New Memoir Tells Writer's 'Wild' Story Of Keeping Her Mother's Secrets

Speaker 1: 00:00 When Adrian Broder was 14 her mother woke her to tell her that she and her step father's best friend had kissed. That was the beginning of an affair that lasted for a decade and was facilitated in part by Broder. She tells this story and our memoir, wild game, my mother, her lover and me for a dura. We'll be reading and signing her memoir on Saturday at Chino farm in Rancho Santa Fe as part of the good earth. Great chef series. Adrian [inaudible], welcome. Thank you so much. Prior to your mom telling you this secret that she and your step, father's best friend had kissed, she had been going through a hard time in her life and struggling with depression. Do you think that's why you took to helping her keep this secret as a way to help her through this tough time? Maybe? Speaker 2: 00:48 Well, I was 14 years old at the time. As you mentioned in like most 14 year olds, I think, um, you very much want to see your mother happy. And I won't pretend that I sort of understood at the time the depths of what had happened previously in her life. I don't think we're very aware as children that our mothers have a huge interior life and pass. But of course the story of all our lives begin far before we're born. So yes, I imagine that it was wanting to help her just wanting her love, which every child wants and this sort of odd and unique situation when she made me her confidante, which sort of immediately transformed me from, you know, her child to her best friend. Speaker 1: 01:33 And in the book you write, uh, that you not only kept your mom secret, but you also helped her carry out the affair of a very adult situation for a child to be in. But in what ways did you do that? Speaker 2: 01:46 You know, the title of the book, wild game refers to this cookbook that the two couples, these were couple friends that the two couples decided to create together. And what you need to know. His background is that my mother Malabar was just an astonishing cook who'd studied all over the world and who had worked in test kitchens and who had a food column for the Boston globe and wrote cookbooks and her lover Benz South or was an avid recreational Hunter and fisherman. And so they concocted this idea to allow for more time up, you know, to cover for the affair, but also to create more opportunities for the couple to get together. And one of my rules was at the end of these sort of boozy and delicious feast that they would have would be to suggest a walk and both their spouses were quite ill, not in great health, and so they would never want to come along. But in that way, as a 14 year old, I looked like this incredibly innocent chaperone. Um, so those were the types of ways that I was involved in. Just, you know, helping them to get a little time alone when my mother would visit Ben South or, you know, they would take secret trips together. I would help take care of my stepfather, that kind of thing. Speaker 1: 03:04 Mm. So as a child, you saw a lot, and again, you were put in a very adult situation and it took years for you to realize how signing on to this secret, um, that your mother had wounded you and others. What was the impact of it on your life? Speaker 2: 03:19 Well, I mean, I think, you know, we all know that secrets are very corrosive things. I think Carl Young called them psychic poison. And I think that's a very apt description. But I think the, the very worst thing about holding a secret, like the one I held is that it actually keeps you from true intimacy or making really authentic connections because you're presenting yourself to the world, but you're not presenting the whole of yourself. So when I wasn't telling close friends, this is what I'm doing, this is why I'm leaving this party. This is who I am. You know, they don't know me and they have to guess at why I'm behaving in a certain way. And, and so in that way, I think it was, um, it was very destructive for me. And honestly, it's just, it's a burden to hold someone else's secret. I think it can create this sense of closeness. And it certainly felt that way when I was 14. Like I was incredibly close to my mom and, and keeping her secret and helping her, but in fact, I was sort of sharing in this corruption. Speaker 1: 04:26 And how did that impact your adulthood? Speaker 2: 04:29 Um, the bigger question is how didn't it impact my adult, you know, I mean in many ways shapes and form over many, many years. I mean, if you want to just zoom all the way to the end, what I would say is despite the fact that I, I really feel like I've healed from this event in my life. I spent a lot of time in therapy. I, I spent a lot of time once the secret came out, confiding in friends and also my wonderful stepmother who used to own the Del Mar book works in San Diego, really saved me by passing literature my way. And I read all these wonderful novels and books in which you know you, you're immediately taken out of the bubble of your own experience and you're put into these new ones where you empathize and you see characters getting out of their own really complicated predicaments. Speaker 2: 05:20 And it was just, it was very fruitful and helpful for me to see my way out of this very dark period of my life. But that said, so, you know, still years and years later, there was this moment not that long ago when my father in law died, and I have this beautiful family of in-laws and the six siblings, my husband being one of them, descended on my mother-in-law there, 15 grandchildren and one of the adult grandchildren discovered this locked stainless steel box in the basement. And every single person in this room was excited and thrilled that there was a locked box that was going to reveal some wonderful secret or news of their father. And I alone thought, Oh my God, what is in that box? This box is going to destroy everyone because of course in my family, a locked box could only bear bad news. And so it just reminds me that our, you know, we can really do a lot of work and we can get far from our past, but our past are always with us. They're Prolog, they're with us forever. And it's the lens through which, you know, I still view the world even though I've, I've made a lot of changes. Speaker 1: 06:33 So did writing this book help you to forgive your mom for making you part of her secret and was it therapeutic in many ways? I mean, Speaker 2: 06:40 absolutely. I think the biggest, my biggest goal, both in my own healing and in writing this book was that there was a legacy of secret keeping and deception in my family that I was determined to put an end to as a parent. I happen to now and at this very moment in my life have a 14 year old daughter of my own. Um, and in terms of, of finding forgiveness and compassion for my mother, I mean I think one of the gifts of writing the book really unexpected gifts for me anyway, was that, um, when you actually really researched someone's life and put yourself in their shoes, of course you learn an awful lot about them. And I'm not forgiving any of my mother's very specific actions which were very destructive. But I actually really now see her very painful childhood. I mean her parents were divorced twice from each other. Her father had a secret family. There was a legacy of, you know, deception there. Um, she had an unhappy marriage to my father. Her, her first child died. So I mean she really, she had a lot of trauma in her life, not necessarily making it okay, but it gives you sort of a reservoir of understanding of why she might've done something like this or been so self centered when an opportunity for love came her way. Speaker 1: 08:07 I have been speaking with Adrian Broder, author of wild game, my mother, her lover, and me. Adrian, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me again. Broder will be reading and signing her memoir on Saturday at Chino farm in Rancho Santa Fe. For more information, head over to kpbs.org.