, And I realized she never attended 0:08:37.360 --> 0:08:40.000 the university. If I am, she made that all up. 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:47.840 So do you think that some of your profound desire 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:53.360 to know your parents, particularly your father, but really both 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:56.840 of them. Stems from this feeling that you had as 0:08:57.200 --> 0:09:01.400 a kid that it didn't all add up, that they didn't, 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:05.160 you know, actually seemed to be who they were saying 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:09.080 they were in part. In part and also when I 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:11.080 was a kid, I thought they were, you know, the 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:14.360 most glamorous couple in the world. No matter what went 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:17.319 on during the week, no matter what, you know, rouse 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:21.080 they got into. On Saturday night or early Saturday, you know, 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:25.080 early early Saturday night, it all stopped. My mother was 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:28.520 all glammed up to go out. She was beautiful, and 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:31.320 my father was in khaki's in a sport coat, and 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:34.280 off they went to you know, eat dinner with friends, 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:37.040 or to go to a show or whatever they were doing. 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:40.280 But every Saturday night they went out. Every Saturday night, 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:42.840 we had a babysitter. That was a boundary they put. 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:45.440 And they didn't have very many boundaries in that house, 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:48.160 I can tell you. So when you talk about Rowse, 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:52.880 what was the marital tension between them like and and 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:55.280 what did it encompass? You know, what was your sense 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:57.960 as a child of what that was about. It was 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:01.080 mostly about finances, and they were my mother was very, 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:05.360 very disappointed that my father was not the older Yale graduate, 0:10:05.440 --> 0:10:10.640 more established, uh kind of guy in his career that 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:13.840 she had hoped he would be. She was looking for status, 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:16.560 she was looking for security. She had grown up very 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:20.360 insecure in Havana, and uh, she was looking to my 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:24.240 father to provide her that security and that financial stability. 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:27.320 And you know, we weren't poor by any means, and 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:30.680 you lived in a nice suburb, but she wanted very 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:34.440 much to keep up. I remember them fighting about bills 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:37.360 that came in from a store one day, and she 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:40.640 looked at me and said, we're going out. She didn't drive, 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:42.800 so we took the asylum Avenue of Us about two 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:45.840 miles blessed, and we went to Lord and Taylor and 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:48.840 she bought the most gorgeous suit at Lord and Taylor. 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:52.320 And I remember her whipping out that green card with 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:55.200 the white lettering, and you know, she was mrsk Harrold 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:58.040 Molton at Lord and Taylor. So in part it was 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:00.760 to to get back at my father, and in part 0:11:00.880 --> 0:11:03.680 it was to be the Mrs k Harold Bolton that 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:07.520 she always wanted to be. There was a dangerous quality 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:12.240 to her. She was wiley. She was just a wily survivor. 0:11:13.000 --> 0:11:17.600 She actually ended up getting her master's degree without ever 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:22.000 having gone to college. She told the registrar there that 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:27.000 there was absolutely no way to get her transcripts from Havannah. 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:30.960 And you know, in those days, Havannah was really locked up. 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:33.520 I mean, there was the embargo, and nobody was getting 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:37.280 through the embargo. And she basically told them, it's locked 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:40.679 behind the Iron curtain. I can't get those transcripts. We 0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:44.680 don't have any sort of diplomatic relations with Cuba, and 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:46.840 you'll just have to take my word for it, and 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:51.400 they let her in. I was very, very attached to her. 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:55.320 There was something very alluring and compelling about her. When 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:58.360 I became a teenager, the dynamic change. But when I 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:01.920 was a little girl, she was sort of the permissive parent. 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:05.040 I don't think they wittingly did this, but they almost 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:08.760 played good cop, bad cop with each other. And she 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.520 was always the one that I ran to for comfort, 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:15.280 and in turn, she ran to me for comfort. We 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:18.640 comforted each other, which is not always the healthiest relationship 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:21.160 to have with your eight year old, but that's the 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:24.680 way it was. And I just adored her. And when 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:28.480 she would threaten to leave the family or run away, 0:12:28.559 --> 0:12:30.880 or she couldn't take it anymore. I mean, it devastated 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:39.040 me every time. Judy is not alone in her experience 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:41.880 of her good cop bad cop parents. She has two 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:45.480 younger siblings, a brother and a sister. Harold doesn't really 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:48.640 understand little kids in general, let alone his own. Too 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:52.160 young Judy, her dad seems kind of scary. In fact, 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:55.240 she's scared of him. The summer that Judy is nine, 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:58.360 her mother and Matild gathers up her and her siblings 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:02.640 and they go to Miami, Matild's extended family lives. But 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:06.720 to complicate matters, not only does Matild not drive, but 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:10.800 she doesn't fly either. She's terrified of airplanes. So they 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:14.199 take a train. Matild, Judy, and her siblings. As a 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:19.560 train departs, they see Harold recede into the background. Twenty 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:23.120 four hours later, we arrived in Miami. My sister had 0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:26.880 motion sickness. My brother, he was very little, so I 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:29.640 don't sure what was happening with him. He was he 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:32.240 was acting out. He missed my father. I knew I 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:35.200 was terribly homesick. I had never met people like my 0:13:35.280 --> 0:13:38.719 mother's family. They were so different than the Boltons of Behaven. 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:43.960 They were brashed. They were emotional, and they spoke Spanish, 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:46.760 and I spoke a little bit of Spanish because that's 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:50.319 how I communicated with my maternal grandparents who did live 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:53.560 in Connecticut. But I have to say that first summer 0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:55.640 that I went to Miami and that we lived in 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:58.400 Miami for almost three months, that was the first time 0:13:58.520 --> 0:14:02.000 I really realized that I was Latin x in some ways. 0:14:02.520 --> 0:14:05.840 I realized that my mother came from Cuba, from really 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:10.200 another country. And the thing that I remember most about 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:14.400 that summer was my mother's relatives and a lot of 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:18.640 Cuban ex pats that lived in her cousin's apartment building, 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:24.080 gathering every night to try and catch arrant airwaves from 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:28.760 the television to see Fie Delcaster Talk, and they were 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:33.760 just sent on seeing him. They would fiddle with the channels, 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:36.360 they would fiddle with the rabbit ears for a man 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:40.360 they hated so much, they absolutely had to see him. 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:43.640 And during that period of time, there's no word from 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:47.000 your father, none. Well, I knew that they had had 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:49.800 a fight and that she was going to leave him. 0:14:49.840 --> 0:14:52.720 My Bolton grandparents sent us money, which my mother kind 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:55.360 of pocketed, and we stayed sort of in a very 0:14:55.440 --> 0:14:59.160 run down shabby hotel across the street from my mother's 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:02.560 cousin called the Royal Hotel. I'll never forget it. I'll 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:05.920 never forget the the owner of the hotel, because I 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:08.360 would go to the front desk almost every day and 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:10.920 asked if I had had a letter from my dad, 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:15.600 and she would say, I don't think he's gonna write you. 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:17.880 You know, I was looking for Basically, my dad was 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:20.920 a very prolific correspondent, even when I was a little kid. 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:24.920 He sent Birthday cards and Valentine's cards in the mail, 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:27.920 which was just an absolute thrill and also reflected that 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:32.000 formality that he had, and he sent the sugariest literally 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:37.640 Valentine's cards. And I was basically missing him and lonely, 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:40.000 and I was looking for a Valentine's card in the 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:46.720 middle of July and I never got it. We'll be 0:15:46.840 --> 0:16:03.640 right back. During this long, lonely summer, Judy scrambles up 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:06.520 dimes and tries to reach her father to no avail 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:11.400 via pay phone. Eventually, after about three months, he does 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:14.000 come to make up with her mother and collect them all. 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:16.840 At first, he insists that they're all going to fly 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:21.080 home together, but Judy's mother simply cannot fly, so back 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:24.320 on the train to West Hartford they go. Once she's home, 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:28.000 ever curious about her parents, Judy begins to do what 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:30.600 so many people who into it that there are secrets do, 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:36.080 She Snoops. I always spot of them as glamorous in 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:39.800 some way. And I always wondered about my dad, so 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:43.040 much older, living the life, a full life before he 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:46.400 had me, And in some ways I found evidence of that. 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:50.720 I found a picture that unfortunately no longer exists, of 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:55.440 him in literally a pith helmet and flowing khakis, and 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:59.800 in the back of the picture is written Guatemala two. 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:04.440 And that forever piqued my interest, so much so that 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:06.720 later on I would go on to write my m 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:10.720 F a thesis about that and about him. Sometimes when 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:15.240 we stumble upon something that has meaning, even if we 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:18.480 don't know what that meaning is, somehow like its shimmers, 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:22.280 it takes on this kind of weight to it. There 0:17:22.320 --> 0:17:24.800 was something about Guatemala, as if it pertained to your 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:27.919 dad that you had a feeling about. Well, it was 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:32.600 so far away, and it sounded so exotic, and my 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:36.200 parents were very social in those years. My parents had 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:41.159 very loud, raucous joyous parties. Um. They were friends with 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:44.439 a lot of Latin X people in the Hartford area 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:48.600 and there was a lot of um singing. Someone inevitably 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:53.480 brought a guitar to my parents house and my mother sang. 0:17:53.520 --> 0:17:56.280 She had a beautiful singing voice, and her song of 0:17:56.359 --> 0:18:00.359 choice was usually Juan Panama. And I remember, you know, 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:03.040 watching those parties almost from the top of the stairs, 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:06.520 or at least trying trying to listen in. And I 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:08.680 think that added to the whole romance and the whole 0:18:08.720 --> 0:18:13.080 curiosity of who my parents were. And at that time, coincidentally, 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:16.760 I was reading a series about a detective girl who 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:19.760 happened to be named Judy Bolton, which throwed me to 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:21.879 no end to see my name on the cover of 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:25.359 a book. So I think I also took on that 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:27.440 persona and had a little bit of fun with it. 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:35.119 They're becoming Judy Bolton, girl detective. Exactly when Judy is twelve, 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:38.200 a young woman around nineteen years old comes to visit 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:46.320 and so begins the Summer of Anna. Anna just sort 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:50.960 of literally showed up in our lives. Um. There was 0:18:51.000 --> 0:18:54.080 really no context for her, but we you know, my 0:18:54.200 --> 0:18:57.760 brother and sister and I loved her dearly. We She 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:01.080 was just a lot of fun. And when Anna was around, 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:05.560 my father was so much more relaxed and and happy. 0:19:05.920 --> 0:19:08.360 You know, the guy who made us drink skin milk, 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:11.520 let us get SODA's. You know, we could do all 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:14.520 sorts of things. We could have sugary cereals because Anna 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:18.159 like them. So whatever Anna liked, she got from my 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:20.960 father and as a consequence, that spilled down to us 0:19:21.520 --> 0:19:24.960 and we could sort of share in her in her bounty. 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:30.560 What was your understanding, if any of why Anna was 0:19:30.680 --> 0:19:34.840 visiting you. Anna was staying with a local family, and 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:40.000 she was supposedly an exchange student. But you know, my 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:43.080 mother was very suspicious of her, very jealous of her. 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:45.159 She was the cause of a lot of tension in 0:19:45.200 --> 0:19:49.119 our house. She would, you know, tell my father you 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:51.679 love her more than you love your children. You're in 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:53.800 love with her. I mean, she didn't quite know what 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:55.960 role to put her in. Was she some of the 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:58.919 had crush on Could he have been a child of hers? 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:01.280 That he father in ga a model? She just you know, 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:04.640 looking back on it, I realized that she was confused. 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:07.800 But Anna was staying locally with a family in West Harford, 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:11.480 and she was introduced to my family because my father 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:15.040 had spent time in Guatemala and she consequently spent a 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:17.520 lot of time with us. We took her to Behaven, 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:21.640 she met my grandparents, and she also met my father's 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:25.159 best friend and his family, and we frequently went to 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:28.200 their house for the weekends too. Tell me a little 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:32.560 bit about your father's best friend. Felippe and my father 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:39.040 became friends through Philippa's brother, who my father met when 0:20:39.119 --> 0:20:42.320 he was studying at the Wharton School after the war. 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:46.520 Philippe was the person that my father visited often in 0:20:46.600 --> 0:20:50.480 Latin America or traveled with in Latin America, and they 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:54.600 were very very close. And even though Philippe lived probably 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:57.520 a good two hour derive from West Harford, I placed 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:00.960 him in Westchester. We went to this them, you know, 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:05.080 probably every six weeks. The two families were very close. 0:21:05.119 --> 0:21:08.240 The two wives actually got along very well, and my 0:21:08.359 --> 0:21:12.360 father and Philippe were always huddled in a corner talking 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:14.840 and we just assumed that, you know, they were just 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:19.560 close traveling companions and close buddies, and we really didn't 0:21:19.600 --> 0:21:22.720 think about it, but Philippo had an American mother and 0:21:23.320 --> 0:21:26.920 el Salvadoran father, and he grew up mostly in El Salvador, 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:33.720 with boarding school in the United States. My mother had 0:21:33.760 --> 0:21:36.080 always wanted me to go to a Jewish school. My 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:40.440 father grew up in a totally assimilated family, even though 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:44.040 my grandfather's father was a rabbi. She used to joke 0:21:44.160 --> 0:21:46.679 that when the first time she had her own kitchen, 0:21:46.720 --> 0:21:48.480 you know, when she moved out of her parents house 0:21:48.480 --> 0:21:51.520 and she was married, she made a poor groast. I 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:53.080 don't know if that's true or not, but that's what 0:21:53.160 --> 0:21:56.040 she used to say. They were very, very They did 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:59.679 not observe anything. They barely went to synagogue or to 0:21:59.760 --> 0:22:02.479 tell both. And my mother grew up among the Safari 0:22:02.680 --> 0:22:06.600 community in Havana, and she grew up very traditionally. She 0:22:06.720 --> 0:22:11.119 went to a Jewish school, as most Cuban Jewish kids 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:15.280 did in her generation, and she was a believer and 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:17.919 my father was not. I think that was the strict 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:20.959 dividing line. And when she had finally had enough of 0:22:21.000 --> 0:22:24.119 me being in public school, I think the thing that 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:26.879 really threw her for a loop was that they were 0:22:26.920 --> 0:22:30.639 teaching a sex education and she just could not abide that. 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:35.159 So she enrolled us in the local yeshiva. I was 0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:39.119 there for six, seventh, eighth, and ninth grade, and in 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:42.159 my last year there in ninth grade, there was a 0:22:42.240 --> 0:22:45.240 community of Lebovic educators that came to teach us in 0:22:45.280 --> 0:22:49.480 the school, and I became very mesmerized by the community. 0:22:49.600 --> 0:22:52.520 I loved that there was an embracing community. I loved 0:22:52.560 --> 0:22:56.439 that they were so kind to me, and it just 0:22:56.480 --> 0:22:59.480 seemed to be an oasis from my family life, where 0:22:59.480 --> 0:23:03.440 everything is just so tense and you know, my mother 0:23:03.560 --> 0:23:07.240 constantly upset and my father trying to do something about it. 0:23:07.920 --> 0:23:10.040 So that was the weird part of my education. I 0:23:10.160 --> 0:23:15.359 left the yeshiva as an ultra Orthodox Jew and my 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:17.400 parents were having none of that, and they would not 0:23:17.520 --> 0:23:20.240 let me go to a boarding school, a Jewish girls 0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:24.399 boarding school in Brooklyn or in Providence, Rhode Island. And 0:23:24.880 --> 0:23:27.840 I said, well, I only want to be with girls. 0:23:27.880 --> 0:23:30.119 I don't want to be in a classroom with boys. 0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:33.200 And I said, well, here are you two choices. Mrs 0:23:33.240 --> 0:23:36.119 Porter's School, which I didn't think that I would be 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:38.960 a very good fit for Mount Saint Jose's Academy, the 0:23:38.960 --> 0:23:42.280 local Catholic girls school. And you know, I was a teenager, 0:23:42.320 --> 0:23:44.199 so I had a bit of obstinate streak to me, 0:23:44.280 --> 0:23:46.000 and I said, and I thought I would last there 0:23:46.040 --> 0:23:47.760 two weeks, and that they would they would give in 0:23:47.840 --> 0:23:50.040 and send me to the school I wanted to go to. 0:23:50.280 --> 0:23:53.639 I said, I'll go to Mount Saint Joseph Academy. And 0:23:53.960 --> 0:23:57.439 it was definitely a strange situation at first, but I 0:23:57.560 --> 0:24:01.359 really ended up liking it. And at that time, the 0:24:01.440 --> 0:24:03.680 nuns were younger and they were out of their habits, 0:24:04.040 --> 0:24:07.359 and they were very social justice minded, and I just 0:24:07.760 --> 0:24:10.879 I loved being around them. I loved the support, I 0:24:10.920 --> 0:24:14.000 loved the female energy. And by the end of that year, 0:24:14.160 --> 0:24:17.239 I had sort of not only just acclimated, but I 0:24:17.280 --> 0:24:20.240 had sort of found my way to a Judaism that 0:24:20.359 --> 0:24:24.120