July 11, 2024 • 58 mins
Reed grew up with a camera in his hand. At first, the videos he made with his brothers were just for fun. But when their mom goes missing, the boys embark on a cinematic journey to solve the complex mystery of their mom’s disappearance.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
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. My guest today
is Read Harkness, a filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. Reads
is a story about turning his camera on a family,
(00:36):
his family, specifically his younger half brother Sam, in a
lifelong attempt to understand what happened, what went wrong, and
how to make it right if such a thing as possible.
Read's documentary, twenty five years in the making, Sam Now,
is a powerful illustration of the way that art can
(00:58):
drive us to a deeper truth. Tell me about the
landscape of your childhood, just whatever the word landscape means
to you.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I grew up on the West Coast. My parents divorced
when I was a toddler, and my dad stayed in
Seattle and my mom went back to her family home
in Palo Alto, California. Most of my life I've lived
along I five. I currently live in Portland, Oregon, but
(01:29):
I'd say the West Coast and the Pacific Northwest is
very much home to me. In Seattle. When I was
about five, my dad remarried to Joyce, who came with
my stepbrother Peter. He's about a year older than me.
Not that long after they were married. They had two sons,
(01:49):
Jared and then Sam, So in the summertimes when I
was in Seattle, I had three brothers. It was a
house full of boys.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
And when you were with your mom in Palo Alto,
were there any more kids in that household.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
My mom remarried when I was about five, and a
parallel thing happened, except she had two daughters. So I
would go between one house majority women and one house
majority boys. It was a really interesting experience for me.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
So when Jared and Sam were growing up, you would
see them mostly summers. Were there also sort of holidays
in between?
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yeah, I'd be in Seattle every summer and pretty much
every Christmas vacation. But I did school with my mom
until I was a teenager and junior year. I did
some part of high school in Seattle, and then right
away after high school I moved up to Seattle.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
When did you first pick up a camera?
Speaker 3 (02:47):
M that's a gread question. What's funny is I remember
not having a camera, but setting up scenes with cardboard
and clay and creating these little sets. After watching those
Will Vinton claymation specials, I would try to recreate those things,
but I didn't have a camera, and I would just
like move them around, all the clay around, and I'd
(03:08):
like imagine them being animated. My first actual camera was
a PXL two thousand made by Fisher Price. A friend
borrowed it a week later and broke it. I think
things like that kind of cement the passion. Sometimes. My
grandmother had a VHS camera that she would let all
(03:29):
of us cousins and my brothers use, and that was
really the first like time where I felt like I
can experiment. So grandma had a VHS camera that she
kept in this old like floral suitcase, and I just
remember the feeling of like un zipping that suitcase, getting
(03:49):
the camera out, putting it huge VHS tape in and
recording something with my cousins and brothers.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
And what was it like for you being the filmmaker,
being the director, if you will, Like, what did that
do for you as a kid, you know, and sort
of as a teenager when you began to really record
it seems like just at every opportunity, we know, record
as much of both life and sort of invention as
(04:19):
you possibly could.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah, I grew up being told no a lot, couldn't
keep focus, and therefore, you know, was put into special
ed classes and in a lot of ways maybe taught
down to But I would go home after school and
delve into projects, things like screen printing or airbrushing or
(04:43):
taking apart machinery. I loved the experience of diving in
and film all kinds of things. We shoot things like
squibs and pretend we were getting shot. We would you know,
create masks a lot of the time, like we like
we were like casting our faces and you know, we're
(05:03):
doing all these horror special effects. And then we just
do things that were just spontaneous, like boys running around
the neighborhood, raw energy stuff. And I think that that's
the stuff that I started to get really interested in.
And I think cameras and video became an interesting way
for me to explore and I got to a place
(05:25):
where I was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna try to
make my own films. I think before it was like
goofing around and playfulness. And I saw my brother Sam,
He's eight years younger than me, just sitting playing Nintendo
on the floor, and I thought, Okay, Sam's really doesn't
have anything planned for the day. I'm going to see
(05:46):
if he'll do this this movie with me. And I
had had this idea after watching Michael Aptead series. This
is in ninety seven, the Up series. It's like a
series is where they start, you know, seven year olds
and then fourteen year olds, and they go on every
seven years making a movie about the same group. And
(06:10):
I thought it would be interesting if I started filming
my brother as he's growing up, and I make this
movie called Sam one, and then pretty much every year
we make Sam two, Sam three, Sam four, Sam five.
But in that the first one, I'm not approaching it
like a documentary. I'm making a short film. It's a
(06:31):
concepted film about you know, Sam's he's sick at school,
he goes home, he's locked out of the house and
he's like staring in the window in horror as an
animated frog like eats his sack lunch that's on the table.
(06:52):
It's very much an art film.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
So Sam really became your subject. How old were you
and how old was he?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Sam was around ten and I would have been seventeen
or eighteen.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Why Sam, it wasn't Jared, it wasn't your step brother,
It wasn't a kid from school.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
I mean, for one thing, he was available. He was
accessible to me, Like he was just literally sitting there
on the floor playing video games. I was like, hey,
come with me, and he was like okay. And I
think that his personality is like he's down for an
Adventure's something about me being up there in the summertime,
(07:37):
you know, was always an exciting thing, I think for
my younger brothers. And we loved connecting, we loved wrestling,
we loved like being in the outdoors. And Sam was
someone who he was the kid that he would fall
down and he'd get right back up. And it was
something a quality that I didn't have. I would fall
down and stay down. I would feel it so hard
(07:59):
if something happened.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Do you mean that both physically and metaphorically.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah, I feel things really strongly. And Sam, he would
fall out of like a treehouse, hit the ground with
a thought, and then get right back up. Everybody's thinking,
we need to call an ambulance. He had this confidence
that it was really fun and also strange, and my cousin,
and I called him Candy Bones because he just like
(08:27):
he seemed like he could never get hurt. He was
just bounced right back up. So I was fascinated by
that because I'm not somebody that does that. I haven't
broken many bones or anything, but I definitely like have
been really hurt. And I think that if I fall
off that highev, I would There's no way that I
would have liked just got up like Sam did.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Contributing to this household of raw energy, as Reed calls it,
is Joyce and her effervescence. She's a big and joyful
presence in the boy's life. What they don't know at
the time is that her big presence will soon become
a big absence.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
In my youth. Joyce was a really interesting step parent
to me. I remember her being the one that would
be like she would set out like a whole tray
full of water balloons and it's like, all right, guys,
water balloon fight, and then she'd be like throwing water
balloons out of the kitchen window outside at us too.
She had this quality that was like the super fun
(09:30):
mom who loved to, you know, get the party started.
She also was very creative and very like arts focused
and like to you know, sort of encourage us to
listen to music, you know, watch interesting content. She introduced
me to Pee Wee's Playhouse. I remember, and I remember
that being like, Okay, this is like kind of a
weird kids show, but it's really awesome. It was just
(09:52):
really interested in creativity and you know, playfulness, and she
really seemed to like bomb with us around playful energy.
She really brought a lot of that out. She inspired
a lot of that, like you know, keep going and
like she was really excited when I started making the
Sam movies. You thought it was like the coolest project.
(10:13):
I think that in hindsight, what's strange is that my
youth and my in my childhood home with my dad
and stepmom was normal. It was something normal to me.
Now when I look back and I sort of like
pick apart things, I can see patterns of things to come.
Like I could see, especially in hearing stories from my dad,
(10:36):
how he was in a lot of pain in that relationship,
and that there would be things that you know, we're
pretty manic where something really surprising would just happened out
of the blue, and you know, Joyce would would have
a really strong reaction and leave the house and as
kids who are really engaged with other kids like I'm
(10:56):
just I'm connecting more with my brothers than I am
with with my parents. I wasn't really that aware of it.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Read and Sam continue to make their movies together. To
watch their movies is to see the sheer joy of
two brothers creating stories together creatively on fire. They both
love it, but their regular filmmaking is disrupted in the
fall of nineteen ninety nine when Reid moves to Portland
for an animation job. Sam still occasionally comes to visit
(11:30):
and stay with his older brother so that they can
continue making their films. But then a different kind of
disruption happens, a much bigger one. When Sam is thirteen,
his mother reads stepmother, Joyce, disappears. It's the year two
thousand and Reid doesn't have the details, but he knows
(11:54):
something has happened. He hears from family members bits and
pieces of where they think might have gone and if
or when they think she's coming back. When Sam comes
out to Portland to film and spend time with Reid,
they don't talk about the fact that Joyce has vanished,
and nobody has heard from her.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
It had become this taboo in our family where nobody
wanted to bring it up with Sam and Jared. They
had a discomfort with the unknown. And then my dad
was in a place where he really didn't want to
pursue contact with her, so he wasn't encouraging conversation around it.
And then the extended family, like my grandmother, my aunt Cindy,
(12:38):
there was like these like ripples of like different people
in the family are really harboring the emotion and anger
of this and not knowing what to do. Cindy told
me later that she kind of wanted to adopt Sam
and Jared during those years, my aunt and it was
really heartbreaking because our family is very tight knit, not
(13:00):
just a nuclear family, but like the whole Harkness family,
which is like a really big group of aunts and
uncles and cousins, and we all congregate at my grandmother's
house regularly. Were all It just seemed like the ideal
support system regarding family, the whole It takes a village,
(13:21):
you know. That was my family. They were like we
were always together, we were always doing things. There was
like open door policy at Grandma's. There was always cookies.
There was always food in the fridge. The support system
was there, it just was failing to operate around the
taboo of you know, Joyce is gone, what do we do?
Speaker 2 (13:41):
And do you think that that was because the larger
net of the family, they were taking their cues from
your father, and he really didn't want to talk about it,
so then nobody talked about it. Like the silence became
kind of contagious.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Yeah, I would say the silence became contagious. I think that.
But there's a thing with men and boys not talking
about difficult stuff generally, and I think in the Pacific
Northwest it's like even more amplified. And then I think
that you know, this is this is a family that's
made up mostly of educators, even very specifically childhood educators.
(14:17):
My dad is was a first grade teacher for thirty years,
and my grandmother worked like her whole career in early
childhood education, you know, learning about like the most pioneering methods,
and these are really cool aspects that like really do
help shape like who we are, these kind of free
(14:37):
range kids that are like able to lean into adventuresome
spirit and a lot of creative play. But I think
something that comes with being in a classroom and being
an educator and being that kind of observer to things
that might happen. And I think I'm thinking of my
dad here, Like I remember helping out in his classroom,
(14:58):
so like I remember the challenge that he would face
every day and how you know, just keeping order, keeping things,
keeping things moving, keeping a smile on his face. I'm
sure that this had had an impact. And I'm sure
that there was many things. Many factors in his view
(15:20):
were things that you just you didn't address, you didn't
talk about, but you knew. So I think that he
may have become conditioned to just keeping things going and
being stable, yet not addressing some of the elephants in
the room directly.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
And it seems like both Sam and Jared both had
very different responses to Joyce's disappearing. Jared, he wears it
all kind of outwardly. He stops going to school. He's
completely signaling you know, I am not okay. He shows it,
whereas Sam bottles it up and nothing seems like it's
(16:03):
really affecting him. And he has this great laugh and
he just is always laughing it off in a way
and performing and so they have these two really different
ways of coping during those years.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Yeah, and this is the high dive. You know, Sam
fell off the high dive in real life, as you know,
an eight year old and landed on the on the
cement and walked away. And he did the same thing
emotionally when Joyce left, he sprung back. I think that
also there's a factor here where, you know, seeing Jared
(16:39):
being so depressed, just crumpled in a ball on the floor,
not going to school at all. I think he was
like he cut class for like sixty days or something ridiculous.
He was like figuring out some way, Well, my dad
was at work to you know, make it seem like
he was at school. And I think Sam saw that
and wanted to take the high road. What I saw
(17:01):
was like he started associating with like, you know, the
honorall kids, even though he wasn't Jared was the academic.
Sam was definitely not the a student, and he started
getting into school sports too. He was into wrestling and
then he found the sport of ultimate frisbee, which ultimately
became like his his big life passion and getting in
(17:24):
with those groups, you know, those social groups where there's
a lot of like camaraderie and like encouragement. I think
that he was able to sort of ride this wave
of like we can power through. I can like be
physically strong, I can be mentally stronger than this.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Nearly three years past was no word from Joyce. Sometimes
she sends packages though boxes full of random stuff. There's
(18:08):
never a note or a letter. It all feels so
impersonal that the boys speculate that the packages might not
even be from her. The boxes have her name on them,
but no return address, a clear indication that she does
not want to be found. One year, during Christmas, one
(18:28):
such box arrives. This time it contains homemade fudge.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
The setting is It's Christmas, I'm visiting my family in Seattle.
And the year before Sam and Jared and I on
Christmas Day went up to the mountains and went sledding
and had like one of my favorite days ever. The
(18:55):
ski slopes were closed, and so we just like hyped
up the ski slopes and were just like sledding down
for what felt like miles. We had such a good
time that we wanted to recreate that the next year
and we had talked about this. Sam was so excited.
Jared was immovable. He was just like on the floor.
(19:19):
He's just like no, no, no, no, like just would
not come with us. And we imagine both of these
like really excited brothers just trying to like drag him,
pull him, encourage him, you know remember last year all that,
and he's not able to won't. So it's just me
and Sam. Sam offered me some fudge and I said
(19:40):
who made the fudge? And he's like Mom. And I
was like, who's mom? And he's like mom, And I
was like really, I was in such disbelief that that
could be possible. So that's the same day that we
go up sledding and it's just me and Sam and
we're on this mountain. We're hiking up this old logging
road and you know, it's snowing, and we've got these
(20:03):
two sleds and we as we're hiking where we're imagining it,
we're just gonna have the longest sled run ever. We're
gonna like hike up as long as we can and
then just sled all the way down the mountain, so
it would be like a couple miles maybe, and we
get to the point where it's like the sun setting,
and we're like, okay, now we need to turn around,
and we set our sleds down and we're like, let's race,
(20:26):
and we're like one, two, three, go, and we realized
that it's not steep enough to actually sled, So then
we're walking back with a totally different energy. Instead of
this idea that we're gonna hike all the way up
to have a fun ride down, we're now just walking down.
(20:48):
And on this walk we start talking about the next
film we're gonna make. It would be Sam six, and
Sam has these ideas. He's got these ideas about this
Apple Ganger alter identity of his called the Blue Panther,
who's just this goofy mock superhero who wears a wrestling
(21:08):
mask and a too small wet suit. And he's telling
me about how the Blue Panther is going to battle
twin robots and his girlfriend at the time is a
twin and so she's going to play this twin character,
and then the twins are going to divide into more twins,
so there'll be like four twins fighting the Blue Panther.
(21:32):
And I'm thinking about this this conflict I'm thinking about
this like idea of Sam and his alter ego and
how he really wants to take on this, like I'm
going to take on like four people, you know, And
I'm just thinking about like how we've done a lot
of really childish filmmaking. I love it. I love all
the youthful filmmaking that we do. But I'm at a point,
(21:53):
you know, where I'm kind of like, I want to
do something serious. And so I just turned to him
and I say, Sam, how about the blue panther his mom?
And then he stopped talking and it was quiet and
it's just footsteps in the snow, and then he comes
back with yeah, And I was like really, and he's
(22:16):
like yeah. We drive home and we talk about it
a little more. I kind of put it away a
little bit. It really felt like that was sort of
the big taboo. It really felt like that might have
really hurt Sam for me to say that, But he
presented something different or unexpected, which was that he kind
(22:36):
of wanted he wanted to engage with me around it,
and so we continue to have conversations about what that
would be like, and he wanted to go at his
midwinter break, which was in February, so it's like two
months away. He wanted to go and go in a
road trip and try to try to find her, and
I'm thinking that sounds really crazy, but I'm also thinking, hey,
(23:00):
wants to go on a road trip with me, and
this is kind of like also our dream, and this
is also something that we a place where we thrive
and even if nothing happens, you know, it might be
a really good experience. I'm somebody who's like, you know,
read a lot of like Joseph Campbell and been really
interested in things like Rites of Passage, and I'm thinking
(23:24):
about our relationship and I'm thinking about, you know how
I always wanted a big brother, and I'm thinking, hey,
this could be really cool. It's like I become a detective.
I kind of put down my filmmaker hat, like I
was like, Okay, this is not really going to be
the blue Panther finds his mom. I have to get
some pieces together. I have to actually figure out where
(23:45):
we're going on this road trip. And that turns out
to be a big challenge. I talk to like everybody
I can find that new joice, and everybody's got different ideas.
It's like, oh, maybe she's in Texas, maybe she's in California,
she's a seminar somewhere. So there's like no concrete evidence,
and like the person who seems to have like the
(24:06):
most intel is my stepbrother Peter. Seems like he had
done some research and he had found this like professor
done in southern California who might have been in contact
with her. But then he's like reluctant to give me
his name, and I like, you know, I'm doing all
these searches, and then finally we get this name of
(24:27):
this professor and a really basic plan, because we don't
have any other leads to where anyone else that knows
her is. We're gonna drive down I five to southern
California and we're gonna meet this professor on his office
hours which are posted online, and just like approach him
in person. This is like I didn't even have a
cell phone. I'm just gonna walk in there and hopefully
(24:47):
he'll just like see us and be like I can't
turn you away and I'll help you. And along the way, Chwis'
family lives in Medford, Oregon, so we'll we'll talk to
them and see if they've heard from her.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, that's a particularly riveting part of your film where
you you do meet with Joyce's adoptive mother and brother
and sister, and it's such a stark contrast to the
family scenes that we see of your family. It's like
it's like it's like in a different key, it's in
(25:23):
a different palette.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
The Taylor family. Yeah, you know, I think of our
the Harkness family is being very connected, very interested in play,
very much like you know, there's kind of a lot
of like laughter and smiling and kind of kind of
an encouraging vibe. I couldn't help but feel that we
talk about the sort of family secret part of like okay,
nobody really wants to talk about Joyce leaving, But then
(25:47):
meeting and talking to the Taylor family, they were so
much more closed off. I mean they were they were like,
they're honest, they're forthcoming. But her mom said when she
left her kids, I just wiped her out of my life.
When Joyce made the decision to abandon Sam and Jared,
I abandon her basically, And that's something that has really
(26:10):
hard to reconcile. That kind of attitude.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Read and Sam make it down to southern California to
meet this mysterious professor with the camera on. Of course,
Sam shows up at the university during the professor's office hours,
but when they arrive, they learn that the professor is
on an extended and semi permanent leave of absence. This
had been their only lead. The door cracked open, now
(26:41):
seems like it is slammed shut. It seems like this
might be the end of the road, but they stay
in the area and try other tactics. They post missing
Mom flyers. At one point, Sam uses a paper megaphone
to shout into the beautiful hills of California, mother, where
are you mother? The stakes are high, but Read and
(27:04):
Sam possess that harkness sense of play that their filmmaking
has always allowed them. They are full of light and energy.
The brothers are stymied, but undaunted. They're not ready to
give up, not yet. They returned to a list they'd
made of other phone numbers linked to the professor's name.
There's one number on the list they haven't tried. Sam
(27:26):
calls it, and there's a recording stating that the number
has been disconnected, but a new number is provided on
the recording. Sam calls that new number and Joyce answers
the phone.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
So that was so unbelievable. I'm still like, how did
that happen?
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Was there some part of you that thought, this is
never going to happen, but it's going to be the journey.
We're going to be on our hero's journey, and the
journey is the destination. The journey is what matters. And
then you actually do find her.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Yeah, I think that I had two voices. One it
was like, hey, this will like, no matter what happens,
this will be a beneficial experience.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
You know.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
What I was thinking was like I kept holding the
idea of like no expectations, like reduce my expectations because
I have no idea what's going to happen. I don't
know if Sam's going to break down, you know, at
like day one or day two or day five, and
you know, it really felt like when we get there
(28:31):
and the professor's on a leave, he's just like, you know,
his offices has turned over someone else. Actually I started
to break down. I started to be the one that
was like losing it a bit and just like I
don't know what to do now. And it was Sam
who kind of held me up. And was like, come on,
let's go through a frisbee and we go to the
(28:52):
beach and we started tossing the frisbee and you know,
while we're doing that, I'm starting to regulate a little
bit and get to this place of like, oh, okay,
wait a minute. We have this notebook full of numbers
that you know, we could just start calling numbers, and
Joyce answers the phone. And what happens next is so
amazing because Sam doesn't ask her questions. He just fills
(29:14):
her in on everything that's happened over the last three
years in his life. Jared and I got girlfriends, I
went to Japan, I started playing ultimate frisbee, Like he
just wants to let her know what's been going on
in his life. And then she invites us to come
see her. She's not in southern California. She's actually in
southern Oregon, and we immediately start driving up there, and
(29:37):
this is like back to the energy of like, oh
my gosh, this is the most exciting thing. I can't
believe this's happening, like, but we're also nervous, and I
remember asking Sam multiple times, like what are you going
to say? What's gonna happen, and he's just like it's
gonna be cool. It's like, we just got to go.
He was so excited. And we get there and knock
on the door and she answers and welcomes us in,
(29:59):
and the professor's there with her. They're in our relationship,
and it was like as if nothing had happened. She
had like Sam's favorite sushi ready to go. She had
like these sodas. I think it was like blue Sky
sodas that she always had stocked in the fridge at
her in Seattle, and it was like, oh, yeah, come over.
(30:21):
It was like as if three years hadn't passed, and
instead it was just, hey, I started in a relationship
and I'm I'm down here now and like come on
down anytime you're ready. It was like that. It was like, Okay,
there was excitement, and there was like pure joy of reconnection,
and then there wasn't. There wasn't anything further until we
(30:42):
go to this coffee shop nearby her house and she
just breaks down mostly to me why she left, in
a kind of a really fast rant that I've watched
so many times, and it's really emotionally charged and and
complex and cutting and confusing and in the most clear way,
(31:07):
like true to her thought process. It's like I had
to escape the control of everybody. I do escape control.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
The thing that really struck me during that time in
the coffee shop was that she says with so much
like with no charge, seemingly certainly no sense of apology.
She says, I know I'm going to go down in
history as the woman who broke up whole bunch of rules,
But I'm happy. I had to save myself. And she
(31:37):
repeats a number of times that she's happy, and I
don't get the sense that, at least there that she's
overly concerned about the pain that she's inflicted.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Yeah, this is one of the hardest things to understand
in this story. I think that she felt like she
was losing her mind and that she was going to
start acting out in ways that would potentially be more
hurtful than if she if she stayed. But you know
this part of like, I had to get out, I
had to go, and I walked through a portal and
(32:11):
now I'm happy. Oof. It's so that stuff just like
hit me in the weirdest way. I still can't really
wrap my head around. I mean, because I have a
mom who is very much connected and is like the
kind of mom where it's like I could count on
her pretty much always be there, Like she would be
(32:32):
there if I was in the hospital tomorrow, she would
be calling or be there. And to have this really
different perspective of like, nope, I have to take care
of myself and be gone and I'm happy without the
part of just saying like and I'm sorry that I
hurt you, and I take accountability for any pain or trauma.
(32:56):
It just was so hard. And here I am, too,
in this place where it's like I've basically made this
deal with Sam to help him find his mom my stepmom,
and then we get to these places where it's like
emotionally really confusing for me, and I'm in this like
place of I'm helping Sam, and I can't burn bridges.
(33:17):
I have to sort of like follow his lead.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
We'll be right back. Overall, for Sam, reuniting with Joyce
is a positive experience. Finding Joyce is a big deal,
(33:47):
and when the brothers get back home, they tell the
whole extended family about their discovery. The family is gathered
for someone's birthday and when Sam and reads share this
monumental news. The tone of the room doesn't change as
much as they expect it might. Nobody seems terribly impressed
or surprised by this news. Nobody continues to talk about it.
(34:10):
Do they not realize the gravity of what's happened? Do
they not care? Everyone is just going about their evening,
laughing and having a good time. At this point, Reid
is moved to do something quite out of character. He
comes out from behind the camera, He hands his camera
to a relative, asks them to keep filming, and confronts
(34:34):
his family. He's clearly uncomfortably full of emotion. What Sam
did was so incredibly brave, and you're not talking about it?
Why aren't we talking about it?
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Yeah, it's like this reveal moment where I've played this
role of I'm recording what's going on, I'm in taking
I'm observing everything, and I'm definitely I'm a sensitive, emotional
human who's taking it all in and I'm not exposing
that in the filming because I want to allow for
(35:09):
other people's stories and opinions and emotions to matter. And
also when I'm trying to follow the story of Sam,
who is emotionally disconnected like he struggles with connecting with
his emotions, and I wanted to let that lead, let
that kind of hero be When it's so easy to
connect to somebody that has like strong emotions, I wanted
(35:32):
to let that more nuanced thing live and breathe and
be focused on because it happens for a lot of people.
You know, it's very real for a lot of people
to suppress their emotions. Anyway, We've just come back from
finding Joye and it's too much for me, and the
elephant in the room is too big. And I step
up on the stage of the family room and I
(35:54):
say something, and I'm trembling and I'm not sure what
I'm doing. It's one of the most uncomfortable moments in
my life. And I and I try to convey the
power of what's happened, and it's really messing with the
energy of the room, where everyone wants to keep things light,
everyone wants to just kind of laugh and like, hey,
(36:15):
let's not get awkward. But I realized that, you know that,
like families are really uncomfortable addressing discomfort, Like families will
avoid it all costs, addressing these kinds of discomforts. And
I see that as a major oversight in family support
just in general, like, as we raise our kids, as
(36:36):
we are family to each other, how is it that
we can't Maybe some families do this totally well. Anyway,
my family wasn't operating that way, and it was a
really uncomfortable experience for me to just be like, you guys,
you guys, can you see this? You know? And I
don't know, you know, even with me doing that, Like
what the power of that was? I just know that
(36:58):
I was, I was speaking from I was naming the
skeleton in the closet. I was definitely like pointing at
it when everybody wanted to turn away.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
But the boys don't turn away from the situation or
from Joyce. They continue to be in touch. She gets
in touch with Jared too, and spends time with them both.
Jared even moves in with her for a while. On
the surface, things seem to be going really well. Having
Joyce back in their lives is great for Sam, until
(37:34):
it isn't. Some years later, the abandonment, the rejection, the secrecy,
the childhood loss, it all catches up with him. Sam's
in his late twenties and he's falling apart. He's afraid
of relationships. He's afraid of abandoning others, and he starts
to really wreck him with how destructive this experience has
(37:55):
been for him. He feels he might be repeating some
of the patterns his mother has instilled in him, hurting
others without remorse. He writes Joyce a letter to convey
this turmoil.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
In that letter, he says something about how he misses
the mom he had when he was eleven, and he
asks her if she could be more present in his
life because in this time, even though he's found her,
you know, and it's been over a decade of them
(38:30):
being reconnected, he doesn't see her making much of an effort.
He's the one that always has to contact her and
plan any visits with her, and she never was coming
up to Seattle to visit Jared, Sam and Peter live
in Seattle and Joyce's in southern Oregon, and he wanted
her to, you know, just come up and spend time
(38:52):
with the three of them, and that hadn't happened since
the reconnection. So she comes up to do that. Sam,
Joyce and I have breakfast together and everything's just kind
of normal. It's like we're just chit chatting and things
seem pretty good. She's in good spirits. Sam's in a
good mood. It's nice. And then my dad calls Sam
(39:17):
and Sam immediately like hangs up the phone like doesn't
doesn't answer, and Joyce is like, who is that and
Sam's like it was Dad, and then she's like why
didn't you answer? And then he's like, well, you know,
we're like having breakfast, and she's like he should have answered,
and then she's like, let's go see him, and so
(39:41):
we get in the car and head over to my
dad's house. So we just head over and we get
there and knock on the door and my dad's in
his pjs and he doesn't recognize Joyce and Joyce thinks
it's hysterical and we go in and it's so awkward.
(40:01):
I feel like we just ambushed my dad on like
Jackass the movie. And we go in and my dad
is makes the connection. He's like, oh my gosh, it's
Joyce and he's just like whoa, okay, hold on, let
me get dressed. And he comes back out and he's
really uncomfortable. Sam's like, this is getting really weird, and
then he starts to talk to Joyce. I'm filming too.
(40:23):
That makes things weird, right, So there's the camera, there's
my dad hasn't seen Joyce in twelve years. He's caught
off guard, and then they have a conversation and it's like, well,
brought you here, and she's just like I just decided
to come up and it just like and all this
so I was like her story is like, oh, just
any other you know, like I haven't seen you in
(40:43):
twelve years, but like, oh, you know, just decided to
drop by. And she's so giddy and like thinks it's
like really funny and fun and my dad's like on edge.
And then he calls his mom, mother Doris, who lives
a few blocks away, and is like, Joyce is here,
(41:05):
and so then we go over to her house and
then it's like a bigger group and my grandmother's reaction
to seeing Joyce is like total embrace. She gives her
like a minute long hug and they're both crying and she's,
you know, the ultimate grandma. She just welcomes us all in,
is like let me put on some tea, and like
(41:26):
everyone's gathered in the family room and it's just this
sort of like the mood changes to like this kind
of like happy gathering all of a sudden, and then
something really bizarre happens, which is she sort of draws
Joyce into this conversation about narcissism, and she happens to
(41:53):
have this book out about narcissism, and she's like, that's
not where you're at, right, is like, yep, that's me.
And she like defines in her own words how this
pattern that she has of getting whipped up into a
tailspin and either hurting herself or other people.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Why did your grandmother have the book on narcissism out?
Speaker 3 (42:17):
That's a really good question. She had the book out
to give to another family member who was dealing with
somebody who had narcissistic patterns, and then mentioned it. Somehow
it came up maybe she had been thinking about this
regarding Joyce, but she brought it up in a really friendly,
kind curious way, and Joyce's response to it was like, yep,
(42:40):
that's me. Peter ends up coming over it to my
grandma's house too, and then it's like a bigger group.
Some family members are called and decline coming. It's too
much for them.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
And Joyce seems so surprised by that. There's these really
interesting interactions, like you know, Joyce at one point says
to your mother, well, it did occur to us for
a minute that you'd be surprised, and your father says,
that's an understatement. And he also there's this moment where
he actually like sort of slaps himself on the cheek
(43:12):
a couple of times, like you know, am I in
a fiction here? Like what is happening in this house?
And it's like that's the voice of reason in that moment, right,
which is like, this is wild. He hasn't seen his
ex wife in decades since one day she just walked out,
and now she's come back and she's laughing and everybody's laughing.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's what is that I'm trying
to put my finger on this quality of how Joyce
is in that scene, and it feels to me like
this sort of clown, Like she's playing the role of
clown in order to make things light, like maybe there
(43:55):
will be some levity if I'm kind of fun and
laughing and that that'll take off some of the seriousness
and the pressure and the discomfort of this whole thing,
and maybe it backfires and it's like super unreal and
super ungrounding, and my dad is just like, what is
(44:16):
going on? He does slap his face and he's like,
is this some kind of fiction that's going on here?
And Sam is having the same look on his face,
And I'm like, am I, you know, like I'm not
saying it much because I'm recording, but I'm like, am
I contributing to this by having a camera? And you know,
it definitely chills out at Grandma's house, But in my
(44:37):
dad's house it is just a very very strange, like
a practical joke feeling. Twelve years later, surprise.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
This flippant tone is all too familiar to Read. The
temperature in the room is so similar to how it
had been when Read and Sam first told their family
about finding Joyce. Things are there's laughter. The family defaults
to levity for better or worse. At least this time,
the elephant in the room is in fact in the room.
(45:11):
Joyce is right there with them in person, and it's
harder to stay cavalier, as evidenced by their grandma bringing
up the book on narcissism and their dad slapping himself
on the cheek. The levity, it seems, has worn sin
as a coping mechanism.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Yeah, the elephant herself is in the room, and you
really can see sort of like a little more the
dynamic between Joyce and my dad. And then right after that,
I'm in the car driving with my grandmother and my
dad and I'm asking my grandmother what was that like
for you to see Joyce after all these years, And
(45:50):
she's like, it was really good. And at the same time,
my dad he thinks I'm asking him the question, and
he's speaking over her and saying it was freakish, for
it was freakish, And my grandmother continues and she's like,
it was just really good to connect with her after
all these years, and there's this quality to it where
(46:10):
it's like my grandmother's doing this radical acceptance thing where
she's just like, I'm gonna embrace Joyce. I know that
this is something that is like, has been a real
pain in our family, and I'm just gonna embrace her.
And then my dad is feeling pain and my grandmother
is failing to connect with his pain and putting Joyce first,
(46:34):
saying that like, I think she needs this. I think
that she needs this connection with me. And I think
about this and I'm thinking like my grandmother's hip. She's
like done all these years of early childhood experience. She
really knows what's going on, and she's like, oh my gosh, Joyce, narcissism, abandonment, adoption.
She really hasn't had like warm, connective parental figures. However,
(46:58):
I am that for her a little bit, and I
can be that and I will play that role now.
At the same time, in the same beat, she's failing
to connect with her son over this pain, and my
dad he's somebody who has felt abused by Joyce in
their marriage. I feel for the whole situation. It's like,
(47:18):
here's grandmother trying to heal some ancient wound with Joyce,
trying to like, you know, provide this maternal role to her.
Joyce didn't feel like her adoptive parents really loved her.
She was put up for adoption at eighteen months by
(47:39):
her mother never reconnected with her. And then here's Grandma Dorris,
who has been a mother role to her mother in
law role to her, saying like I accept you, I
welcome you back in. Yet my dad is very distraught
and she's failing to see that there in the car.
(48:01):
This is a further level of elephant in the room.
I go with Sam later that night, he's making his
Halloween costume. I've been talking about clowns and all this.
You know, Joyce might be putting on a little bit
of a show for Halloween, but I don't know. And
I asked Sam how that was, and he's like, the
jury's out. I'm going to put off thinking about it.
(48:22):
That was too much for me. It definitely wasn't what
I expected. I never expected Joyce to like be at
Grandma's house ever again. So he's just he's just really confused,
and this is another level of kind of waking up.
I think for Sam. I think that there's many levels
of fantasy involved in this story. You know, some are like, hey,
(48:44):
I'm going to be the Blue Panton. I'm going to
like you know, I'm going to go and like find
my mom, you know. And then there's levels of like
I can tolerate this, like this is something I can handle.
And then there's when my mom comes up, It'll be
like old times. And I think that that's the most
sad part for me, is just like the holding onto
hope of like that he will get his mom back
(49:07):
in the way that he hopes. You know that this
sort of like like when we were all living together,
like when he used to be easy, and you know,
I'd see her all the time and we talk all
the time. And I think that that's the sad reality
is just that like the fantasy that you know that
Sam seems to hold around it over time is like
(49:30):
slowly crushed. And I think that what's extra sad about
it for me is just thinking about how knowing two
stable parents, my mom and my dad, I can kind
of like refer back to nostalgic times with them and
kind of see a through line to now. When I
think about Sam and Joyce and Jared and Joyce, they
(49:50):
think about how this disruption and time really did cause
a permanent shift that would need like a great amount
of repair work to get back to some level of
trust and security. I think that Jared got that a
bit more than Sam by living with her and like
(50:11):
really kind of immersing into her new world. Sam did
not get that, and it's been really challenging, and his
process with her has been more of a slow drip.
And they do, you know, they'll do phone calls maybe
once or twice a month and talk about the weather,
but nothing to tend not to talk about like emotional
(50:32):
things or like about the abandonment or about the movie.
They just keep it really basic. And then when they
do have visits, which is is like every few years now,
it seems like at the fastest clip, it's like visit
for a day and then leave. It's like, in Sam's words,
about as much as they can take of each other.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
And this was Sam choosing, really choosing himself for a
period of time, stop being in touch with Joyce and
then now having this much much more distanced, much more
sporadic relationship with her. I mean, there's a moment where
she says, because he's distanced himself that she felt that
(51:13):
he was punishing her, And it's said in such a
kind of befuddled way, like why would he do that?
Speaker 3 (51:19):
Why would he?
Speaker 2 (51:20):
Yeah, Sam does choose himself, and in so doing he
builds a life that, while certainly shaped by Joyce's abandonment,
also makes meaning out of his emotionally complex and traumatic experience.
This is all we can do, right, take what life
(51:41):
has handed us and make something true, something real, something
powerful from the ashes. By the time Read's film ends
in twenty twenty, Sam has a longtime partner. Bailey Reid
asks the couple whether they think they'll have kids. They
look at each other in a way, and then they
(52:04):
say that they're thinking about fostering and adopting. That's the
way they want to make a family. And that has
also become Sam's life's work. He does youth social work
with unhoused kids.
Speaker 3 (52:19):
It's so hard to know these things, right, I mean,
you know, Sam choosing to go into social work, Sam
choosing to work with young people who also are experiencing
like alienation from their parents, street youth. I think of this.
I think of, like, how how many youth are on
the street that are like disconnected from their parents, and
(52:39):
why all those trust issues, all these kind of same things.
Sam works with people like that. Now he's doing domestic
violence work, where he'll work with like high school sports
teams and like help them understand relationship concepts. He works
with survivors and domestic violence and does an amazing work.
(53:03):
The through line is so incredible. It's like his personal pain,
like this really big thing in his world is what
he's most committed to giving back and where he feels
the strongest calling. I find that really interesting and I'd
be interested to know if that's If that's true for
a lot of people in social work.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
I think it's true in my experience on this podcast
and just in my life of hearing a lot of
stories of a lot of trauma, that the capacity to
make meaning out of it is what saves us. And
there are multiple ways of making meaning out of trauma.
Some people make art out of trauma. Some people write
(53:44):
books out of trauma, some people make films out of trauma.
Some people go into the healing arts out of trauma,
some people go into psychology and social work out of trauma.
And you know, it strikes me as such an incredibly
healthy adaptation, because if we can make meaning out of something,
then we've stripped it of its power over us because
we've made something good out of it.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
Yeah. I like that, And I like how Sam sort
of uses this as a pattern breaking in his life too,
where he's like actively engaging in other people's stories and
learning about all these different tools and methods for how
to talk about relationships, like just being on the pioneering
(54:26):
side of relationship conversations, and that that is providing for
him this understanding, you know, for work that he needs
to do for himself. It's keeping him aware of it.
Yet at the same time he says things like, I
think a lot of my life has been helping other people,
(54:47):
so I don't have to face my own shit, you know, like, oh,
this person has it really rough, I'm gonna focus on
their thing. But also I see the awareness of trauma,
childhood trauma, the awareness of of like patterns in life,
and how you know, he starts replaying some of the
patterns that were handed down and how he's he begins
(55:09):
to actively say things like I want to break I
want to be the one to step out of this.
So these are the things where it's like what does
it take to truly break a generational pattern? But you know,
we've got Joyce's mother has in Japan put her up
for adoption. There's like maybe a first observation of an abandonment,
and then she's adopted to this American family who Joyce
(55:32):
claims didn't really love her or connect with her in
a way that would bring about security, and so there's
another level of abandonment. And then Joyce you know, of course,
like you know, gets to this point where she abandons
her own children, and then Sam comes to the awareness
that like he's capable of abandoning people. He's really scared
of that idea. And he has just kind of had
(55:53):
these relationships with girlfriends where he's just sort of walked
away with no feeling no oh, I just heard that person.
And he has become aware of it. He's done therapy
and he's like kind of like, oh my gosh, what
is this? So you know, lifetimes, lifetimes are happening. And
then we get to Sam and then Sam's like, how
do I address this? And you know, and I'm a
(56:15):
part of that too, with like, hey, I'm I'm recording
this all and I'm putting it out so that you
have it and also so that other families can look
at this. And then there's the patterning in the Harkness
family too, where it's like, what are the ways in
which we support these patterns that aren't seen? And I
think that that's the elephant in the room stuff, the secrecy,
(56:36):
the part where it's like it's uncomfortable to talk about
some things. That's where the things are allowed to ride
on forever unless we look at them, unless we feel
the fear and the pain of them. I think that
they just they'll just ride on. They'll stay there. The
skeletons will stay there. They'll stay right there in the
closet unless you open the door and look at it
(56:56):
and think about what it is, and then and then
it can potentially be free.
Speaker 2 (57:19):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zaccur is
the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
(57:40):
find me on Instagram at Danny Rider. And if you'd
like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1 (58:12):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
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. My guest today
is Read Harkness, a filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. Reads
is a story about turning his camera on a family,
(00:36):
his family, specifically his younger half brother Sam, in a
lifelong attempt to understand what happened, what went wrong, and
how to make it right if such a thing as possible.
Read's documentary, twenty five years in the making, Sam Now,
is a powerful illustration of the way that art can
(00:58):
drive us to a deeper truth. Tell me about the
landscape of your childhood, just whatever the word landscape means
to you.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I grew up on the West Coast. My parents divorced
when I was a toddler, and my dad stayed in
Seattle and my mom went back to her family home
in Palo Alto, California. Most of my life I've lived
along I five. I currently live in Portland, Oregon, but
(01:29):
I'd say the West Coast and the Pacific Northwest is
very much home to me. In Seattle. When I was
about five, my dad remarried to Joyce, who came with
my stepbrother Peter. He's about a year older than me.
Not that long after they were married. They had two sons,
(01:49):
Jared and then Sam, So in the summertimes when I
was in Seattle, I had three brothers. It was a
house full of boys.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
And when you were with your mom in Palo Alto,
were there any more kids in that household.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
My mom remarried when I was about five, and a
parallel thing happened, except she had two daughters. So I
would go between one house majority women and one house
majority boys. It was a really interesting experience for me.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
So when Jared and Sam were growing up, you would
see them mostly summers. Were there also sort of holidays
in between?
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yeah, I'd be in Seattle every summer and pretty much
every Christmas vacation. But I did school with my mom
until I was a teenager and junior year. I did
some part of high school in Seattle, and then right
away after high school I moved up to Seattle.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
When did you first pick up a camera?
Speaker 3 (02:47):
M that's a gread question. What's funny is I remember
not having a camera, but setting up scenes with cardboard
and clay and creating these little sets. After watching those
Will Vinton claymation specials, I would try to recreate those things,
but I didn't have a camera, and I would just
like move them around, all the clay around, and I'd
(03:08):
like imagine them being animated. My first actual camera was
a PXL two thousand made by Fisher Price. A friend
borrowed it a week later and broke it. I think
things like that kind of cement the passion. Sometimes. My
grandmother had a VHS camera that she would let all
(03:29):
of us cousins and my brothers use, and that was
really the first like time where I felt like I
can experiment. So grandma had a VHS camera that she
kept in this old like floral suitcase, and I just
remember the feeling of like un zipping that suitcase, getting
(03:49):
the camera out, putting it huge VHS tape in and
recording something with my cousins and brothers.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
And what was it like for you being the filmmaker,
being the director, if you will, Like, what did that
do for you as a kid, you know, and sort
of as a teenager when you began to really record
it seems like just at every opportunity, we know, record
as much of both life and sort of invention as
(04:19):
you possibly could.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah, I grew up being told no a lot, couldn't
keep focus, and therefore, you know, was put into special
ed classes and in a lot of ways maybe taught
down to But I would go home after school and
delve into projects, things like screen printing or airbrushing or
(04:43):
taking apart machinery. I loved the experience of diving in
and film all kinds of things. We shoot things like
squibs and pretend we were getting shot. We would you know,
create masks a lot of the time, like we like
we were like casting our faces and you know, we're
(05:03):
doing all these horror special effects. And then we just
do things that were just spontaneous, like boys running around
the neighborhood, raw energy stuff. And I think that that's
the stuff that I started to get really interested in.
And I think cameras and video became an interesting way
for me to explore and I got to a place
(05:25):
where I was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna try to
make my own films. I think before it was like
goofing around and playfulness. And I saw my brother Sam,
He's eight years younger than me, just sitting playing Nintendo
on the floor, and I thought, Okay, Sam's really doesn't
have anything planned for the day. I'm going to see
(05:46):
if he'll do this this movie with me. And I
had had this idea after watching Michael Aptead series. This
is in ninety seven, the Up series. It's like a
series is where they start, you know, seven year olds
and then fourteen year olds, and they go on every
seven years making a movie about the same group. And
(06:10):
I thought it would be interesting if I started filming
my brother as he's growing up, and I make this
movie called Sam one, and then pretty much every year
we make Sam two, Sam three, Sam four, Sam five.
But in that the first one, I'm not approaching it
like a documentary. I'm making a short film. It's a
(06:31):
concepted film about you know, Sam's he's sick at school,
he goes home, he's locked out of the house and
he's like staring in the window in horror as an
animated frog like eats his sack lunch that's on the table.
(06:52):
It's very much an art film.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
So Sam really became your subject. How old were you
and how old was he?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Sam was around ten and I would have been seventeen
or eighteen.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Why Sam, it wasn't Jared, it wasn't your step brother,
It wasn't a kid from school.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
I mean, for one thing, he was available. He was
accessible to me, Like he was just literally sitting there
on the floor playing video games. I was like, hey,
come with me, and he was like okay. And I
think that his personality is like he's down for an
Adventure's something about me being up there in the summertime,
(07:37):
you know, was always an exciting thing, I think for
my younger brothers. And we loved connecting, we loved wrestling,
we loved like being in the outdoors. And Sam was
someone who he was the kid that he would fall
down and he'd get right back up. And it was
something a quality that I didn't have. I would fall
down and stay down. I would feel it so hard
(07:59):
if something happened.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Do you mean that both physically and metaphorically.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah, I feel things really strongly. And Sam, he would
fall out of like a treehouse, hit the ground with
a thought, and then get right back up. Everybody's thinking,
we need to call an ambulance. He had this confidence
that it was really fun and also strange, and my cousin,
and I called him Candy Bones because he just like
(08:27):
he seemed like he could never get hurt. He was
just bounced right back up. So I was fascinated by
that because I'm not somebody that does that. I haven't
broken many bones or anything, but I definitely like have
been really hurt. And I think that if I fall
off that highev, I would There's no way that I
would have liked just got up like Sam did.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Contributing to this household of raw energy, as Reed calls it,
is Joyce and her effervescence. She's a big and joyful
presence in the boy's life. What they don't know at
the time is that her big presence will soon become
a big absence.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
In my youth. Joyce was a really interesting step parent
to me. I remember her being the one that would
be like she would set out like a whole tray
full of water balloons and it's like, all right, guys,
water balloon fight, and then she'd be like throwing water
balloons out of the kitchen window outside at us too.
She had this quality that was like the super fun
(09:30):
mom who loved to, you know, get the party started.
She also was very creative and very like arts focused
and like to you know, sort of encourage us to
listen to music, you know, watch interesting content. She introduced
me to Pee Wee's Playhouse. I remember, and I remember
that being like, Okay, this is like kind of a
weird kids show, but it's really awesome. It was just
(09:52):
really interested in creativity and you know, playfulness, and she
really seemed to like bomb with us around playful energy.
She really brought a lot of that out. She inspired
a lot of that, like you know, keep going and
like she was really excited when I started making the
Sam movies. You thought it was like the coolest project.
(10:13):
I think that in hindsight, what's strange is that my
youth and my in my childhood home with my dad
and stepmom was normal. It was something normal to me.
Now when I look back and I sort of like
pick apart things, I can see patterns of things to come.
Like I could see, especially in hearing stories from my dad,
(10:36):
how he was in a lot of pain in that relationship,
and that there would be things that you know, we're
pretty manic where something really surprising would just happened out
of the blue, and you know, Joyce would would have
a really strong reaction and leave the house and as
kids who are really engaged with other kids like I'm
(10:56):
just I'm connecting more with my brothers than I am
with with my parents. I wasn't really that aware of it.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Read and Sam continue to make their movies together. To
watch their movies is to see the sheer joy of
two brothers creating stories together creatively on fire. They both
love it, but their regular filmmaking is disrupted in the
fall of nineteen ninety nine when Reid moves to Portland
for an animation job. Sam still occasionally comes to visit
(11:30):
and stay with his older brother so that they can
continue making their films. But then a different kind of
disruption happens, a much bigger one. When Sam is thirteen,
his mother reads stepmother, Joyce, disappears. It's the year two
thousand and Reid doesn't have the details, but he knows
(11:54):
something has happened. He hears from family members bits and
pieces of where they think might have gone and if
or when they think she's coming back. When Sam comes
out to Portland to film and spend time with Reid,
they don't talk about the fact that Joyce has vanished,
and nobody has heard from her.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
It had become this taboo in our family where nobody
wanted to bring it up with Sam and Jared. They
had a discomfort with the unknown. And then my dad
was in a place where he really didn't want to
pursue contact with her, so he wasn't encouraging conversation around it.
And then the extended family, like my grandmother, my aunt Cindy,
(12:38):
there was like these like ripples of like different people
in the family are really harboring the emotion and anger
of this and not knowing what to do. Cindy told
me later that she kind of wanted to adopt Sam
and Jared during those years, my aunt and it was
really heartbreaking because our family is very tight knit, not
(13:00):
just a nuclear family, but like the whole Harkness family,
which is like a really big group of aunts and
uncles and cousins, and we all congregate at my grandmother's
house regularly. Were all It just seemed like the ideal
support system regarding family, the whole It takes a village,
(13:21):
you know. That was my family. They were like we
were always together, we were always doing things. There was
like open door policy at Grandma's. There was always cookies.
There was always food in the fridge. The support system
was there, it just was failing to operate around the
taboo of you know, Joyce is gone, what do we do?
Speaker 2 (13:41):
And do you think that that was because the larger
net of the family, they were taking their cues from
your father, and he really didn't want to talk about it,
so then nobody talked about it. Like the silence became
kind of contagious.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Yeah, I would say the silence became contagious. I think that.
But there's a thing with men and boys not talking
about difficult stuff generally, and I think in the Pacific
Northwest it's like even more amplified. And then I think
that you know, this is this is a family that's
made up mostly of educators, even very specifically childhood educators.
(14:17):
My dad is was a first grade teacher for thirty years,
and my grandmother worked like her whole career in early
childhood education, you know, learning about like the most pioneering methods,
and these are really cool aspects that like really do
help shape like who we are, these kind of free
(14:37):
range kids that are like able to lean into adventuresome
spirit and a lot of creative play. But I think
something that comes with being in a classroom and being
an educator and being that kind of observer to things
that might happen. And I think I'm thinking of my
dad here, Like I remember helping out in his classroom,
(14:58):
so like I remember the challenge that he would face
every day and how you know, just keeping order, keeping things,
keeping things moving, keeping a smile on his face. I'm
sure that this had had an impact. And I'm sure
that there was many things. Many factors in his view
(15:20):
were things that you just you didn't address, you didn't
talk about, but you knew. So I think that he
may have become conditioned to just keeping things going and
being stable, yet not addressing some of the elephants in
the room directly.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
And it seems like both Sam and Jared both had
very different responses to Joyce's disappearing. Jared, he wears it
all kind of outwardly. He stops going to school. He's
completely signaling you know, I am not okay. He shows it,
whereas Sam bottles it up and nothing seems like it's
(16:03):
really affecting him. And he has this great laugh and
he just is always laughing it off in a way
and performing and so they have these two really different
ways of coping during those years.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Yeah, and this is the high dive. You know, Sam
fell off the high dive in real life, as you know,
an eight year old and landed on the on the
cement and walked away. And he did the same thing
emotionally when Joyce left, he sprung back. I think that
also there's a factor here where, you know, seeing Jared
(16:39):
being so depressed, just crumpled in a ball on the floor,
not going to school at all. I think he was
like he cut class for like sixty days or something ridiculous.
He was like figuring out some way, Well, my dad
was at work to you know, make it seem like
he was at school. And I think Sam saw that
and wanted to take the high road. What I saw
(17:01):
was like he started associating with like, you know, the
honorall kids, even though he wasn't Jared was the academic.
Sam was definitely not the a student, and he started
getting into school sports too. He was into wrestling and
then he found the sport of ultimate frisbee, which ultimately
became like his his big life passion and getting in
(17:24):
with those groups, you know, those social groups where there's
a lot of like camaraderie and like encouragement. I think
that he was able to sort of ride this wave
of like we can power through. I can like be
physically strong, I can be mentally stronger than this.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Nearly three years past was no word from Joyce. Sometimes
she sends packages though boxes full of random stuff. There's
(18:08):
never a note or a letter. It all feels so
impersonal that the boys speculate that the packages might not
even be from her. The boxes have her name on them,
but no return address, a clear indication that she does
not want to be found. One year, during Christmas, one
(18:28):
such box arrives. This time it contains homemade fudge.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
The setting is It's Christmas, I'm visiting my family in Seattle.
And the year before Sam and Jared and I on
Christmas Day went up to the mountains and went sledding
and had like one of my favorite days ever. The
(18:55):
ski slopes were closed, and so we just like hyped
up the ski slopes and were just like sledding down
for what felt like miles. We had such a good
time that we wanted to recreate that the next year
and we had talked about this. Sam was so excited.
Jared was immovable. He was just like on the floor.
(19:19):
He's just like no, no, no, no, like just would
not come with us. And we imagine both of these
like really excited brothers just trying to like drag him,
pull him, encourage him, you know remember last year all that,
and he's not able to won't. So it's just me
and Sam. Sam offered me some fudge and I said
(19:40):
who made the fudge? And he's like Mom. And I
was like, who's mom? And he's like mom, And I
was like really, I was in such disbelief that that
could be possible. So that's the same day that we
go up sledding and it's just me and Sam and
we're on this mountain. We're hiking up this old logging
road and you know, it's snowing, and we've got these
(20:03):
two sleds and we as we're hiking where we're imagining it,
we're just gonna have the longest sled run ever. We're
gonna like hike up as long as we can and
then just sled all the way down the mountain, so
it would be like a couple miles maybe, and we
get to the point where it's like the sun setting,
and we're like, okay, now we need to turn around,
and we set our sleds down and we're like, let's race,
(20:26):
and we're like one, two, three, go, and we realized
that it's not steep enough to actually sled, So then
we're walking back with a totally different energy. Instead of
this idea that we're gonna hike all the way up
to have a fun ride down, we're now just walking down.
(20:48):
And on this walk we start talking about the next
film we're gonna make. It would be Sam six, and
Sam has these ideas. He's got these ideas about this
Apple Ganger alter identity of his called the Blue Panther,
who's just this goofy mock superhero who wears a wrestling
(21:08):
mask and a too small wet suit. And he's telling
me about how the Blue Panther is going to battle
twin robots and his girlfriend at the time is a
twin and so she's going to play this twin character,
and then the twins are going to divide into more twins,
so there'll be like four twins fighting the Blue Panther.
(21:32):
And I'm thinking about this this conflict I'm thinking about
this like idea of Sam and his alter ego and
how he really wants to take on this, like I'm
going to take on like four people, you know, And
I'm just thinking about like how we've done a lot
of really childish filmmaking. I love it. I love all
the youthful filmmaking that we do. But I'm at a point,
(21:53):
you know, where I'm kind of like, I want to
do something serious. And so I just turned to him
and I say, Sam, how about the blue panther his mom?
And then he stopped talking and it was quiet and
it's just footsteps in the snow, and then he comes
back with yeah, And I was like really, and he's
(22:16):
like yeah. We drive home and we talk about it
a little more. I kind of put it away a
little bit. It really felt like that was sort of
the big taboo. It really felt like that might have
really hurt Sam for me to say that, But he
presented something different or unexpected, which was that he kind
(22:36):
of wanted he wanted to engage with me around it,
and so we continue to have conversations about what that
would be like, and he wanted to go at his
midwinter break, which was in February, so it's like two
months away. He wanted to go and go in a
road trip and try to try to find her, and
I'm thinking that sounds really crazy, but I'm also thinking, hey,
(23:00):
wants to go on a road trip with me, and
this is kind of like also our dream, and this
is also something that we a place where we thrive
and even if nothing happens, you know, it might be
a really good experience. I'm somebody who's like, you know,
read a lot of like Joseph Campbell and been really
interested in things like Rites of Passage, and I'm thinking
(23:24):
about our relationship and I'm thinking about, you know how
I always wanted a big brother, and I'm thinking, hey,
this could be really cool. It's like I become a detective.
I kind of put down my filmmaker hat, like I
was like, Okay, this is not really going to be
the blue Panther finds his mom. I have to get
some pieces together. I have to actually figure out where
(23:45):
we're going on this road trip. And that turns out
to be a big challenge. I talk to like everybody
I can find that new joice, and everybody's got different ideas.
It's like, oh, maybe she's in Texas, maybe she's in California,
she's a seminar somewhere. So there's like no concrete evidence,
and like the person who seems to have like the
(24:06):
most intel is my stepbrother Peter. Seems like he had
done some research and he had found this like professor
done in southern California who might have been in contact
with her. But then he's like reluctant to give me
his name, and I like, you know, I'm doing all
these searches, and then finally we get this name of
(24:27):
this professor and a really basic plan, because we don't
have any other leads to where anyone else that knows
her is. We're gonna drive down I five to southern
California and we're gonna meet this professor on his office
hours which are posted online, and just like approach him
in person. This is like I didn't even have a
cell phone. I'm just gonna walk in there and hopefully
(24:47):
he'll just like see us and be like I can't
turn you away and I'll help you. And along the way, Chwis'
family lives in Medford, Oregon, so we'll we'll talk to
them and see if they've heard from her.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, that's a particularly riveting part of your film where
you you do meet with Joyce's adoptive mother and brother
and sister, and it's such a stark contrast to the
family scenes that we see of your family. It's like
it's like it's like in a different key, it's in
(25:23):
a different palette.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
The Taylor family. Yeah, you know, I think of our
the Harkness family is being very connected, very interested in play,
very much like you know, there's kind of a lot
of like laughter and smiling and kind of kind of
an encouraging vibe. I couldn't help but feel that we
talk about the sort of family secret part of like okay,
nobody really wants to talk about Joyce leaving, But then
(25:47):
meeting and talking to the Taylor family, they were so
much more closed off. I mean they were they were like,
they're honest, they're forthcoming. But her mom said when she
left her kids, I just wiped her out of my life.
When Joyce made the decision to abandon Sam and Jared,
I abandon her basically, And that's something that has really
(26:10):
hard to reconcile. That kind of attitude.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Read and Sam make it down to southern California to
meet this mysterious professor with the camera on. Of course,
Sam shows up at the university during the professor's office hours,
but when they arrive, they learn that the professor is
on an extended and semi permanent leave of absence. This
had been their only lead. The door cracked open, now
(26:41):
seems like it is slammed shut. It seems like this
might be the end of the road, but they stay
in the area and try other tactics. They post missing
Mom flyers. At one point, Sam uses a paper megaphone
to shout into the beautiful hills of California, mother, where
are you mother? The stakes are high, but Read and
(27:04):
Sam possess that harkness sense of play that their filmmaking
has always allowed them. They are full of light and energy.
The brothers are stymied, but undaunted. They're not ready to
give up, not yet. They returned to a list they'd
made of other phone numbers linked to the professor's name.
There's one number on the list they haven't tried. Sam
(27:26):
calls it, and there's a recording stating that the number
has been disconnected, but a new number is provided on
the recording. Sam calls that new number and Joyce answers
the phone.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
So that was so unbelievable. I'm still like, how did
that happen?
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Was there some part of you that thought, this is
never going to happen, but it's going to be the journey.
We're going to be on our hero's journey, and the
journey is the destination. The journey is what matters. And
then you actually do find her.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Yeah, I think that I had two voices. One it
was like, hey, this will like, no matter what happens,
this will be a beneficial experience.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
You know.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
What I was thinking was like I kept holding the
idea of like no expectations, like reduce my expectations because
I have no idea what's going to happen. I don't
know if Sam's going to break down, you know, at
like day one or day two or day five, and
you know, it really felt like when we get there
(28:31):
and the professor's on a leave, he's just like, you know,
his offices has turned over someone else. Actually I started
to break down. I started to be the one that
was like losing it a bit and just like I
don't know what to do now. And it was Sam
who kind of held me up. And was like, come on,
let's go through a frisbee and we go to the
(28:52):
beach and we started tossing the frisbee and you know,
while we're doing that, I'm starting to regulate a little
bit and get to this place of like, oh, okay,
wait a minute. We have this notebook full of numbers
that you know, we could just start calling numbers, and
Joyce answers the phone. And what happens next is so
amazing because Sam doesn't ask her questions. He just fills
(29:14):
her in on everything that's happened over the last three
years in his life. Jared and I got girlfriends, I
went to Japan, I started playing ultimate frisbee, Like he
just wants to let her know what's been going on
in his life. And then she invites us to come
see her. She's not in southern California. She's actually in
southern Oregon, and we immediately start driving up there, and
(29:37):
this is like back to the energy of like, oh
my gosh, this is the most exciting thing. I can't
believe this's happening, like, but we're also nervous, and I
remember asking Sam multiple times, like what are you going
to say? What's gonna happen, and he's just like it's
gonna be cool. It's like, we just got to go.
He was so excited. And we get there and knock
on the door and she answers and welcomes us in,
(29:59):
and the professor's there with her. They're in our relationship,
and it was like as if nothing had happened. She
had like Sam's favorite sushi ready to go. She had
like these sodas. I think it was like blue Sky
sodas that she always had stocked in the fridge at
her in Seattle, and it was like, oh, yeah, come over.
(30:21):
It was like as if three years hadn't passed, and
instead it was just, hey, I started in a relationship
and I'm I'm down here now and like come on
down anytime you're ready. It was like that. It was like, Okay,
there was excitement, and there was like pure joy of reconnection,
and then there wasn't. There wasn't anything further until we
(30:42):
go to this coffee shop nearby her house and she
just breaks down mostly to me why she left, in
a kind of a really fast rant that I've watched
so many times, and it's really emotionally charged and and
complex and cutting and confusing and in the most clear way,
(31:07):
like true to her thought process. It's like I had
to escape the control of everybody. I do escape control.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
The thing that really struck me during that time in
the coffee shop was that she says with so much
like with no charge, seemingly certainly no sense of apology.
She says, I know I'm going to go down in
history as the woman who broke up whole bunch of rules,
But I'm happy. I had to save myself. And she
(31:37):
repeats a number of times that she's happy, and I
don't get the sense that, at least there that she's
overly concerned about the pain that she's inflicted.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Yeah, this is one of the hardest things to understand
in this story. I think that she felt like she
was losing her mind and that she was going to
start acting out in ways that would potentially be more
hurtful than if she if she stayed. But you know
this part of like, I had to get out, I
had to go, and I walked through a portal and
(32:11):
now I'm happy. Oof. It's so that stuff just like
hit me in the weirdest way. I still can't really
wrap my head around. I mean, because I have a
mom who is very much connected and is like the
kind of mom where it's like I could count on
her pretty much always be there, Like she would be
(32:32):
there if I was in the hospital tomorrow, she would
be calling or be there. And to have this really
different perspective of like, nope, I have to take care
of myself and be gone and I'm happy without the
part of just saying like and I'm sorry that I
hurt you, and I take accountability for any pain or trauma.
(32:56):
It just was so hard. And here I am, too,
in this place where it's like I've basically made this
deal with Sam to help him find his mom my stepmom,
and then we get to these places where it's like
emotionally really confusing for me, and I'm in this like
place of I'm helping Sam, and I can't burn bridges.
(33:17):
I have to sort of like follow his lead.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
We'll be right back. Overall, for Sam, reuniting with Joyce
is a positive experience. Finding Joyce is a big deal,
(33:47):
and when the brothers get back home, they tell the
whole extended family about their discovery. The family is gathered
for someone's birthday and when Sam and reads share this
monumental news. The tone of the room doesn't change as
much as they expect it might. Nobody seems terribly impressed
or surprised by this news. Nobody continues to talk about it.
(34:10):
Do they not realize the gravity of what's happened? Do
they not care? Everyone is just going about their evening,
laughing and having a good time. At this point, Reid
is moved to do something quite out of character. He
comes out from behind the camera, He hands his camera
to a relative, asks them to keep filming, and confronts
(34:34):
his family. He's clearly uncomfortably full of emotion. What Sam
did was so incredibly brave, and you're not talking about it?
Why aren't we talking about it?
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Yeah, it's like this reveal moment where I've played this
role of I'm recording what's going on, I'm in taking
I'm observing everything, and I'm definitely I'm a sensitive, emotional
human who's taking it all in and I'm not exposing
that in the filming because I want to allow for
(35:09):
other people's stories and opinions and emotions to matter. And
also when I'm trying to follow the story of Sam,
who is emotionally disconnected like he struggles with connecting with
his emotions, and I wanted to let that lead, let
that kind of hero be When it's so easy to
connect to somebody that has like strong emotions, I wanted
(35:32):
to let that more nuanced thing live and breathe and
be focused on because it happens for a lot of people.
You know, it's very real for a lot of people
to suppress their emotions. Anyway, We've just come back from
finding Joye and it's too much for me, and the
elephant in the room is too big. And I step
up on the stage of the family room and I
(35:54):
say something, and I'm trembling and I'm not sure what
I'm doing. It's one of the most uncomfortable moments in
my life. And I and I try to convey the
power of what's happened, and it's really messing with the
energy of the room, where everyone wants to keep things light,
everyone wants to just kind of laugh and like, hey,
(36:15):
let's not get awkward. But I realized that, you know that,
like families are really uncomfortable addressing discomfort, Like families will
avoid it all costs, addressing these kinds of discomforts. And
I see that as a major oversight in family support
just in general, like, as we raise our kids, as
(36:36):
we are family to each other, how is it that
we can't Maybe some families do this totally well. Anyway,
my family wasn't operating that way, and it was a
really uncomfortable experience for me to just be like, you guys,
you guys, can you see this? You know? And I
don't know, you know, even with me doing that, Like
what the power of that was? I just know that
(36:58):
I was, I was speaking from I was naming the
skeleton in the closet. I was definitely like pointing at
it when everybody wanted to turn away.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
But the boys don't turn away from the situation or
from Joyce. They continue to be in touch. She gets
in touch with Jared too, and spends time with them both.
Jared even moves in with her for a while. On
the surface, things seem to be going really well. Having
Joyce back in their lives is great for Sam, until
(37:34):
it isn't. Some years later, the abandonment, the rejection, the secrecy,
the childhood loss, it all catches up with him. Sam's
in his late twenties and he's falling apart. He's afraid
of relationships. He's afraid of abandoning others, and he starts
to really wreck him with how destructive this experience has
(37:55):
been for him. He feels he might be repeating some
of the patterns his mother has instilled in him, hurting
others without remorse. He writes Joyce a letter to convey
this turmoil.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
In that letter, he says something about how he misses
the mom he had when he was eleven, and he
asks her if she could be more present in his
life because in this time, even though he's found her,
you know, and it's been over a decade of them
(38:30):
being reconnected, he doesn't see her making much of an effort.
He's the one that always has to contact her and
plan any visits with her, and she never was coming
up to Seattle to visit Jared, Sam and Peter live
in Seattle and Joyce's in southern Oregon, and he wanted
her to, you know, just come up and spend time
(38:52):
with the three of them, and that hadn't happened since
the reconnection. So she comes up to do that. Sam,
Joyce and I have breakfast together and everything's just kind
of normal. It's like we're just chit chatting and things
seem pretty good. She's in good spirits. Sam's in a
good mood. It's nice. And then my dad calls Sam
(39:17):
and Sam immediately like hangs up the phone like doesn't
doesn't answer, and Joyce is like, who is that and
Sam's like it was Dad, and then she's like why
didn't you answer? And then he's like, well, you know,
we're like having breakfast, and she's like he should have answered,
and then she's like, let's go see him, and so
(39:41):
we get in the car and head over to my
dad's house. So we just head over and we get
there and knock on the door and my dad's in
his pjs and he doesn't recognize Joyce and Joyce thinks
it's hysterical and we go in and it's so awkward.
(40:01):
I feel like we just ambushed my dad on like
Jackass the movie. And we go in and my dad
is makes the connection. He's like, oh my gosh, it's
Joyce and he's just like whoa, okay, hold on, let
me get dressed. And he comes back out and he's
really uncomfortable. Sam's like, this is getting really weird, and
then he starts to talk to Joyce. I'm filming too.
(40:23):
That makes things weird, right, So there's the camera, there's
my dad hasn't seen Joyce in twelve years. He's caught
off guard, and then they have a conversation and it's like, well,
brought you here, and she's just like I just decided
to come up and it just like and all this
so I was like her story is like, oh, just
any other you know, like I haven't seen you in
(40:43):
twelve years, but like, oh, you know, just decided to
drop by. And she's so giddy and like thinks it's
like really funny and fun and my dad's like on edge.
And then he calls his mom, mother Doris, who lives
a few blocks away, and is like, Joyce is here,
(41:05):
and so then we go over to her house and
then it's like a bigger group and my grandmother's reaction
to seeing Joyce is like total embrace. She gives her
like a minute long hug and they're both crying and she's,
you know, the ultimate grandma. She just welcomes us all in,
is like let me put on some tea, and like
(41:26):
everyone's gathered in the family room and it's just this
sort of like the mood changes to like this kind
of like happy gathering all of a sudden, and then
something really bizarre happens, which is she sort of draws
Joyce into this conversation about narcissism, and she happens to
(41:53):
have this book out about narcissism, and she's like, that's
not where you're at, right, is like, yep, that's me.
And she like defines in her own words how this
pattern that she has of getting whipped up into a
tailspin and either hurting herself or other people.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Why did your grandmother have the book on narcissism out?
Speaker 3 (42:17):
That's a really good question. She had the book out
to give to another family member who was dealing with
somebody who had narcissistic patterns, and then mentioned it. Somehow
it came up maybe she had been thinking about this
regarding Joyce, but she brought it up in a really friendly,
kind curious way, and Joyce's response to it was like, yep,
(42:40):
that's me. Peter ends up coming over it to my
grandma's house too, and then it's like a bigger group.
Some family members are called and decline coming. It's too
much for them.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
And Joyce seems so surprised by that. There's these really
interesting interactions, like you know, Joyce at one point says
to your mother, well, it did occur to us for
a minute that you'd be surprised, and your father says,
that's an understatement. And he also there's this moment where
he actually like sort of slaps himself on the cheek
(43:12):
a couple of times, like you know, am I in
a fiction here? Like what is happening in this house?
And it's like that's the voice of reason in that moment, right,
which is like, this is wild. He hasn't seen his
ex wife in decades since one day she just walked out,
and now she's come back and she's laughing and everybody's laughing.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's what is that I'm trying
to put my finger on this quality of how Joyce
is in that scene, and it feels to me like
this sort of clown, Like she's playing the role of
clown in order to make things light, like maybe there
(43:55):
will be some levity if I'm kind of fun and
laughing and that that'll take off some of the seriousness
and the pressure and the discomfort of this whole thing,
and maybe it backfires and it's like super unreal and
super ungrounding, and my dad is just like, what is
(44:16):
going on? He does slap his face and he's like,
is this some kind of fiction that's going on here?
And Sam is having the same look on his face,
And I'm like, am I, you know, like I'm not
saying it much because I'm recording, but I'm like, am
I contributing to this by having a camera? And you know,
it definitely chills out at Grandma's house, But in my
(44:37):
dad's house it is just a very very strange, like
a practical joke feeling. Twelve years later, surprise.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
This flippant tone is all too familiar to Read. The
temperature in the room is so similar to how it
had been when Read and Sam first told their family
about finding Joyce. Things are there's laughter. The family defaults
to levity for better or worse. At least this time,
the elephant in the room is in fact in the room.
(45:11):
Joyce is right there with them in person, and it's
harder to stay cavalier, as evidenced by their grandma bringing
up the book on narcissism and their dad slapping himself
on the cheek. The levity, it seems, has worn sin
as a coping mechanism.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Yeah, the elephant herself is in the room, and you
really can see sort of like a little more the
dynamic between Joyce and my dad. And then right after that,
I'm in the car driving with my grandmother and my
dad and I'm asking my grandmother what was that like
for you to see Joyce after all these years, And
(45:50):
she's like, it was really good. And at the same time,
my dad he thinks I'm asking him the question, and
he's speaking over her and saying it was freakish, for
it was freakish, And my grandmother continues and she's like,
it was just really good to connect with her after
all these years, and there's this quality to it where
(46:10):
it's like my grandmother's doing this radical acceptance thing where
she's just like, I'm gonna embrace Joyce. I know that
this is something that is like, has been a real
pain in our family, and I'm just gonna embrace her.
And then my dad is feeling pain and my grandmother
is failing to connect with his pain and putting Joyce first,
(46:34):
saying that like, I think she needs this. I think
that she needs this connection with me. And I think
about this and I'm thinking like my grandmother's hip. She's
like done all these years of early childhood experience. She
really knows what's going on, and she's like, oh my gosh, Joyce, narcissism, abandonment, adoption.
She really hasn't had like warm, connective parental figures. However,
(46:58):
I am that for her a little bit, and I
can be that and I will play that role now.
At the same time, in the same beat, she's failing
to connect with her son over this pain, and my
dad he's somebody who has felt abused by Joyce in
their marriage. I feel for the whole situation. It's like,
(47:18):
here's grandmother trying to heal some ancient wound with Joyce,
trying to like, you know, provide this maternal role to her.
Joyce didn't feel like her adoptive parents really loved her.
She was put up for adoption at eighteen months by
(47:39):
her mother never reconnected with her. And then here's Grandma Dorris,
who has been a mother role to her mother in
law role to her, saying like I accept you, I
welcome you back in. Yet my dad is very distraught
and she's failing to see that there in the car.
(48:01):
This is a further level of elephant in the room.
I go with Sam later that night, he's making his
Halloween costume. I've been talking about clowns and all this.
You know, Joyce might be putting on a little bit
of a show for Halloween, but I don't know. And
I asked Sam how that was, and he's like, the
jury's out. I'm going to put off thinking about it.
(48:22):
That was too much for me. It definitely wasn't what
I expected. I never expected Joyce to like be at
Grandma's house ever again. So he's just he's just really confused,
and this is another level of kind of waking up.
I think for Sam. I think that there's many levels
of fantasy involved in this story. You know, some are like, hey,
(48:44):
I'm going to be the Blue Panton. I'm going to
like you know, I'm going to go and like find
my mom, you know. And then there's levels of like
I can tolerate this, like this is something I can handle.
And then there's when my mom comes up, It'll be
like old times. And I think that that's the most
sad part for me, is just like the holding onto
hope of like that he will get his mom back
(49:07):
in the way that he hopes. You know that this
sort of like like when we were all living together,
like when he used to be easy, and you know,
I'd see her all the time and we talk all
the time. And I think that that's the sad reality
is just that like the fantasy that you know that
Sam seems to hold around it over time is like
(49:30):
slowly crushed. And I think that what's extra sad about
it for me is just thinking about how knowing two
stable parents, my mom and my dad, I can kind
of like refer back to nostalgic times with them and
kind of see a through line to now. When I
think about Sam and Joyce and Jared and Joyce, they
(49:50):
think about how this disruption and time really did cause
a permanent shift that would need like a great amount
of repair work to get back to some level of
trust and security. I think that Jared got that a
bit more than Sam by living with her and like
(50:11):
really kind of immersing into her new world. Sam did
not get that, and it's been really challenging, and his
process with her has been more of a slow drip.
And they do, you know, they'll do phone calls maybe
once or twice a month and talk about the weather,
but nothing to tend not to talk about like emotional
(50:32):
things or like about the abandonment or about the movie.
They just keep it really basic. And then when they
do have visits, which is is like every few years now,
it seems like at the fastest clip, it's like visit
for a day and then leave. It's like, in Sam's words,
about as much as they can take of each other.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
And this was Sam choosing, really choosing himself for a
period of time, stop being in touch with Joyce and
then now having this much much more distanced, much more
sporadic relationship with her. I mean, there's a moment where
she says, because he's distanced himself that she felt that
(51:13):
he was punishing her, And it's said in such a
kind of befuddled way, like why would he do that?
Speaker 3 (51:19):
Why would he?
Speaker 2 (51:20):
Yeah, Sam does choose himself, and in so doing he
builds a life that, while certainly shaped by Joyce's abandonment,
also makes meaning out of his emotionally complex and traumatic experience.
This is all we can do, right, take what life
(51:41):
has handed us and make something true, something real, something
powerful from the ashes. By the time Read's film ends
in twenty twenty, Sam has a longtime partner. Bailey Reid
asks the couple whether they think they'll have kids. They
look at each other in a way, and then they
(52:04):
say that they're thinking about fostering and adopting. That's the
way they want to make a family. And that has
also become Sam's life's work. He does youth social work
with unhoused kids.
Speaker 3 (52:19):
It's so hard to know these things, right, I mean,
you know, Sam choosing to go into social work, Sam
choosing to work with young people who also are experiencing
like alienation from their parents, street youth. I think of this.
I think of, like, how how many youth are on
the street that are like disconnected from their parents, and
(52:39):
why all those trust issues, all these kind of same things.
Sam works with people like that. Now he's doing domestic
violence work, where he'll work with like high school sports
teams and like help them understand relationship concepts. He works
with survivors and domestic violence and does an amazing work.
(53:03):
The through line is so incredible. It's like his personal pain,
like this really big thing in his world is what
he's most committed to giving back and where he feels
the strongest calling. I find that really interesting and I'd
be interested to know if that's If that's true for
a lot of people in social work.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
I think it's true in my experience on this podcast
and just in my life of hearing a lot of
stories of a lot of trauma, that the capacity to
make meaning out of it is what saves us. And
there are multiple ways of making meaning out of trauma.
Some people make art out of trauma. Some people write
(53:44):
books out of trauma, some people make films out of trauma.
Some people go into the healing arts out of trauma,
some people go into psychology and social work out of trauma.
And you know, it strikes me as such an incredibly
healthy adaptation, because if we can make meaning out of something,
then we've stripped it of its power over us because
we've made something good out of it.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
Yeah. I like that, And I like how Sam sort
of uses this as a pattern breaking in his life too,
where he's like actively engaging in other people's stories and
learning about all these different tools and methods for how
to talk about relationships, like just being on the pioneering
(54:26):
side of relationship conversations, and that that is providing for
him this understanding, you know, for work that he needs
to do for himself. It's keeping him aware of it.
Yet at the same time he says things like, I
think a lot of my life has been helping other people,
(54:47):
so I don't have to face my own shit, you know, like, oh,
this person has it really rough, I'm gonna focus on
their thing. But also I see the awareness of trauma,
childhood trauma, the awareness of of like patterns in life,
and how you know, he starts replaying some of the
patterns that were handed down and how he's he begins
(55:09):
to actively say things like I want to break I
want to be the one to step out of this.
So these are the things where it's like what does
it take to truly break a generational pattern? But you know,
we've got Joyce's mother has in Japan put her up
for adoption. There's like maybe a first observation of an abandonment,
and then she's adopted to this American family who Joyce
(55:32):
claims didn't really love her or connect with her in
a way that would bring about security, and so there's
another level of abandonment. And then Joyce you know, of course,
like you know, gets to this point where she abandons
her own children, and then Sam comes to the awareness
that like he's capable of abandoning people. He's really scared
of that idea. And he has just kind of had
(55:53):
these relationships with girlfriends where he's just sort of walked
away with no feeling no oh, I just heard that person.
And he has become aware of it. He's done therapy
and he's like kind of like, oh my gosh, what
is this? So you know, lifetimes, lifetimes are happening. And
then we get to Sam and then Sam's like, how
do I address this? And you know, and I'm a
(56:15):
part of that too, with like, hey, I'm I'm recording
this all and I'm putting it out so that you
have it and also so that other families can look
at this. And then there's the patterning in the Harkness
family too, where it's like, what are the ways in
which we support these patterns that aren't seen? And I
think that that's the elephant in the room stuff, the secrecy,
(56:36):
the part where it's like it's uncomfortable to talk about
some things. That's where the things are allowed to ride
on forever unless we look at them, unless we feel
the fear and the pain of them. I think that
they just they'll just ride on. They'll stay there. The
skeletons will stay there. They'll stay right there in the
closet unless you open the door and look at it
(56:56):
and think about what it is, and then and then
it can potentially be free.
Speaker 2 (57:19):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zaccur is
the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
(57:40):
find me on Instagram at Danny Rider. And if you'd
like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1 (58:12):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets News
Host
Dani Shapiro
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