May 16, 2019 • 33 mins
Dani Shapiro and Sam Dingman from the podcast, Family Ghosts, discuss the family secret Sam revealed on his podcast. Season 2 of Family Ghosts launched on May 15. Familyghostspodcast.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Danny Shapiro and this is Family Secrets. The secrets that
are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
(00:20):
and the secrets we keep from ourselves. In this bonus episode,
we talk to Sam Dingman, the host of the podcast
Family Ghosts. Family Ghosts is a documentary style storytelling podcast
investigating the true story behind a mysterious figure whose legend
has followed a family for generations. Sam tells me about
(00:43):
his family secret he aired on his podcast and the
aftermath of telling it. I guess to kind of summarize
um the story basically, what it's about is, I, in
my memory became aware at my grandmother's nine birthday that
(01:07):
there was, in addition to my dad and his two brothers,
both of whom I have known for my whole life,
there was a third brother that I didn't know about,
and that he The reason I didn't know about him
was because he had taken his own life when he
was very young, when he was eighteen UM, and that
(01:31):
my dad had found the body um when that happened.
And I was told this again in my memory, not
by my dad, but by my younger brother Jake, who
UM was at this particular moment of my grandmother's birthday,
also in a period of turmoil in his life. Again
(01:55):
in my memory, and UM, I remember feeling in that
moment like perhaps there was some connection between the fact
that this had happened to my father when my father
was very young, and the fact that at that point
in my life I was in my mid twenties. At
the time, UM, I felt like this relationship of closeness
(02:18):
and trust and intimacy that I had that I recalled
having with my dad when I was a kid, UM
had erote it. And I wondered if perhaps by exploring
the story of Dick and take the opportunity to actually
talk to my dad about it and and connect with
him about it, I might be able to hit upon
(02:41):
what was at the root of the erosion of our
relationship with each other. And so the rest of the
episode is basically my attempt to do that. I'm just
wondering whether you think, Sam that part of the erosion
with your father during those years leading up to that point,
(03:03):
it seems like it had something to do with your
father just kind of retreating, you know, becoming just more distant,
more you know, sort of less engaged with you in
some way, and whether I don't, I don't want to
push this idea, but like whether you think that that distance,
(03:23):
that lack of engagement, actually this is interesting. I mean,
you were a young man at this point, right, and
you know when your father was a young man, he
had gone through a really really hard thing um and
lost his brother, and his brother took his life as
(03:44):
a very young man, and maybe that whole period of
time in a life you know, felt like, you know, unconsciously,
like some kind of repetition for your father, like I
just can't I can't be close to someone at this age.
Does that make any sense? It does make sense. And
you know, as you're saying, I, I don't, I don't
want to push that necessarily either, because I don't know
(04:07):
if that's what was going on for him. But you're
hitting on something which has been very profound for me
in the aftermath of this story, which is that one
of the things that's difficult for me about this story
is that I don't know that I did a good
enough job of considering my dad's emotional journey and all
(04:31):
the possible ways that he might have experienced My young
adulthood and adulthood based on what he'd been through at
the time that I was working on the story, because
I was working so hard to understand my own feelings,
and in doing that, I think, well, I had a
(04:55):
very powerful experience actually in the aftermath of telling the story.
And maybe I'll just tell you about it because I
think it will be a youthful or useful illustration of this,
which is this is going to sound unrelated, but it isn't.
I am a huge baseball fan. It's something that I
talked about a lot in the story. That's something that
I get from my dad. It's a big thing that
(05:16):
we have shared about a lot over the years. UM.
And I now that I live in New York, UM
can't watch my beloved Baltimore Orioles on TV unless I
pay for a subscription to this thing called MLB TV,
which allows you to watch games out of market. And
one of the things that I know all about it,
(05:37):
I've got to got two Red Sox fans in my house.
So okay, okay, so you know of what I speak. Um.
And one of the things that is a blessing and
a curse about MLB TV is not only can you
watch the games out of market, but you can watch
them on tape delay, so you can start the game
from the beginning, um, as though at whatever time you want. So,
(06:00):
since I often get home from work kind of late
at night, say nine or ten, UM, one thing that
I will often do is make myself a late night
dinner and sit down and watch the Orioles game from
the beginning, having studiously avoided the Internet all evening so
that I don't know what happens in it, and then
watch it as though, um, it's happening in real time. UM.
(06:24):
And So it was opening day of the two eighteen season,
and I came home from work and I sat down
to do exactly that, UM. And I got a text
message from my dad around the time I sat down
to do this. And at this time, UM, things that
(06:45):
were a little rough between me and my dad in
the aftermath of the story, UM, because I think it
was it was exposing in a way that he was
not expecting it to be, and it had resulted in
this scenario where I I would get a little pang
of fear when I would get a text message from
him or a voicemail from him, because I was afraid
(07:06):
that he was going to be upset. And it was
Opening Day, and I had had a long day at work,
and I just really wanted to watch the game and
not engage with anything resembling an anxious or negative thought. Um.
And so I didn't look at the text message, and
I watched the Orioles game, which memory serves when extra innings. Um.
(07:31):
But if it wasn't extra innings, the way that it
ended was on a walk off home run by Adam Jones,
who was one of my favorite players and obviously the
most dramatic possible way for a baseball game to end,
let alone an opening day baseball game. And so Adam
Jones hits this home run, I'm feeling thrilled. I'm feeling
relieved from all this tension that had built up during
(07:52):
the game, and I think to myself, okay, it's it's
finally okay to look at this text message from my dad.
And when I look at the text message, it's a
is ah, it's too music note emojis, um, which I
didn't even know he knew how to use emojis, and
it says walk off and then um, there's a follow
(08:15):
up message that says oops. Please disregard this message if
you're watching the game on tape delay. And I don't
know what it was, but I didn't. UM. I'm sorry.
I haven't really talked about this before, but UM, I
just was overwhelmed by how considerate that was on his part,
(08:39):
and the fact that he remembered that that might be
something that I was doing today, and even if he
remembered it after the fact, he wanted to write and
let me know that he remembered. And I looked at
this message and I just started crying and crying and
crying in this way that I have I don't know
(09:01):
if I've ever cried like that before, and I just
kept saying this phrase out loud, over and over again.
My girlfriend at the time was there, thankfully, and was
kind of talking me through this um and was understandably
a little confused about why I was having this huge
response to this seemingly benign text message. But it was
(09:23):
that I think it made me realize that there were
so many things, so many ways over the years, when
my experience of our relationship was that it was eroding
or growing distant, there were all these ways that I
think he was trying to reach out and I wasn't
seeing it, and I wasn't welcoming it because I wanted
(09:43):
to go back to the way things were when I
was fifteen and sixteen years old, and I wanted him
to be reaching out in the ways that he did then,
which you know, maybe is valid or maybe isn't valid,
But it closed me off to the reality that he was,
in a lot of ways trying to reach out to
me as an adult and as a peer, um and
(10:03):
somebody who cared about me, not as a teenager anymore,
but as a grown person, and that I had been
so busy trying to to tell this other story that
I had missed all of that and been so in
a way, I was the one who had been denying
him this form of connection that he was looking for,
(10:26):
and I just felt awful about it. Yeah. Well, and
and also I imagine because you were underestimating him right
in that moment, you were like that this text message
could be anything, right, Um, just that feeling, the feeling
of like, maybe this is going to be something I
don't want to read and it's and it ends up
being well, in fact, you didn't want to read it
(10:47):
because it would have he wouldn't have been able to
have watched the game quite in the same way. But
but you didn't want to read it. Not not for
those reasons, but because you were a little you know,
a little afraid of of what, you know, what my
what it might contain. Yeah, and he was just he
was just trying to say hi, you know, and I
see you. I mean, you know the subtext of that
(11:08):
was I see you, I see you. Yeah, And I
mean so much of that episode to me actually is
you you know, about you wanting him to see you. Um.
And you know, there's there's this kind of it's almost
like a difference in your emotional temperatures, right, Like, so
(11:29):
your emotional temperature around this discovery about Uncle Dick is
is highly emotionally charged. And you you know, you want
to know everything that you possibly can about Uncle Dick.
And and there's a very moving part of the episode
where you actually go to the place, um where he
(11:50):
took his own life. UM. And you know have this
experience of you know, kind of attempting too and feeling
like you do connect with him in some way. UM.
And it's very very emotionally charged for you. And then
on the other hand, there's your dad um who says
at one point UM in a very like the opposite
(12:14):
of highly emotional charged right um way, he says, regarding
the experience that he had with his brother, I never
felt it was highly formative. And you know, when I
heard him say that, I didn't believe that for a second.
But I believe that he believed it. And and I
wondered about the um what does the emotional cost? I mean,
(12:38):
I wonder about this all the time, and in in
all of the episodes of family Secrets and in my
own life and with my own family secret that I discovered.
You know, there's there is um a price that is
paid for that kind of stuffing down, you know, of
of something so important and just deciding that it's not formative,
(13:03):
deciding that it um, it's in the past and we're
going to leave it there. Yeah, I agree, And I think,
I mean, this brings up such an important question in
the work that if I made both of us do
and that it sounds like we both think about a lot,
which is when you are the person whether we're talking
(13:23):
about UM, my dad or my mom or any of
the people who UM from the past who are wrestling
with these things in the momentum that becomes secrets or
become ghosts. Something that I'm always wrestling with and trying
to figure out the significance of is that person in
(13:46):
that moment in the past doesn't feel like they have
a choice. The choice is I can either be undone
by this trauma that is, well maybe trauma's I guess
traumas not the right word there. I can be undone
by this thing that has happened. I can be completely
(14:09):
washed away into the sea of my emotions that are
too big to comprehend. Or two at this often formative age,
when you know on some level instinctively that you don't
have the emotional equipment to do that, to just go
(14:29):
onward and um, the fact that they made the choice
to go onward is oftentimes why people in our position,
or you know, the people that we tell stories about
position to look back in the first place, because this
person in that moment made the decision to continue the
family in some way, UM, and that led to our
(14:52):
birth and development and emotional maturity. UM. To even know
that there might have been another path in that moment,
or that there is something unfinished related to that incident
that happened, and so it can be tempting to judge
them for the choice they made at that time to
(15:14):
just push through and keep going, But that is a
that is a privilege of not having our survival predicated
on that on that choice, UM. And I think it's important,
I guess, probably to note here that there's a difference
(15:34):
of degrees. You know, Um, sometimes the secret from the
past is, um, something that might have been like a
crime or something that you know, people should be held
to count for some kind of violence or something like that,
And I guess that would color this a little bit differently.
But when it's something like a traumatic experience that a
parent went through, just to keep it in that realm Um,
(15:58):
it's a very odd position to be in to be
a descendant of this this parent and the person that
they had their experience with when they were young, and
to feel like it's important to go back and understand
the truth of what happened. But I don't judge you
parent for making the choice you made at the time.
(16:19):
Like that's a weird space to to exist in. Does
that make sense? It makes perfect sense to me. There
there's a moment in um Inheritance my memoir where I'm
like in the middle of all this discovery about my
parents and the choices that they made, and I feel
(16:40):
very betrayed that such a huge secret about my own
identity was kept from me. And then I'm in a lecture.
I was in Miami, actually at a lecture, and the
author who was giving a lecture spoke about present is um.
And it wasn't something that I had thought a lot
about present is m I wasn't even sure I knew
exactly what he ent And I ended up reading, reading
(17:03):
up quite a bit on present is um and and
essentially UM it would be defined as UM judging the
past through the lens of the present, so the lens
of everything that we now know psychologically, emotionally, intellectually, societally, culturally, UM,
(17:25):
and ascribing those qualities to the people in the past
who made whatever choices that they did. And it was
a real sort of light bulb moment for me UM,
and I realized that part of my work in understanding
as much as I possibly could about the past about
(17:49):
my parents was going to be in being able to
see them as the human beings that they were before me.
And I think that that's part of the work of
maturity full stop, you know, not just writing about it
or making podcasts about it, but actually moving through life
in general. Is to be able to see the people
(18:12):
that you come from as people and not um just
as as mom and dad and and and what you're
saying to you know. I used to think that the
phrase you know, she did the best she could. You know,
he did the best he could, that sort of you know,
they did the best they could. I used to think
that that phrase was just pure um cliche or um
(18:37):
like that it didn't really mean anything. But I've actually
come to think that it does mean something. People people
generally do the best they can. Yeah, and whatever that
means with what life has handed them at the time, Uh,
that life has handed them whatever is on their plate.
And then you know, time goes on and there absolutely are,
(18:59):
after a facts and ripple effects of um, the choices
that were made and the choices to get on with things,
and the people who hold those you know, who hold
all that usually is the next generation or even the
generation after um. You know, it's it's not as if
it goes away. Um. I think what we're talking about, though,
(19:22):
is the is the judging, which is ultimately toxic and
and as you said, also, it depends on it depends
on what we're talking about. Uh, judging can be completely
reasonable in certain situations, but in terms of what we're
talking about of people dealing with family tragedies really um
(19:42):
and making making choices that they're going to You know,
this is very much true with Holocaust survivors. You hear
so many, so many children of survivors. The parents never
wanted to talk about it. Ever, that was then this
is now, life goes on. Of course, the children then
inherited that and want, you know, and wanted and needed
(20:02):
ultimately to know more. But you know, for the parents,
it was, UM, I can't talk about this because if
I talk about this, I'm going to lose my mind.
So we're not going to do that. We're gonna gonna
build a new life. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you
so much about this, And UM, I think, at the
(20:25):
risk of coming across as self aggrandizing or something, UM,
I think that it's an important part of I don't
want to claim that, you know, this is an impact
that my work is having. But the reason I think
it's that telling these stories and telling them in a
responsible way matters is because I think it's a very
(20:46):
important way of understanding history and humanity. There's a moment
late in the episode about your uncle Dick where you
say to your father on sick of hiding behind the
curtain and um or maybe you don't say it to him,
maybe it's a narration, but you you say, I'm sick
(21:07):
of hiding behind the curtain. That's what I needed him
to hear. And you know, I'm thinking about that in
relation to the story that you told about the texts,
because really you wanted Poppy to see you and and
you wanted to see Poppy. And that's really it. That's
(21:31):
really all we're ever asking of each other is um.
And that's where that's where secrets become so corrosive and toxic,
because they prevent us from being able to actually see
and be seen. UM. But it's this, it's this, it's
a really it's a really moving moment and and it's
and it's a funny moment too, because you're in the
studio with him and he's like, you know, and you're
having this emotional moment with your dad and he says,
(21:53):
you know, it's weird to be in this setting talking
about all this stuff with the microphones and the headphones
and you know, can we can we just give each
other they are hugs somehow without you know, it was
it was such a great moment. Thank you, thank you.
Yeah he I think, he says, Um, he says, I
feel like I'm in a New Yorker cartoon or something.
But you know, I just I resonate so much with
(22:16):
with what you said about this, this fundamental question of
that we're all asking each other is like, I think
I see you? Do you see me? Um? And it
makes me think of an experience that I had in
another conversation about the show, UM that felt really formative
(22:36):
for me in terms of trying to always have a
better understanding of what I'm trying to do and what
the best way to do it is. And this person
said to me, and this is somebody who's um opinion
about art and storytelling I respect very very deeply. But
they said that they had a hard time with the
show because they expected it to be quirkier. They they
(22:57):
thought that they saw that it was gonna be a
show called Family Go So and they expected it there
to be quirky characters and UM to be more darkly comedic.
I guess in some ways, And I felt like I
completely understand that as an expectation because a lot of
(23:17):
times when we see storytelling about families, that is a
tweak that is placed on the narrative um for whatever
creative reason that people telling that story decide to do it.
But that a lot of these things are difficult to
(23:38):
sit with and and adding an element of quirk makes
it easier to sit with, but is not necessarily true
to the impulse of conveying the weight of a secret
or the weight of a ghost um about which there
is often nothing quirky or funny um, And that that's
(24:02):
a I'd like to lean into that space to whatever
extent I'm capable of in this kind of storytelling, not
to a point that it makes a listener uncomfortable and
want to tune out, but to a point that pushes
past the desire to say, uh, cookie, uncle whoever, but
(24:23):
actually think, what were the decisions that uncle whoever was
faced with? Is there any way that I can understand
the circumstances he was in when he made them and
think about how that's affected me? Right, right, Because ultimately,
leaning into those moments is not about going darker or
(24:48):
you know, more sinister or it's in fact kind of
the opposite of that, because um in in staying with
that place that might be a little bit uncomfort rble,
you know, where um, you know, a little levity and
a little quirk might just make everybody be like, okay,
well that was you know, We're good now. Um is
(25:11):
actually where we end up connecting and it's it's it's
where um we you know, the listener, the reader, the
um you know, this is this is where I think
people end up feeling like, oh right, this is this
is the real stuff. I've got this stuff too, and
(25:32):
and and it makes people feel a little bit better about,
you know, themselves, and a little bit less alone in
the world because we all have it. Yeah, it's it's
it's in. That's the tagline of our shows. Every house
is haunted. Um, it's it's in. It's in all of us,
and it's in, it's in every family. And a huge
(25:55):
part of the impetus for me and wanting to do
a project like this was the first acting class that
I ever took. When I got to college. I had
this professor who was one of those one of those
professors in whatever discipline. Although I think there's a lot
of them in theater classes who just completely remakes your
(26:19):
perspective on the world, you know, with some tossed off
phrase that they probably didn't even think about that carefully.
But he was talking to us about UM the great
dramas in UM theater, not just American theater, but UM
world theater throughout history, and he said, all the greatest
dramas begin with the family. And he said this is
(26:42):
true of Clifford Odets when he's talking about struggling, you know,
depression or post Depression era families in Hell's Kitchen in
New York City, or whether we're talking about UM, the
Greek tragedies or the Shakespearean histories, these are all families
(27:04):
struggling to confront the secrets and ghosts that live in
their houses. And it was a huge moment for me
to hear him say that, because it's somehow made a
connection between why stories like that for me personally, have
always felt so magnetic and revelatory and like I have
(27:32):
to ruminate on them for days and days afterwards because
they feel like they've stirred something up UM. As opposed
to I've never been somebody who's drawn to fantasy or
action or um even comedy to a certain extent. I
can enjoy all those things. But but family stories in
(27:53):
fiction have always really really pulled at me. And I
think there was this this realization when he said that
that the reason that's happening is because they're coming from
this thing that is real and lives inside of all
of us, and whether it's fictional or not, that that
(28:17):
imprinting is coming through in this type of storytelling. And
so I was really interested in this question of what
if you removed the fictional layer from that? What if
you what if you tried to tell the kinds of
stories that might prompt that sort of fictional storytelling. Could
(28:39):
you could you find could you find something else? Could
you find something very rich? Um? And with that there's
this challenge, right, which is, if it's a fictional story,
you get to make up the ending, and you get
to you get to arrange the event of the story
(29:00):
in such a way that they have the maximum emotional weight.
And time after time and our work on family ghosts,
when we're sorting through something, you know, all the tape
that we have for a story, we come up against
this question of you know, well, this would be the
most dramatic way of structuring this. But is it what
really it feels true to the person whose story we're telling. Um?
(29:23):
Is it Actually it might be the most interesting way
of telling the story, but is it what is actually
shaping this person's way forward in the world. Um. And
that element of things I think is it's a real
leap of faith because you're having to trust that people
will resonate it with the way and you've in the
(29:45):
way that you've described, which is I feel less alone
because I recognize the inner quest that this person is on. Yeah.
And and you know, there's the intimacy of this form
that I think allows for that um and more than
more than any other form, UM, it allows for you know,
(30:05):
that sense that, um, you know someone is listening. People
don't I mean, I don't think people tend to listen
to podcasts and groups. It's it's a very it's not
a communal experience, you know, it's often like literally like
literally in your head with you know, AirPods on. And
so there's something very intimate about that. And UM And
(30:26):
I think I think two that there's a desire that
we all have in this world where everything is being
shaped constantly UM and being curated and edited. And you know,
our experience walking through the world is being created, curated,
and edited and in ways that we often aren't even
(30:48):
aware of, where when something actually is sort of hewing
as closely as possible to the real uh and the
true UM that there's something for from me. I know,
you know selfishly that that's what I want to hear,
So that is therefore what I want to do because
it feels um like, you know, the richest possible storytelling
(31:15):
is the storytelling that is hewing as close to experience
as as as as we can. Yeah, I think about
it a lot of times, like, um, you know, there's
this ridiculous and I think I'll just go ahead and
say toxic for society. Phenomenon of metrics associated with tweets,
(31:37):
Like when somebody puts out a tweet, Um, there's these
numbers that appear underneath it to measure the relevance of it,
And I think it creates this um emotional ecosystem where
people feel like they need to express themselves in this
(31:58):
particular format in such a way that it gets the
highest scores and you know, speaks to the broadest possible
number of people so that those numbers will be as
high as possible. And I think something that is wonderful
about both listening to a podcast or radio story UM
(32:20):
and telling that story is that it's like, you know,
even though in speaking into the microphone you're theoretically addressing
any number of people, in that moment, you're only talking
to one person that the person who's listening UM and
as the listener, even though you know that a million
(32:40):
other people might be listening to this episode, the person
you're listening to, it's like they're only talking to you.
I'd like to thank Sam Dingman for telling us his
story today. You can find this episode detailing his family's
secret one of Your Business on Family Ghosts Podcast, and
(33:04):
you can find out more about Sam and listen to
season two of the podcast on Family Ghosts podcast dot com.
(33:29):
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows,
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Danny Shapiro and this is Family Secrets. The secrets that
are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
(00:20):
and the secrets we keep from ourselves. In this bonus episode,
we talk to Sam Dingman, the host of the podcast
Family Ghosts. Family Ghosts is a documentary style storytelling podcast
investigating the true story behind a mysterious figure whose legend
has followed a family for generations. Sam tells me about
(00:43):
his family secret he aired on his podcast and the
aftermath of telling it. I guess to kind of summarize
um the story basically, what it's about is, I, in
my memory became aware at my grandmother's nine birthday that
(01:07):
there was, in addition to my dad and his two brothers,
both of whom I have known for my whole life,
there was a third brother that I didn't know about,
and that he The reason I didn't know about him
was because he had taken his own life when he
was very young, when he was eighteen UM, and that
(01:31):
my dad had found the body um when that happened.
And I was told this again in my memory, not
by my dad, but by my younger brother Jake, who
UM was at this particular moment of my grandmother's birthday,
also in a period of turmoil in his life. Again
(01:55):
in my memory, and UM, I remember feeling in that
moment like perhaps there was some connection between the fact
that this had happened to my father when my father
was very young, and the fact that at that point
in my life I was in my mid twenties. At
the time, UM, I felt like this relationship of closeness
(02:18):
and trust and intimacy that I had that I recalled
having with my dad when I was a kid, UM
had erote it. And I wondered if perhaps by exploring
the story of Dick and take the opportunity to actually
talk to my dad about it and and connect with
him about it, I might be able to hit upon
(02:41):
what was at the root of the erosion of our
relationship with each other. And so the rest of the
episode is basically my attempt to do that. I'm just
wondering whether you think, Sam that part of the erosion
with your father during those years leading up to that point,
(03:03):
it seems like it had something to do with your
father just kind of retreating, you know, becoming just more distant,
more you know, sort of less engaged with you in
some way, and whether I don't, I don't want to
push this idea, but like whether you think that that distance,
(03:23):
that lack of engagement, actually this is interesting. I mean,
you were a young man at this point, right, and
you know when your father was a young man, he
had gone through a really really hard thing um and
lost his brother, and his brother took his life as
(03:44):
a very young man, and maybe that whole period of
time in a life you know, felt like, you know, unconsciously,
like some kind of repetition for your father, like I
just can't I can't be close to someone at this age.
Does that make any sense? It does make sense. And
you know, as you're saying, I, I don't, I don't
want to push that necessarily either, because I don't know
(04:07):
if that's what was going on for him. But you're
hitting on something which has been very profound for me
in the aftermath of this story, which is that one
of the things that's difficult for me about this story
is that I don't know that I did a good
enough job of considering my dad's emotional journey and all
(04:31):
the possible ways that he might have experienced My young
adulthood and adulthood based on what he'd been through at
the time that I was working on the story, because
I was working so hard to understand my own feelings,
and in doing that, I think, well, I had a
(04:55):
very powerful experience actually in the aftermath of telling the story.
And maybe I'll just tell you about it because I
think it will be a youthful or useful illustration of this,
which is this is going to sound unrelated, but it isn't.
I am a huge baseball fan. It's something that I
talked about a lot in the story. That's something that
I get from my dad. It's a big thing that
(05:16):
we have shared about a lot over the years. UM.
And I now that I live in New York, UM
can't watch my beloved Baltimore Orioles on TV unless I
pay for a subscription to this thing called MLB TV,
which allows you to watch games out of market. And
one of the things that I know all about it,
(05:37):
I've got to got two Red Sox fans in my house.
So okay, okay, so you know of what I speak. Um.
And one of the things that is a blessing and
a curse about MLB TV is not only can you
watch the games out of market, but you can watch
them on tape delay, so you can start the game
from the beginning, um, as though at whatever time you want. So,
(06:00):
since I often get home from work kind of late
at night, say nine or ten, UM, one thing that
I will often do is make myself a late night
dinner and sit down and watch the Orioles game from
the beginning, having studiously avoided the Internet all evening so
that I don't know what happens in it, and then
watch it as though, um, it's happening in real time. UM.
(06:24):
And So it was opening day of the two eighteen season,
and I came home from work and I sat down
to do exactly that, UM. And I got a text
message from my dad around the time I sat down
to do this. And at this time, UM, things that
(06:45):
were a little rough between me and my dad in
the aftermath of the story, UM, because I think it
was it was exposing in a way that he was
not expecting it to be, and it had resulted in
this scenario where I I would get a little pang
of fear when I would get a text message from
him or a voicemail from him, because I was afraid
(07:06):
that he was going to be upset. And it was
Opening Day, and I had had a long day at work,
and I just really wanted to watch the game and
not engage with anything resembling an anxious or negative thought. Um.
And so I didn't look at the text message, and
I watched the Orioles game, which memory serves when extra innings. Um.
(07:31):
But if it wasn't extra innings, the way that it
ended was on a walk off home run by Adam Jones,
who was one of my favorite players and obviously the
most dramatic possible way for a baseball game to end,
let alone an opening day baseball game. And so Adam
Jones hits this home run, I'm feeling thrilled. I'm feeling
relieved from all this tension that had built up during
(07:52):
the game, and I think to myself, okay, it's it's
finally okay to look at this text message from my dad.
And when I look at the text message, it's a
is ah, it's too music note emojis, um, which I
didn't even know he knew how to use emojis, and
it says walk off and then um, there's a follow
(08:15):
up message that says oops. Please disregard this message if
you're watching the game on tape delay. And I don't
know what it was, but I didn't. UM. I'm sorry.
I haven't really talked about this before, but UM, I
just was overwhelmed by how considerate that was on his part,
(08:39):
and the fact that he remembered that that might be
something that I was doing today, and even if he
remembered it after the fact, he wanted to write and
let me know that he remembered. And I looked at
this message and I just started crying and crying and
crying in this way that I have I don't know
(09:01):
if I've ever cried like that before, and I just
kept saying this phrase out loud, over and over again.
My girlfriend at the time was there, thankfully, and was
kind of talking me through this um and was understandably
a little confused about why I was having this huge
response to this seemingly benign text message. But it was
(09:23):
that I think it made me realize that there were
so many things, so many ways over the years, when
my experience of our relationship was that it was eroding
or growing distant, there were all these ways that I
think he was trying to reach out and I wasn't
seeing it, and I wasn't welcoming it because I wanted
(09:43):
to go back to the way things were when I
was fifteen and sixteen years old, and I wanted him
to be reaching out in the ways that he did then,
which you know, maybe is valid or maybe isn't valid,
But it closed me off to the reality that he was,
in a lot of ways trying to reach out to
me as an adult and as a peer, um and
(10:03):
somebody who cared about me, not as a teenager anymore,
but as a grown person, and that I had been
so busy trying to to tell this other story that
I had missed all of that and been so in
a way, I was the one who had been denying
him this form of connection that he was looking for,
(10:26):
and I just felt awful about it. Yeah. Well, and
and also I imagine because you were underestimating him right
in that moment, you were like that this text message
could be anything, right, Um, just that feeling, the feeling
of like, maybe this is going to be something I
don't want to read and it's and it ends up
being well, in fact, you didn't want to read it
(10:47):
because it would have he wouldn't have been able to
have watched the game quite in the same way. But
but you didn't want to read it. Not not for
those reasons, but because you were a little you know,
a little afraid of of what, you know, what my
what it might contain. Yeah, and he was just he
was just trying to say hi, you know, and I
see you. I mean, you know the subtext of that
(11:08):
was I see you, I see you. Yeah, And I
mean so much of that episode to me actually is
you you know, about you wanting him to see you. Um.
And you know, there's there's this kind of it's almost
like a difference in your emotional temperatures, right, Like, so
(11:29):
your emotional temperature around this discovery about Uncle Dick is
is highly emotionally charged. And you you know, you want
to know everything that you possibly can about Uncle Dick.
And and there's a very moving part of the episode
where you actually go to the place, um where he
(11:50):
took his own life. UM. And you know have this
experience of you know, kind of attempting too and feeling
like you do connect with him in some way. UM.
And it's very very emotionally charged for you. And then
on the other hand, there's your dad um who says
at one point UM in a very like the opposite
(12:14):
of highly emotional charged right um way, he says, regarding
the experience that he had with his brother, I never
felt it was highly formative. And you know, when I
heard him say that, I didn't believe that for a second.
But I believe that he believed it. And and I
wondered about the um what does the emotional cost? I mean,
(12:38):
I wonder about this all the time, and in in
all of the episodes of family Secrets and in my
own life and with my own family secret that I discovered.
You know, there's there is um a price that is
paid for that kind of stuffing down, you know, of
of something so important and just deciding that it's not formative,
(13:03):
deciding that it um, it's in the past and we're
going to leave it there. Yeah, I agree, And I think,
I mean, this brings up such an important question in
the work that if I made both of us do
and that it sounds like we both think about a lot,
which is when you are the person whether we're talking
(13:23):
about UM, my dad or my mom or any of
the people who UM from the past who are wrestling
with these things in the momentum that becomes secrets or
become ghosts. Something that I'm always wrestling with and trying
to figure out the significance of is that person in
(13:46):
that moment in the past doesn't feel like they have
a choice. The choice is I can either be undone
by this trauma that is, well maybe trauma's I guess
traumas not the right word there. I can be undone
by this thing that has happened. I can be completely
(14:09):
washed away into the sea of my emotions that are
too big to comprehend. Or two at this often formative age,
when you know on some level instinctively that you don't
have the emotional equipment to do that, to just go
(14:29):
onward and um, the fact that they made the choice
to go onward is oftentimes why people in our position,
or you know, the people that we tell stories about
position to look back in the first place, because this
person in that moment made the decision to continue the
family in some way, UM, and that led to our
(14:52):
birth and development and emotional maturity. UM. To even know
that there might have been another path in that moment,
or that there is something unfinished related to that incident
that happened, and so it can be tempting to judge
them for the choice they made at that time to
(15:14):
just push through and keep going, But that is a
that is a privilege of not having our survival predicated
on that on that choice, UM. And I think it's important,
I guess, probably to note here that there's a difference
(15:34):
of degrees. You know, Um, sometimes the secret from the
past is, um, something that might have been like a
crime or something that you know, people should be held
to count for some kind of violence or something like that,
And I guess that would color this a little bit differently.
But when it's something like a traumatic experience that a
parent went through, just to keep it in that realm Um,
(15:58):
it's a very odd position to be in to be
a descendant of this this parent and the person that
they had their experience with when they were young, and
to feel like it's important to go back and understand
the truth of what happened. But I don't judge you
parent for making the choice you made at the time.
(16:19):
Like that's a weird space to to exist in. Does
that make sense? It makes perfect sense to me. There
there's a moment in um Inheritance my memoir where I'm
like in the middle of all this discovery about my
parents and the choices that they made, and I feel
(16:40):
very betrayed that such a huge secret about my own
identity was kept from me. And then I'm in a lecture.
I was in Miami, actually at a lecture, and the
author who was giving a lecture spoke about present is um.
And it wasn't something that I had thought a lot
about present is m I wasn't even sure I knew
exactly what he ent And I ended up reading, reading
(17:03):
up quite a bit on present is um and and
essentially UM it would be defined as UM judging the
past through the lens of the present, so the lens
of everything that we now know psychologically, emotionally, intellectually, societally, culturally, UM,
(17:25):
and ascribing those qualities to the people in the past
who made whatever choices that they did. And it was
a real sort of light bulb moment for me UM,
and I realized that part of my work in understanding
as much as I possibly could about the past about
(17:49):
my parents was going to be in being able to
see them as the human beings that they were before me.
And I think that that's part of the work of
maturity full stop, you know, not just writing about it
or making podcasts about it, but actually moving through life
in general. Is to be able to see the people
(18:12):
that you come from as people and not um just
as as mom and dad and and and what you're
saying to you know. I used to think that the
phrase you know, she did the best she could. You know,
he did the best he could, that sort of you know,
they did the best they could. I used to think
that that phrase was just pure um cliche or um
(18:37):
like that it didn't really mean anything. But I've actually
come to think that it does mean something. People people
generally do the best they can. Yeah, and whatever that
means with what life has handed them at the time, Uh,
that life has handed them whatever is on their plate.
And then you know, time goes on and there absolutely are,
(18:59):
after a facts and ripple effects of um, the choices
that were made and the choices to get on with things,
and the people who hold those you know, who hold
all that usually is the next generation or even the
generation after um. You know, it's it's not as if
it goes away. Um. I think what we're talking about, though,
(19:22):
is the is the judging, which is ultimately toxic and
and as you said, also, it depends on it depends
on what we're talking about. Uh, judging can be completely
reasonable in certain situations, but in terms of what we're
talking about of people dealing with family tragedies really um
(19:42):
and making making choices that they're going to You know,
this is very much true with Holocaust survivors. You hear
so many, so many children of survivors. The parents never
wanted to talk about it. Ever, that was then this
is now, life goes on. Of course, the children then
inherited that and want, you know, and wanted and needed
(20:02):
ultimately to know more. But you know, for the parents,
it was, UM, I can't talk about this because if
I talk about this, I'm going to lose my mind.
So we're not going to do that. We're gonna gonna
build a new life. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you
so much about this, And UM, I think, at the
(20:25):
risk of coming across as self aggrandizing or something, UM,
I think that it's an important part of I don't
want to claim that, you know, this is an impact
that my work is having. But the reason I think
it's that telling these stories and telling them in a
responsible way matters is because I think it's a very
(20:46):
important way of understanding history and humanity. There's a moment
late in the episode about your uncle Dick where you
say to your father on sick of hiding behind the
curtain and um or maybe you don't say it to him,
maybe it's a narration, but you you say, I'm sick
(21:07):
of hiding behind the curtain. That's what I needed him
to hear. And you know, I'm thinking about that in
relation to the story that you told about the texts,
because really you wanted Poppy to see you and and
you wanted to see Poppy. And that's really it. That's
(21:31):
really all we're ever asking of each other is um.
And that's where that's where secrets become so corrosive and toxic,
because they prevent us from being able to actually see
and be seen. UM. But it's this, it's this, it's
a really it's a really moving moment and and it's
and it's a funny moment too, because you're in the
studio with him and he's like, you know, and you're
having this emotional moment with your dad and he says,
(21:53):
you know, it's weird to be in this setting talking
about all this stuff with the microphones and the headphones
and you know, can we can we just give each
other they are hugs somehow without you know, it was
it was such a great moment. Thank you, thank you.
Yeah he I think, he says, Um, he says, I
feel like I'm in a New Yorker cartoon or something.
But you know, I just I resonate so much with
(22:16):
with what you said about this, this fundamental question of
that we're all asking each other is like, I think
I see you? Do you see me? Um? And it
makes me think of an experience that I had in
another conversation about the show, UM that felt really formative
(22:36):
for me in terms of trying to always have a
better understanding of what I'm trying to do and what
the best way to do it is. And this person
said to me, and this is somebody who's um opinion
about art and storytelling I respect very very deeply. But
they said that they had a hard time with the
show because they expected it to be quirkier. They they
(22:57):
thought that they saw that it was gonna be a
show called Family Go So and they expected it there
to be quirky characters and UM to be more darkly comedic.
I guess in some ways, And I felt like I
completely understand that as an expectation because a lot of
(23:17):
times when we see storytelling about families, that is a
tweak that is placed on the narrative um for whatever
creative reason that people telling that story decide to do it.
But that a lot of these things are difficult to
(23:38):
sit with and and adding an element of quirk makes
it easier to sit with, but is not necessarily true
to the impulse of conveying the weight of a secret
or the weight of a ghost um about which there
is often nothing quirky or funny um, And that that's
(24:02):
a I'd like to lean into that space to whatever
extent I'm capable of in this kind of storytelling, not
to a point that it makes a listener uncomfortable and
want to tune out, but to a point that pushes
past the desire to say, uh, cookie, uncle whoever, but
(24:23):
actually think, what were the decisions that uncle whoever was
faced with? Is there any way that I can understand
the circumstances he was in when he made them and
think about how that's affected me? Right, right, Because ultimately,
leaning into those moments is not about going darker or
(24:48):
you know, more sinister or it's in fact kind of
the opposite of that, because um in in staying with
that place that might be a little bit uncomfort rble,
you know, where um, you know, a little levity and
a little quirk might just make everybody be like, okay,
well that was you know, We're good now. Um is
(25:11):
actually where we end up connecting and it's it's it's
where um we you know, the listener, the reader, the
um you know, this is this is where I think
people end up feeling like, oh right, this is this
is the real stuff. I've got this stuff too, and
(25:32):
and and it makes people feel a little bit better about,
you know, themselves, and a little bit less alone in
the world because we all have it. Yeah, it's it's
it's in. That's the tagline of our shows. Every house
is haunted. Um, it's it's in. It's in all of us,
and it's in, it's in every family. And a huge
(25:55):
part of the impetus for me and wanting to do
a project like this was the first acting class that
I ever took. When I got to college. I had
this professor who was one of those one of those
professors in whatever discipline. Although I think there's a lot
of them in theater classes who just completely remakes your
(26:19):
perspective on the world, you know, with some tossed off
phrase that they probably didn't even think about that carefully.
But he was talking to us about UM the great
dramas in UM theater, not just American theater, but UM
world theater throughout history, and he said, all the greatest
dramas begin with the family. And he said this is
(26:42):
true of Clifford Odets when he's talking about struggling, you know,
depression or post Depression era families in Hell's Kitchen in
New York City, or whether we're talking about UM, the
Greek tragedies or the Shakespearean histories, these are all families
(27:04):
struggling to confront the secrets and ghosts that live in
their houses. And it was a huge moment for me
to hear him say that, because it's somehow made a
connection between why stories like that for me personally, have
always felt so magnetic and revelatory and like I have
(27:32):
to ruminate on them for days and days afterwards because
they feel like they've stirred something up UM. As opposed
to I've never been somebody who's drawn to fantasy or
action or um even comedy to a certain extent. I
can enjoy all those things. But but family stories in
(27:53):
fiction have always really really pulled at me. And I
think there was this this realization when he said that
that the reason that's happening is because they're coming from
this thing that is real and lives inside of all
of us, and whether it's fictional or not, that that
(28:17):
imprinting is coming through in this type of storytelling. And
so I was really interested in this question of what
if you removed the fictional layer from that? What if
you what if you tried to tell the kinds of
stories that might prompt that sort of fictional storytelling. Could
(28:39):
you could you find could you find something else? Could
you find something very rich? Um? And with that there's
this challenge, right, which is, if it's a fictional story,
you get to make up the ending, and you get
to you get to arrange the event of the story
(29:00):
in such a way that they have the maximum emotional weight.
And time after time and our work on family ghosts,
when we're sorting through something, you know, all the tape
that we have for a story, we come up against
this question of you know, well, this would be the
most dramatic way of structuring this. But is it what
really it feels true to the person whose story we're telling. Um?
(29:23):
Is it Actually it might be the most interesting way
of telling the story, but is it what is actually
shaping this person's way forward in the world. Um. And
that element of things I think is it's a real
leap of faith because you're having to trust that people
will resonate it with the way and you've in the
(29:45):
way that you've described, which is I feel less alone
because I recognize the inner quest that this person is on. Yeah.
And and you know, there's the intimacy of this form
that I think allows for that um and more than
more than any other form, UM, it allows for you know,
(30:05):
that sense that, um, you know someone is listening. People
don't I mean, I don't think people tend to listen
to podcasts and groups. It's it's a very it's not
a communal experience, you know, it's often like literally like
literally in your head with you know, AirPods on. And
so there's something very intimate about that. And UM And
(30:26):
I think I think two that there's a desire that
we all have in this world where everything is being
shaped constantly UM and being curated and edited. And you know,
our experience walking through the world is being created, curated,
and edited and in ways that we often aren't even
(30:48):
aware of, where when something actually is sort of hewing
as closely as possible to the real uh and the
true UM that there's something for from me. I know,
you know selfishly that that's what I want to hear,
So that is therefore what I want to do because
it feels um like, you know, the richest possible storytelling
(31:15):
is the storytelling that is hewing as close to experience
as as as as we can. Yeah, I think about
it a lot of times, like, um, you know, there's
this ridiculous and I think I'll just go ahead and
say toxic for society. Phenomenon of metrics associated with tweets,
(31:37):
Like when somebody puts out a tweet, Um, there's these
numbers that appear underneath it to measure the relevance of it,
And I think it creates this um emotional ecosystem where
people feel like they need to express themselves in this
(31:58):
particular format in such a way that it gets the
highest scores and you know, speaks to the broadest possible
number of people so that those numbers will be as
high as possible. And I think something that is wonderful
about both listening to a podcast or radio story UM
(32:20):
and telling that story is that it's like, you know,
even though in speaking into the microphone you're theoretically addressing
any number of people, in that moment, you're only talking
to one person that the person who's listening UM and
as the listener, even though you know that a million
(32:40):
other people might be listening to this episode, the person
you're listening to, it's like they're only talking to you.
I'd like to thank Sam Dingman for telling us his
story today. You can find this episode detailing his family's
secret one of Your Business on Family Ghosts Podcast, and
(33:04):
you can find out more about Sam and listen to
season two of the podcast on Family Ghosts podcast dot com.
(33:29):
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows,
Family Secrets News
Host
Dani Shapiro
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