Priscilla Gilman, THE CRITIC'S DAUGHTER: A Memoir
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[0:58]Priscilla Gilman is the author of the Critics' Daughter, a memoir.
[1:01]This is actually her second time on the podcast, and I am so happy she's back.
[1:05]Priscilla is a former professor of English literature at both Yale University and Vaster College,
[1:10]and the author of the anti-romantic child, a story of unexpected joy.
[1:14]The Critics' Daughter will be published by Norton.
[1:17]She graduated from Yale, Summa Cum Laude, with exceptional distinction in the English major.
[1:22]She went on to earn her master's and Ph.D. in English and American Literature at Yale, and spent two years as an assistant professor of English at Yale,
[1:29]and four years as an assistant professor of English at Vaster College, before leaving academia in 2006.
[1:35]From 2006 to 2011, she worked as a literary agent at Janklo in Nesbit Associates, representing a wide range of literary fiction,
[1:43]inspirational memoir, wellness, and psychology and education books.
[1:46]During those years, she also taught poetry, appreciation to inmates in a restorative justice system,
[1:52]and to New York City Public School students.
[1:55]She also spoke at numerous early childhood and education conferences and events.
[2:00]Welcome Priscilla. Thank you so much for coming back on Mom's End of Time Tree books.
[2:04]You were here before.
[2:05]The anti-romantic child and now the Critics' Daughter, a memoir,
[2:10]oh, I'm so happy to be here.
[2:13]Priscilla, this book.
[2:15]Oh my gosh, I actually cried.
[2:17]I haven't cried in a book in a really, really long time.
[2:20]And I never want to make you cry about it.
[2:24]It was so amazing.
[2:26]When you quoted Charlotte's web, and I know I have a thing about it,
[2:30]but in the context of the story, and oh my gosh, it's really great.
[2:36]And by the way, we have the same life.
[2:39]We went to the same grade school in college,
[2:43]but I was like, okay, I just read every personal reference of my entire life in this book.
[2:52]Wow, that's amazing.
[2:55]And Zippy, those Charlotte's web lines, oh my gosh.
[2:58]When I did the audiobook, I recorded my own audiobook.
[3:01]I only cried three times, and one of them was that time.
[3:06]I just stopped.
[3:07]I looked at the engineer.
[3:08]I was like, oh, yeah.
[3:10]The others were actually, it's interesting.
[3:12]None of them.
[3:13]I didn't make myself cry with my own prose.
[3:15]One of them was my sister's duality.
[3:17]Oh my god.
[3:18]When I was reading that about the magical childhood
[3:20]and how we could have shared more with him.
[3:22]And then one of them was his own lines about not wanting to die,
[3:28]wanting to be remembered, wanting to give comfort to the people that he left behind,
[3:33]like way their tears.
[3:34]Those lines where he's echoing on kobanya.
[3:36]I found out later.
[3:37]I didn't know when I first read it, but yeah.
[3:39]Well, I don't write in so fast.
[3:42]Why don't you tell listeners what your book is about?
[3:45]Oh, wow.
[3:47]My book is about my father, Richard Gilman,
[3:51]who was a theater critic, a professor at the Yale School of Drama
[3:55]and a writer.
[3:56]And it started out as a book about criticism
[4:00]and culture in the 70s.
[4:02]It was going to be much more about his cohort.
[4:05]He was very close friends with many famous critics
[4:07]from Susan Sontech.
[4:08]It was a bit hardwick.
[4:09]Christopher Lehman helped an intellectual boyard,
[4:11]who were the two lead New York Times book critics, Stanley
[4:14]Calzman, a film critic.
[4:15]And it morphed into a really personal story.
[4:19]It is a story about a lost New York.
[4:21]It is a story about a lost culture and an era in the arts and criticism.
[4:25]But it is a very personal family story about my complicated relationship
[4:30]with my complicated father, whom I adored, revered, and then lost
[4:35]for the first time.
[4:36]The first line of the book is I lost my father for the first time
[4:39]when I was 10 years old.
[4:41]And that line came to me, Zibi.
[4:43]I don't know where it came from.
[4:45]And I got that line.
[4:47]And then the critics' daughter, the title came to me.
[4:49]And I was like, OK, I'm going to be able to do this.
[4:53]Because I had been putting off writing a book about my father
[4:57]and my agent, Tina Bennett, who was my friend in grad school.
[5:01]And she's a character in the book.
[5:02]Remember she talks to my dad about trying to make his writing into a book
[5:05]when he has cancer.
[5:06]And she said, this is the book you have to write.
[5:08]And you met your child.
[5:09]Wonderful, great.
[5:10]But you really need to go back and talk about your dad.
[5:13]So I got that line and that title.
[5:15]And it was off to the races.
[5:16]And it became so much more about me than I originally thought it was going to be
[5:23]in about my evolution as a, as a, from a girl to a woman.
[5:26]And my parents had a very, very bitter divorce.
[5:29]Wondering if that's one of the points of reference, Zibi, with your life.
[5:32]I don't know.
[5:33]You know, what it's like to love both of your parents very, very much
[5:38]and have them possess so much animosity and bitterness between them
[5:42]and feel like you're caught in the middle.
[5:45]And my father was an extremely brilliant, but very troubled person.
[5:50]Being the child of somebody who struggles with depression.
[5:53]Self medicates with smoking.
[5:56]Ultimately dies of lung cancer, which I always knew he would.
[5:59]Even though he said, no, my parents lived until there were 90 something
[6:03]and they smoked, but I knew it.
[6:06]And the pressure that I felt even before my parents split up when I was 10,
[6:13]to keep my father in a good mood, to pull him out of his darkness,
[6:16]to help him to bring sunshine and light and joy and fun and play into his life
[6:22]because he had this very playful, joyful childlike side.
[6:26]And he was an incredible father in so, so many ways.
[6:30]And when I was a little girl, you know, just a magical, wild, zany figure
[6:37]who adored reading to us and watching the PBS shows with us.
[6:41]I know you watch those and joining in our games.
[6:45]And he honored our belief that our stepped animals were alive.
[6:48]And he talked to them.
[6:50]And it was, you know, and he took us to the library to take all the books out.
[6:53]And, you know, he was, he was just magical and completely magical.
[6:58]But dark had a dark set or had darkness in him.
[7:01]I don't like to phrase dark side.
[7:03]He had darkness in him as we all do.
[7:05]Well, I feel like, even though he loved childhood and made yours so special.
[7:12]And, you know, even things like, you had the one when you were in Weston, I guess.
[7:17]And he would have you dive off his shoulders and the pool and all of that.
[7:21]Oh, that was an Italy.
[7:22]Yeah.
[7:23]I'm really sorry.
[7:24]Yeah.
[7:25]You did the same thing.
[7:26]Oh, my gosh.
[7:27]Yeah.
[7:28]But, you know, all of this of his love of childhood,
[7:31]he inadvertently though, like, still years.
[7:35]Because you had to grow up so quickly and take care of him so much.
[7:39]Yeah.
[7:40]And there was so much pressure on you.
[7:41]And honestly, I first of all, I feel like I understand you like so well.
[7:46]At least all that what you shared.
[7:48]I mean, the book is about your dad, but it's really your,
[7:53]I mean, I guess that's why it's the daughter.
[7:55]I mean, it's, it's making sense of you and how you're working through all of this.
[7:59]And there's so much.
[8:01]And we all have, we all have so much for so many, you know, and with our relationships with our families and whatever.
[8:06]But, you know, all the pressure to take care of him.
[8:10]To even when his friend when you were visiting the friends and who like leave his glasses and cigarettes burning.
[8:16]And he was like, oh, daddy and other glass, whatever.
[8:21]You know, just all of the things from making sure he's okay to his emotional state.
[8:26]I mean, that takes a lot of toll in a developing child.
[8:31]It really does.
[8:32]And I think I never sort of slowed down enough to acknowledge that or see it.
[8:37]And I remember talking with you last time when we were talking and into a romantic child.
[8:41]You know, I've gone through a lot of challenges.
[8:44]We all do.
[8:45]But I had a lot of major challenges at a young age.
[8:47]And when my father is dying of cancer when I'm in my 20s and I'm married and my mother-in-law has just died of cancer.
[8:54]And then I have a child with developmental disabilities. It turns out to be autism.
[8:59]But my marriage is falling apart. I mean, it's having your track job in academia.
[9:04]I am just soldering on.
[9:06]I am. I am not wanting to slow down and cry or say, oh, this is hard.
[9:10]This is difficult because I'm in that mode that my parents trained me to be in from a very young age, which is the smiley one, the poised one, the caretaker,
[9:21]the one who brings strength and cheer and and staticness to everybody else.
[9:26]Wait, I have a pet. I loved that part of the book. So wait.
[9:29]Oh, good. Thank you.
[9:31]You said, you know, this insistence on soldering on through disappointment trauma and loss.
[9:37]This buoyant optimism had served me well as I weathered my parents split.
[9:40]There is illness and death, Benji special needs and my father's diagnosis and diminishment, but they came in a cost.
[9:46]I didn't allow myself to truly feel or acknowledge the terror disorientation and profound sadness that must have accompanied these situations and experience.
[9:54]And I certainly didn't share those feelings with others. I feared being a burden.
[9:58]I feared undermining.
[10:00]and listeners' own well-being.
[10:01]I feared appearing weak and vulnerable
[10:03]rather than strong and capable.
[10:05]I feared not being able to parent effectively
[10:07]if I leaned into or came face to face
[10:10]with my own wounded child.
[10:12]I feared playing anything other than the role
[10:14]I'd been assigned at a very young age,
[10:16]the happy, resilient, reliable one,
[10:18]the canceled and supported, cheered up,
[10:20]and calmed others.
[10:22]Even though the role in the self were closely related,
[10:25]even though I'd been chosen for the role
[10:26]because it wasn't a stretch,
[10:28]playing it to the hills, it took a toll.
[10:30]You just made me teary
[10:31]because you read that with such empathy, Sibi.
[10:34]No.
[10:34]I mean, that totally jumped out of me when I read it
[10:37]because it's so easy, isn't it?
[10:40]To just like, not to hide at all.
[10:44]Right, and just keep going.
[10:47]You hide at all and keep going
[10:49]and I know that you understand that
[10:51]better than most people do.
[10:52]Sibi, so.
[10:53]That's it, I'm just saying.
[10:55]Yeah, and it's funny when you were reading it,
[10:59]I heard something different in it.
[11:00]I use the role, but obviously I do engage a lot
[11:05]with this idea of how in families,
[11:07]children get slotted into certain roles
[11:09]and how I very much tried to avoid that
[11:12]with my own kids,
[11:13]even though I did write a piece called
[11:14]Ernie and Burt's mother,
[11:15]where I slotted them into the roles,
[11:17]and then right after I wrote it,
[11:19]they were like, oh wait, actually,
[11:20]I'm more like Burt mom, and he's more like Ernie.
[11:23]But also, of course, that word role,
[11:25]you know, I'm playing on the,
[11:26]I play on theatrical metaphors
[11:28]and similes right throughout the book
[11:29]and I structured it in acts,
[11:32]and that was a big,
[11:34]the formal decision to do it in acts.
[11:37]It was three acts, was it four acts,
[11:38]was it five acts,
[11:39]then I stretched it as much as I could,
[11:41]and then I added an apple.
[11:43]So, you know.
[11:45]Wait, just on this topic again,
[11:47]you wrote in the fall of 2017,
[11:50]I unearthed a bin of old things
[11:51]from my mother's basement,
[11:53]and it was a diary I'd kept in middle school.
[11:55]Here is a page from that diary.
[11:57]Things not to do when I'm with Daddy.
[11:59]One, don't cry.
[12:01]Two, don't complain.
[12:03]Three, don't be difficult.
[12:04]Four, don't tell him anything but good news.
[12:07]Five, don't mention mommy.
[12:09]Six, don't expect him to be the daddy of old.
[12:13]That is heart-breaking.
[12:15]I almost, I couldn't believe it.
[12:16]I didn't have any memory of it.
[12:19]Zibi, and I'm flipping through
[12:20]and there's like entries about,
[12:21]oh, this new, you know, go-go song is so great.
[12:25]Or like, oh, this cute boy, like,
[12:27]I'm gonna slow dance with him at the dance,
[12:29]and then there was just this.
[12:32]And it went right in there.
[12:35]Isn't it like break your heart
[12:36]to think of you as a kid going through this?
[12:38]Do you know what I mean?
[12:39]Now that you have kids, yes.
[12:41]You know what's interesting?
[12:43]I, my agent and my editor,
[12:47]both of them would say to me at various points,
[12:50]we have, like, I have so much empathy for little Priscilla.
[12:54]I want you to have more empathy for little.
[12:57]And I think that was one of the hardest parts of the book
[13:01]is to go back into it.
[13:03]And, you know, pictures were really important.
[13:05]I put up a picture of myself just a few months
[13:08]before the split on Instagram yesterday.
[13:11]And just looking at how little I was.
[13:13]You know, and then I think, oh my gosh,
[13:14]I'm 10 years old.
[13:17]Like, I cannot imagine my children
[13:20]who are a college first year
[13:21]at a recent college graduate now,
[13:22]but I can imagine them at 10,
[13:25]finding out the stuff that I found out,
[13:28]being experiencing and going through
[13:31]what I did, seeing one of their parents
[13:33]in so much distress and so much pain.
[13:37]It's unfathomable to me.
[13:39]And that they asked you to keep
[13:41]on this secret for a long time?
[13:43]Oh yeah.
[13:44]I mean, it's so hard.
[13:46]Zibi, it's not interesting.
[13:47]Because I remember you asked when we were talking
[13:49]and intermittent child, I remember you asking me about
[13:52]when Benj first had all these challenges.
[13:55]My ex-husband asked me to keep it a secret.
[13:59]Not to tell anyone, because he didn't want a school
[14:04]or family friends, perception of Benjamin
[14:07]to be shaped by an idea of disorder in some way.
[14:11]And I think, you know, when people ask me,
[14:13]how did you become a memoirist from being an academic
[14:16]and writing a dissertation?
[14:18]And you're also a critic.
[14:19]And how can you do all this personal stuff
[14:22]in a way merely telling the truth
[14:25]and sharing things that are hard
[14:27]and sharing things that were difficult
[14:29]and going back in and with empathy
[14:34]and a sense of sadness for that little girl.
[14:36]That in and of itself is correcting the past, right?
[14:39]It's me saying, I don't have to keep secrets anymore.
[14:44]I don't, because do you remember there's that part
[14:46]in the book where Joel Crammens?
[14:48]Yes, I don't think you're a picture too.
[14:50]It is hanging down at the time.
[14:52]Okay, I am.
[14:54]Yeah, they're really all the best for pictures.
[14:56]Amazing, amazing.
[14:57]You know, she's doing this book,
[14:59]how children feel when their parents divorced
[15:01]and she asks us to do,
[15:02]she asks me and my sister to write for it
[15:04]or participate in it, be photographed for it.
[15:07]And my mother's like,
[15:08]you don't want to talk about it, that's private.
[15:11]And I'm thinking, I don't want to talk about it
[15:13]because I'd have to say a lot of very painful things
[15:16]and possibly expose my father and some of his actions
[15:20]that are less than savory and paint my mother.
[15:24]And I just thought, I can't do this.
[15:26]And in a way, I'm doing it now.
[15:30]So thank you, Joel Crammens,
[15:31]for being the first person to ask me to talk about it.
[15:34]Honestly, it opened like, I'm doing it now.
[15:37]I just connected with her, like in the last couple months,
[15:40]if you want me to put you to a touch,
[15:41]you could like have a, you could almost do a reprise
[15:44]of the whole thing.
[15:46]On her Facebook friend and she lost my post
[15:48]and every time she dies, I'm like, yes, yes, so.
[15:52]That was just one of like the thousands of things.
[15:55]I really couldn't even believe it.
[15:56]I mean, I just, I mean,
[15:59]it's not worth going into how many references
[16:02]that were all the same, pedums.
[16:04]Did you read about CTC books, I think?
[16:06]I read the best CTC books.
[16:07]And you reminded me of another series
[16:10]that I had totally forgotten about.
[16:11]It was in the same sentence,
[16:13]like the ever after girls, wait, what was it?
[16:15]Oh, the Melanie books?
[16:17]No, no, it was the same sentence.
[16:19]So it was, hold on, I'll find it.
[16:21]You said, I'm looking up at my, at my post-circle, did.
[16:25]Children's books, which are,
[16:26]my academic e-books are behind me.
[16:29]You can see them on the video in front of the kind family,
[16:31]but oh, they're so good.
[16:34]Oh my gosh, I had forgotten all about them.
[16:37]They're fantastic.
[16:38]This was so my life.
[16:40]Like the beauty products, the Naxima series,
[16:45]Clearacelle, Flexin' finesse,
[16:47]Justin's baby shampoo, Bandiodor and Bonnie Bell lip smackers.
[16:52]Like it was like, you opened up my childhood medicine cabinet
[16:56]and like took me back on like a time travel.
[16:58]I mean, that was so much fun.
[17:01]How did you remember on this?
[17:03]I have a really good memory.
[17:05]Like ask any of my friends from elementary middle school
[17:07]and I can tell you like what they wore to the dance.
[17:10]Like if it was at a purple, off the shoulder sweatshirt,
[17:13]the pre-pants, I have an incredible memory.
[17:15]And I really do.
[17:17]I just remember it's so vivid to me.
[17:19]And then if I wasn't quite sure, I did a lot of research.
[17:21]I actually did do a lot of incredibly fun
[17:25]romping through rabbit holes.
[17:28]I'm going on old Upper West sides, websites,
[17:31]and tribute books, and remembering the green noodle,
[17:35]like all the restaurants and the stores
[17:37]and with so much fun.
[17:39]It was, it's crazy.
[17:40]You literally agreed about the same world.
[17:43]Oh.
[17:44]You know, I, and I also, by the way, I got mono at Yale,
[17:47]my freshman year, but I know yours wasn't diagnosed
[17:50]till later.
[17:51]Wow.
[17:52]It was nine disinfections, but I could not believe
[17:55]that you took time off and were an instructor at Gilda's
[17:59]Rubik's class, which I also used to take.
[18:01]I mean, it's incredible.
[18:03]Oh, so that was the most fun.
[18:04]And I don't know if you read my interview with Tertulia.
[18:07]They asked me about bookstores.
[18:08]It just went up.
[18:10]And I said, like, try to get a job at Shakespeare and Coppity,
[18:12]but they were like, you're a sophomore at Yale.
[18:15]You don't have enough to get a literary and philosophical range.
[18:20]So I was like, OK, I'll go audition and to be in a rope
[18:23]exceed her, and I ended up teaching stretch and firm,
[18:26]body sculpting and step to Marital or more
[18:29]Elizabeth Shoe, Mary Start Masters in Connie Chung,
[18:31]and the list goes on.
[18:35]So fun.
[18:35]So much fun.
[18:37]You have just a little bit at the end about how you processed
[18:42]all of this stuff and the aftermath of the loss and your
[18:47]relationships and the inappropriate men and all of this.
[18:52]And I was like, I feel like there's another memoir right
[18:54]in this section here.
[18:55]Oh, I think those men would beg to differ.
[19:01]I think it could be maybe a normal or something.
[19:04]You know, maybe I may take a picture out of your book.
[19:07]And it would be a novel from memoir to fiction.
[19:13]Yes.
[19:15]Whoa.
[19:17]Do you feel, how do you feel like that this is all out there?
[19:21]And the A that you went through the prat?
[19:24]Like, what was it right even going through emotionally
[19:26]writing this all down?
[19:27]And all of the, like, what was it like for you?
[19:32]It was really hard.
[19:34]I will say, you know, when people asked me how long did it
[19:37]take you to write this?
[19:38]I started working on it in 2015.
[19:42]And I teach very more than full time.
[19:46]Like I lead six books.
[19:47]I teach real on my college.
[19:49]I teach a writing class.
[19:50]I'm a private writing coach.
[19:52]I'm a meditation teacher.
[19:54]And I really don't have much time to write.
[19:56]And I had to get, you know, getting my son into college
[19:59]and the other one.
[20:00]getting Benjamin, my autistic son,
[20:01]transitioned to college and all of that.
[20:03]So when I started writing it,
[20:05]we sold it in 2017 as a proposal.
[20:08]And you know, I would go a month or two without working on it.
[20:12]And then and in part,
[20:13]I think it was good that I was working so much
[20:16]and consumed with parenting because I really,
[20:20]I don't think emotionally I could have done this
[20:23]like in a stretch.
[20:25]I just don't think I could.
[20:26]Like the idea of a writing retreat to me,
[20:28]I just don't think it would, it would work for me.
[20:30]I do well when I write, I'll have a weekend.
[20:33]I'm like, this is my weekend where I'm going to go in
[20:35]and I'm going to write a couple of scenes.
[20:38]And then I might not look at it again for a month.
[20:41]And sometimes that was really emotionally necessary
[20:43]to me because there was a lot of crying
[20:46]while I was working on this.
[20:48]And there were also moments where I would finish a scene
[20:51]and just feel completely hollowed out.
[20:55]And just, oh my gosh, I need to go meditate.
[20:58]Meditation was key.
[21:00]A lot of sleep was key.
[21:01]But in terms of it coming out, you know,
[21:04]it's very scary.
[21:06]I mean, if the Andromeda child was personal,
[21:08]this is even more so.
[21:10]And you know, in the carcass,
[21:13]I had a wonderful carcass review,
[21:15]anonymous carcass reviewer, whoever you are,
[21:18]you really read with such empathy and appreciation.
[21:20]And I absolutely love the review.
[21:21]But they did describe my mother as cruel.
[21:24]And I took that as a sign that they were reading the book
[21:29]with an abundance of empathy for little Priscilla.
[21:32]And they were just thinking, you know,
[21:33]it's cruel to have to tell a child terrible things
[21:36]about their father when they're 10, whatever.
[21:38]I don't think my mother was cruel.
[21:40]I don't think she did it to hurt me.
[21:42]I don't think she did it with some kind of twisted agenda.
[21:45]I think we did not know how to talk about divorce to children.
[21:50]This is 1980, 1981.
[21:52]She was not in therapy.
[21:53]We never got therapy till much later.
[21:56]And I think she genuinely thought,
[21:58]I'm helping her process this
[22:00]and come to terms with this very complicated man.
[22:03]Because remember, I'd found that letter
[22:05]that my father wrote to his first wife
[22:08]where there was all the sexual details in it.
[22:09]And that's what started her trying to explain
[22:13]and account for it to me.
[22:14]And I think she wanted me to understand
[22:17]why she had to end the marriage.
[22:18]And I absolutely agree that she had to end the marriage.
[22:22]I mean, I am so glad my parents split up.
[22:25]It would have been terrible if they stayed together.
[22:27]They both ended up much happier and more fulfilled apart.
[22:31]That doesn't mean that the split itself
[22:34]didn't take an enormous toll on me.
[22:36]Well, I don't think she came across as cruel.
[22:39]I mean, I think what came across the most for me
[22:42]was like you're longing for her to understand,
[22:47]to forgive your dad to make peace
[22:51]with who he was and to sort of go back
[22:54]to when she loved him.
[22:56]And I think you just-
[22:57]Exactly. Exactly.
[22:59]Zibi, you nailed it.
[23:00]And I remember, I interviewed the amazing
[23:04]incredible writer, Lori Seagull, read her books, everyone.
[23:06]She's in her 90s and still going
[23:08]and one of my parents closest friends.
[23:10]And I interviewed her a few times
[23:12]when I was working on the book.
[23:13]And she has such fond vivid memories
[23:17]of my parents in the early days of their relationship.
[23:20]And their marriage and she said,
[23:22]there was so much that was good in their connection.
[23:25]And they had the same values.
[23:29]They had the same passion for literature and the arts
[23:33]and the same adoration of their children, right?
[23:36]I mean, and I think that they created
[23:39]two interesting children.
[23:41]And my sister-in-law, I always talk to my sisters
[23:43]and my best friends.
[23:44]We always talk about how we are so weird
[23:46]because we're a combination of our two very different parents.
[23:49]Like we have, I do have my mother's
[23:52]steely resolve and her ability to be a great advocate
[23:57]which she used as an agent and I have used as a parent
[24:01]of two children with special needs, right?
[24:03]I mean, we all get bits and pieces from our parents.
[24:06]And I think the ultimate message of my book, right,
[24:09]is being able to look at your parents as human beings
[24:13]and understand that their own demons
[24:18]and their own complicated histories
[24:20]and why they did what they did and not to blame
[24:23]and not to reduce them to something simple
[24:27]because none of us were simple.
[24:28]We're all complicated and I feel like in the end of the book,
[24:31]you know, there's that moment where my mother finally does.
[24:34]She finally gives me that affirmation about my dad.
[24:37]And I think so many people who have bad splits
[24:40]can identify with my mom, right?
[24:41]Where you don't want to acknowledge
[24:43]there's anything good about the person.
[24:45]And in a way, sometimes it's to separate yourself, right?
[24:49]Because you need to get out.
[24:50]And so you have to cut, you have to shut down
[24:53]the part of you that loves that person or the part of you.
[24:56]My dad was draining my mom as he drained me.
[25:00]Yeah.
[25:01]You know, well, then there was all that stuff that came out.
[25:04]I mean, from her, from what you found out,
[25:06]I mean, it must have been hard.
[25:09]Right, it's hard to, I don't know.
[25:11]There's no good way.
[25:12]There's no good way.
[25:13]I say this to my mom all the time.
[25:14]I was talking to her this weekend and I was like,
[25:16]she said, oh, if I've made mistakes,
[25:18]like, you know, I'm so sorry.
[25:20]And I said, mom, you don't have to ever apologize.
[25:22]Like, there are all parents make mistakes.
[25:26]You know, I want the same forgiveness for myself.
[25:29]We all make mistakes and there's no right way.
[25:31]Yeah.
[25:32]If she had done it when we were younger,
[25:33]that would have had its own problems.
[25:34]If she had waited, that would have had its own problems.
[25:37]If she had not told me, and I'd found out later, right,
[25:40]I think about like Wally and Alan Sean
[25:42]and how they found out that their father
[25:44]had another family and other kids and they hadn't known
[25:47]and they found out in their 30s,
[25:49]that's its own kind of drama, right?
[25:53]So you also, though, could have written
[25:55]like the literary agent's daughter.
[25:57]Do you know what I mean?
[25:58]Yes, you were on good reads, wants me to do that.
[26:01]They're like, I hope that she will do a memoir
[26:04]about her mother, the Nestment magazine.
[26:06]And I said, and I don't think that's happening.
[26:09]Yeah, I don't know.
[26:11]Was this hard for her?
[26:13]Like, was it hard for Claire and your mom?
[26:15]Like, was it okay?
[26:17]Had it everybody in your ecosystem feel
[26:19]about having all of this out there?
[26:21]Were they okay with that?
[26:22]Did you check with them?
[26:23]Like, what was it like?
[26:24]I did check with them.
[26:25]You know, my mom is not gonna read a guy.
[26:26]My ex-husband didn't read my first book.
[26:29]Very similar reasons.
[26:30]They don't wanna go into the pain.
[26:32]They don't wanna go into my mother hates reading
[26:34]anything about herself.
[26:36]So there are a lot of books that my mother is in, right?
[26:39]I mean, she is in the ureological thinking.
[26:41]I think she didn't read that one.
[26:43]But she's in, there's a biography of Donna Parkley
[26:46]that she's featured extensively.
[26:47]And she sent me to borders to read the sections
[26:50]that she's in.
[26:52]She can't stay on to read anything about herself.
[26:54]I think it's good.
[26:55]My ex-husband actually did read this one
[26:57]and helped me with it.
[26:59]No, it was my mother very well.
[27:01]We're very, very good friends.
[27:02]But didn't read the first one.
[27:04]So I think I did interview both my mom and my sister
[27:09]and my brother, who's not my mother's son,
[27:11]but my half-father Nikki, he was out of information.
[27:15]Oh my gosh, he sent me long pages long letters
[27:20]with his memories and things.
[27:21]And it was very validating because he said,
[27:24]I never thought they were get divorced either.
[27:26]And he was older.
[27:27]So I thought, well, maybe it was just me.
[27:28]And I was like, didn't think it.
[27:30]And he was like, no, no, no, it was completely shocking.
[27:32]And he said, yeah, they both yelled when they fought.
[27:35]It wasn't just, it wasn't just our dad.
[27:37]She yelled back, you know, so I checked a lot
[27:41]of things with them.
[27:43]I wanted to get their take and their perspectives.
[27:46]So when you think about the reader of the book,
[27:48]what do you want the reader to get out of this?
[27:50]Oh, I want, oh, I feel so warmly towards my readers
[27:55]and my potential readers, because I hope that I do think
[27:59]just as I did with the anti-emantic child,
[28:01]I do think this is universal story.
[28:03]And I think that Benji, my son who has autism,
[28:08]it's called the Interment of Child, because he was the opposite
[28:12]in many ways of what I was expecting or predicting
[28:14]or projecting as a parent.
[28:16]And then I, so you go through this romanticization
[28:18]of what being a parent is going to be.
[28:20]And then there's all this disorientation, disappointment,
[28:23]loss, whatever, of what you think.
[28:25]And then you come to a deeper sense of romanticism, right?
[28:28]Where you see your child as he or she actually is,
[28:30]rather than who you want he or she to be.
[28:33]And I think that this book is,
[28:35]even though my father is obviously a very idiosyncratic,
[28:39]he's really an original.
[28:41]I mean, his life and end of itself,
[28:42]there's probably gonna be biography at some point.
[28:44]It's, wow, they can version the Catholicism,
[28:46]all of this stuff.
[28:47]Even as he's very eccentric and idiosyncratic,
[28:50]I think all of us at some point in our lives,
[28:53]we worship an adult.
[28:55]And then we come to see that adult
[28:58]as flawed, having limitations, right?
[29:01]Much more complicated than we thought.
[29:03]we have to come to terms with seeing them
[29:05]with greater complexity and greater depth or whatever.
[29:08]And then how do we get to that place
[29:11]where we recover the sense of wonder and magic and love?
[29:16]And also mystery, because, you know,
[29:19]my father's memoir was called Faith Sex Mystery.
[29:22]Great title.
[29:23]No ams, just faith, comma, sex, comma, mystery.
[29:26]And I think, you know, even as I'm writing this book
[29:30]about my dad and attempting to capture him
[29:33]and attempting to revive him in some way,
[29:35]I wanted, I want the reader to end the book
[29:39]with a sense of reverence for mystery,
[29:41]because my father would want it that way, right?
[29:43]We are all, even as we should strive to know each other
[29:47]and accept each other and love each other
[29:49]with empathy and attunement, right?
[29:52]To individuality, respecting the essential mystery
[29:56]of every person is another value
[29:58]that I think my father taught me.
[30:00]Well, Priscilla, oh my gosh. Thank you. Thanks for this book. This conversation. I was so
[30:08]just completely immersed. My heart was like open, like, for you the whole time. I just feel like
[30:18]this was such a personal intimate account. And anyway, it was really great. So thank you.
[30:26]Zibi, I'm so, so touched by your reaction. Thank you so much. Thank you. Always wonderful to talk to you.
[30:33]You too. Bye. Bye.
[30:38]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me
[30:43]on Instagram at zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for my newsletter
[30:48]at zibiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every
[30:53]other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan Beck, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[30:57]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.