We sat in a booth at a diner somewhere near Frankfort, Michigan, across the table from my mother’s older brother and only sibling, John, and his wife, Dawn. For four decades, he sent all five of us money at Christmas until he died.1
His cards arrived like clockwork: I could predict their December arrival almost to the day. Crisp, official checks in a Currier & Ives card, his signature a calligraphic flourish. The last time I’d seen him was almost 40 years prior in Leadville when I was eight or nine. His head seemed to touch the ceiling in our living room with fake wood walls and orange shag carpet. He was in Colorado touring colleges with one of his daughters, a cousin in name only. Sally or Susan: I don’t remember which one.2
While waiting for our food to arrive, I asked him a question about my mother. A question I don’t remember now, but I think it was related to why she left Missouri or why she’d been estranged from her parents or what their childhood was like or the story of her adoption. He started to answer, but Dawn, sitting next to him in the puffy vinyl booth, elbowed him sharply. He stopped and, reading the room, I didn’t press. I regret that now.
Family secrets perpetuate family trauma. My mother’s trauma is my trauma and my sisters’ trauma and my brother’s trauma and my children’s trauma and my nieces’ and my nephews’ trauma and I had a right to know what my uncle knew about it. In order to treat the disease, knowing its pathology helps. Given the stories my siblings tell me about my mother’s abusive husbands and the experiences with men we all had (and our daughters had, too) I am fairly certain that there was domestic violence in her childhood, at minimum, and perhaps incest. But what to do? What to say now?
Like a punch in the gut, a slap in the face, a bomb in my lap.
I’m writing this after notification of a family secret last week that took me totally off-guard. She dropped it like a punch in the gut, a slap in the face, a bomb in my lap. A train I didn’t see coming that apparently I should have, given the unmet expectations of the news bearer (as a mother, I feel nothing more than the sum of all the expectations I fail to meet). A family secret almost identical to one revealed to me 15 years ago by someone else: same family, different places, different names, different times. But the same dysfunctional behaviors. A classic family movie remade with contemporary actors only this time, the woman playing the mother blamed for it all is not Nancy. It’s me.
Both revelations came at moments of ridiculous ordinary. The first time while driving around Capitol Hill in Seattle trying to find a place to eat, the kids in the back seat not old enough to be privy to this kind of information and my sister and me bickering about her slow driving: her slow driving drove me crazy. The second time while lying flat on my back on an aesthetician’s table on the 13th floor of the Medical Dental Building, no children in attendance but a needle near my face.
Exactly how it should never be.
Family secrets should be revealed with a warning label, first of all. And maybe an aperitif or two. They should be preceded by a formal invitation, embossed and sent with a first class stamp. With a save the date and répondez s’il vous plait. They should require a dress code fit for a cotillion ball or, at a minimum, a court hearing. Jackets, ties, and heels. Shoes polished. Hair and make-up. Fresh powder on your nose. Family secrets are serious business. Revealing them should require mediators and liaisons. Candlelit hors d'oeuvres to prepare the palate. Agendas and notetakers to keep the record straight. Formal tables and upright chairs. Boxes of Kleenex and cards on the surface so everyone gets a fair turn. Hot towels delivered with tongs to make sure your hands are clean before taking a bite out of the curdled family meal served on a silver platter. They deserve notices to the other party in the spirit of full transparency. Hand-delivered: sign here on the dotted line, please. Your family court date has arrived. Someone just dished some dirt about you. A motion for revision.
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
– Robert Frost
There are always two sides to a story, even when one person bears most of the blame. There are always at least two people involved, not to mention all the ghosts of interactions past. There are always multiple sides in a family’s trauma, the perspective lines of the people we desperately want to love but often loathe converging into the same point on the same horizon.
This didn’t start with me. It didn’t start with you.3 Or him, or her, or them, for that matter. But as a family, this trauma we inherited belongs to all of us.
Things That Nourished My Writing: January-February 2024
FOOD
The tofu and yam sandwich (aka The Michael King) from The Other Coast Cafe. So fricking delicious.
The Dos Rios bar from Amano Chocolate.
LITERARY
Best Literature Newsletters on Substack
This reading, recommended by
PLACES
The Nordic ski trails at Cabin Creek.
In front of the fireplace in my living room.
MUSIC
In honor of Valentine’s Day, this playlist.
THINGS
My Yakima roof ski racks. So much less bulky than the Thule box.
FILM
2024 Oscar-Nominated Short Films
Because he felt guilty, I think. I had always been told that my mother was adamant about our not going to live with him when she died. But then discovered later that she had asked him if he would take us but he said no. His obit.
I do know that Susan lives in Seattle now. I reached out to her once but she never responded.
It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn
Such superb writing! The story made me cry, but I laughed out loud reading, and then re-reading the paragraph on how to reveal family secrets! I'm proud of you Callie - You are putting an end to the cycles of family disfunction by shining your light!