The Second Secret

a reason she didn't want me to know. I think I was worried about like upsetting her, or I wouldn't say I was scared. I was more nervous to say anything. So I just that's kind of my m O, like nervous. Sometimes if I'm scared or nervous to do something, I just don't do it, or I put it off. I'd procrastinate it. That's Lindsay Romer. And this is a story of a layer to see grit, the kind that begins in childhood and moves through life in various ways, sometimes

so subtle that we don't even know what's happening. We just have a faint whiff of something not quite adding up, not quite making sense. And as always when the secret is finally spoken, fully revealed, Finally, though it may be shocking, finally we understand. 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.

I grew up in Baltimore County, Maryland, was born there, and I really have nothing but positive memories of my childhood, even with you know, my parents got divorced when I was I think, maybe like three, but I still everything. I think it's when you're a child, you kind of see everything with rose colored glasses. I guess that makes sense.

It was just kind of normal. There were kids that I went to school with her that I knew that seemed to have a whole lot of things, things that they did in their lives, sometimes like more than I guess what I felt like I had. But I never felt like I was missing anything. My mom was always very loving and caring and a cute little house in Baltimore County, and it was me and my brother and your brother is he's three years younger than me. Do you have memories of that really early childhood time. I

know your father died when you were five. Do you have memories of him? He was actually a magician. Um. He used to, you know, do shows all over the place and would always do my birthday parties. And I just remember him as like a happy, just kind of glowing, magical person. I don't ever remember him seeming or being sad or upset. Do you have any memories of his performing at your at your birthday parties? I do. There's one in particular. It's just kind of like a flash

of a memory. Sitting in front of the bay window at our old house, and maybe it was probably a small party, maybe I had like seven or eight friends over, and he did you know, it, was doing some magic tricks. And it was this combination of so excited and happy that he was performing for us, and also like very proud, you know, thinking like, oh my god, my friends must

think this is so cool. My dad's a magician. And maybe cool wasn't the word I used, but oh my god, my dad's a magician, Like this is kind of as good as it gets for a tiny kid. I remember being at one of his magic shows in the theater, and I was either in the front row or pretty close to the front row and I had I remember these sun kissed fruit snacks that my mom used to buy, and they were a little little like pellet shaped things, and I would wash them onto my fingernails and pretend

that I had pretty fancy lady nails. And I remember watching one of his magic shows while sitting doing that with my nails in the audience. After my parents separated, he had um, you know, obviously his own place, and it was just decorated with so much magic stuff. I remember there was a slot machine that took dines, and he would just have this unlimited supply of dimes and would just let me play on that. Did your mom work as well? She did. She still has the same

job she had. Um Out of school, she went to Micah and she's an interior designer. Tell me a little bit more about your mother. My mom, she's somebody I hold as you know, Like I said, my brother is one of my best friends, I hold my mom just as close. She's someone over the years that I have grown to develop just so much respect for and how

much love. And I've always loved her. I've never there's never a point in my life and I was like, you know, my Mom's the meanest other than probably when I was going through puberty and she told me I couldn't go to the movies or something. But she is someone that I now have two step daughters that are nine and eleven, and there's so many times that I will call her a text her and be like, oh my god, one of them just did something to me

that really upset me or hurt my feelings. And I know I did the same thing to you, and I'm so sorry, And you know, this gives me this whole new level of respect for her. I think is a parent. And one thing that always stuck out to me is when we were kids, you know, we weren't wealthy by any means, but she never, if you know, me and my brother would ask for a million things as kids do, whether we were at the grocery store, towards r US or wherever, and she would never say we can't afford that.

She would just say we don't need that. And that was something that looking back as an adult, I think was just um a wise, I guess way of saying that to us and kind of helped me, I guess as I grew up as an adult valuate you know, do I need this? No, I don't need this. Maybe I just put it back on the shelf. I shouldn't get it today. Right, that's so interesting. So it wasn't coming from a place of scarcity, but from like a value judgment or weighing what's necessary or what we need

and what we don't. M hm. So Lindsay's dad is a magician. Really, this has got to be like hitting the parental jackpot. Well, maybe astronaut or owner of a candy factory. It's been a couple of years since her parents marriage ended. Her parents now share custody, and Lindsay's father is supposed to be picking Lindsay and her brother up for their time with him. But on this particular night, he never shows. It was a Tuesday night and my mom was out of town and my grandmother was staying

with us, and he just didn't show up. But I remember like looking out the window and it just got later and later and later, and he just never arrived. My grandmother and then she was like, you know, it's too late, you guys have to go to bed. Let's just go to bed. And the next day my mom came back from her trip early. I wasn't expecting her that early, and there were all these people in our house and I couldn't find my mom. They're just I kept being like, where's my mom, where's my mom? And

I remember people being leave your mother alone. She'll she'll be down in a minute, and leave your mother alone. But I just had this very vivid memory of being in that house and just seeing, you know, as short as I was at five years old, just seeing all these legs everywhere. And then I finally went up and found her in her bedroom and she sat me down and was like, I have to tell you something. Daddy died in a car accident. And I don't think at

that age I really quite understood what death was. We had had a dog that died, but I don't think that was ever. I knew the dog just wasn't coming back. She but just wasn't coming back anymore. But I don't think I quite understood. But I do remember sitting on her bed and crying because I think I knew death was like I knew she been net wasn't coming back so then, and my dad wasn't coming back. And I'm assuming your brother wasn't there for that conversation because he

was too little. Oh yeah, he was so little. I mean he was I guess a little over too. I don't know what kind of conversation my mother had with him, or how she said it or what she said, but I'm sure something simple was communicated to him. So Lindsay grows up having been told that her dad died in a car accident. She was also told that the accident

was due to carbon monoxide poisoning. As children, we tend to take what we're told at face value, and yet at the same time, if it doesn't make sense, we puzzle over it, or we get nervous about it. We can't quite let it go. We create our own narratives, as Lindsay does. Here, remember asking, and my mom said something along the lines of if he's stay in your car for too long with the windows rolled up, carbon monoxide can get in your car and it can kill you.

So the way that was explained to me, I didn't quite get it. So, like when I was a kid, at red lights in the car, I would crack my window a little bit because I was afraid that would happen if we sat at a red light for too long with our windows rolled on. Does your mom me Mary? She did, Yeah, when I was about ten, How did you experience loss of your father, Like, how did you

internalize it? And how did you think about him as you were growing up, as you got a little bit older, as your mom remarried, as you got to middle school, high school, how did that sit inside of you? First and foremost, I just I missed him, But I think I always felt like I didn't know anybody else to my age whose father had died, So I guess it

made me feel really left out sometimes. Or if I would go to a friend's house and see them, like, you know, their father hug them, or their father be there at dinner, or their father take them somewhere or take us somewhere, that was always like a reminder I don't have that. I don't have a my biological dad

here anymore. It wasn't something I think I thought about twenty four hours a day, but I would notice it in moments like that, and it just made me feel kind of left out or mothered, or it made me feel sad. How old are you when you learn that

there's more to the story than carbon monoxide poisoning. As I grew up, I would see very sele sporadically, not often, but once in a while I would see somebody it portrayed in like a TV show or a movie where somebody would get in their car and attach to you know, regular car up so that that would happen, and I remember thinking, that's weird. And I remember hearing carbon monoxide said out loud in at least one or two of these shows or movies, and I was like, Oh, that's weird.

That guy did it on purpose. I was told it was an accident of what happened to my dad, that it wasn't on purpose. And when I was in high school, my stepdad. My stepdad has two brothers. One it's awesome and we see him all the time at holidays and whenever our families get together. And the other one, I think has struggled with mental illness his whole life, and

he would do odd things. And there was one time when I was in high school and he called our house and I answered that I happened to be the one to answer the phone, and you know, maybe we had call her. I d then, I don't know, it was like the house phone and I just said hello, and he said Lindsay why did your dad kill himself? And I was like, okay, Mom, Jack's on the phone, like,

what what is this? You know? She took the phone and I guess they had their conversation, and then when she hung up, I told her what he said, and she said, oh, he's crazy. Don't listen to him. That's not true. I was like, Okay, he had done some had some kind of erratic and odd behavior in the past, so I didn't think to like question um what she said. And then when I was I was like twenty two or twenty three, I had gotten accepted into an AmeriCorps program.

We're just kind of like Peace Corps, but in America, and I needed my birth certificate or a copy of my birth certificate for it. And I was always I'm embarrassed to admit that I was such a snoop when I was a kid. It's always like going through stuff in my house that was not mine. But this wasn't

even like intentional snooping. I really I knew we had this file cabinet in the basement that had documents in it, and I don't know if my mom wasn't home or if I just didn't want to bother her and I went looking for my birth certificate and I found my dad's death certificate, and I remember it was a plain, simple piece of paper and there were different options like natural causes illness, a few other things in suicide, and I just remember there's a big typewriter looking X next

to suicide, and I was like, whoa it. You know, was the first time I guess it was really confirmed for me. And I think in the back of my mind, I think I knew that's what it was, even though my mom told me it wasn't. It was based on those depictions that I had seen in TV shows and movies, and I think I just didn't want to really accept that as the truth. And then I didn't really have a choice but to accept it when I saw it

on the paper. You know, it's so interesting when you when you bring up snooping, because that's such a theme, was people who have had secrets kept from them. I think we so often become these little slews or snoops, you know, without having any idea why, but it becomes this like little obsessive behavior. It was kind of it's funny that you said that it was sound was like a little private investigator. Yeah, I guess that now here you say that that makes a lot of sense to me.

I don't think I could have put into words before. I think I think I was thought I was just like a rude little kid. It's like, I'm going to find some things out that I'm probably not sopposed too. If you can call it back to mind, what did it feel like that moment that you saw that X next to suicide. I think physically the feeling I felt was like my stomach dropped. But then in my mind I almost said to myself, Duck, you've known this. Jack

said it, You've seen this in movies. You just weren't letting the puzzle pieces all get pushed together in the right arrangement. I think I kind of didn't want to believe it, so I didn't believe it, but then I had to when I found that paper. We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets now. Lindsay knows unequivocally that her mother has actively kept from her the fact of her other suicide. She had directly asked, and her mother had said, and I quote, no, no, that

didn't happen. She sits on this information for a little while wrestling with it privately. She also doesn't want to cause her mother pain. Sometimes it's easier not to say anything at all. I think I was old enough to think, not like, oh my god, she lied to me. I can't believe she did that, But I think I had the thought, well, there must be a reason she lied about it. There must be a reason she didn't want me to know. I think I was worried about like

upsetting her, or I wouldn't say I was scared. I was more nervous to say anything. So I just that's kind of my m O, like nervous. Sometimes if I'm scared or nervous to do something, I just don't do it, or I put it off, or I procrastinate it. So it wasn't until a couple of months later when I was actually away. I was in Denver, Colorado, at a training for my Americorp program, and one night, I'm really not sure what inspired me to do it, I just called her. I just was like, I'm going to do

this now. And I called her and told her what I found. And I just remember hearing this, not an angry sigh, not a sad sigh, just a I don't know if it was relief or if it was worried or if I don't know what it was, but she just kind of sighed and said, yeah, yeah, that's what happened. And I remember asking her, like, you know, why didn't you tell me? And her response was just, you know, when should I have? There never was a right time.

Just I didn't know how to tell a five year old little girl that, and when do I do it when you're ten, when you're fifteen, eighteen twenty one. There never was a right time, and I just never knew when to drop that bomb. And you know, I was like, I get that, that's kind of a nice kind of the way I operate. If I'm scared or I don't know how, I just don't do it. I think I remember being a little bit like you lied to me? Why you lied to me? And I think her response

was just kind of I panicked. You know, I didn't expect Jack to call and say anything like that to you. That's not you know, if you ever were to know, that's not the way I wanted you didn't find out. I wasn't mad or anything, but I was grateful that we had that conversation and that she did open up about it, And did she give you any sense of the reason for or the motivation behind your father's suicide. Did she talk about his being in any way unstable

or mentally ill or depressed? Not really. It was kind of like my whole life. She didn't speak highly of him, but she also didn't speak poorly of him. She just didn't really speak about him much at all. And I noticed, you know, throughout my life if I had a question about him, where I brought him up, it almost seemed like she kind of like winced or like her body tense stuff. And that communicated to me like maybe I shouldn't bring him up too often because it just seemed

like uncomfortable or maybe painful for her. She just said, and that conversation when I was in Denver just that he was very he was very depressed. He was having on her time. But she really didn't give me any kind of details about anything, you know. It's it's also so interesting I think when as children or in families, when we sense that a subject is painful or off limits, or you know, you describe your mother as wincing, that

serves to keep us quiet. It serves to you know, like, not want to cause pain, not want to rock the boat in any way. I think it too was like my mother. I've always just seen her as perfect and strong, and I didn't want to do anything to make her not feel like that or upset her, don't make her feel sad. Lindsey grows up to be a successful adult with a great job. She has the whole story. She knows all there is to know about how she lost

her father. She's moved on. If you were to come across her Facebook page, you'd see whatever she had made public on social media, perhaps a few photos and posts, the information that you worked for a nonprofit and it graduated from Villanova. You know, so many family secret stories would not have come to light if not for social media,

and what you're about to hear next is one of them. Yeah, I think with my early thirties, I've got the Facebook message from a man named Brian um Because, a very handsome older man with gray hair and like a gray goatee, And this message said I knew your dad and I knew your grandmother. We were friends. It looks like you

live a really great life right now. I think your dad would be very happy to see that, and when I first read it, it caught me off guard because that my father just wasn't spoken of often really, even between my brother and I that much. UM and we didn't see my father there's side of the family very often either, So it just wasn't a topic that came up a lot. I thought about it a lot, but it wasn't something that was like spoken about a lot.

So to have this, you know, essentially a stranger send me this message, you know, part of it was just it just really caught me off guard, and I didn't really know how to respond to it, so I didn't. And then I asked my mom about the name, and she said, yeah, you don't really have to respond to that person, like you didn't show any kind of emotion in her face, didn't just was like, ah, yeah, that might have been someone from your day's pass and now

you don't have to respond to him. I was like, all right, So your mother says, no need to get back to him, so that door gets closed. And then what happens, Well, I guess fast forward maybe like five six, seven years, and generally the education and training programs that I do are around Baltimore City, UM in Baltimore County. But one of my co workers who lives on the eastern shore of Maryland and she you know, does education

around there. She was out on medical weave and she had this class that she did at facility in Delaware that supports folks who are in recovery from drives and alcohol. And my supervisor was like, hey, listen, I know this is super far away. It's just once a month. Can you cover these until your coworkers out of medical agnostic? Sure, no problem. And I had just started to get into listening to podcasts, and I was like, amazing, I've got like a two plus hour drive, you know, five probably

five hours round trip. I was in my car that day and I think that around the times when I stumbled on your podcast Family Secrets, and I found myself so immersed into the episodes and they made the drive feel like it was twenty minutes. And I remember pulling up to the facility on the first class that I did there, and I was like, I wish I wish

the driver longer. Um, you know, totally enjoyed my class with them, and then I was really excited to get back in the car and listen to more and I found myself really eating with a lot of the guests that you had, and I thought to myself, Wow, we had a family secret, but I already figured mine out,

you know, finding my father's death certificate. And it started to make me think, as I heard some of your guests say, sometimes when they found out the secret that was within their family, the secret keepers had had passed away and they were not able to ask the questions to those people that they wanted to ask. And I'm almost finished your book, Dannos, like six pages left. I was soping to have it's on before I got on the call with you today, but I noticed that it

sounded like that was something for you too. I think that you wish you had been able to ask your parents about your family secret. So I thought to myself, you know, my mom doesn't love to talk about my father that much. So I really need to start reaching out to people that I know and find out some more stories, because if I don't find these out, they're gonna leave this earth with the people that know them. Lindsay is right. That was such a fear and preoccupation

of mine as well. When I first discovered my family's secret. My parents were gone, and they had taken it to the grave with them, but there was a great sense of urgency to identify and find those who were still living and might still know something. Those people started to rise to the surface of my consciousness as if they had been there all along, just waiting in line for

some reason. And this message from Brian, like, I never forgot about it, I never deleted it, but it came back to my mind once in a while, and it certainly came back to my mind in those spots, and I thought to myself, I should really respond to them. I wonder, you know, how he knew my dad or

what kinds of stories he could tell. So I responded to him, and he wrote me back almost immediately, and I think accidentally tried to call me on Facebook audio and remember seeing my phone ring, and I was like, oh God, no, I should have done this. Look, oh, I don't know if I wanted. I'm not ready to

speak at what's happening. I think the message I wrote him was something along those lines and not with much detail, but you know, I just wanted to reach out and see if you I'd be willing to speak with me on the phone. I would love to hear some stories about my father, and he was very willing to do that, and so we set up a date to talk. And it was a date. I think I did this on purpose because I was meeting some friends for brunch and the place where we meeting was about four minutes away

from where I lived. So I made this date to call him on my way out there. And I don't want to say anxious was what I felt, but it was like when, oh my god, that's gonna happen. What it's going to be? And when I called him, he sounded kind of slightly out of breath a little bit, and I kind of gave him like the background that I just gave you, you know what prompted me to

finally respond to the message. He's okay, and you know, asked me a few questions about, you know, what did you know about your mom and dad's relationship and what did you know about your dad? And I kind of was like, why is he asking you? I just wanted to hear some stories, and he, you know, said okay, okay, and he said, well, your dad was gay and he

and I had an affair. And there it is the secret that had been lurking beneath the secret, the first secret suicide, the second secret, Lindsay's father's sexuality, and then there's more. And I said, what did you say? And he repeated himself and I was like wow, He goes, did you have any idea? And I said, nope, now I didn't. He went on to tell me all sorts of stories about how they met, and there were some

things that were very heartwarming. There were some things that were also kind of upsetting and scary, and I think gave me a little bit more of you into my father's mental health. I would imagine that being five years old and losing your father, one has lost someone that one has never really gotten to know in a way except for these flashes and these childhood memories. And so now you're getting this avalanche of information, right, Yeah, that's agree way of saying it. It did feel kind of

like an avalanche, and it wasn't an unwelcomed avalanche. It was like, I was kind of like, wow, Okay, this is giving me a much broader picture of who my dad was, and you know, what he felt like and what he went through. And after speaking with Brian and you know, I reached out to a few other people, and they all said similar things that he I don't know that he was ever diagnosed, but that he had bipolar disorder. I never saw the depressive states, I think.

I don't know if I saw nannic states or if I saw, you know, what he wanted me to see or what I wanted to see maybe for that matter. But one of the first things he said was your father was the most charming and charismatic person I've ever met. And he said when they met, they had this just instant connection. You know, they met, sat in his car and talked for like three hours getting to know each other. And how did they meet. They met at a gym.

I didn't ask too much too many details on like you know, how that interaction or who walked up to who, or how that went down, But I guess what I pictures. They saw each other and kind of their eyes locked and went towards each other and just started chatting. But of course, even as this beautiful love story is playing out, someone is suffering terribly because of it, Lindsay's mother. That's what I think was extremely hurtful for my mother is that she didn't know about his sexuality and he was

cheating on my mom with this person. And I think after speaking to several family members and Brian and eventually my mother. You know, it was the eighties, and I think he was struggling with his sexuality and he was suppressing who he knew he was because I think he wanted to have this kind of stereotypical life of a

wife and kids and you know, white picket fence. I don't think he necessarily felt that in his heart was a pent who he was, and that, combined with his mental illness, made his internal struggle really, really, really difficult. From off. I think it was hard for him to just come out and be out and be who he was, and this was what the world was extremely homophobic, I think back then compared to two thousand twenty, when I think folks are a lot more accepting than they were,

you know, fourty years ago. Did his affair, your father's affair with Brian have something to do with your parents divorce? It did? Yeah, it was only a couple of weeks ago. I finally talked to my mom about everything, and I think I was kind of trying to gather my facts and find my information before I talked to her. It was another thing. I was just nervous to talk to

her about it. We'll be right back. A long time elapses between the time Lindsay reaches out to Brian and learns more of the truth about her father and when she decides to actually tell her mother what she's discovered. A phrase comes up. It was never the right time. This, you might remember, is what Lindsay's own mother had told Lindsay about why she never revealed her father's suicide. It was never the right time. This is true of so

many families and so many secrets. We wait, We think that the stars will align, that there will be a perfect moment, but there never is. I'm embarrassed to say it's almost a year and not quite but almost a year, maybe about ten months. I guess I was nervous. I was afraid of upsetting her. I'm so close to her. I hold her as like one of my best friends. She's somebody I feel very lucky to have that relationship with her, and I can talk to her about just

about anything. But I was really nervous to talk to to her about this. I think I was afraid of retraumatizing her and making her like rehash all this. The assumption that I made was that this must have been so difficult for her to deal with when she found out about his affair that she just kind of tucked it away in a little box and put it in a closet and was like, I'm never going back there again. So I was kind of afraid to reopen that box

for her. And the timing was never right. It's like, if I tell her right away, I'm going to ruin that. That could ruin that vacation, and then all the holidays are coming up. It's going to ruin the holidays. And then we had a trip that we were my husband and I. My husband's family lived with parents I should say live in Florida, and he and I and my mom and stepdad were going down there for like a long weekend in February. And I was like, I was gonna ruin that trip. And I was St Patrick's weekend.

My mom and I were supposed to go up to New York to stay with her sister for the weekend. It's kind of like a little tradition we started, I guess a year ago, and you know, to see a show and TUF dinner and do New Yorkie things, and we had to cancel the trip because of Corona, and my plan was to talk to her on the train ride home because I was like, oh, we'll have at least three hours alone together. That's going to be the

time that I do it. And then we had to cancel the trip and I was like, oh my god, we're all quarantined. When am I going to have this conversation? Because it was really important to me to do it in person. I just felt like it would be unkind or rude or or mean even to just do it over the phone. Um. I really wanted to be able to do it in person. And then I think when I finally got the email from your producer to set up a date for this call, well, now, my my taker,

my time is counting down. I have to do this before I have this call. Nothing like a deadline, right right, Because I really didn't feel comfortable recording this episode without like speaking to her first and making sure that she was okay with it, because I guess I kind of that it is this is not just my story, this is her story. This didn't happen to me, This happened

to her, or you know, happened to us. One of the hot topics that I teach and train about his consent and I wanted to make sure that I had her consent before I did this. And how did she respond? She was very surprised. The only time I've been out to a restaurant during all of the social distancing and its outdoor seating, we were the only people there, so it's very safe. We went to Lebanese to vernon, which

is delicious. And she had I think, like a chicken swarm, a wrap in one hand and her fork in the other hand. And I said, I need to talk to you about something. And I saw her face kind of drop, as I'm sure any mother would when their daughter says that. It's like, oh my gosh, what's going to come out of my child's face right now? And I gave all these qualifiers, like I was nervous to bring this up, and I wasn't sure how to do it. I don't want to upset you. I'm afraid Joe be mad at me.

And I talked to a man named Brian. She dropped her wrap and she dropped her fork and went, oh really, I would both had sunglasses on, but she almost looked like scared, and that made me feel awful because I didn't, you know, I didn't want upset or I didn't want to make her mad. Kind of jumped in and said, I can't imagine what that must have been like for you. I'm so sorry that happened to you. You didn't deserve it.

And I was just wondering if we could talk about it, and she kind of like I could see her relaxed slightly, and then she kind of dropped her guard and really just kind of shared everything. It sounded like with me with what happened. Do you think maybe after holding that for so many years that there was some relief? Well, I asked her that, I mean it turned into a three hour lunch and I said, towards the end, how are you feeling? How do you feel? Do you feel relieved?

And she said kind of, I feel like I should feel relieved, but I don't fully feel that. And I was like, oh, no, maybe I shouldn't have done this, and she went on to say, I don't know if I feel relieved because I don't really think about this much anymore. She said, I've done a lot of work on myself, and I think I've moved past it to the point where I don't really think about it much anymore. What happened with Brian, You've had a you know, an

ongoing connection with him. I think he in fact, I was able to share some stories and give some insight onto who my father was and what he was like that I don't know that I would have found out otherwise. After I had that initial conversation with him, I then was like, you know, immediately reached out to my brother and he was just kind of what what our father to my brother was kind of almost like this phantom

person that he doesn't really remember. And after I spoke with him, I reached out to my dad's sister and we set up a time to speak. And I really wish that some of these conversations I had had in person, because I kind of wanted to see their facial expressions. But I was so nervous for all these different conversations with people, and come to find out, they were expecting

me to ask this. So I called my dad's sister, you know, so such this time to speak, and I again because I was nervous, you know, gave all this beginning. So I had a minute, you know, kind of doing some finding some stories and I told her what I found out and she said, Lindsay, I've been waiting over thirty years for you to ask me about this, and she, you know, shared a whole lot. And then I called my godfather, who was good friends with my father, and

he said something similar. And I told my brother about all this, and he said, do you think we're the only people in the family that I don't know? And I was like, Wow, that hadn't occurred to me, but yeah, I think you might be right. And my brother was working for about six weeks in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Brian lives in Florida, not far from where MITI was working.

And I'm not sure which one of them got in touch with each other first, but and I'm not sure who proposed the idea, but they decided to meet up in person. And MITCHI called me and told me that, and I said, do you want me to book a ticket and come with you? And he was, this is a really big deal. I said, I know, Do you

want me to book a ticket and come down? And he goes, this is a really big deal and he said, okay, I'll book you think getting come down so his wife and I flew down and we met up with Brian for lunch the next day. And you know, I shared all of this with my mom. I told her everything at the lunch that we had, and I think it was hurtful for her to hear that. Mitchell and I went and met this man that our father had an affair on her with. But he was so open and

so honest and shared so many stories. But you know, good and bad. Remember, Lindsay's father was a magician, and as a magician, he had certain tools of his trade, white doves and a white rabbit he used in his shows. Ryan tells Lindsay a story that must have been terribly hard to hear about an argument that two of them had at one point, one that illustrates just how much mental anguish Lindsay's dad must have been dealing with. He was so angry that he picked up his rabbit and

he threw it against the wall and killed it. I don't say that to speak poorly at my father, to make him sound like a scary monster person, but that was his mental illness acting out and making him make that choice. So Brian shared things like that with us, but he also shared, you know, like your father was

so charismatic and everyone loved him. And Brian even went on to tell us that he was actually in a relationship with somebody with a man when he met our father, and you know, it was also having kind of an affair of his own. But Brian said, if this speaks anything to the charisma that your father had, said, my partner even got to be friends with your dad, like your dad even won him over, And I was like, wow,

and it's just kind of surreal. It was a meeting that was a story I never thought I would hear. I feel guilty saying this because I know my mom would not like to hear me say this, but I'm grateful for the experience and it was just, I guess, kind of a beautiful thing to meet somebody who knew our dad on such a deep level. How do you think that knowing all this now impact too? Are you glad? You know? I am glad. I know I think all of the processing and talked to some of my friends

about the story and my husband, my brother. I'm glad that I know. And several people have said to me like, are you mad at your mom for not telling you? And I said, I'm not mad at her at all. I have nothing but admiration, if not, you know, more than I had before that she went through this, and she gave me her version of things. She had no idea that anything like this was going on. My dad often would say he was working late and then would moment like three o'clock in the morning, or you know,

he wouldn't come home at all. She would call a hospitals and I seem an accident like what happened. She said. He took her to see a play and the plot of the play was about a man and a woman that were married, and the man was gay and cheating on her with other men. And she said it was at that play that she was like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, this is what's happening in my marriage. And she maybe this is where I

got my private investigation skills from. But she she did some snooping up her own and found some some things that confirmed us for her, and confronted him and said, I want to divorce. I know what's going on. This is this relationship will go no further. And I think just the way that she raised us, she didn't she could have just bashed him every day to us. If she wanted to, she could have put awful visions of our father in our heads. And she didn't. You know,

she just didn't speak about it much at all. And she picked herself up and she kept going, which I think must have been so to be hard to have two tiny children and then have your husband cheating on you, and you know, I have no idea what's going on, and then it's I just I can't imagine what that must have been like for her, and to have to make that choice of no, we're done, we will be no longer. But she just kept going. And I told her when we had lunch, I said, I have so

much admiration for you. You're so strong. You could have started drinking, you could have started doing drugs, you could have done a million things to cope with this. But you just got up every day. You got us up, every day, you took care of us, you went to work. I had no idea that my mom ever went through anything like this. There were no clues, there were no mutterings or utterings of anything along these lines. So I said that to her, and she said, well, what else

was I going to do? I had two kids. I needed to focus on the good and I needed to move forward and make sure you guys were taken care of and and raise well. The homophobia of the era also played a significant part in Lindsay's mom's decision not to tell her kids the truth, and Lindsay's understanding of the choices her mother made and her reasons for them

have brought the two of them even closer together. So ultimately, this is a story that contains tragedy, sorrow, secrecy, and loss, but also a deepening love between a mother and a daughter. I said to her, why didn't you tell us? And I was kind of expecting the same answer, as you know, there never was a right time, and that's part of

what she said. But she also said she was worried about telling us the whole truth because she was afraid that we would get bullied because people were not accepting of folks in the LGBTQ community then. And I was like, wow, that never occurred to me as as a reason for why she wouldn't have told us. And then I think as time moved forward, it was kind of again like when's the right time? How do I share this with them?

And if she had told us when we were kids, we probably would have just accosted her every day with like a million and one questions, kind of making her relive all of this over and over and over again. So I think it was a combination of trying to

protect us and also trying to protect yourself. That makes me think of another kind of thematic family secrets thing that runs through a lot of stories, which is that what we find out and when we find it out, I have a lot to do with how we're going to be able to process or how a family is able to process a secret having been kept, and that this is a secret that came out in the fullness

of time, kind of when everybody could handle everything about it. Yeah, that's definitely how I've looked at it, Like I'm grateful to to have found out when I did, because I think I'm enough of an adult to be able to process that in a healthy and normal way. I don't know how I would have processed that if I found it when I was five, when I was ten, when I was fifteen, you know, I don't know how my

brain would have handled that. The one other thing that occurs to me is, as you're talking about your mother is that this is actually I mean your your love for her mother is so clear, and your respect for her. This is a way of actually knowing her better and having even more dimensionality to her for you. Yeah, I think knowing all this and also finally hearing her version of everything, it just makes me want to cuddle her

up and hug her forever. You know, when you think you can't love a person more and then you find you do. I guess that's kind of my reaction to it. And I know it's weird for me to say I'm proud of her, but I am proud of her. I think for like I said earlier, getting up every day and keeping a routine and raising her kids with love and kindness and moving forward in her life. Everybody has their own different version of the story and different kind

of interactions with each other. But yeah, I think it gave us kind of a new maybe moved us to like a new level in our relationship where we can talk to each other about this. And it really felt like it almost felt like when she when we were at lunch and she was telling me everything. We were

friends like. It wasn't a daughter mother dynamic. It was if we were friends, and feeling that didn't make me feel nervous or panic to kind of made me feel even closer to her that we have not only a mother daughter relationship, but also a really strong foundation of friendship. Family Secrets is an i Heeart Media production. Dylan Fagan is the supervising producer and Bethan Mcaluso is the executive producer. We'd also like to give a special thanks to Tyler

Klang and Tristan McNeil. If you have a family secret you'd like to share, leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight secret zero. That's secret and then the number zero. You can also find us on Instagram at Danny Ryder and face book at facebook dot com slash

Family Secrets Pot, and Twitter at fami secrets Pot. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.