Tell me your secrets

Tonight my brother is spending his first night in a place he can't talk about. He's gotten a job with a government agency and is about to begin a 6 week training program. I was just thinking about whether that's too much to reveal on the internet, but then I realized that that's all I know about the situation: government job, gone for 6 weeks. Probably lots more, "I can't tell you that" in the future.

That makes two of the people closest to my heart who have loyalties that overrule me. At least, that's one overly dramatic and petty way to look at it. Another would be: both my husband and my brother are using their rare and valuable skill sets to serve the country, and hopefully the greater good. Neither view really feels right though, neither fits.

I've always prided myself on being able to keep a secret. I look at them almost as actual things, maybe like river rocks, that I am trusted to hold safe and to tend in the moments when they get too heavy for another person to carry. It seems like a vote of confidence in my character, some tacit approval of me as a person, when one is handed to me. I trust you, it says.

I have plenty of secrets myself, and have calculated their relative value over the years as one might appraise particularly old pieces of jewelry. Some lose their value naturally over time as the people or situations involved loosen their holds on me and each other. Some lose their value with the telling, and sometimes this is a good thing-- one of the best ways to release a secret's hold on you, if it's truly yours to begin with, is to share it. There's relief in that.

But some you can't, shouldn't, let go of. Some you're stuck with, either because you promised to keep them for someone else, or because they're yours, but you know others would be hurt by your telling.

I think some people can live easily with the secrets others have entrusted to them stowed at the back of a dusty mental shelf, maybe even eventually forgotten. I can't-- I hold those given to me close, and think about them often. This is not an appraisal of their value like I would give them away, but rather an appreciation of a valuable gift. Trust is very much like love, and it's easy (and maybe not always harmful) to confuse the two.

When I first realized that my husband's job would require him to keep things from me, I was incredulous and a little exhilarated-- it was the feeling of being in a museum and never wanting to touch the sculpture until you see the sign that says "Do Not Touch," and then it's like your hand burns with the not touching, and the distance between the sculpture and your fingertips suddenly seems electrically charged and so easily breached. I could touch it, I'm just not supposed to. And why not? I'd be so careful, so gentle.*

*A 50 cent secret: I touched the tomb of Henry V in Westminster Abbey, even though the plaque said not to. That's always given me a little thrill.

The fact that there will be-- or maybe already are-- things my husband isn't allowed to tell me about his job is maddening. It's a boundary I'm committed to steering clear of, but not without a little twinge of resentment. After all, my job is telling my secrets-- much of writing is measuring out little chunks of secrets, like a bread crumb trail in a forest, and hoping they lead somewhere worth going, some place worth the price of admission. Secrets can explain who we really are, what it means to be human.

It makes sense, both in principle and in our particular case, for my husband and my brother to keep professional secrets from me. But it hurts. It hurts in the little kid way of being told you can't play, you're not allowed, and it hurts in a more adult way of being separated, in danger of disconnection. It also hurts in a whole different way because both my husband and my brother will conceivably face a significant level of danger, and I'm not allowed to know about it.

Joan Didion says writers are always selling someone out, but I disagree. In the end it's not the secrets themselves that I'll miss knowing (I imagine most of them are pretty boring anyway), it's the connection with the person holding them, the feeling of being trusted. In this case maybe it is harmful to confuse trust with love-- I know my husband's and my brother's love for me won't be diminished by the things they aren't allowed to tell me, and in fact maybe my respect for this boundary will lead to a deeper level of trust in each of those relationships. It's just hard not to worry.