Secrets by Donny Kaye

My nine year old granddaughter told me yesterday that secrets can be good or bad.  She went on to say that a secret was good if you have just gotten a new puppy and want to surprise someone with it.  When I asked her about when secrets are bad she said, “Papa, you just feel bad inside with some secrets”.  As Lauren answered me, I recognized once again, how early in life we are introduced to secrets and how they typically register at the earliest of ages as “making you feel badly inside” and fill one with confusion, disconnection and wonder about the truth.

Last Saturday, the lay organist searched out the melodious tune of Amazing Grace on the transportable electric keyboard organ in the gathering area at the small town funeral home.  I was intrigued to watch members of my extended family solemnly entering the memorial service in remembrance of their recently deceased loved one, my aunt.    As I witnessed their somber entrance, I was filled with fleeting remembrances of my own of the stories that are part of my heritage in the Irish Catholic family I grew up in.  Most of the stories I was recalling have been figured out in time, realizing that secrets flourish in my family’s history.

          My cousin Mary spoke so eloquently at her mother’s funeral the other morning.  There is still confusion in the family about her children and husband.  It seems that after she was first married and had a child, she left her husband and child for the man next door and his children.  No one has ever breathed a word about this episode.  It’s treated more like she got confused one night and entered the wrong house when she came home and no one ever had courage enough to correct her error. 

There is the secret about Cousin Bill who one day just disappeared from the family.  As a child I watched the eye brows raise in the hush of the conversation about Bill. He was older and really cool and one of my cousins who I enjoyed the most.  Where did he go?  What could he have done that resulted in such secrecy? Years later I learned that he was gay and just disappeared because it seemed easier than to try and find acceptance within the family.  

Or Cousin Diane, whose children just disappeared one day, leaving all of the others of us kids wondering if the same could happen to us, and nothing would be said. 

To add to the confusion and deceit there was Cousin Rogene, who after an extended stay in California, returned home with triplets.  I was only ten and couldn’t understand how that happened.  Only at her funeral some fifty years later did I learn that the triplet’s father had secretly continued to visit his lover, my cousin, on weekends when he could travel to Denver, leaving behind his other wife and children in California.  It would have been nice to know that she really hadn’t gone through life totally alone as a single mom. 

And Amazing Grace played on.

As I was overcome by emotions sitting in the memorial service as a result of the, “bad feelings inside”, to quote my granddaughter Lauren, I found it difficult to breath knowing my own story of secrecy related to my homosexuality and I wondered how my deceit  would ever find a place of acceptance and understanding within my family? No wonder my Cousin Bill just disappeared one day.

On Friday night before the funeral, I was visiting with my niece, who is my age mate and who grew up with me more as my sister who lived next door. We were recalling humorously, our learning in high school that one of our family had been suspended from school because of the “m” word.  The only “m” word that she understood at that point in her life was menstruation.   Did this mean boys menstruated too?  This secret confused her for a number of years; thinking that she didn’t want to get caught having her period at school, for fear that she would get suspended like our cousin.  She was in her late twenties when she realized our Cousin William had been suspended for getting caught masturbating at school.  Oh, that “M” word!  Needless to say, not only do secrets make you feel bad inside, they can create situations of immense confusion and major misunderstanding.

         It seems that sexual secrets abound in our family.  My sister, who was sixteen years my senior, recalled for me long after I was married that our mother had bitterly handed her a brown paper bag as she prepared to leave her wedding reception.  In the bag was a jar of Vaseline and a douche bag.  Our mother’s words to her on this significant occasion were, “Here, you will need these!”  These were the only words ever spoken to my sister about sex.  This exchange of the brown paper bag constituted her sex education it seemed.   

In the hours since this weekend’s family gathering, I’ve not only been aware of “feeling badly” about the secrets I have created and allowed in my life, I’m also aware of anger and sadness that comes up for me.  I know that there has been no spaciousness within my life experience for fifty some years, regarding my sexuality. As I realize this, I also recognize that I have been the one agreeing to and perpetuating the secret concerning my sexuality.  As my granddaughter said to me yesterday, some secrets are good, some bad.  Out of fear and a sense of inadequacy within me to language my sexuality, I created the secret in my life related to who I am. 

         Secrets, despite them creating bad feelings and a sense of disconnection, isolation and separateness, you’ve got to laugh.  Secrets revealed or not can be quite humorous.

What I recognize now is that living the secret is far more energy consuming than living the truth.  Others do figure it out, eventually.  The real price of having a secret comes at the expense of the one living the secret.  After all, only my closest friends realized the enjoyment I had shopping for my aunt’s funeral  for the perfect muted pattern scarf in purple, pink and red to wear with my European cut pink shirt and skinny jeans.

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