September 19, 2019 • 37 mins
Frank's father was a “proud Willie Loman” character who sold stuff — cars, printing presses, whatever needed selling. He was a glad-handing guy, “the mayor of everything.” And he was living a double life.
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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,
and the secrets we keep from ourselves. You're about to
(00:22):
hear from a man we're calling Frank Gold, not his
real name. We thought long and hard about whether it
was okay to use a pseudonym for a guest on
Family Secrets. After all, what we're doing on this podcast
is casting light into the shadows, calling everything by its
true name. But Frank has a good reason for keeping
(00:42):
his identity private in the name of protecting others. So
here's Frank insert air quotes. My parents, Well, my family,
both sides of the family, came to this country around
the turn of the last century early, so my grandparents
were all born in the United States. My parents were
born here. I was obviously born here, and my grandparents
(01:07):
were Their parents were very prosperous that people who came
here were very hard working and industrious. My father's father
went to college and graduated from college, and my grandparents
were all very affluent. Um, but my parents, both of them,
we're like, we're like a regressive generation instead of building
(01:29):
on the prosperity of their immediate ancestors. Both of my
parents were like first generation immigrants. They neither one finished college.
My father didn't even go to college. He was intrigued
by a wealthy uncle and wanted to just skip to success.
And uh, that was really not a good recipe for him.
(01:53):
And um they got married very young in their early twenties,
and they struggled. You know, they were choices and uh,
shortsighted choices. And by the time I was born, they
were married about two or three years. We were living
(02:13):
in the Tri State area. You know. I remember we
lived in like garden apartments, you know, not fancy, and
uh we lived in one place. When I was in kindergarten,
we moved again. I mean, I maybe I was the
wrong kid to move a lot, because I take a
lot in I'm very aware it can be hard to
move around a lot as a kid. You can feel
(02:35):
kind of unmoored. You become attached to a place, and
then through no choice of your own, you leave that place.
And Frank's dad kept changing jobs, so it keeps happening
for Frank, along with his younger sister and brother. For
Frank This constant moving around forms a key aspect of
his character, one that will serve him well later in life.
(02:56):
He becomes hyper aware, with a keen almost sixth cents
about people and places. I just remember, you know, this
awareness is like all these parallel lives, all these every
town has a school, where school district, and you know
every town in school is going through its own sort
of you know John hughesesque high school experience simultaneously in
(03:21):
parallel all over Long Island, over Westchester, or over New Jerseys,
the same music, the same experience. You go to the
same concerts, but separately. But when you don't move, that's
your world. And you think that's that is your world.
Yet when you move at kindergarten in the third and
then the six, none of them are your world. This
(03:42):
might be hard to imagine for anyone listening who say
under a thirty Today kids grow up with all of
this connectivity. They know there are worlds other than their own.
And while that connectivity, the way we're attached to the
hip to our devices, definitely has a downside, it also
has an upside, especially in families in which secrets are pervasive.
(04:05):
But back then, when Frank grew up, it was hard
to break through that sense of isolation, a partners a loneness.
Your family's world, your town's world, your community's world. That
was the whole world as far as you knew. So
Frank's upbringing, while making him hyper aware, also makes it
hard for him to get close to people, because, after all,
(04:28):
relationships don't last, not when you keep moving. What was
their relationship like your parents, I wouldn't say it was
particularly warm. They've gotten warmer, by the way, and more
expressive in their old age than they ever were that
I remember growing up. I don't remember a ton of affection.
(04:51):
I don't remember hardly any emotional conversation. And I just
saw them recently and it's always light la la, superficial stuff.
There's no depth that know. They don't want to talk
about heavy things or emotional things that aren't necessarily even heavy.
You know, the weather, about what other people are doing,
(05:13):
very little um personal conversation. Ever, when Frank is in
the ninth or tenth grade, the lack of warmth between
his parents becomes something else, something harder, murkier. They've moved
all over the Tri state area around New York City,
and at this point his father is commuting a pretty
(05:34):
sizable distance to work each day to a better job.
He's making more money, but life isn't getting better. In fact,
it's getting worse. And the family is pretty isolated because
Frank's father has shoved away his own relatives always because
of unspoken petty grievances. It went from you know, it's
(05:55):
some extra time to commute two. All of a sudden,
late nights, things were like chugging along normal suburban existence,
and all of a sudden, you know, it's like ten
o'clock o'clock, and you know, my mother's anxious, upset, standing
by the window, looking out the window, pacing, and um,
(06:16):
you know that that creates anxiety in the in the house.
And you know, we have school the next day and
I am by the way at most fifteen sixteen. You know,
my sisters like nine and my brothers in between. He
would come home eventually, and uh, they would argue. They
would fight, where were you? What? Why are you home
(06:38):
still late? Why didn't you tell me? And that's unsettling
to hear, you know when you're really wide awake in
your bedroom. Were worse awakened by stuff like that? And um,
it was a lot fast, and you know it's in
a family that doesn't really talk about emotions. It was confusing.
(07:00):
It was the most emotional thing I'd ever experienced, probably
up until then. And um, all I remember looking back
is how incessant. To God, it seemed like it grew
into I mean maybe it started off you know, a
day a week, and then it grew into like a
constant thing. And there were just these arguments night after
(07:24):
night after night, and then yelling and name calling and
and it was horrible. And you know, it's it's really
abusive to have nine year olds and twelve year olds
and you know, sleeping the right listening to this. I mean,
I know couples have problems, but there's a time and
a place and that was neither. And I remember talking
(07:49):
to my mother one day, was very upset and saying,
you know, why are you guys fighting all the time?
And what's going on? Like why can't you, like naively,
you know, worked this out of fate? What's going on?
And I remember, I mean I remember where I was standing, like,
I remember, well, because there's things going on, I said,
what's going on? I said, well, what do you think?
(08:12):
I said, how hell do I know what's going on.
I'm just I'm just listening to idiots fight all night,
like enough already, and she's, well, there's another woman. And
I didn't know where to go with that. By the way,
my guess is if I had really listened to the fights,
I probably would have known that by now. And maybe
(08:33):
I did know it on some level. But hearing it,
especially from you know, your parents, who you never spoke
to about anything emotionally or of substance ever anyway, was jarring.
And uh, all I remember, you know, is that was
that persisted through high school. I don't remember anything other
(08:56):
than that fighting. And then I left to go to college.
And uh I went to college, and I didn't think
about that for one second, not a minute. Did you
go far away? I mean, did you try a feeling
miles away? I didn't even visit the school. You know,
back then you'd get a brochure in the mail and
(09:19):
type your application and send it off across your fingers.
But it was it was it important to you to
get away. I like the idea that it was different,
and I liked the idea that you know that thirty
two kids in my class, which is about two five
kids went to one state school. I'm not going to
school with thirty two people. I just spent less, you know,
(09:40):
four plus years with I liked the idea that no
one was going there. I mean, I, yeah, I might
sing a pattern now, yeah, you know, it didn't occur
to me that I like, I got to get out
of here. But I did. And I wanted to change
and I wanted new and I got it. I really did.
And um, what's funny, We're interesting. I remember going to
(10:01):
college and totally compartmentalizing and blocking out these fights and
all this horribleness. And I mean, Danny was the night
after night after night after it's it's it's torture. I mean,
you know, it's funny. At one point, I said to
(10:22):
my mother when I was still home, you gotta leave.
Why are you doing this? He's not he's not. It's
not working. Like, get get out, Let's get the funk
out of here. Like what are we doing here? I
can't you don't understand. It's complicated. Let's take a quick
(10:43):
break here. There were other family fights going on at
the same time. Frank's mother used to fight with her
mother on the phone. He would hear the two of
them going at it all the time, more anger, more
rage that he constantly overhearing. During his childhood and adolescence,
he used to want to walk into the kitchen, take
(11:05):
the phone out of his mother's hand and hang it
up because he just couldn't take it anymore. I will
say that my mother, who really is is not the
perpetrator in any of those stories, is the professional victim
in a way, like how she could those that same
conversation with my grandmother countless times for years and years
(11:29):
I'll never understand. And then to gets stuck in a
it's her own with my father in that dynamic. It's
horrible And I don't know why she took it where
she felt so powerless, but she obviously did. I don't
want to say I resented her for it, but it
angered me that she was not stronger. So now we're
(11:54):
talking about you're in college. Now I come home to
visit and my you know, my sister and brothers still
live in the house because they're here in high school
or middle school whatever, the same things happening, And I think,
oh my god. Still every night, every night he goes
to work, she it's turns dark. She's standing at the door,
(12:18):
pacing upset, everyone's in their bed. He comes home, and
the same two person play plays out, you know, from
ten to midnight, like like like it was the first day,
like I never left. Frank's now out of college and
one day he needs to borrow his dad's video camera.
(12:41):
This was in the early days of video cameras, when
they took VHS cassette tapes, the era well before smartphones.
So Frank's dad sets out to show Frank how to
use the camera. Frank calls this a normal sea moment,
you know, like backyard barbecues or shooting hoops or eying
board games. Normal, just something any father and son might do.
(13:05):
So in this normalcy moment, I remember him showing it
to me and how it works, and he had to
put a tape in it. And he had a tape
in it, you know, and he's like, you hit play,
you know, and you know, you just record and then
you can go back, and a video started to play.
I think he thought that the tape was probably blank,
(13:29):
and it was well. I remember is like a kid,
like a young boy playing on a lawn, and I
thought it for maybe five or ten seconds. He got
completely flustered, so I thought it was mine, let me
see that, and you know, took it, took a camera
triad off and fiddled with it and wound and did
(13:50):
something and I thought, whatever, dude, Like, so there's something
on the tape, Like it didn't occur to me that
it was his or it was a secret or I mean,
I thought, what are y'all jumping about? Like the reaction
seemed odd? And I remembered it, and yeah, and you
(14:10):
remembered it. It stayed with you. Yeah, because I you know,
I think, Um, I've developed this thing for it's not
even conscious. Um, I'm very tuned to people's behaviors, patterns,
the way they do things or say things, not consciously.
I don't have a list, but when you change course,
(14:33):
when you're not consistent, when you're speaking oddly, or something's
out of your pattern. Despite the senses tingle, I think
for people from whom a tremendous secret has been kept,
develop a kind of sixth sense, some sense of there's
(14:57):
a heightened sensitivity because you don't know that there's a secret.
I mean, that's it wouldn't be a secret if you
knew there was a secret. There's just this feeling of
hyper vigilance or UM observing very carefully the piece is
not necessarily totally adding up UM. And then I think
in retrospect those moments, like the moment with the video cassette,
(15:21):
become AHA moments. It certainly wasn't an AHA moment as
you were experiencing it, but later, yeah, I filed it away.
And by the way, I didn't try to develop the skill.
I didn't know I had the skill. I didn't know
everyone didn't see and perceive things the way I did.
But I now know. You know that I have a
(15:41):
hyper subconscious awareness, two patterns, two behaviors. You know, it's
funny you don't want to watch a movie with me
because I can spot that formula. There's nothing unintentional in
a movie. So everything they say and do that seems
meaningless or an ocuous is not. It's a It's a
plot device. And I'm like, oh, he's gonna get locked
(16:03):
out of his house when they focus on the keys,
being like, there's a reason for all that stuff, And yeah,
I think this was the this is the byproduct of
this UM. I mean, my mother told me in part
with the one little factory that she knew that you know,
this fighting and CoML was you know, the result of
(16:25):
an infidelity, but there was still so much lying and
manipulation and emotional abuse happening, and uh, you know, you
sit up, You're sitting in your bed in the pitch black,
and you hear it all, and you hear at night
after night, and you know, all of a sudden, You're like,
I'm hearing inconsistencies in the story. She's not picking up
(16:49):
on it because she's sobbing and yelling, but I'm thinking, well, wait,
you didn't. That's not what you said two nights ago.
It's a rough way to develop that skill. So fast
forward into Frank's adult life. He becomes an attorney. His
skills as an interpreter of people's patterns and behavior serves
(17:11):
him well in his career. He marries, has three kids,
his parents still together, incredibly, moved to Florida, and sort
of settle into a calmer life. The violent fights have
been reduced to squabbling, but with a mean edge to it.
Frank doesn't see them too often. One day, literally, I'm
(17:32):
sitting at my desk like life is just normal, and
that stuff is very far behind me and very distant
in my mind. The phone rings and it's my sister
and she's like, hey, we need I need to talk
to you. And she said, I got a call and uh,
(17:57):
I don't know what to do with it. I said, well,
what are you talking about out and she's like, well,
you know all the stuff we talked about growing up
and all the fighting and all that other stuff. I said, yeah.
She's like, well, I got a call from our half
brother and I said, why who? I am unaware of
(18:22):
a half brother. I'm like, what are you talking about?
She says, well, it seems that all those fights and
all those like nights, it wasn't just an affair. It
blossomed into another family. I said, and there's a son.
She says, no, there are two. And I laughed because
(18:49):
it's insane news. It's unimaginable. It changes your entire reality
in a moment, and it's not even just one. And
I needed a moment to just like process, like, okay,
let me shut the door and you can tell me,
like what are you sure? Like you don't know where
(19:13):
to go with something like that. And uh. She told
me this story how this guy kid called her and
you know he's younger than us because he was born
when we were in high school. And uh, the short
(19:35):
version is this is the older son. He uh speaks
to my father and sees my father fairly often. And
he said to my father one day, you know, you're
getting older, and what happens, like you know if if
you were sick or you died, Like, how would I know?
I need to speak to my siblings and find out.
(19:56):
And my freaking father's like, yeah, call call my daughter
because she's the most understanding. I'm like, they didn't think
I would understand. I don't want to call me by
the way, probably pick the right person. But you know
I went from like stunned and almost laughing to like
(20:18):
kind of anger. So your half brother calls your sister
and introduces himself with your father's permission. Yes, and and
but but my father does not have the balls to
to to make the call himself. First of all, that's
a cowardly move. Your this kid, your your your secret half,
(20:43):
your secret son wants to speak to his adult path
siblings and you decide with him which one is the
best to approach, and then you let him do it.
That's offensive. And she's like, you have no idea. The
conversation I had with this like we thought we had
it bad. He had the reverse, you know. He the
(21:06):
times that Dad was home, he wasn't there. And that
woman who concocted a whole story. See, they didn't know
there was another family. They thought he was busy and
traveling and at work. Hold them. So your father, who
(21:28):
was pretty ineffective in a variety of ways in life,
you know, professionally, that kind of saying as average or below,
as running the mill, unexceptional as you get, except as
someone who managed to have two households, each of which
didn't know about the other. Correct, How did this half
(21:53):
brother then know that there was another family with other siblings.
He's like a like a criminal investigator, which I think
is hilarious because part of him calling my sister might
have been about, you know, just were in contact in
case of theing happens to my father. I think the
(22:13):
other half, for maybe more than half, was he actually
wanted some answers, and I suspect he wasn't getting them
from my father. And now, now keep in mind, now
we're in the age of social media, and it's not
hard to find people, and it's not hard to find
people with your last name or your proximity, especially if
you're a criminal investigator for a police department. So then
(22:37):
what happens, Frank, how do you process? Does your mind
go back to that VHS cassette tape. Absolutely, And it
goes back to why why he wouldn't stop the behavior?
You know, he would lie and connive and promise, but
(22:57):
he had a house with two babies, so he's not
gonna stop. And by the way, so I mean so
I my sister explains all this to me and gives
has a lot of details because she's spoke to in length,
and I said, this is a huge bromb this, this
(23:20):
is not okay. And um, first of all, I don't
really I know this kid who called is innocent in this.
You know, he didn't choose it, he's I don't begrudge
him wanting to know his full story because he had
an even more bizarre He also lived in the household
(23:42):
lies just different lies, and maybe they weren't fighting, but
he saw his father very not often less than we did, ironically,
So I don't want to meet him and I don't
want him to be in my life. And I wish
you didn't exist. And while I don't, I begrudge him nothing.
(24:06):
It doesn't work for me. So I said that to
her right away. I said, I'm not interested. I'm not
talking to him, I'm not meeting him. And my sister said, yeah, yeah,
me too. I didn't believe at the time, although I
think she's come around to that, and um, I said,
(24:29):
we have to talk to are that about this? Like
this is not okay? And I thought about it for
a long time. And you go through a lot of
different feelings, you know, those stages of grief, truly, anger, denial, bargaining.
I mean, you really do go through that. What would
(24:50):
you say you were grieving? I thought those days and
those feelings and those scaps were behind me, if not healed,
closed at least, and like an alien just showing up.
Like I'm telling you, your reality change is in an instant.
(25:10):
It's very disorienting to think you know the world today
and receive a phone call and find out that humans
exist that don't fit with your story, blood relatives and
they're alive and they were and it's and that's the reality.
(25:31):
It's the difference between like the language, like when my
when I found out that my dad hadn't been my
biological father. I was describing it as something that happened
to me that I discovered that, you know, that I
wasn't who I thought I was, literally, and I realized
I had to change the language because it wasn't something
that happened to me. It had always been thus like
it it was me, and that, I think is part
(25:55):
of what's shocking and disorienting when you uncover a secret
that because it was the reality. You didn't know it
was the reality, but it was for a very long
time in your life. Yes, And I feel betrayed and
deceived because of it. And I never trusted people that
much like when I I. Most people give people trust
(26:18):
and then people can lose that I I don't distrust,
but I started out at zero. No one gets credit
in advance, and that was formed long before this phone call.
The phone call lets me to work where it came from,
even though it wasn't always conscious. We're going to pause
(26:39):
for a moment for a word from our sponsor. Frank
tells his wife the story because, as he puts it,
that's what couples and healthy relationships do. But he feels
sick about it, embarrassed, as if somehow this reflects poorly
on him, and then after sitting on it for about
(27:00):
a week, he calls his father. I said, this is
not okay, it's not He says, look, life is complicated,
and you know, all I could say is you you know,
you have needs, you take actions, you do something and
you think it's one thing and it turns into something else,
(27:20):
and all of a sudden you have this. And I said, yeah,
maybe for one kid, not too. Two is not an accident.
One is like, oh my god, what happened. Two is
a family you know, fool me once too unforgivable, unacceptable.
(27:44):
He's he's bullshitting me. He's he's selling me. You know.
They say, hey, man, you know you think it's one thing. No,
at some point you were in when you were when
you took that fucking video camera there to film your
son's you know what you were doing Owen, by that
point it was not unintentional or an accident. So don't
(28:05):
tell me that that crap. I mean, my my whole
life and career is about sussing out full of ship people.
And he's he's, you know, patient zero in in full
of shitness for me. So I'm imagining that that conversation
like doesn't particularly and with some kind of like great
(28:28):
closure for any anybody. No, it doesn't, and I'll tell
you how it ends. He says, Look, you know your mom.
I don't think you want you know, you should burden
her with this and it would be a lot for her.
And I realized, my mother, and I'm gonna say this intentionally,
(28:48):
may not know. He thinks she doesn't know. She may know,
she may have a video camera story in her head someplace,
or she may not want to know. And I said
to him, stop, I will talk with her about this
or not because of my relationship with her. Don't ask
(29:12):
me to do something or not do something, because I'm
more likely to do it to spite you. So stop
selling me. And here we arrive at the reason, or
at least part of the reason why Frank is using
a pseudonym for this episode. His mom, as far as
this part of the story goes, is innocent. Also his kids.
(29:35):
He doesn't want to be the guy who suddenly doesn't
speak to his relatives the way his father did. He's
refusing to allow his father to turn him into a
version of himself who he hates and disrespects. So he
doesn't say a word to his mother or his kids.
Five years go by and Frank's daughter wants to go
to Florida to see her grandparents. There's a Pink Floyd
(29:56):
concert that Frank wants to see what's happening in Florida
at the same time, So he tells her, you know what,
I'll come with you for the weekend. We'll see them,
I'll go to the show. Then his dad catches wind
of it, and he says he wants to go to
the show too. He knows the venue, knows all the
guys there. At first, Frank recoils, but then I thought, again,
(30:17):
am I being that guy? You know? Again? I have
a reason why I can't see my father, and I
don't want to be him, you know, So I think
I'll give it. How how bad can it be? What
could go wrong? So, um, we go to this this concert,
and uh, it's fine. He knows the people at the
(30:38):
in the parking lot, he knows the ticket takers. Because
the guy who thinks he's antisocial is you know, the schmoozer.
He knows everyone. He's connected, and it's it's a it's
a real conflict between you know, how he describes himself
and how he acts. We go to the concert and uh,
there's an intermission and we decided to go and get
(30:59):
some walk around and go to the bathroom whatever. And
as we're walking up the steps to leave the arena,
it's like, oh, this is a you know, a client
of mine, some local guy for now, and that he knows.
He's like I. Guy was like, hey, how are you
doing man? And my fathers like, hey, how you doing
it is? Let me introduce you to my son. And
(31:20):
he introduces me, but not by my name, by the
half the older half brother's name, and he doesn't realize.
He doesn't and he just and the guy's like, hey, hey,
nice to meet you. And they just chit chat for
a minute or two, and I am stunned, like like
the arena got quiet, you know, like that device in
(31:42):
a movie where it's just you, like the camera zooms
in and all and everything fades to like a hush,
and you're like, like time stood still, and you're like
where do you go with that? And I thought another test,
you know, And I said to myself, I really consciously
(32:03):
thought this, I'm not going to get freaked out by this.
I'm not gonna let this ruin this night for me.
I'm letting this one go, and he says goodbye. The
whole transactions like two minutes and we walk into the
arena and it's a really nice guy. I said, yeah,
and wrong son. He's like what I said, I'm Frank.
(32:25):
You introduced me by Southern aid and he turned red
and he looked bewildered. I've never seen maybe the only
other time I saw that face was on the video camera,
you know, when he was fumbled and grabbed confused, you know,
the two worlds all of a sudden overlapped matter and antimatter,
(32:46):
and he did and he looks so bad. I've never
seen that expression. I mean, did I don't think. I said, yeah,
you did, And anyway, let's go. Oh no, I mean,
I mean he's he's a great kid, and you know
you shouldn't be I mean as it stops speaking about
(33:06):
it and don't mention it again, old man, And that's it.
And we walked away. Throughout our conversation, Frank's embarrassment that
this this is his family, this is his father, this
is where he comes from, is palpable. He so badly
(33:26):
doesn't want this to be his story. He got out,
he moved away, he built his own happy, successful life,
and then this new piece of information, shameful information, as
Frank experiences it, has crashed in like a meteor, and
he's now carrying around this story like his own secret.
Is this why he doesn't want to tell his kids
(33:47):
or talked to his mom about it? Embarrassment? Shame? First
of all, it's not my secret to tell her, it's his.
So on, that's that's my rationalization to get me off
the hook. Now that I know this piece of information
that I don't want to that, I don't feel I
should even be the one to tell her. And I
don't know that you'd want to hear it from me,
But I wouldn't want to hurt her. She's the one
(34:10):
who never left, and she's the one who still lives
with this guy. I don't want to wait, the sleepwalker.
So Frank puts this whole story somewhere inside him, or
at least tries to file it away. He doesn't think
about these two half siblings of his. He doesn't want
(34:31):
to have anything to do with them. It's not their
fault that their father had two families. Intellectually Frank knows this,
but that doesn't matter, or at least it doesn't matter enough,
so he doesn't think about this all that much, to
the point where when he does one of those over
the counter DNA tests, it doesn't occur to him that
(34:51):
wait for it, guess who showed up in the database.
They think you're their half cousins or whatever. And my
kids are in there under my account, My sister is
in there and her son. I had to, uh, I
shut it all down. I stopped the sharing, I broke
(35:12):
the connection. I did other than quit the service. I
shut anything down that makes a connection or shares information
or shows names. I stopped sharing with any relatives or
anybody because again, you know, the virus and showed up again.
Did it occur to you that that might happen or
(35:34):
did that not into your mind? I didn't think about it.
That's so interesting. I never thought about it. So there's
this way. It strikes me that the way that you
have managed to metabolize this and kind of just move
on with your life is to just bring down. It's
something bigger than a curtain, and it's like the bring
(35:56):
down like a big thick concrete wall, like it doesn't exist.
It shouldn't have exist did, so therefore it's not going
to exist. So you would have been able to do
something like submit your DNA to a commercial testing site
and actually not think, hey, wait a minute, there's this
world genealogically out there that could be complicated. Yes, because
it's the same compartmentalizing when I went to college the
(36:17):
first time and came home and said, what this is
still happening? But of course it was. I mean, why
wouldn't it still be happening. So in a way that
compartmentalizing has served you well, I think so. All right,
So I have one more question. So you said before
you said this great thing, you said, I'm glad. I know.
(36:38):
I wish it didn't exist, but I'm glad. I know.
Why are you glad? You know? Well, because it's reality.
I'd like to thank Frank for trusting us with his
(37:00):
story today. Family Secrets is an I Heeart media production.
Dylan Fagan is the supervising producer, Lowell Bolante is the
audio engineer, and Julie Douglas is the executive producer. If
you have a family secret you'd like to share with us,
you can get in touch at listener mail at Family
Secrets podcast dot com, and you can also find us
(37:21):
on Instagram at Danny Writer, and Facebook at Family Secrets Pod,
and Twitter at fami Secrets Pod. For more about my book, Inheritance,
visit Danny Shapiro dot com. 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,
and the secrets we keep from ourselves. You're about to
(00:22):
hear from a man we're calling Frank Gold, not his
real name. We thought long and hard about whether it
was okay to use a pseudonym for a guest on
Family Secrets. After all, what we're doing on this podcast
is casting light into the shadows, calling everything by its
true name. But Frank has a good reason for keeping
(00:42):
his identity private in the name of protecting others. So
here's Frank insert air quotes. My parents, Well, my family,
both sides of the family, came to this country around
the turn of the last century early, so my grandparents
were all born in the United States. My parents were
born here. I was obviously born here, and my grandparents
(01:07):
were Their parents were very prosperous that people who came
here were very hard working and industrious. My father's father
went to college and graduated from college, and my grandparents
were all very affluent. Um, but my parents, both of them,
we're like, we're like a regressive generation instead of building
(01:29):
on the prosperity of their immediate ancestors. Both of my
parents were like first generation immigrants. They neither one finished college.
My father didn't even go to college. He was intrigued
by a wealthy uncle and wanted to just skip to success.
And uh, that was really not a good recipe for him.
(01:53):
And um they got married very young in their early twenties,
and they struggled. You know, they were choices and uh,
shortsighted choices. And by the time I was born, they
were married about two or three years. We were living
(02:13):
in the Tri State area. You know. I remember we
lived in like garden apartments, you know, not fancy, and
uh we lived in one place. When I was in kindergarten,
we moved again. I mean, I maybe I was the
wrong kid to move a lot, because I take a
lot in I'm very aware it can be hard to
move around a lot as a kid. You can feel
(02:35):
kind of unmoored. You become attached to a place, and
then through no choice of your own, you leave that place.
And Frank's dad kept changing jobs, so it keeps happening
for Frank, along with his younger sister and brother. For
Frank This constant moving around forms a key aspect of
his character, one that will serve him well later in life.
(02:56):
He becomes hyper aware, with a keen almost sixth cents
about people and places. I just remember, you know, this
awareness is like all these parallel lives, all these every
town has a school, where school district, and you know
every town in school is going through its own sort
of you know John hughesesque high school experience simultaneously in
(03:21):
parallel all over Long Island, over Westchester, or over New Jerseys,
the same music, the same experience. You go to the
same concerts, but separately. But when you don't move, that's
your world. And you think that's that is your world.
Yet when you move at kindergarten in the third and
then the six, none of them are your world. This
(03:42):
might be hard to imagine for anyone listening who say
under a thirty Today kids grow up with all of
this connectivity. They know there are worlds other than their own.
And while that connectivity, the way we're attached to the
hip to our devices, definitely has a downside, it also
has an upside, especially in families in which secrets are pervasive.
(04:05):
But back then, when Frank grew up, it was hard
to break through that sense of isolation, a partners a loneness.
Your family's world, your town's world, your community's world. That
was the whole world as far as you knew. So
Frank's upbringing, while making him hyper aware, also makes it
hard for him to get close to people, because, after all,
(04:28):
relationships don't last, not when you keep moving. What was
their relationship like your parents, I wouldn't say it was
particularly warm. They've gotten warmer, by the way, and more
expressive in their old age than they ever were that
I remember growing up. I don't remember a ton of affection.
(04:51):
I don't remember hardly any emotional conversation. And I just
saw them recently and it's always light la la, superficial stuff.
There's no depth that know. They don't want to talk
about heavy things or emotional things that aren't necessarily even heavy.
You know, the weather, about what other people are doing,
(05:13):
very little um personal conversation. Ever, when Frank is in
the ninth or tenth grade, the lack of warmth between
his parents becomes something else, something harder, murkier. They've moved
all over the Tri state area around New York City,
and at this point his father is commuting a pretty
(05:34):
sizable distance to work each day to a better job.
He's making more money, but life isn't getting better. In fact,
it's getting worse. And the family is pretty isolated because
Frank's father has shoved away his own relatives always because
of unspoken petty grievances. It went from you know, it's
(05:55):
some extra time to commute two. All of a sudden,
late nights, things were like chugging along normal suburban existence,
and all of a sudden, you know, it's like ten
o'clock o'clock, and you know, my mother's anxious, upset, standing
by the window, looking out the window, pacing, and um,
(06:16):
you know that that creates anxiety in the in the house.
And you know, we have school the next day and
I am by the way at most fifteen sixteen. You know,
my sisters like nine and my brothers in between. He
would come home eventually, and uh, they would argue. They
would fight, where were you? What? Why are you home
(06:38):
still late? Why didn't you tell me? And that's unsettling
to hear, you know when you're really wide awake in
your bedroom. Were worse awakened by stuff like that? And um,
it was a lot fast, and you know it's in
a family that doesn't really talk about emotions. It was confusing.
(07:00):
It was the most emotional thing I'd ever experienced, probably
up until then. And um, all I remember looking back
is how incessant. To God, it seemed like it grew
into I mean maybe it started off you know, a
day a week, and then it grew into like a
constant thing. And there were just these arguments night after
(07:24):
night after night, and then yelling and name calling and
and it was horrible. And you know, it's it's really
abusive to have nine year olds and twelve year olds
and you know, sleeping the right listening to this. I mean,
I know couples have problems, but there's a time and
a place and that was neither. And I remember talking
(07:49):
to my mother one day, was very upset and saying,
you know, why are you guys fighting all the time?
And what's going on? Like why can't you, like naively,
you know, worked this out of fate? What's going on?
And I remember, I mean I remember where I was standing, like,
I remember, well, because there's things going on, I said,
what's going on? I said, well, what do you think?
(08:12):
I said, how hell do I know what's going on.
I'm just I'm just listening to idiots fight all night,
like enough already, and she's, well, there's another woman. And
I didn't know where to go with that. By the way,
my guess is if I had really listened to the fights,
I probably would have known that by now. And maybe
(08:33):
I did know it on some level. But hearing it,
especially from you know, your parents, who you never spoke
to about anything emotionally or of substance ever anyway, was jarring.
And uh, all I remember, you know, is that was
that persisted through high school. I don't remember anything other
(08:56):
than that fighting. And then I left to go to college.
And uh I went to college, and I didn't think
about that for one second, not a minute. Did you
go far away? I mean, did you try a feeling
miles away? I didn't even visit the school. You know,
back then you'd get a brochure in the mail and
(09:19):
type your application and send it off across your fingers.
But it was it was it important to you to
get away. I like the idea that it was different,
and I liked the idea that you know that thirty
two kids in my class, which is about two five
kids went to one state school. I'm not going to
school with thirty two people. I just spent less, you know,
(09:40):
four plus years with I liked the idea that no
one was going there. I mean, I, yeah, I might
sing a pattern now, yeah, you know, it didn't occur
to me that I like, I got to get out
of here. But I did. And I wanted to change
and I wanted new and I got it. I really did.
And um, what's funny, We're interesting. I remember going to
(10:01):
college and totally compartmentalizing and blocking out these fights and
all this horribleness. And I mean, Danny was the night
after night after night after it's it's it's torture. I mean,
you know, it's funny. At one point, I said to
(10:22):
my mother when I was still home, you gotta leave.
Why are you doing this? He's not he's not. It's
not working. Like, get get out, Let's get the funk
out of here. Like what are we doing here? I
can't you don't understand. It's complicated. Let's take a quick
(10:43):
break here. There were other family fights going on at
the same time. Frank's mother used to fight with her
mother on the phone. He would hear the two of
them going at it all the time, more anger, more
rage that he constantly overhearing. During his childhood and adolescence,
he used to want to walk into the kitchen, take
(11:05):
the phone out of his mother's hand and hang it
up because he just couldn't take it anymore. I will
say that my mother, who really is is not the
perpetrator in any of those stories, is the professional victim
in a way, like how she could those that same
conversation with my grandmother countless times for years and years
(11:29):
I'll never understand. And then to gets stuck in a
it's her own with my father in that dynamic. It's
horrible And I don't know why she took it where
she felt so powerless, but she obviously did. I don't
want to say I resented her for it, but it
angered me that she was not stronger. So now we're
(11:54):
talking about you're in college. Now I come home to
visit and my you know, my sister and brothers still
live in the house because they're here in high school
or middle school whatever, the same things happening, And I think,
oh my god. Still every night, every night he goes
to work, she it's turns dark. She's standing at the door,
(12:18):
pacing upset, everyone's in their bed. He comes home, and
the same two person play plays out, you know, from
ten to midnight, like like like it was the first day,
like I never left. Frank's now out of college and
one day he needs to borrow his dad's video camera.
(12:41):
This was in the early days of video cameras, when
they took VHS cassette tapes, the era well before smartphones.
So Frank's dad sets out to show Frank how to
use the camera. Frank calls this a normal sea moment,
you know, like backyard barbecues or shooting hoops or eying
board games. Normal, just something any father and son might do.
(13:05):
So in this normalcy moment, I remember him showing it
to me and how it works, and he had to
put a tape in it. And he had a tape
in it, you know, and he's like, you hit play,
you know, and you know, you just record and then
you can go back, and a video started to play.
I think he thought that the tape was probably blank,
(13:29):
and it was well. I remember is like a kid,
like a young boy playing on a lawn, and I
thought it for maybe five or ten seconds. He got
completely flustered, so I thought it was mine, let me
see that, and you know, took it, took a camera
triad off and fiddled with it and wound and did
(13:50):
something and I thought, whatever, dude, Like, so there's something
on the tape, Like it didn't occur to me that
it was his or it was a secret or I mean,
I thought, what are y'all jumping about? Like the reaction
seemed odd? And I remembered it, and yeah, and you
(14:10):
remembered it. It stayed with you. Yeah, because I you know,
I think, Um, I've developed this thing for it's not
even conscious. Um, I'm very tuned to people's behaviors, patterns,
the way they do things or say things, not consciously.
I don't have a list, but when you change course,
(14:33):
when you're not consistent, when you're speaking oddly, or something's
out of your pattern. Despite the senses tingle, I think
for people from whom a tremendous secret has been kept,
develop a kind of sixth sense, some sense of there's
(14:57):
a heightened sensitivity because you don't know that there's a secret.
I mean, that's it wouldn't be a secret if you
knew there was a secret. There's just this feeling of
hyper vigilance or UM observing very carefully the piece is
not necessarily totally adding up UM. And then I think
in retrospect those moments, like the moment with the video cassette,
(15:21):
become AHA moments. It certainly wasn't an AHA moment as
you were experiencing it, but later, yeah, I filed it away.
And by the way, I didn't try to develop the skill.
I didn't know I had the skill. I didn't know
everyone didn't see and perceive things the way I did.
But I now know. You know that I have a
(15:41):
hyper subconscious awareness, two patterns, two behaviors. You know, it's
funny you don't want to watch a movie with me
because I can spot that formula. There's nothing unintentional in
a movie. So everything they say and do that seems
meaningless or an ocuous is not. It's a It's a
plot device. And I'm like, oh, he's gonna get locked
(16:03):
out of his house when they focus on the keys,
being like, there's a reason for all that stuff, And yeah,
I think this was the this is the byproduct of
this UM. I mean, my mother told me in part
with the one little factory that she knew that you know,
this fighting and CoML was you know, the result of
(16:25):
an infidelity, but there was still so much lying and
manipulation and emotional abuse happening, and uh, you know, you
sit up, You're sitting in your bed in the pitch black,
and you hear it all, and you hear at night
after night, and you know, all of a sudden, You're like,
I'm hearing inconsistencies in the story. She's not picking up
(16:49):
on it because she's sobbing and yelling, but I'm thinking, well, wait,
you didn't. That's not what you said two nights ago.
It's a rough way to develop that skill. So fast
forward into Frank's adult life. He becomes an attorney. His
skills as an interpreter of people's patterns and behavior serves
(17:11):
him well in his career. He marries, has three kids,
his parents still together, incredibly, moved to Florida, and sort
of settle into a calmer life. The violent fights have
been reduced to squabbling, but with a mean edge to it.
Frank doesn't see them too often. One day, literally, I'm
(17:32):
sitting at my desk like life is just normal, and
that stuff is very far behind me and very distant
in my mind. The phone rings and it's my sister
and she's like, hey, we need I need to talk
to you. And she said, I got a call and uh,
(17:57):
I don't know what to do with it. I said, well,
what are you talking about out and she's like, well,
you know all the stuff we talked about growing up
and all the fighting and all that other stuff. I said, yeah.
She's like, well, I got a call from our half
brother and I said, why who? I am unaware of
(18:22):
a half brother. I'm like, what are you talking about?
She says, well, it seems that all those fights and
all those like nights, it wasn't just an affair. It
blossomed into another family. I said, and there's a son.
She says, no, there are two. And I laughed because
(18:49):
it's insane news. It's unimaginable. It changes your entire reality
in a moment, and it's not even just one. And
I needed a moment to just like process, like, okay,
let me shut the door and you can tell me,
like what are you sure? Like you don't know where
(19:13):
to go with something like that. And uh. She told
me this story how this guy kid called her and
you know he's younger than us because he was born
when we were in high school. And uh, the short
(19:35):
version is this is the older son. He uh speaks
to my father and sees my father fairly often. And
he said to my father one day, you know, you're
getting older, and what happens, like you know if if
you were sick or you died, Like, how would I know?
I need to speak to my siblings and find out.
(19:56):
And my freaking father's like, yeah, call call my daughter
because she's the most understanding. I'm like, they didn't think
I would understand. I don't want to call me by
the way, probably pick the right person. But you know
I went from like stunned and almost laughing to like
(20:18):
kind of anger. So your half brother calls your sister
and introduces himself with your father's permission. Yes, and and
but but my father does not have the balls to
to to make the call himself. First of all, that's
a cowardly move. Your this kid, your your your secret half,
(20:43):
your secret son wants to speak to his adult path
siblings and you decide with him which one is the
best to approach, and then you let him do it.
That's offensive. And she's like, you have no idea. The
conversation I had with this like we thought we had
it bad. He had the reverse, you know. He the
(21:06):
times that Dad was home, he wasn't there. And that
woman who concocted a whole story. See, they didn't know
there was another family. They thought he was busy and
traveling and at work. Hold them. So your father, who
(21:28):
was pretty ineffective in a variety of ways in life,
you know, professionally, that kind of saying as average or below,
as running the mill, unexceptional as you get, except as
someone who managed to have two households, each of which
didn't know about the other. Correct, How did this half
(21:53):
brother then know that there was another family with other siblings.
He's like a like a criminal investigator, which I think
is hilarious because part of him calling my sister might
have been about, you know, just were in contact in
case of theing happens to my father. I think the
(22:13):
other half, for maybe more than half, was he actually
wanted some answers, and I suspect he wasn't getting them
from my father. And now, now keep in mind, now
we're in the age of social media, and it's not
hard to find people, and it's not hard to find
people with your last name or your proximity, especially if
you're a criminal investigator for a police department. So then
(22:37):
what happens, Frank, how do you process? Does your mind
go back to that VHS cassette tape. Absolutely, And it
goes back to why why he wouldn't stop the behavior?
You know, he would lie and connive and promise, but
(22:57):
he had a house with two babies, so he's not
gonna stop. And by the way, so I mean so
I my sister explains all this to me and gives
has a lot of details because she's spoke to in length,
and I said, this is a huge bromb this, this
(23:20):
is not okay. And um, first of all, I don't
really I know this kid who called is innocent in this.
You know, he didn't choose it, he's I don't begrudge
him wanting to know his full story because he had
an even more bizarre He also lived in the household
(23:42):
lies just different lies, and maybe they weren't fighting, but
he saw his father very not often less than we did, ironically,
So I don't want to meet him and I don't
want him to be in my life. And I wish
you didn't exist. And while I don't, I begrudge him nothing.
(24:06):
It doesn't work for me. So I said that to
her right away. I said, I'm not interested. I'm not
talking to him, I'm not meeting him. And my sister said, yeah, yeah,
me too. I didn't believe at the time, although I
think she's come around to that, and um, I said,
(24:29):
we have to talk to are that about this? Like
this is not okay? And I thought about it for
a long time. And you go through a lot of
different feelings, you know, those stages of grief, truly, anger, denial, bargaining.
I mean, you really do go through that. What would
(24:50):
you say you were grieving? I thought those days and
those feelings and those scaps were behind me, if not healed,
closed at least, and like an alien just showing up.
Like I'm telling you, your reality change is in an instant.
(25:10):
It's very disorienting to think you know the world today
and receive a phone call and find out that humans
exist that don't fit with your story, blood relatives and
they're alive and they were and it's and that's the reality.
(25:31):
It's the difference between like the language, like when my
when I found out that my dad hadn't been my
biological father. I was describing it as something that happened
to me that I discovered that, you know, that I
wasn't who I thought I was, literally, and I realized
I had to change the language because it wasn't something
that happened to me. It had always been thus like
it it was me, and that, I think is part
(25:55):
of what's shocking and disorienting when you uncover a secret
that because it was the reality. You didn't know it
was the reality, but it was for a very long
time in your life. Yes, And I feel betrayed and
deceived because of it. And I never trusted people that
much like when I I. Most people give people trust
(26:18):
and then people can lose that I I don't distrust,
but I started out at zero. No one gets credit
in advance, and that was formed long before this phone call.
The phone call lets me to work where it came from,
even though it wasn't always conscious. We're going to pause
(26:39):
for a moment for a word from our sponsor. Frank
tells his wife the story because, as he puts it,
that's what couples and healthy relationships do. But he feels
sick about it, embarrassed, as if somehow this reflects poorly
on him, and then after sitting on it for about
(27:00):
a week, he calls his father. I said, this is
not okay, it's not He says, look, life is complicated,
and you know, all I could say is you you know,
you have needs, you take actions, you do something and
you think it's one thing and it turns into something else,
(27:20):
and all of a sudden you have this. And I said, yeah,
maybe for one kid, not too. Two is not an accident.
One is like, oh my god, what happened. Two is
a family you know, fool me once too unforgivable, unacceptable.
(27:44):
He's he's bullshitting me. He's he's selling me. You know.
They say, hey, man, you know you think it's one thing. No,
at some point you were in when you were when
you took that fucking video camera there to film your
son's you know what you were doing Owen, by that
point it was not unintentional or an accident. So don't
(28:05):
tell me that that crap. I mean, my my whole
life and career is about sussing out full of ship people.
And he's he's, you know, patient zero in in full
of shitness for me. So I'm imagining that that conversation
like doesn't particularly and with some kind of like great
(28:28):
closure for any anybody. No, it doesn't, and I'll tell
you how it ends. He says, Look, you know your mom.
I don't think you want you know, you should burden
her with this and it would be a lot for her.
And I realized, my mother, and I'm gonna say this intentionally,
(28:48):
may not know. He thinks she doesn't know. She may know,
she may have a video camera story in her head someplace,
or she may not want to know. And I said
to him, stop, I will talk with her about this
or not because of my relationship with her. Don't ask
(29:12):
me to do something or not do something, because I'm
more likely to do it to spite you. So stop
selling me. And here we arrive at the reason, or
at least part of the reason why Frank is using
a pseudonym for this episode. His mom, as far as
this part of the story goes, is innocent. Also his kids.
(29:35):
He doesn't want to be the guy who suddenly doesn't
speak to his relatives the way his father did. He's
refusing to allow his father to turn him into a
version of himself who he hates and disrespects. So he
doesn't say a word to his mother or his kids.
Five years go by and Frank's daughter wants to go
to Florida to see her grandparents. There's a Pink Floyd
(29:56):
concert that Frank wants to see what's happening in Florida
at the same time, So he tells her, you know what,
I'll come with you for the weekend. We'll see them,
I'll go to the show. Then his dad catches wind
of it, and he says he wants to go to
the show too. He knows the venue, knows all the
guys there. At first, Frank recoils, but then I thought, again,
(30:17):
am I being that guy? You know? Again? I have
a reason why I can't see my father, and I
don't want to be him, you know, So I think
I'll give it. How how bad can it be? What
could go wrong? So, um, we go to this this concert,
and uh, it's fine. He knows the people at the
(30:38):
in the parking lot, he knows the ticket takers. Because
the guy who thinks he's antisocial is you know, the schmoozer.
He knows everyone. He's connected, and it's it's a it's
a real conflict between you know, how he describes himself
and how he acts. We go to the concert and uh,
there's an intermission and we decided to go and get
(30:59):
some walk around and go to the bathroom whatever. And
as we're walking up the steps to leave the arena,
it's like, oh, this is a you know, a client
of mine, some local guy for now, and that he knows.
He's like I. Guy was like, hey, how are you
doing man? And my fathers like, hey, how you doing
it is? Let me introduce you to my son. And
(31:20):
he introduces me, but not by my name, by the
half the older half brother's name, and he doesn't realize.
He doesn't and he just and the guy's like, hey, hey,
nice to meet you. And they just chit chat for
a minute or two, and I am stunned, like like
the arena got quiet, you know, like that device in
(31:42):
a movie where it's just you, like the camera zooms
in and all and everything fades to like a hush,
and you're like, like time stood still, and you're like
where do you go with that? And I thought another test,
you know, And I said to myself, I really consciously
(32:03):
thought this, I'm not going to get freaked out by this.
I'm not gonna let this ruin this night for me.
I'm letting this one go, and he says goodbye. The
whole transactions like two minutes and we walk into the
arena and it's a really nice guy. I said, yeah,
and wrong son. He's like what I said, I'm Frank.
(32:25):
You introduced me by Southern aid and he turned red
and he looked bewildered. I've never seen maybe the only
other time I saw that face was on the video camera,
you know, when he was fumbled and grabbed confused, you know,
the two worlds all of a sudden overlapped matter and antimatter,
(32:46):
and he did and he looks so bad. I've never
seen that expression. I mean, did I don't think. I said, yeah,
you did, And anyway, let's go. Oh no, I mean,
I mean he's he's a great kid, and you know
you shouldn't be I mean as it stops speaking about
(33:06):
it and don't mention it again, old man, And that's it.
And we walked away. Throughout our conversation, Frank's embarrassment that
this this is his family, this is his father, this
is where he comes from, is palpable. He so badly
(33:26):
doesn't want this to be his story. He got out,
he moved away, he built his own happy, successful life,
and then this new piece of information, shameful information, as
Frank experiences it, has crashed in like a meteor, and
he's now carrying around this story like his own secret.
Is this why he doesn't want to tell his kids
(33:47):
or talked to his mom about it? Embarrassment? Shame? First
of all, it's not my secret to tell her, it's his.
So on, that's that's my rationalization to get me off
the hook. Now that I know this piece of information
that I don't want to that, I don't feel I
should even be the one to tell her. And I
don't know that you'd want to hear it from me,
But I wouldn't want to hurt her. She's the one
(34:10):
who never left, and she's the one who still lives
with this guy. I don't want to wait, the sleepwalker.
So Frank puts this whole story somewhere inside him, or
at least tries to file it away. He doesn't think
about these two half siblings of his. He doesn't want
(34:31):
to have anything to do with them. It's not their
fault that their father had two families. Intellectually Frank knows this,
but that doesn't matter, or at least it doesn't matter enough,
so he doesn't think about this all that much, to
the point where when he does one of those over
the counter DNA tests, it doesn't occur to him that
(34:51):
wait for it, guess who showed up in the database.
They think you're their half cousins or whatever. And my
kids are in there under my account, My sister is
in there and her son. I had to, uh, I
shut it all down. I stopped the sharing, I broke
(35:12):
the connection. I did other than quit the service. I
shut anything down that makes a connection or shares information
or shows names. I stopped sharing with any relatives or
anybody because again, you know, the virus and showed up again.
Did it occur to you that that might happen or
(35:34):
did that not into your mind? I didn't think about it.
That's so interesting. I never thought about it. So there's
this way. It strikes me that the way that you
have managed to metabolize this and kind of just move
on with your life is to just bring down. It's
something bigger than a curtain, and it's like the bring
(35:56):
down like a big thick concrete wall, like it doesn't exist.
It shouldn't have exist did, so therefore it's not going
to exist. So you would have been able to do
something like submit your DNA to a commercial testing site
and actually not think, hey, wait a minute, there's this
world genealogically out there that could be complicated. Yes, because
it's the same compartmentalizing when I went to college the
(36:17):
first time and came home and said, what this is
still happening? But of course it was. I mean, why
wouldn't it still be happening. So in a way that
compartmentalizing has served you well, I think so. All right,
So I have one more question. So you said before
you said this great thing, you said, I'm glad. I know.
(36:38):
I wish it didn't exist, but I'm glad. I know.
Why are you glad? You know? Well, because it's reality.
I'd like to thank Frank for trusting us with his
(37:00):
story today. Family Secrets is an I Heeart media production.
Dylan Fagan is the supervising producer, Lowell Bolante is the
audio engineer, and Julie Douglas is the executive producer. If
you have a family secret you'd like to share with us,
you can get in touch at listener mail at Family
Secrets podcast dot com, and you can also find us
(37:21):
on Instagram at Danny Writer, and Facebook at Family Secrets Pod,
and Twitter at fami Secrets Pod. For more about my book, Inheritance,
visit Danny Shapiro dot com. 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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