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1:18

my kids were really little, we would

1:21

go for these walks in our neighborhood and there was

1:24

a tree down the street

1:26

that had this kind of gnarly knot

1:28

on it that looked like an old

1:30

man's ear. And

1:33

at some point I said, why

1:35

don't we whisper our secrets to the tree? This

1:39

is Kale Maclear. She's a writer

1:41

in Toronto. She says

1:43

her two sons love the idea. And

1:46

they kind of sidled up to it and they, you

1:48

know, they spoke for a long time. And I remember

1:50

being kind of impressed by how many secrets they had

1:52

to divulge. And

1:55

it was kind of both interesting to

1:57

me, but also kind of curious.

2:00

That they were really conduct with me and

2:02

I thought what is it's are now telling

2:04

the streets But anyway we continue for this

2:06

ritual for many years and then when I

2:08

discovered the secret on the my cats a

2:10

cap for me for so long I start

2:12

to have a different relationship to the tray

2:14

and I didn't want to stop there anymore.

2:16

and I didn't want my son's to divulge

2:18

fisticuffs to the tree and I didn't want

2:20

to be. Kilos.

2:24

To Toronto from London when she was four

2:26

years old. Her parents told

2:28

her she sent the whole plane ride, walking

2:30

up and down the aisles talking to the

2:32

other passengers. Q parents

2:35

had been together for more than a decade.

2:38

Or. So relationship like when you were

2:40

growing up. I. Knew them

2:42

to have a very on. Com.

2:45

Much less relationship on. They can

2:47

be quite tender with each other

2:49

in some ways but they weren't

2:51

openly demonstrate as that was very

2:53

combat is there were often really

2:56

and hans arguments and fights with

2:58

that. My mother was very dramatic

3:00

app pens and would tennis pro

3:02

boat plates and parts around and

3:04

on at remember feeling that there

3:06

will be periods of com and

3:08

then out of nowhere their be

3:10

it's a kind of outburst. Kills.

3:14

Mother Marie next to his father

3:16

Michael in Japan in the early

3:18

sixties. My father was

3:20

stationed in Tokyo as the Far

3:22

East correspondent for the Cbc and

3:24

my mother was she was in

3:27

her twenties and she was quite

3:29

and his lovely and said saying

3:31

and seats would hang out at

3:33

these parties with these and foreigners

3:35

often and seats Met my father

3:37

at a party and and the

3:40

gifts for journalists on she didn't

3:42

speak. Any English and he spoke with

3:44

virtually no Japanese. that some have a

3:46

surplus let and they were also

3:48

both interested in gambling says they

3:50

started playing an athlete eyewitness than

3:52

a game based on have poker

3:54

on that it's flower vase cards

3:56

and they with that and gamble

3:58

together and I think they just

4:01

started to build the friendship and then

4:03

a relationship. They both really

4:05

loved living the kind of high life. They

4:07

went to casinos all the time. They played

4:09

poker several times a week with friends. They

4:11

loved traveling. My mother often accompanied my father

4:14

on his trips. Kiyo's parents

4:16

told her that McStray's couples were unusual

4:18

at the time in Japan. When

4:20

they went out, people would stare at them. Once

4:23

someone yelled at Michael to go home. Michael

4:27

and Mariko got married and moved to London.

4:30

Mariko worked as a tour guide even

4:32

though she wasn't very familiar with the city. She

4:35

once led a tour group in circles around

4:37

the Tower of London in the fog. Kiyo

4:40

was born in London in 1970. In

4:44

1974, Michael got a new job

4:46

with the CBC in Toronto. My

4:49

mother was very much a city girl. She

4:51

loved London and I think it was really a

4:54

culture shock when she arrived in Canada. I

4:56

mean, they arrived in the middle of winter in

4:58

Toronto and back then there was a real winter.

5:01

They lived kind of in a suburban-ish

5:04

area in Toronto and

5:06

everything was very far apart. It

5:09

was kind of a neighborhood scene but she felt very

5:11

isolated. I think she was quite

5:13

unhappy and she was really missed the kind

5:15

of cosmopolitan life of London and Tokyo. Growing

5:18

up, Kiyo's father Michael was often away

5:20

traveling for work. When

5:23

he was home, she remembers people often

5:25

recognized him from TV. She

5:28

and her father were close. When

5:30

she was away at camp, he would write her letters

5:32

in the voice of their pet cat. But

5:35

Kiyo says there were still a lot

5:38

of things she didn't know about

5:40

her father. There were huge kind of areas

5:42

of his life I knew nothing about. For

5:44

example, he never really wanted to talk about his

5:46

mother. Whenever I'd mentioned her

5:48

name, he would really kind of

5:50

clam up and just kind of get

5:53

really sad, I guess. He

5:56

had been given over to foster care at a very

5:58

young age so there was kind of a big gap. reasons

6:00

for that, but I really wanted to know

6:02

more about that side of his

6:04

family. Keo's

6:08

mother often threatened to leave Michael, and

6:10

once Mariko actually did leave, she went

6:13

to Niagara Falls, but she came

6:15

back the next day. While

6:18

Keo was away at college, she learned

6:20

that her father had been having an affair. And

6:23

I just felt kind of riddled with guilt, and I didn't

6:25

know. It just felt like a really kind of hot, burning

6:27

secret, and it made it really

6:29

hard for me to relate to my father. I just

6:31

felt so guilty whenever I was with him that

6:34

I was kind of betraying my mother in some way. And

6:36

then, a few months later, Mariko found

6:39

out about the affair, and that Michael

6:41

had been seeing the same woman for years. And

6:44

it was so very explosive again.

6:47

I didn't know it at the time, but I

6:49

think a lot of the arguments were based on

6:52

things that were happening behind the scenes in my

6:54

father's kind of love life. And

6:56

eventually, my father realized

6:58

that it wasn't tenable anymore, and he just

7:00

left. Michael announced that he

7:03

was separating from Mariko. Keo

7:05

remembers her mother called her father's coworkers to tell

7:07

them about the affair. She

7:09

threatened her father's girlfriend. And

7:12

it was awful, to be honest. My mother

7:14

kind of fell into this deep depression, and

7:16

I was so used to her moods, but

7:19

I'd never seen her sad before, and it was

7:21

really alarming to me. Eventually

7:24

she pulls herself out of it and had kind of a renaissance, like

7:26

in her 50s, early 50s. She

7:29

kind of started to socialize a lot and take

7:31

up, you know, art again and go to classes

7:33

and made all sorts of friends. But in the

7:36

period right after he left, it was a really

7:38

kind of desolate time for her, and it was

7:40

really hard for me to witness her be

7:43

so despairing, because I'd

7:45

always known her to be very strong and fiery, and

7:47

this was another side to her. Her

7:50

parents never legally divorced, but

7:52

they never lived together again. When

7:55

Keo was in her 40s, Michael had two strokes, and Keo was

7:58

in the middle of a very bad situation. and

8:00

her husband became his main caretakers.

8:04

A few years later, they noticed that

8:06

Michael was having trouble remembering things. We

8:09

had been noticing things that were

8:11

kind of slipping. He

8:14

was usually so eloquent and

8:16

verbally dexterous, and suddenly he was kind

8:19

of missing words that were really commonplace.

8:22

I remember they reached a point where we just

8:24

knew that something was going on. Michael

8:27

went to the doctor for a memory test

8:29

and was diagnosed with dementia. He

8:31

died in 2018. What

8:34

I realized after he died was that there were

8:36

a lot of holes in

8:38

the narrative of his life. So

8:41

I decided that I wanted to

8:43

do a DNA test because I wanted to kind

8:45

of reconnect with anyone who might have been part

8:47

of that family. And

8:49

so I thought, you know what, I'll do this

8:52

test and maybe I'll find a cousin or somebody

8:54

who might have known my father's mother and could

8:57

tell me one story. Because all I had was

8:59

one photograph of her, which was like the size

9:01

of like a chocolate square. So

9:04

a few months after my father died, I

9:06

did this DNA test. The

9:08

DNA test came with a piece of paper with

9:10

terms and conditions. It read,

9:13

you may discover unanticipated facts about

9:15

yourself or your family when using

9:17

our services that you

9:20

may not have the ability to change. She

9:23

mailed the test in and waited. And

9:26

then she got an email. Her

9:29

DNA results were ready. It

9:32

became quickly clear

9:34

that there was

9:36

something unexpected had arrived

9:39

in my inbox. I'm

9:42

Phoebe Judge and this is Love.

9:49

We'll be right back. Support

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need Indeed. Support for this episode comes from Viator. Sure,

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a good souvenir is

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Do more with Viator. The

12:20

results said that I was half

12:23

Japanese on my mother's side and that I was

12:26

half Jewish on my father's side. It just

12:28

didn't square with anything I'd been told about

12:31

my family history. He would

12:33

always been told that her father's family was Scottish

12:35

and Irish. He had never

12:37

talked about being Jewish, but

12:39

her test results showed that her

12:42

father's family was from Lithuania, Latvia,

12:44

and Belarus. And I remember

12:46

I texted my husband. My

12:49

husband's actually Jewish and I sent him

12:51

the kind of the pie chart with

12:53

the ethnicity breakdown which showed the kind

12:55

of half Jewish half Japanese. And

12:57

he texted back immediately and he was like,

13:00

you don't even like her, right? And

13:02

he said, muzzle-toed, now you know

13:05

what that means. He

13:07

also says that she was so confused by

13:09

the results that you took a second DNA

13:11

test. She got those results

13:13

back in April and they were exactly

13:15

the same. I realized at

13:18

a certain point that, you

13:20

know, the person that I would have asked had left

13:22

the room, namely my father. I mean, he had just

13:24

died three months prayer. And that

13:27

the only person I had left to ask was

13:29

my mother. And, you know,

13:31

even at the best of times my

13:33

mother is not, you know, an

13:36

obliging subject. Growing up,

13:39

Keo had always found it hard to talk to her mother.

13:42

When Keo brought her husband to meet her mother for the

13:44

first time, Keo told him, we

13:47

don't really talk about things. In our

13:49

family, everything is kind of tamped down. I

13:52

think I was always a little afraid of my mother

13:54

because she could turn on a

13:57

dime and like her emotions were

13:59

kind of... hard to read at

14:01

times and then suddenly there'd be something very

14:03

explosive that would happen. In

14:05

hindsight, I kind of understand it a little bit

14:08

more. I think that she was very frustrated. She

14:10

felt very dislocated and also like being in a

14:12

country where she didn't speak the language fluently like

14:14

that was a real barrier to her.

14:17

Sometimes, Mariko would text Kyo

14:19

in Japanese and Kyo wouldn't

14:21

understand. Her mother would

14:23

reply, why don't you speak your

14:25

mother language? In some ways, I

14:28

was a kind of disappointment to my mother because I

14:30

wasn't the daughter that

14:32

she expected. Because I

14:34

grew up in a biracial and

14:37

bilingual home, I lost a lot of

14:39

my Japanese at a very young age.

14:42

So I think there was a kind of disappointment on

14:44

her part that I felt very strangely. Kyo

14:48

says that her mother never understood why she

14:50

loved reading books and writing her own stories.

14:53

But her mother was an artist. They

14:55

would go to museums and galleries to see what

14:57

she was doing together often. Mariko's favorite artists were

14:59

Monet and Turner. My mother

15:02

kind of opened my eyes to

15:04

seeing what there was in terms

15:06

of art history and just her

15:08

sense of design and composition was

15:11

so beautiful and I feel like

15:13

my interest in art has kind of carried

15:16

over since my childhood because of her. Mariko

15:19

owned her own gallery in Toronto that sold

15:21

Japanese art. Sometimes Kyo

15:24

would go with Mariko on trips to Japan

15:26

to buy new pieces for the gallery.

15:29

Kyo remembers her mother seemed different when she

15:31

was in Japan. She smoked

15:33

a lot and seemed more confident. On

15:37

those trips, Mariko's family in Japan

15:39

teased her for becoming too Western.

15:43

Mariko was the youngest of seven children. When

15:47

she was in art school, she liked fashion and

15:49

going out to parties. One

15:51

of Mariko's brothers told her not

15:53

to be the nail that sticks out. In

15:56

many ways, she was incredibly progressive

15:58

and really rebellious. She

16:00

had this kind of dream of leaving Japan. A

16:03

lot of her friends were kind of models

16:05

or actresses, and she spent a lot of

16:07

time at embassy parties. Years

16:09

later, a newspaper in Toronto

16:11

profiled Kyo's parents. Her

16:14

father described Mariko as very

16:16

strong-minded, in some ways more

16:18

independent than me. Kyo's

16:21

mother also had a reputation for always saying

16:23

what was on her mind. At

16:25

Michael's funeral, Kyo heard her mother tell

16:27

someone, I lost everything this

16:29

week. I lost my husband, and

16:32

I lost my Aeromiles card. Kyo

16:35

says that her mother was not an

16:37

organized person. She knew

16:39

there were a lot of details her mother didn't keep

16:42

track of. When Kyo tried

16:44

to talk to her mother as an adult, Mariko

16:46

often avoided answering direct questions.

16:50

And so I knew that I had to find her at

16:52

the right moment, because I knew this

16:54

was, you know, even without knowing

16:56

the story, I knew this was potentially charged

16:59

information. And so

17:01

I got her on the phone one day,

17:04

and I kind of just said, you know,

17:06

I'll discover this strange thing. And, you know,

17:08

I remember her hesitating. She kind of put

17:11

the phone down to like make herself a cup

17:13

of tea. She came back, and she was just

17:15

really evasive. Kyo tried again.

17:18

She asked what the DNA results could mean. Eventually,

17:22

Kyo's mother told her, we

17:24

tried for so long, for seven

17:26

years. My mother kind of

17:28

alluded to the fact that my father had had mumps

17:31

as a child and was maybe sterile. She

17:34

said that she'd gone to a clinic on Harley

17:36

Street in London, England, and that the doctor said

17:38

it would be okay. She didn't really kind of

17:40

answer me in any direct way. It

17:43

was just kind of evasions. I

17:45

kind of guessed that there might have been

17:47

a donor insemination, but it

17:49

was all these like little fragments of information, and she

17:51

wasn't actually telling me a full story. She

17:54

started wondering if Michael was not her

17:56

biological father. She wanted to

17:58

ask her mother more, but then... And

18:00

then, Mariko was diagnosed with breast cancer.

18:03

So that kind of put everything on hold.

18:07

It became clear that I needed

18:09

to find somebody else to help

18:11

me. Keo heard about

18:13

a private Facebook group for people who had

18:16

also found out they weren't biologically related to

18:18

one of their parents after a DNA test.

18:21

The group had about 8,000 members. Mariko

18:25

wrote a post saying that she was looking

18:27

for help with finding her biological father. A

18:30

woman in San Francisco responded. She

18:33

told Keo she had experience with this kind

18:35

of work. She called

18:37

herself a search angel. This

18:39

is a term kind of used in genealogy

18:42

for people who volunteer to help people

18:44

who are kind of looking for their

18:47

story after they've had these DNA surprises.

18:49

So there's like a whole kind of like

18:52

posse of people who volunteer their time to

18:54

do this. She was in touch

18:56

with me almost every day for a period of weeks. Keo's

18:59

search angel suggested that Keo write to

19:02

the National Health Service in England to

19:04

request her mother's medical records. She

19:07

wanted to find out more about the

19:09

fertility doctor Mariko had seen. But

19:11

the NHS wrote back they couldn't

19:13

find any records about a sperm donor or

19:16

donor insemination for Mariko. Eventually,

19:20

Keo's search angel turned to a

19:22

tool called DNA Painter

19:25

that genealogists used to map shared chromosomes.

19:28

She turned up five possible candidates

19:31

for Keo's biological father. And

19:34

you know at that point I had this

19:36

really strange feeling that I

19:38

wasn't sure I wanted to find out who

19:40

my father was. My biological father was. There's

19:44

something so conclusive about it. I felt like literally like

19:46

I was on this train and that I was going

19:48

to arrive at a station and I

19:50

didn't know if it was a station I wanted to

19:53

arrive at. I didn't

19:55

really want to migrate out of the family that

19:57

I had been raised in. I didn't want to

19:59

have another father. I was, you know, I'm not

20:01

at an age where I kind of need another

20:03

father, but I was really curious. Kiyo's

20:06

search angel sent her a family tree

20:08

with the five possibilities. They

20:10

each had a number next to their name, a score

20:12

of how likely it was that Kiyo was related

20:15

to them. Kiyo

20:17

started to contact relatives of those five

20:19

men through the DNA test website. She

20:23

wrote, I am writing to

20:25

you now with the hope that you might

20:27

possess information relating to my biological father. I

20:30

don't wish to intrude or upset anyone's life.

20:33

I just hope to view photographs and maybe learn

20:35

more about my family's medical history. One

20:38

relative didn't respond. Another

20:41

said he didn't want to talk. A

20:43

third replied with a phone number and said to

20:45

call her right away. She

20:47

connected Kiyo with one of her cousins. He

20:50

took a DNA test and a few

20:52

weeks later he called Kiyo. He

20:55

told her, the man you are looking

20:57

for. He was my father. It

20:59

turned out that he was a kind of fairly

21:02

famous race car driver, British race car

21:04

driver. She learned

21:06

that her biological father had been married five times.

21:09

He had a reputation for being a playboy. He

21:12

was the son of Jewish refugees. He

21:15

taught himself to play piano. He

21:17

retired to Portugal and he died in 2002.

21:21

He had four other children. Kiyo

21:24

remembers it in the photos of her biological father.

21:26

He had dark hair and a mustache. He

21:30

wore sunglasses in one photo and

21:32

a suit in another. So

21:34

I had these photographs and

21:36

at this point I thought, you know what, I'm going

21:38

to approach my mother again. And

21:41

so I remember the day really visibly. We were

21:43

sitting down at the kitchen table and I opened

21:45

up my laptop and I

21:47

started to scroll through some of the photos and I said,

21:49

you know, I've discovered, you know, that

21:51

I have these half siblings. And so I was kind

21:54

of just showing her the images and saying, you know,

21:56

casually like this is my half brother

21:58

and here's another half brother. And then I said,

22:00

and this is my father. And

22:03

it was a photo of my biological father's young

22:05

man. And he was

22:07

kind of strapping. He had this kind

22:09

of Clark Gable mustache. And

22:12

my mother could feel her

22:15

breath change. And

22:19

she put her hand on my knee. I

22:23

was about to scroll forward. And she said, wait

22:25

a second. And she said, he's

22:28

very handsome. And then

22:30

she said, he was very

22:32

handsome. And it was like

22:34

this little adjustment in the way she said

22:36

it that made me realize, whoa. She

22:40

knows this man. This is somebody she

22:42

knew. We'll

22:50

be right back. OK,

22:56

here's the situation. Our

23:00

daughter Mia is leaving for her first sleepover. Okay, here's the

23:02

situation. Our daughter Mia is leaving for her

23:04

first sleepover. We have friends

23:06

coming to stay, and we just got a puppy. So

23:09

I go on Instacart and solve everything in one

23:12

order from Kohl's. Fun PJs for Mia,

23:14

a new bedding for the guest room, and a

23:17

vacuum cleaner that actually picks up pet hair. All

23:19

delivered in as fast as 30 minutes. With

23:22

Kohl's on Instacart, there's no such we can't

23:24

fix. Visit instacart.com to get free delivery on

23:26

your first three orders, offer valid for a limited time, $10

23:29

minimum order, additional terms apply. apply.

23:31

This Friday. You must be

23:33

very careful, guys. Check out my

23:35

Facebook page. It's

23:38

a little evil. Oh, no,

23:40

no, don't. First

23:43

snowman. I don't even know. It's

23:45

going to be the water. It's

23:47

the most terrifying. It's

23:50

the next somebody to help. Movie of the year.

23:56

Public When

24:02

Keel McClear showed her mother the picture of

24:04

her biological father, Keel wasn't sure

24:06

how she would respond. But

24:09

then, Mariko started talking. What

24:11

she said was that it was

24:13

around, I guess, 1968, and she was in London. She

24:19

went to this passport office because she had to renew

24:21

her passport, and she was feeling very lonely because her

24:24

husband, you know, my

24:26

father, the reporter, was traveling

24:28

around the world, and she was alone in

24:31

London. And she couldn't travel

24:33

yet because she didn't have a British passport.

24:36

And when she married my father, she had to renounce

24:38

her Japanese citizenship. So she was in a kind of

24:41

citizenship limbo where she wasn't really allowed

24:43

to travel overseas, and she really wanted

24:45

to go and visit her mother. So

24:48

she went to this passport office, and she,

24:51

you know, approved the official, and they

24:54

gave her forms to fill in. And,

24:56

you know, I think for anyone who

24:58

even doesn't, who speaks English fluently, these

25:00

forms are a complete,

25:04

they're just overwhelming, right? And

25:06

so for somebody who doesn't speak English as a

25:08

first language, she was just kind of completely snimied.

25:11

And she heard a voice from behind her say, I

25:13

can help you with that if you'd like. And

25:16

she turned around, and she said there

25:18

was a man standing there, and he

25:20

offered to help. And he said,

25:23

actually, I know you. You've met

25:25

before. And he named a casino where they had

25:27

met, and he mentioned that he knew

25:29

my father, and they struck

25:31

up a conversation, and he, apparently,

25:34

he helped her with her passport. That's

25:36

how much I got out of her the first day. Kia

25:40

remembers suddenly feeling like she had no

25:42

idea who her mother was. She

25:45

also wondered if there was anything else that her

25:47

parents had told her. And

25:50

so I started to be suspicious of a lot of things

25:52

in life. And

25:55

I felt like I was ready for a jump scare at

25:57

any moment. Like I thought, you know, somebody's going to tell

25:59

me something else. was untrue or that I was

26:01

just kind of looking for lies everywhere. Like

26:04

I needed to ask every question, get every

26:06

angle on the situation in order

26:08

to kind of feel settled again because I

26:10

really felt completely unsettled. I

26:12

kind of was like really anxious to get more

26:15

information and was kind of going at her in

26:18

this really interrogative way, you know, asking

26:20

her a million questions and trying

26:23

to pin her down. And, you know,

26:25

I realized like I was very much like the reporter's

26:27

daughter at this point. After

26:29

a while, Kiel realized this tactic

26:31

wasn't working. During

26:34

this time, Kiel and her husband started taking

26:36

Mariko to her doctor's appointments for her

26:38

cancer treatment. She decided

26:41

to try not asking any questions for

26:43

one weekend. And when

26:45

she did ask, she tried to act like

26:47

she wasn't interested. We were in a

26:49

waiting room a lot of the time. And so during

26:52

that period of time, every now and then I would

26:54

ask her another question. And every time I asked her

26:56

a question, the story would change a little bit. Her

27:00

mother told her the second time she met the man

27:02

from the passport office, they went out to

27:04

dinner. He owned a few

27:06

restaurants around London. He

27:09

was married at the time to a Japanese

27:11

woman and had three children from that marriage.

27:13

I guess he was quite well off. Eventually,

27:16

her mother told her that she had an affair

27:19

with him. They went on dates

27:21

to the movies. They drove around

27:23

the countryside. Mariko

27:25

said he eventually rented her her own apartment.

27:28

They often traveled together while Kiel's

27:30

father, Michael, was away on reporting

27:33

trips. Mariko

27:35

told Kiel that she found out she was pregnant

27:37

in 1969, two years into the affair. When

27:42

Kiel asked her what her biological father said

27:44

when he found out she was pregnant, her

27:47

mother said he said he would marry her. But

27:50

then she said she didn't remember. Michael

27:54

was away at the time, reporting on the Vietnam

27:56

War. said

28:00

that a baby was on the way. And

28:02

at that point, I don't know if

28:04

he knew that I wasn't his own child, but that's

28:08

the story I got with that conversation. Later,

28:11

Kiel learned from one of her father's

28:13

girlfriends that he had known.

28:16

Every few years, Michael thought about telling her,

28:19

but always decided it wasn't the right

28:21

time. Kiel

28:24

once asked her mother why she chose to

28:26

stay with Michael. Mariko said,

28:30

Michael needed you. He loved you. Did

28:34

knowing that your mother had an affair change

28:37

the way you saw her? Yes,

28:39

completely. In

28:41

lots of ways, like on the one hand, there

28:44

had been a narrative in my family that

28:46

my mother was wronged and that my father

28:48

was a philanderer and that she was long

28:50

suffering. And

28:53

so immediately, that narrative kind

28:56

of was overturned. But it was actually deeper than

28:58

that. It was the sense that my mother had

29:00

a whole story and a whole life that

29:02

I knew nothing about. And

29:05

that, to me, was really thrilling to discover,

29:07

I have to say, because I

29:11

really underestimated my mother. Not

29:14

in just this way, but the sense

29:17

that she had been this kind of background

29:19

player in my life. I

29:21

think in the sense that women and mothers often

29:24

are, and especially of a certain generation, they

29:28

stayed at home, they were kind of ambient,

29:30

they were our backdrop, they raised

29:32

us. They weren't the big

29:34

protagonists often in the sense that

29:37

they weren't out working, especially compared with my

29:39

father, who was getting all

29:41

these accolades and drawing this attention

29:44

as a globe-plotting world reporter. My

29:47

mother was the stay-at-home

29:49

housewife for many years. And

29:51

so just discovering that she

29:53

had this whole other

29:55

life that existed prior

29:57

to my birth, that she

29:59

had gone on all these adventures that she had this

30:01

like really passionate love at a certain point. It

30:04

really changed my conception of her. It

30:08

also changed my sense of our relationship

30:10

because we've had for

30:13

many years a fairly combative relationship.

30:15

It was a really painful relationship

30:17

at times where I

30:19

felt like there was some resentment on

30:21

her part, that there's some

30:24

ambivalence maybe even like about being

30:26

a mother. When

30:28

I found out about this story and my mother's

30:31

affair, it really changed

30:33

a lot because it made me think about

30:35

how her ambivalence probably

30:38

had something to do with the fact that I

30:40

was born of

30:42

this affair she had and that there

30:44

was a lot of shame that she must have helped

30:46

about it. I think maybe

30:49

even subconsciously,

30:51

my presence

30:53

at different points probably represented something

30:56

quite complicated for her. For

30:58

a while when I was like interrogative, it

31:00

was because I thought she owed it to

31:02

me. I thought she owed me my story.

31:05

And at a certain point I realized that it

31:07

was also her secret and that

31:10

she owed it to herself to keep

31:12

something secret and that some part

31:14

of the story was hers and not something that

31:16

I should have. When

31:21

Kia and her husband talked with her mother

31:23

about her affair and her past, Marika

31:26

would sometimes contradict herself. She

31:28

said that she'd had no other affairs and

31:31

that she had many boyfriends. But

31:34

a few months after her mother was diagnosed with

31:36

breast cancer, Kia went with her

31:38

to an appointment where the doctor asked if

31:40

her mother had been having any memory issues.

31:44

And so when I was doing my mother's cancer treatment, it became

31:47

clear that she wasn't following

31:51

directions clearly. That

31:54

when she was in the radiation treatment, the person, the

31:56

technician would have to repeat things

31:58

many times. She was often confused. kind of failures

32:01

in her memory, little slippages.

32:04

Mariko was diagnosed with dementia.

32:07

And it kind of put her

32:09

feeling, or kind of slippery

32:11

memories into a new light. Kiyo's

32:15

mother now lives in a retirement home. When

32:17

Mariko first moved in, the staff

32:19

told Kiyo that she was disruptive. They

32:22

asked Kiyo to remind her mother to follow

32:24

the residents' rules. But

32:27

Mariko also became friends with a few of the

32:29

other residents. She dyed her hair

32:31

pink, and in art classes, she

32:33

always finished her paintings by declaring

32:36

finito. She told Kiyo,

32:39

I just want my days to be simple and

32:41

peaceful. Kiyo

32:44

decided they didn't need to talk about

32:46

her birth father anymore, unless her

32:48

mother wanted to. When I

32:50

realized that she had dementia and I

32:53

realized that things were changing, well,

32:55

first of all, I had to let go of this idea that I would

32:57

ever find out the kind of facts in

33:01

this clear-cut way.

33:05

And I honestly, I don't know if it's because of the

33:08

dementia. Like, I don't know if that's what started

33:10

it, or if it's because maybe

33:13

deep down, she knew that

33:15

I knew her secret and that

33:17

I didn't judge her for it. And that I, in

33:19

fact, I've actually had the

33:21

chance to say to her, I really, I

33:24

love you, and I'm so

33:26

glad I know this. And

33:28

I don't know

33:30

if I said that, that this makes me feel closer to you.

33:32

Like, you know, we're not, like our

33:35

relationship is so not touchy-feely. So I think if

33:37

I said that to her, she probably rolled her

33:39

eyes, but I did basically say

33:41

that in not so many words. And so

33:44

the relationship start to soften. And,

33:47

you know, what that's meant is that I know

33:49

that I have to make peace with the fact

33:52

that I'll never know all the details of

33:55

my conception or the story of

33:57

my father and what he meant.

33:59

My biological- father and what he meant to

34:01

her. I don't know honestly if

34:03

it was a great love of her life.

34:05

Like I have no idea and I will

34:07

never know. Do you

34:09

wish that you hadn't found out this about

34:11

your family? No, not at

34:14

all. The one regret I have is

34:16

that my parents hadn't told me them falls.

34:19

I really wish I could have had a

34:22

conversation with my father. You know,

34:24

every now and then I'll go visit his grave and the

34:26

conversation I really wish that I could have had with him

34:28

was that I wish I had

34:31

the chance to tell him that

34:33

it wouldn't have mattered at all. That he still

34:35

was my father and it

34:38

wouldn't have reduced a relationship in any

34:40

way. There will

34:42

always be these bold spots and

34:44

I've you know I have to say like I've just tried

34:46

to make peace with that. Kiel

34:57

McClure's memoir is called Unearthing,

35:00

a story of tangled love and family

35:02

secrets. This

35:07

is Love is created by Lauren Spore and

35:09

me. Nadia Wilson is our

35:11

senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising

35:13

producer. Our producers are

35:16

Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajiko, Lily Clark,

35:18

Lena Sillison and Megan Knain. Our

35:21

show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Semenetti.

35:24

Learn more about the show on

35:26

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35:59

I'm Phoebe J. and this is

36:01

love.