All Together Now: Fridays with The Moth - Nina McConigley

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Go back to All Together Now: Fridays with The Moth - Nina McConigley Episode.

 

Host: Aleeza Kazmi

 

Aleeza: [00:00:03] Welcome to All Together Now, Fridays with The Moth. I am your host for this week, Aleeza Kazmi. 

 

I have been part of The Moth family for five years. First, as part of the education program, then an intern, and most recently, an assistant producer. The last couple of months, like so many of you, I find myself growing more and more anxious about the looming uncertainty of the future. But I found comfort in traditions, even the small ones that I certainly took for granted before. 

 

For me and my family, one ritual we have held onto is, on the hottest days, we all buy Subway sandwiches and watch the sunset at the beach near our house. There is solace in knowing what is in store during these outings. The only thing that changes is the shade of the sky. Traditions, whether big or small, are a reminder that we are more grounded than we may think or feel. 

 

Our story today is from Nina McConigley, and it is all about traditions. Nina told this story at a Moth Mainstage in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where the theme of the night was Flirting with Disaster. Here is Nina, live at The Moth.

 

[cheers and applause]

 

Nina: [00:01:18] The first time I ever wore a sari, I was 13. Now, I grew up in Wyoming, which is not only the least populated state, it is also probably the whitest. And so, there is no place to buy a sari, so I wore my mom's. When we had moved to America, she had brought boxes of them. They are not the most practical thing for Wyoming winters with the wind and the snow, but that is okay. 

 

Growing up, I always thought I was the wrong kind of Indian. When people would ask me, "What are you?" I would say Indian. I would not correct them if they thought I was Arapaho or Shoshone. The other thing about growing up in Wyoming is that, you, as a kid, get to visit a lot of forts and historical sites and you can always dress as cowboy or Indian. I would be Indian, because it was easier. [audience laughter] 

 

I liked dressing up, until, on a fourth-grade trip, someone tried to scalp me while we looked at the Oregon Trail ruts. The thing I wanted when I was 13 was to be Dorothy Hamill. I wanted to be a figure skater. That summer, I had taken a picture of Dorothy Hamill to the Master Cuts at the mall and asked for her haircut. [audience laughter] When they were finished, I pretty much looked like a mushroom, [audience laughter] or a helmet, whatever you want to say. And my mom, when she picked me up, she had beautiful, long Indian hair, she did not say a word. But I did not want to be a good Indian girl. I wanted to be Dorothy Hamill. That summer, I also got my period.

 

Now, I was not surprised by it. I had read a lot of Judy Blume, [audience laughter] so I knew what was supposed to happen when you got your period. But I also knew what was coming, was that I was going to have a coming-of-age ceremony. In the part of India where my mom comes from, they do a ceremony to shepherd you into womanhood when you get your period. The ceremony is you have a ritual bath, you get clean, you get your first piece of gold jewelry, which, I think, goes to your dowry. You drink an egg to be fertile, a raw egg, and you wear a sari for the first time. I knew that was coming. 

 

So, I waited for about three periods before I said something to my mom. [audience laughter] And sure enough, soon after, on a Saturday morning, she and my aunt woke me up and they said, "Today, you are going to have your ceremony." It started with the ritual bath, which, when you are 13, being naked is a very horrific thing. Being naked in front of other people, even worse. So, I put on my Speedo, [audience laughter] which was purple and blue stripes. 

 

My mom and my aunt went through and they put some baby oil on my hair. Usually, it would be coconut oil. But they rubbed my hair. And then, they put me in the bath and dumped water over my head. After that, they spent about half an hour trying to make the Dorothy Hamill haircut into a bun on top of my head. They used a bunch of bobby pins, probably 50 of them. They strung my hair with carnations. 

 

My mom kept telling me like, "If we were in India, you would be having jasmine. We would just walk outside the door and pick this jasmine." I got my first piece of gold jewelry. It was a little necklace, and earrings that came from Zales at the mall. [audience laughter] I did not really like it, because it was the 1980s, I wanted to wear jelly bracelets and silver. [chuckles] I did not really care. But then, it came time for me to pick and wear a sari. I picked one of my mom's most simple saris. It was a pink one. It had a gold border. I had to wear one of her blouses, because there was not a place to get one, and it poofed out in front.

 

They slowly dressed me in the six yards of cloth that it takes to wrap you in a sari. When they finished, I looked at myself in the mirror and I did not know what I thought I looked like. After that, my mom ushered me into the living room, where she had invited a bunch of friends over to celebrate the fact that I had gotten my period. [audience laughter] I think a lot of our Wyoming friends did not get it. They thought they were coming to a birthday party, [audience laughter] because I got some gifts. We sat around and ate samosas and some carrot cake and [audience laughter] celebrated that I was a woman. If getting your period is not excruciating enough, celebrating it, [audience laughter] not good. [chuckles] 

 

I wore the sari for about an hour. And then, after that, I went into my bedroom and I rolled it up in a ball and I went back to reading my biography of Dorothy Hamill. The ceremony didn't mean that much to me. I didn't really care about it. But I knew it was my mom's way of trying to keep our Indian-ness. In Casper, where I grew up, there's no Indian restaurants. There's no Indian grocery store. We knew five other Indians. It was her way of keeping a bit of home of keeping that. 

 

When I was 23, about five days before I was supposed to leave Wyoming to go to graduate school in Boston, my mom was diagnosed with stage 3B cancer. I had my bags packed. The day before I was supposed to leave, I asked her oncologist. I said, “If you were me, would you go to graduate school?” And she said, no. And I thought, okay. So, I didn't get on the plane. Our life after that became this round of going to chemo and radiation and doctor's appointments. 

 

All of our Wyoming friends were great. They brought us a lot of food. Our refrigerator was heaving with lasagnas and casseroles and chicken noodle soup. But my mom didn't want to eat. She just stopped eating. One day, she said, “I just want some curd rice.” Now, I had never really cooked Indian food. That's what your Indian mom is for, is to cook you Indian food [audience laughter] I thought I think that for the rest of my life, I would just show up and rice and curry would magically appear.

 

So, I sat my mom down at the kitchen table. And from the table, she directed me in the kitchen. She told me how you make the rice, how you brown the mustard seeds, and you wait till they crack and how to temper the spices. I slowly but surely made her some curd rice, and she ate. Over the next few months, I made a little rotation of Indian dishes. One day, I went into her bedroom and she was really agitated and she said to me, “I had this dream that I died, and that you and your father and your sister buried me in a frilly pink nightgown.” [audience laughter] I shouldn't even own a frilly pink nightgown. I'd like to point that out for the record, but she said, “I don't want to be buried in Western clothes.”

 

Now, at this point in my life, we hadn't really talked about what would happen if she didn't make it. We just had been going to a lot of appointments. You don't talk about that. We didn't anyway. If my Indian cooking skills were low, my sari skills were lower, much lower. I hadn't really worn a sari that much since my coming-of-age ceremony. 

 

A few months before, when she had first gotten sick, she had to go to the emergency room. When we got to the ER, she had been wearing a sari. And of course, they tell you like, “No, you can't come in. Wait in the waiting room.” And about 10 minutes after she was admitted, a nurse, a really flustered nurse, came out and she said, “You have to unwrap your mother,” [audience laughter] like she was a gift. [audience laughter] 

 

I went into the hospital room, and I slowly started taking the sari off of her and putting her in a hospital gown. Sari, six yards of cloth, and I tried to fold it in the little hospital room and I couldn't get it folded and I just ended up shoving it in the plastic bag, balling it up in a plastic bag they give you in a hospital to put your things. So, that day when my mom said to me, “I can't be buried in Western clothes,” I said, “Okay, but you're going to have to teach me.” 

 

So, I went to her cupboard. My mom's saris are all stacked up. When you open it, it almost looks like books stacked up. I pulled out a sari. It was a green chiffon one. From the bed, she directed me on how to put the sari on, how to tie the petticoat really tight, and how you can put a knot in one corner and tuck it in, and how you pleat it and drape it. And I put the sari on, and then she had me take it off, and then she had me do it again and then she had me take it off, [chuckles] she had me do it again. And then, I did it on a Kanchipuram sari, I did it on a hand block sari and then finally, I helped get her up out of bed and I undressed her. 

 

I could see the marks on her body from where they do the radiation, they mark it. I slowly but surely started to dress her and she had a sari on. We stood there looking at ourselves in the mirror. We put bindis on and I put my hair in a ponytail. I realized the whole time that I was lying to her, because I could not dress my mother if she died. I could not dress a corpse. I mean, it is one thing to dress someone standing up, but I could not imagine dressing her that way. When we looked in the mirror, and I thought I was not just scared of losing my mother, I was really scared of losing my Indian-ness. Because if she died, who in Wyoming was going to teach me? Like, there is nobody. 

 

A miracle occurred in that a few months later, she went into remission, which we were all really happy for. I did end up going to graduate school. I left Wyoming, which was and it came back and life went on. The last time I wore a sari was a few months ago. I got married. Yeah, [chuckles] it was exciting. Got married. [audience applause] 

 

I did not think I wanted to be an Indian wedding or have an Indian wedding or be an Indian bride. But when I started looking through all the bridal magazines, I did not see myself wearing a big white dress. I knew I wanted to wear my mom's wedding sari. Now, my mom's wedding sari is the one sari that since we moved to America, she has never worn. It is wrapped in tissue paper in her closet. It is white, and it has got a lot of heavy gold brocade work on it. It is really heavy. When you hold it in your hands, it looks like sunlight.

 

When I unfolded it to look at it, I could see there were no stains on it. There was some red stain and I knew it was probably rasam or sambar from my parents’ wedding, 46 years ago. I took it to a dry cleaner in Wyoming, and he took one look at it and was like, “I have never cleaned anything like that.” So, I decided to just wear it, stains and all, for my wedding. I liked thinking there was a little bit of my parents’ wedding there with me that day. 

 

The morning of my wedding, I took a bath by myself this time. [audience laughter] But my mom and aunt came over, and even though I know how to put a sari on now, they dressed me and they slowly pleated and they did the draping and they adjusted the palu, which is the bit over your shoulder. My mom put a safety pin in my shoulder and on my waist, because she was sure I was going to unwrap during the ceremony. [audience laughter] When they were done dressing me, my mom looked at me and I looked in the mirror and I looked Indian. It felt really unfamiliar, but it also felt like home. Thank you.

 

[cheers and applause] 

 

Aleeza: [00:14:01] That was Nina McConigley. Nina was born in Singapore and raised in Casper, Wyoming. Her short story collection, Cowboys and East Indians, was the winner of the PEN Open Book Award and a High Plains Book Award. 

 

Nina gave birth to her own daughter a couple of months ago. She tells us that her daughter just had her Annaprashan, which is when a baby has their first taste of food. Nina says, "My mom gave my daughter her ritual bath and oiled her hair. Her first food was rice and dal. Doing the ritual during this time felt grounding. And now that I am a mother, I see why ceremony is important." To see some photos of Nina, her mom, and her daughter, head to our website themoth.org. 

 

If you are inspired to think more deeply about Nina's story, here are a few questions to get you started. Do you have a piece of clothing that makes you feel like yourself? What traditions have been passed down to you, and how do you honor them in your own life? You can also find these prompts and the Extras for this episode on our website, themoth.org/extras. 

 

That is all for this week. Until next time, from all of us here at The Moth, have a story-worthy week.

 

Julia: [00:15:20] Aleeza Kazmi is a former Moth assistant producer and alumna of The Moth Education Program. She began telling stories with The Moth in 2015. And her story, Pastels and Crayons has been heard on The Moth Radio Hour and published in Teen Vogue and The Moth’s third book, Occasional Magic.

 

Aleeza: [00:15:40] Podcast production is by Julia Purcell. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.