Episode 6: The Nuclear Option

Jacqueline Furlin-Smith, a 40-year-old former Canadian military trainer, moves to Costa Rica to follow her dreams,

but in the summer of 2021, vanishes without a trace.

How can a woman just go missing and us put out all that effort to find her?

And she's still missing.

I'm David Rigen and this is someone knows something season 10, the Jacqueline Furlin-Smith case.

Available now on CBC Listen and wherever you get your podcasts.

This is a CBC Podcast.

I don't remember this because I was six years old when it happened and asleep upstairs.

But my parents were downstairs watching on their tiny black and white TV.

It was 1989 and the Berlin Wall was finally open.

Tungers than thousands of East Berliners were streaming west through the checkpoints in cars on foot.

The guards were not shooting. If anything, they'd look confused.

After nearly 30 years of being separated by concrete, west Berliners were climbing 12 feet to the top of the wall

and helped up any East Berliners who couldn't quite get up there themselves.

Young men wearing t-shirts despite the November cold were slamming chisels with hammers trying to break the reinforced stones.

A woman with her feet dangling over the side of the wall was spraying the crowd with champagne.

My mother was watching with tears rolling down her cheeks.

She couldn't believe it. That cruel wall was coming down.

My mother felt the wall in a way my father didn't because she'd seen it in person seven years before.

This was before I was born. Why she took the trip she couldn't tell me.

The wall had just seemed absurd. On the news, it was a fat black line on the map.

But what about the people who lived there who had to see it every day?

So my mother had traveled to Berlin to see it for herself.

The experience had never stopped haunting her.

Miles of thick concrete running ramshot through homes that had been boarded up and over tram tracks that could no longer be used.

On the eastern side, there was a no-man's land, maybe 300 feet deep, with barbed wire dogs and watchtowers,

manned by armed guards who were ordered to shoot on sight if he did as much as enter that zone.

One night my mother went back. The dogs were howling, pulling their chains.

They must have heard something, someone.

And then seven years later, it all ended.

Political prisoners were released. Family and friends were reunited. Europe was whole again.

I could never see the footage without crying. And my parents had seen it live on the news.

They had seen these usually historic Germans.

Men said they were 40 years old.

You fork.

Falling into each other's arms.

So my mother told my dad, we have to be there.

I was curious what she imagined doing once we were there.

And he faced me.

So simple as that.

But my dad didn't think it was simple.

The drive was long, eight hours. We kids were young, six and three.

Money was tight, so a hotel was probably out of the question.

My mom was not worried.

If we have to, she told my dad, we'll sleep in the car. Or we don't sleep.

But my dad did not want to go. And we never went.

I asked my mom if they got into an argument.

But she told me they didn't.

I was very disappointed, she said.

But she also thought, maybe he's right.

It isn't practical to put your sleeping kids in the car, drive all night.

You know, my mom said, your dad is more rational than I am.

That word, rational, really stuck in my ear.

All good things are irrational. Love for starters.

But so much else, throwing a party, learning to play chess, nursing an orchid.

It's a hassle. Life is one big hassle.

But what is the alternative? Sitting on the couch?

That's what my dad did.

I'd always promised myself, I would be different.

It turned out, I was not.

I'm Haley Naldecholtz. And from CBCs, personally, this is creation myth.

There was going to be a solar eclipse.

Brendan loved a kind of thing.

Stars, planets, meteor showers, asteroids racing through the solar system.

He loved it both for the science and because he was very romantic.

He told me, I've never seen a solar eclipse.

It would be beautiful to see it with you.

I knew the next one within driving distance was not soon, 2007-something.

I would be close to 100, or dead.

Brendan was right. We should go.

Then I started thinking about the practical side.

The eclipse was three minutes, the drive, six hours.

We didn't have money for an Airbnb, so we'd be sleeping in a tent in the snow.

My whole body tensed up. I knew it was special, but I just couldn't do it.

So just like my dad, I said no.

Then the most ridiculous thing happened.

A teeny tiny earthquake hit New York.

On social media, someone posted a picture of the damage in their yard on Long Island.

A plastic lawn chair had fallen over. That was pretty much the extent of it.

But I had felt it.

Tectonic plates had vibrated my floorboards and rattled my windows.

Life on Earth was a miracle.

Three days later, at 3.02 pm, Brendan and I were sitting on a blanket by a lake

ready with our special glasses.

This guy was cloudy, and the guy behind us wouldn't stop yapping.

But here we were, leaning into each other while looking up, feeding each other snacks.

I tried to remind myself that you have to say yes to things, to say yes to miracles.

And I knew about the greatest miracle of all.

I'd heard it over and over and over again.

The greatest miracle you could ever experience when you were alive on planet Earth was...

Yep.

Then it was late June.

I had four more days to decide if I was going to get my tubes tied.

Four days.

What the hell was I doing?

I had gone over this with my therapist, Brendan, my friends.

I only saw one option.

The nuclear option.

I would ask a stranger.

Let them decide.

Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson, and I host the Daily News Podcast, Front Burner,

and lately I'll see a story about, I don't know, political corruption or something

and think, during a normal time, we'd be talking about this for weeks.

But then it's almost immediately overwhelmed by something else.

On Front Burner, we are trying to pull lots of story threads together so that you don't lose a plot.

So you can learn how all these threads fit together.

Follow Front Burner wherever you get your podcasts.

Here was my plan.

Since clearly I couldn't decide if I should get sterilized or have a kid,

I would ask someone who knew nothing about me had no stake in my life and wouldn't mince words.

Hello.

Okay, can you hear me?

I can.

We knew each other, but barely.

He was an artist of some kind, and years before I'd been hired to engineer and interview with him.

All I had done was check the levels, hit record, and then stared into the middle distance for a few hours,

while someone on the other side of the country asked questions.

But some form of communication must have passed between us, because once the recording was over,

neither of us got up to leave.

We started talking and didn't stop, especially I didn't stop, because I was in a great mood.

Back when David and I had only just moved to New York, I could not believe the creative projects I got to work on,

following nothing but my own curiosity.

I couldn't know that my stories reminded him of the life he once lived, which he could still live,

that I was twisting the knife.

He almost never talked about his situation.

But now he did.

He had a three-year-old, and he hated being a dad.

We talked for maybe an hour and a half, and then we never talked again.

So I didn't know how he'd been all this time.

I certainly didn't know that he was now living abroad with his family, him, his wife, and their kid.

All I knew was that somewhere deep in my emails from five years before I still had his contact info.

I didn't tell him what I was recruiting him for, that he was going to decide if I was going to have a kid or get my tubes tied.

I just asked like a normal person if he'd be on my podcast.

Sam, let's call him Sam, agreed almost immediately on one condition.

I want zero traceable facts to me.

I'm doing this for the sake of truth, and something that's been inside of me for a very long time.

I found a filter that made his voice unrecognizable.

We also came up with a cover.

Can I say that you're an artist?

Yeah, I think maybe I'm a DJ, but not that.

Well, I like that DJ.

And instead of Sam and Cisco.

Sure, Sam is a DJ inside for Cisco.

I am like so clear on that, dude.

I will fucking give you all the dirt of Sam as a DJ from San Francisco.

Sam.

But I was in Australia.

Can I know?

Oh my god, he sounds so douchey though.

He does count kind of douchey.

Let me know what that works for you.

I was happy to see him again on my computer screen.

He hadn't changed much.

Maybe his hair was grayer, but then only added to his charm.

He said the same about me that I hadn't changed.

I knew he was lying, but why let the Jews get in a way of a compliment?

Once we traded a few of those back and forth, I got down to business.

Because I knew some things about his experiences with parenthood, but not the basics.

Like, how did he even decide to have a kid?

I mean, everyone was kind of having kids at that time.

You know, I was like newly married and really necessarily even wanted baby.

But we're like, let's just do it because we're getting too old.

Uh-huh.

You know, it's not a small decision that I know that most people know that,

and I wish I understood it at the time.

But he understood the moment his son was born.

I saw my son, and I did not feel good.

I had postpartum.

My wife did not.

Did she know?

Not in the first six months or so.

It's too hectic in the first six months.

But soon after that, she felt it.

And we talked about a lot.

She gave me an out.

She did?

Yeah.

Because I was crying in my car a lot.

Because I was very unhappy.

Did you get angry?

Like, were you angry with her wife?

Were you angry with yourself?

Like, did you...

I was angry with myself.

I was not angry with my wife.

I was not angry with my child.

I was not mad at myself.

It was me.

You didn't think this through.

You fucking idiot.

You have to go make a shit ton of money right now.

Money was not a thing that I did really well.

That was now one of my fangs.

You know?

And that's an important part of fucking raising a child in America.

So instead of traveling the country and playing in front of large crowds of people every night,

Sam got a real job, not just because it paid better,

but because kids need stability.

And stability usually deals with repetition, right?

It's tied off in repetition and constants, right?

Yeah.

And so it's fucking boring.

But I realized too late that if you're bored, like you're having a kid,

you have a wife in your home and you're eating dinner,

and it's fucking Tuesday, you're doing it right.

It sucks to be you because you're fucking bored

and your life was the opposite of anything remotely close to what it is now.

I used to thrive on literally how do I make every day different?

Look at your life, right?

Look at your life in New York when I met you.

This was part of the envy that I felt.

You were like walking around town doing your thing with a microphone.

You loved New York.

You were on your adventure.

You were thinking of ideas for your next project, right?

Like all of that stuff is off the table.

Like you're not walking around thinking of your next project.

That part gets consumed if not temporarily, then permanently,

you know, or plenty of it at least permanently.

Permanently.

That's interesting.

So when I met you, I felt like I fucked up.

I felt like not that having a kid is wrong.

Just that for me, I had not done the research, man.

I hadn't done the research to know what I would be giving up.

What if you give everything up, but it's not what you thought it would be?

What did you think it would be?

I don't know.

I didn't connect with him.

The way that my wife did.

And I thought that I would.

Did you think it was like going to be a package deal?

Like you were going to be a parent and you were going to feel like a parent?

I'm going to tell you something outrageously ridiculous.

But the night before my wife had the baby, I masturbated.

And I genuinely thought to myself, well, that's the last time I'm going to do that.

I'm going to have a kid tomorrow.

You were like, I'll probably want to have time for this or?

I don't think it's time.

It's just like I'm going to be in another zone of just life.

And it's going to be amazing.

And I will be a new version of myself.

That's where my head was at.

I was like, once the kid comes, I'm not going to want to do this anymore.

I'm a parent now.

And how quickly...

Honestly, I'm saying it out loud.

It's fucking stupid.

Just what did you interview me for?

I'm like a moron.

But we all are.

Oh my God.

I connected this so deeply, seriously.

I recognized this desire for transformation.

That's what I was promised to.

The moment I laid eyes on my child, something would happen.

Physics itself would split my atoms and release an endless capacity for self-sacrifice

and a desire to delete TikTok and learn about the trees in the neighborhood instead.

How quickly after you became a parent did you realize,

oh wow, I am not that different person that I thought I'd be...

Oh, it's so brutal.

It never happened, right?

So there was just...

You have the kid to take them home.

It's chaos.

And I'm like waiting for this moment to wear a mic.

Oh, man, you keep putting it off.

Oh, maybe it's just the first two weeks.

The first six weeks...

There's always this fucking guideline, you know?

You go, oh, well, in six weeks, oh, maybe like we're out of this really hard part.

And I'll feel that other thing once the baby's sleeping through the night.

Oh, he has a rat.

Oh, hey, when the rash goes away, I'll probably sleep better.

And then we'll be able to get in the zone of what our life is.

Really going to be like.

Yeah.

Then, honestly, until he started school, by the way,

which was fucking awesome,

go learn some shit and go...

Someone else take care of this person for like a day

because she, that's when you're like,

oh, this is what life is like.

And it's not because I don't want to be with my kid, dude.

It's just that your life is a fucking kid dropped in the middle of your house, man.

Your life with your partner, who you love.

And now there's a kid there.

Then you're both like, what the fuck do we do?

No one's there to help you.

It was like, I got it.

Why don't you guys go get a coffee?

Like, no, it's there.

For like five years, which changes both of you.

Yeah.

And then they go, and you're like, holy fuck, we made it.

That's definitely a finish line, like the first finish line,

the six weeks thing, six months as bullshit.

You're fucking dealing with a kid.

It's hard.

But then they go to school and you're like, okay, now you get like five hours a day back, man.

I want to go back to something that you said earlier.

You said that, you know, you talked to your wife.

And you said that she gave you an out.

Did you ever consider that?

I couldn't do it.

I just, it's a scene where you're just damn, like, first of all, you're just, you're being a dick.

I had the baby on purpose, man.

It's not like it was an accident.

Do you know what I mean?

Sure.

See it through, motherfucker.

Like, you know, this is too big a deal.

This is, this is two lives.

You're gonna fuck up for what?

It's for what, man.

I have to say I was surprised that Sam had not left his family.

Plenty of dads leave.

It's not great, but you can be a dad and leave.

And people will still talk to you.

But if you're a mom and you walk out on your family,

the smear campaign will chase you out of town.

Maybe you'd even have to change your name.

Moms have to stay.

Even if that means that the rest of your life might be filled with regret.

The rest of your life.

To that point,

you and ask me, well, I'm telling you, just run a fucking podcast.

So here we go.

If you asked me,

when my kid was three,

if I regret it,

I would have said yes.

If you asked me now,

who would say no?

Oh, well, why?

My kid just got older, honestly.

And your kid is what, eight now, right?

He's eight, yeah.

Yeah.

You know what?

I started to get returned on my investment.

That's a stupid fucking way to say it.

But like, your kid gets older

and they start fucking doing shit.

Instead of just sitting around

fucking playing with wood toys.

Like, they start doing stuff,

and that's a super narcissistic perspective

that my kid's finally giving back to me.

But fuck you.

I gave everything for four fucking years.

Now the kid's like,

hey, Dad, let's go to that.

Let's go to your favorite, like Thai food.

You love Thai food.

Yeah.

You know what?

Dad, do you know any riddles?

You go to the store.

You go to the store.

You buy like 600 books on riddles.

Like, you just hang out all that.

Because now you're engaging with the fucking person, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I like to engage with people.

That's why you and I got on.

We were engaging each other, you know?

Right, right.

I can't stand people who I can't fucking engage with in a real way.

And the child is one of those people

for the first four years.

And mind you, you gave up everything.

There's definitely might be people

who have had children who can wipe people

as soon as they're like,

this guy's a fucking asshole.

And let me tell you,

you're having a great experience.

I'm happy for you.

You're connected with your child at the gate.

And when you're connected to them in that way,

everything's engagement,

even when they're crying.

And fucking being annoying

or doing some dumb shit or ignoring you,

it's still engagement.

I see my wife.

She has the connection.

She is always connected.

Mm-hmm.

It wasn't the case,

and it might not be the case for some people.

If there was a way for you to reach through time,

what would you tell you before you had a kid?

Fuck.

What I would say is like,

people who have kids experience more joy and more pain

than people who don't.

It's not better or worse, too.

You're starting a long arc when you have a kid.

Like, it's a long arc, Ben.

And you will not have that if you don't have a kid.

That's not a threat.

That's just a fact.

You won't have this like,

well, fuck, now I have a kid.

You have to go through all the shit.

All of it.

The first three years stock,

the next four years are

find the school,

blah, blah, blah,

you blew, figure out who they are,

keep them safe,

and then like 20 years later,

they go to college.

Maybe.

Seems like they're what if they were your kid?

Is your job over?

No.

Mm-hmm.

That's the thing they used to cry about.

It's never to be over.

It's an unchangeable fact.

But also, you have a,

for the rest of your life,

you have this person.

Yeah.

If all goes according to plan.

Not to help you,

whatever, but like,

to guide them,

you get to see their life,

you get to build their life,

you get to inform them.

Mm-hmm.

To shit, you know.

But also, it never goes away,

and their responsibility never goes away.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, like it's fucking scary,

you're annoying,

and it's there forever.

Forever.

God, it weighs so much.

It weighs so much, man.

And you grew stronger,

or the weight got less, or what?

I mean, I definitely grew stronger.

I definitely rose to the occasion,

especially in the last few years,

or just feel like I'm up for it.

But if I became a better person,

I did it reluctantly.

Let me say that.

Reluctant or not,

Sam had been transformed,

in a pretty big way, too.

He was no longer the guy

toiling away at a job he hated,

in a city he hated.

Also, he could take care of a family

he regretted having.

He changed pretty much everything.

Packed up his life,

moved across the ocean,

and now he lived with his family

in a country with great beaches

and socialized healthcare,

which allowed him to get his music career back on track.

And those feelings of regret were gone.

It took years,

and it hadn't been easy.

It wasn't that every transformation,

you were confronted with something hard,

and then you rose to the occasion.

I know that people don't,

that they can't give advice

about this,

but I'm asking you.

Should I have a kid or no?

I thought you'd never ask.

Dude, you know what?

No, it's ever fucking asked that directly,

and I think people should.

Not because you're gonna take my advice,

but I think fucking information is important.

If I had information earlier,

I would at least been able to fucking do the, like,

manage it, dude.

Yeah.

You know, I didn't have the information

to fucking manage it,

and I made it really hard for my wife,

and I wasn't a great dad in those early years.

So I think that's smart to ask, like,

question, I think people should fucking walk around

asking that question to different people.

Do you think I should have a kid?

Tell me about your situation.

What is the reality of your situation?

So let's answer your question.

It's a fucking great question.

My Lord,

do you want a kid?

The story has always been no.

I'm just wondering to what degree it's just a story.

Definitely just a story.

There's no truths, right?

And ultimately,

you'll never know the answer to that, right?

You can have a baby and be like,

what the fuck?

I should have had three of these.

Ten years ago.

God damn it.

But are you bored?

No.

Yes.

No.

You're a shit on your plate that you're excited about.

Very.

What's your financials?

Bad.

Your parents are in Belgium.

Yes.

Any family nearby?

No.

There's bad foot to start up.

Bad financials, no family, and my boy.

People move home for a fucking reason, Helena.

They don't do it because they failed.

They move home because they fucking are like,

I need help.

Are you okay with moving back to Belgium?

No.

And my partner's from Minneapolis,

and I am also not very drawn to the Midwest.

Fuck that.

Fuck that.

Minneapolis is a great city,

just to be totally clear.

But a New Yorker leaving to go to Minneapolis

to raise a kid?

Dude, I don't know.

My bets are fucking...

They're not on your side of a line yet.

I'm not saying there's the right answer, dude.

I'm just saying you're a great candidate for my speech.

Which is be fucking careful.

Because it's hard in ways that you can't see.

Yeah.

Did the truth is, sister?

And I just...

I mean this, man.

You can't know.

You can't fucking know what you're gonna feel.

That's the risk that I've been talking about this whole time.

That's what I realized when I cry in my car.

How can I have fucking known this?

Yeah.

I don't know, man.

You're at the fucking precipice, man.

This is whether or not you want to jump.

And you won't be drawn either way.

You will be...

Let me say this.

You will be disappointed, either way.

I love this.

I love how you...

Yes, I relate to your, like,

let's land on the negative.

I'm the same.

But I think it's...

That's not negative, dude.

That's not negative.

I fully...

I disagree with you.

Okay.

It's just factual.

Ten years from now,

you're either gonna have a 10-year-old.

Yeah.

Might be in Belgium and feel okay about it.

Yeah.

Or you'll be in New York.

Wondering what life would be like.

Yeah.

But do you think I wouldn't wonder, either way?

That's what I'm saying.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, you can wonder is what at the pages

were fucking different story, man.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

That's on logistical infrastructure problem about life.

Is there once it passes you,

you can't fucking change it.

Yeah.

And you can always question it.

Yeah.

So there's no really wrong answer.

Yeah.

We'd been talking for nearly three hours.

My brain was mush.

So I wrapped up the conversation.

All right.

We're good.

Yeah, we're good.

You can hit stop on the recorder.

Okay.

All right.

And then just try to pick a path that makes sense.

Yeah, sadness is inevitable, man.

It's life.

It will be regret too.

But we're going to be okay.

I closed my laptop and opened the door of my closet.

Cool air rushed in.

What if that was all there was to it?

Just pick a path and deal with whatever sadness

and regret comes up.

Because they did come up.

All it took was a baby in sunglasses

or a picture of Brendan as a five year old rock star

singing his heart out in the fire poker.

And each time I had taken that pinch in my heart

as a sign that I was making a mistake.

But what if it was not a sign just a feeling

that I could have and then let go?

As so often with a profound insight,

it seemed obvious once I had it.

It was almost embarrassing, like a headline in the onion.

A local woman has complicated feelings

about complicated question.

I was a smart person.

I could handle complexity.

Why had it taken me so long to accept my complicated feelings

around having kids?

Maybe because I'd been forced into a simple stance.

By people trying to convince me

and me saying for years and years,

nope, don't want them and yep, absolutely sure.

Who was the first person who'd said I was making a mistake?

Maybe the man I happened to sit next to on a packed train

when I was 20 or 21.

You'll never know love is profound, eats in.

Then there was a doctor who'd refused to tie my tubes,

my closest friends, cigarette and Joshua,

and of course, David.

More than anything else,

it was his year's long pressure campaign

that had turned me militant.

I couldn't afford to share my moments of doubt with him.

He'd have helped them over me until I caved.

But I was no longer under attack.

Joshua and cigarette had come round.

David and I had divorced.

Brendan believed me.

A new doctor was ready to tie my tubes.

Maybe with no one pushing me to be sure,

I no longer had to pretend I was.

So maybe that's how it would be.

I would always feel some doubt.

Even surgery would not fix that.

I made a note to cancel the appointment.

Then I walked into my living room.

The ivy in front of my windows was casting shadows on the wall.

It was hard to resist making shapes with my fingers,

a duck, a rabbit, a wolf.

But it felt a little silly without a kid to entertain.

Maybe that's one of the reasons people have kids.

To marvel at something like shadows without feeling like a goof.

But we all liked shadows.

Isn't that why a few months before thousands of people

had traveled to the path of totality,

paying an arm and a leg for a hotel or an Airbnb,

or shivering in a tent?

Also, we could spend three minutes marveling

at the shadow of our little moon

as it slid perfectly over the giant sun.

And kids are a miracle.

But so are we.

The light had changed and the shadows were gone.

But I was here, alive on a planet filled with miracles.

All I had to do was get off my couch.

Music

Creation myth is written, produced, hosted,

and sound designed by me Helena Dichrot.

My story editor and senior producer is Veronica Simmons.

Editorial sound design support by Brendan Baker,

who also mixed and mastered the episode.

Special thanks to Sam for making the brutal truth

this funny, from becoming my friend.

And special thanks to my mother, Annika Von the Veldo,

for showing me how to seize the moment,

whether it's a Berlin wall coming down or just a sunny day.

And I want to thank both my parents

for never pressuring me to have kids.

The team behind Creation myth further includes Anna Ashite,

who is our coordinating producer.

Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak.

Tanya Springer is the senior manager.

Arif Nurani is the director and Leslie Murklinger

is the executive director of CBC podcasts.

The audio of the Berlin wall coming down is from ITN Archive.

This project was made possible with the support of VPM media corporation.

I'll be back next week with a new episode.

But while you're waiting, there is something else

and the personally a feed for you.

A show titled Short Sighted.

The person who made it, Graham Isador,

is losing his vision and finding a layer to life he never knew existed.

You should check it out.

And I'll see you next week.

And if you want to binge the whole series, add free,

you can subscribe to our CBC Stories Premium channel on Apple Podcasts.

Just click the link in the show description.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcast.