Host: Jay Allison
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift]
Jay: [00:00:12] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. And I'm Jay Allison, producer of this radio show. This hour is dedicated to fathers, to having a father, to being one, and to celebrating the stories that fatherhood provokes. These are all true stories, which, as some might agree, are the best kind.
So, you like real stories better than made up stories?
Mason: [00:00:36] Yeah, basically.
Jay: [00:00:38] Why?
Mason: [00:00:39] Because I like to hear what happens to people.
Jay: [00:00:43] I agree with you. How about you?
Milo: [00:00:47] Right now, these days, I'm preferring nonfiction. Because it's fun to hear about real things. Because it's also fun to hear about made up things. But now that I'm growing up, I want to hear about people's lives.
Jay: [00:01:04] That's pretty much how we feel here at The Moth. Those are a couple of my kids, by the way, Mason and Milo. And we'll hear from them a little as we go on.
But let's start off with a story from Karen Jones. She told it at our Ann Arbor StorySLAM competition, where we partner with Michigan Public Radio. Here's Karen Jones.
[cheers and applause]
Karen: [00:01:28] Good evening. In early November of 1968, I had just returned home from my high school powderpuff football practice, worn out, but with enough energy to corner my dad and ask him to come to my football game that weekend. My dad did his usual. He shook his head no and walked out of the room. But this time I followed, and I said, "Dad, do you realize you've never been to any of my school functions for my entire life? I really want you to come to my game. This is really important to me." And he shook his head, no. [chuckles] And I started to cry. I never cried. I was tough, and my dad knew it, but he was tougher, and he walked out of the room.
So, the weekend came. As I was running out the door to go to my football game, I said to my dad, "Are you going to make it?" He muttered, "I'll try." So, on the football field, I'm looking at the bleachers in the crowd, and I'm scanning like a raptor. I see my dad. My heart soars, adrenaline is flooding my body, and I play like I've never played before. My name and number 88 echo over the loudspeaker over and over again.
And right around the second quarter, it had turned dark and cold and started to snow. I look in the bleachers and my dad's gone. I look down the sidelines and he's walking away. So, I sprint down the field and I said-- I'm yelling, "Dad. Dad, don't leave." He stops and turns around and looks at me with this vacant, hollowed stare that he always had and walks away. I don't remember any more about the game. It was a blur.
When I got home that night, I do remember that my dad was passed out on his chair with his best friend Jack Daniels next to him. I covered him up with a blanket and I went to bed. I never thought about that [chuckles] until I was writing for my dad's memorial. And every thought I had, every memory I had of my dad was painful and disappointment. So, I called my older brother and I told him I was struggling. He said, "Yeah, I am, too." And at the end of the conversation, he said, "You know, Karen, Dad was only 16 years old when he entered World War II."
I knew my dad had fought in the front lines of the Battle of the Bulge. So, I typed Battle of the Bulge into the search engine, and I learned that my dad fought in a battle that was 40 miles wide and 60 miles deep with 500,000 German soldiers and 600,000 American soldiers. And he fought through Christmas time with very little relief, very little supplies. And there were thousands and thousands of casualties on both sides. My dad smelled, heard, and saw things that to this day I can never comprehend.
And then, I read what John Eisenhower wrote, a great historian. He wrote, "In the crucible of the battle, a possible allied defeat was transformed into a victory. And it broke the back of Hitler's war machine. And those that served and accomplished this great feat deserve to be recognized in America's great. America's great." And I started to cry. I weeped for a long, long time. I thought about that night at the football game [chuckles] and how it had started to snow and it turned cold, a trigger for my dad's PTSD.
And the crowd, my dad hated crowds. He must have had his fill of those 500,000 German soldiers and 600,000 American soldiers. And noises, the cheering of the crowd. My dad was really sensitive to loud noises. So, thinking about that night, I realized that both my dad and I at 17 were on a battlefield. [chuckles] Me fighting for my dad's love and my dad fighting for his life. The difference was I was dodging players while my dad was dodging bullets. We're both teenagers. In the cold snow, I went home to a warm bed, not realizing that my dad had slept on the ground in the cold snow for many months.
It took me a long time to realize that my dad had stepped back onto that battlefield for me that night. It must have taken a lot of courage for him to do that and a huge heap of love. I don't have any bad memories of my dad anymore. They're gone from my cells, and I think it's transformed from the memory of that game. Thank you.
[applause]
[Did This Really Happen by Gustavo Santaolalla]
Jay: [00:06:55] Karen Jones is an occupational therapist, and works with people recovering from automobile accidents. She's the author of the blog, See Our Soldier, A Chronicle of Healing. She wrote us, "My dad was only 16 years old when he went into combat. He fought on the beach of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. He earned four bronze stars. He lost his wife and was left with four children." To see a photo of Karen and her dad, visit our website, themoth.org.
Jay: [00:07:34] What kind of stories do you like best?
Milo: [00:07:36] Usually childhood stories from everybody including me.
Jay: [00:07:42] Like what ones?
Milo: [00:07:44] The time I hit my face on the gym floor, the very polished wood gym floor, and nearly crashed my nose.
Jay: [00:07:53] [laughs] You like injury stories, don't you?
Milo: [00:07:56] Of course, I do.
Mason: [00:07:57] Basically, a blood story.
Jay: [00:08:00] A blood story. Those are good, right?
Mason: [00:08:03] Yes, I like blood.
Jay: [00:08:07] If you share the preferences of my sons, you'll like this next story. It's a classic from one of our favorite Moth storytellers, Ed Gavagan. There's a father in it, and it's funny, and there will be blood.
[cheers and applause]
Ed: [00:08:21] I remember the first scar I ever got was actually two scars. I was about six years old teaching my little buddy next door how to golf. I'd taken my dad's bag of golf clubs, and dragged it out in the yard, and just wanted to show my little buddy how to hit the ball. So, I stood behind him and I had him choke up on the 9 iron and was telling him, "You know, put the tee in the ball."
I was just all gung-ho to be a little teacher. I stood back and I had coached him on the backswing and the follow through. He wailed back, and hit me in the head, and came around, and hit me in the head again. [audience laughter] And the 9 iron took a chunk out of the back right quarter of my scalp, peeled about a palm sized flap of skin and hair. [audience laughter] And on the backswing hit me on this side and two giant flaps of skin peeled off my skull. [audience cheers and applause]
I wasn't sure what happened, but he turned around and he looked at me and the blood, you know, how a head wound is, the blood just starts pouring down and I put my hands up and I feel the soft wet part and then the little bristly hairy part. Because I had a crew cut at the time. So, I pushed my scalp back on. [audience cheers and applause]
I went running into my house. I'll never forget the look on my mother's face. She's in the kitchen with her cat's eye glasses talking on the phone. [audience laughter] It was one of those black rotary dial phones. She let go of the phone. I had blood running down my arms and all over my little white T-shirt. She just made this dying pigeon noise. [audience laughter]
And then, the first thing she did, because I had my younger brother and my younger sister, she called the neighbor to come and watch them. And then, she called my dad and told him to meet us at the emergency room. She threw me in the convertible, and off we flew. She was just locked on, driving like a mother to save her kid. We pull up to the emergency room. That was at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, 1969.
My dad was a drill sergeant. So, his job all day long was to yell at guys, tell them that they were no good and were going to die in Vietnam, and that his grandmother could do everything they could do, but better. [audience laughter] My dad was a badass. I mean, my dad has like-- If you've ever seen Full Metal Jacket, my dad would kick his ass. [audience laughter] You know, rolled up sleeves, the tan uniform, the Smokey the Bear hat.
What I never realized at the time or until much later, is that at that time, my dad was 26 years old and my mom was 25. So, they bundle me into the emergency room, or actually, my dad hadn't gotten there yet. And so, the doctor lays me up on the table and does a little pump. I come up, and he's looking at me and he's like, "Are you okay?" I'm like, "Yeah, I'm okay." And then, in comes my dad. He's got the Smokey the Bear hat. He's like, "Where's my son?" [audience chuckles] There I am, drenched in blood on the table.
And the doctor's like, "Well, we're just going to have to shave a little bit there, and then we got to stitch him up." My dad's there, and he's holding my foot, and he's looking at me and he's like, "Are you okay?" But I heard, "Are you okay?" [audience laughter] So, I was like, "Yes, sir, I'm okay. No problem." [audience laughter] And the doctor then looks at my dad and he goes, "I got to--" You got to realize if you've never been to an Air Force hospital, that's not exactly like they do it on TV. It's kind of ad hoc. So, he forgot something, or he needed some extra parts or whatever. So, he tells my dad, "Just stay here. I got to go get the needle or something."
So, I'm there, and I'm looking at my dad, and I've got to impress him that I'm okay. He's looking at me, and he's like, "Sure you’re okay?" I'm like, "Yeah, dad, don't worry." He's there with his Smokey the Bear hats. This is like, I can't even describe to you what the drill sergeant aspect is unless you've lived it. [audience chuckles] He looks at me and he's holding my foot, and his eyes roll back in his head and he drops. [audience laughter] I think that he's trying to make me laugh. [audience laughter] So, I'm thinking, dad's just trying to give me a little encouragement. I'm there like laughing.
On the way down, my father hit his head on the end of that metal table so bad, it caught his eye socket and ripped himself a scar. I'm laying there going, "Dad, that's funny. Where are you?" [audience laughter] And then, the surgeon comes in and is like, "What the fuck?" [audience laughter] He's like, "Get up." He picks me up, and I help my dad, who is completely unconscious in a giant pool of blood with his tan uniform, completely drenched. We help my father. He lowers the table. We get my dad onto the thing. He's stitching my dad up, and I'm watching and helping everything, and I'm just bundled up. [audience laughter] This guy just wrapped me real quick.
My dad is out, like, out cold, all right? The surgeon's like, dude gives him 16 stitches from the corner of his eye all the way back up. And I'm like, "Oh wow." Like, I'm into it. I want my dad to get better. And then, the surgeon's like, "All right," and he goes and gets a wheelchair, and he's like, "Help me put your dad in the chair." We load my dad in the chair, and then he stitches me up. But because he knew mine were just superficial scalp wounds, it was-- [audience chuckles]
I'm all stitched up, and then he wraps my whole head up, and I got the big Q-tip looking head with the blood spots soaking through. And then, they put my dad in a wheelchair. My dad is still out, and the surgeon goes, "Just push him out to your mom, okay?" [audience chuckles] My mother is in the waiting room. [audience laughter] I come out pushing my father in the wheelchair. [audience laughter] But I'm only about this tall, so I'm looking over the side. I'll never forget the look on my mother's face. Just thank God, she was sitting down when she fainted. [audience laughter]
[cheers and applause]
Jay: [00:15:31] That was Ed Gavagan telling his winning story at a Moth StorySLAM in New York City. Ed designs and builds furniture. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter.
[Interlude by Bill Frisell]
We'll be back in a moment with a story about the challenges of living with a grandfather's legacy.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison, and we're telling stories about fathers and children.
What kind of stories from my childhood do you like?
Milo: [00:17:01] Dangerous ones.
Jay: [00:17:02] Can you think of any?
Milo: [00:17:04] Yeah. The time you were playing with matches and you threw them on the burlap bags and a giant ball of fire came up on that wall.
Jay: [00:17:13] Yeah, I told you that, didn't I?
Milo: [00:17:15] Yup, you did.
Jay: [00:17:17] Our next story is about how sometimes we have to live with the choices made by our forefathers. It was told at an event produced in partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting and Literary Arts. Here, live from a Moth night in Portland, is Clifton Truman Daniel.
[applause]
Clifton: [00:17:39] My grandfather was Harry Truman. He is known for a great many things, but the one that always comes up, and the one that usually comes up first is his decision to use atomic weapons against Japan in 1945. My grandfather never spoke to me about that decision. To be fair, I probably didn't give him a chance. You had to be careful around my grandfather. He would give you a history lesson if he could catch you. [audience chuckles]
I learned about Hiroshima and Nagasaki the same way that all of you did, from a history book. And my history book did not have a whole lot. It has to cover a lot. So, there was a page and a half. There was explanation, there were casualty figures, there was usually a picture of the mushroom cloud. But there wasn't much or anything at all about what happened to the people on the ground.
In 1994, three things happened. I was 37 years old. The first thing was that I agreed to join the board of the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. I had not, up to that point, taken an active role in my grandfather's legacy. I was married, I had started a family, I was working as a newspaper reporter in Wilmington, North Carolina. But my mother, Margaret Truman, had gotten older and had felt that it was time to pass the baton to have the next generation come in.
At about this time, my editor on the newspaper said, "There is a Japanese exchange student in town. She is going to give a demonstration of ikebana, Japanese flower arranging. Go out, interview her. I need a story for tomorrow's paper." So, I met the young woman and her host, who was an older guy who lived in town. I knew him. And at the end of the interview, he, her host, said to me, "I told her who your grandfather was." And she smiled and bowed and said, "That's very nice." And I said, "Thanks."
And in the next second, he said to her, "Tell him about your grandfather." She looked very uncomfortable. She stared at the floor. When she didn't answer, he said to me, "Her grandfather was killed in Hiroshima." I said to her the only thing that I think one human being can say to another in a case like that, I said, "I am so sorry. I am so sorry you lost your grandfather." But what she did surprised me. She looked me in the eyes and smiled and said, "Thank you." And in that brief instant, I thought that both of us wanted to walk over there and knock her host on his butt [audience chuckles] for putting us in that situation.
The third thing that happened, actually happened three days earlier. My mother, Margaret Truman, had agreed to give the keynote address at ceremonies in Wilmington, marking the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings at Normandy. As we're all leaving theater at the end of the show, big crowd of us going out, two older men were trying to get my mother's attention. They were reaching for her sleeve, and they missed. My mother was whisked out the door with the crowd, put in a car, and driven back to her hotel.
My wife and I were behind her. So, we turned to these two gentlemen and asked if there's anything we could do. We noticed that both of them had tears in their eyes. And we said, "What's wrong?" And they said, "Nothing. Nothing, we just wanted to thank her. If it hadn't been for her father dropping that bomb, neither one of us would be alive." They were Pacific War veterans.
Five years later, we are now living in Chicago. We moved to Chicago. And my son Wesley, who is now 25 years old, he was 10 years old at the time. He came home from school with a book, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. For those of you who don't know the story, Sadako Sasaki was a real little girl. She lived in Hiroshima. She was two years old when the bomb exploded. She and her family survived, but Sadako was diagnosed nine years later with radiation induced leukemia.
To help her treatment, she followed a Japanese tradition that says, if you fold a thousand origami paper cranes, you are granted a wish or a long life or health. There are several interpretations. The most popular version of this story has her folding 644 cranes. Her family says that she actually folded closer to 1,500. Spiritually, it was a great help to her, but sadly, she died of the leukemia in October of 1955. There is a monument to Sadako and to all the children killed, wounded, sickened by the bomb that stands in Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park to this day.
Thinking of the Japanese exchange student and thinking of the two Pacific War veterans, I told Wesley that I was glad he was reading this book, because he needed to understand both his great grandfather's decision, but also understand what that cost the Japanese people. His teacher didn't stop with the book. She taught them Japanese history, she taught them culture, she taught them geography. I came home one afternoon and found my living room coffee table covered with sushi and green tea, and Wesley standing next to it wearing a kimono. [audience chuckles]
He brought all of Japan into our lives. He brought the country, the culture, everything into our household. Over the next four or five years, I mentioned this to a couple of different Japanese journalists, who were working on stories on the anniversaries of the bombings. And one day, my phone rang. It was from a call from Japan. It was Masahiro Sasaki, Sadako's older brother, himself a survivor of Hiroshima. And he said he'd heard that I had read his sister's story and he would like to meet me someday.
We met in New York in 2010, where Masahiro and his son Yuji were donating one of Sadako's last folded cranes to the World Trade Center Memorial, as a gesture of healing. And during that meeting, Yuji Sasaki produced a small box, and took out of it a tiny paper crane, and put it in my palm. And he said, "That's the last one Sadako folded before she died. Will you come to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the memorial ceremonies?" And I said, “Yes.”
We arrived in Tokyo in August of 2012. And the train ride from Narita airport into Tokyo proper, it is about an hour. And my family and I, I took my wife and my two sons, Wesley and Gates. We all had our faces shoved up against the windows of the train, because all this time, the last two years, we had been soaking up Japan. We had been soaking up the culture, the food. We had been watching one Miyazaki movie after another. [audience chuckles]
And here it all was on the outside of the train. Villages, houses, rice fields, mountains, forests of bamboo. We were in Japan. We were there for a very somber purpose, but we loved being there. We had sushi and sake, and went to bed happy that night. And the next morning, I had my first interview with NHK, the nation's largest television network. And the young lady who interviewed me started off with a couple of intro questions. She said, "How was your flight? How do you like Tokyo?" And the third question was, "Are you here to apologize?" And I said, "With respect, no." And she said, "Well, then, why did you bother coming?"
All of the advance publicity for this trip had been positive. Japanese reporters had come to my home in Chicago and interviewed me and turned in upbeat stories, this looked like it was going to be very well accepted. So, this question caught me flat footed. I stammered through it. I said, "It's not about apology. It's about reconciliation. It's about honoring the dead and listening to the living." She didn't like any answer I gave her. She rephrased the question over and over and over again, digging for a different answer. And it finally got so uncomfortable that my interpreter almost stopped the interview.
And that afternoon on the train to Hiroshima, I thought, God, what have I done? What have I gotten myself into? I am not a representative of the United States. I am a private citizen. I cannot apologize for my grandfather. I cannot apologize for my country. I've held Sadako's crane in one hand, and I have held in my other hand the hands of men who fought a horrible and bloody war. What's going to happen when I keep saying no? How is this going to-- Is this whole thing just going to be a bust? I worried about it all night in Hiroshima. I practiced that answer over and over again, so at least I wouldn't fumble through it, at least I would be succinct. I didn't sleep much.
We got up the next morning and went into the Peace Park. And there, around the base of Sadako's statue, around the children's peace memorial were 30 or 40 reporters, cameras, microphones. And I thought, here we go. I braced myself to just spend the next week answering apology questions. And out of the middle of this throng came Masahiro Sasaki. And he walked up to me. I hadn't seen him for two years, since the first time we met. And he walked up to me, and he smiled, and he put his arms around me, and hugged me. My worries vanished, because we were going to do this together. We did everything together after that.
Masahiro answered the apology question for me. He always got in front of that. And what he essentially said was, "If we ask them for an apology for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they can ask us for one for Pearl Harbor. And where do we go from there?" The survivors themselves-- We interviewed Masahiro. I sat down with more than two dozen survivors, and just let them tell me their stories. It's hard to describe, and it's hard to imagine what they went through. Burned, the skin stripped from their arms and legs, their houses destroyed, their children trapped in the rubble, burning to death because they couldn't get them out. People vanished in an instant, vaporized.
Yet none of them, none of them asked me for an apology. None of them came to me in anger, none came with recrimination. They only asked that I listen. Sakue Shimohira, who survived Nagasaki, said, "I think the basic idea of peace is to have some understanding of other people's pain." She and the other survivors asked only that I listen to them, and I tell their stories to you, to anyone else who will listen, so that every one of us understands what it's like to live through a nuclear explosion, so that hopefully, we never, ever do this to each other again. Thank you.
[applause]
[Alma by Gustavo Santaolalla]
Jay: [00:29:33] That was Clifton Truman Daniel. Clifton is the author of Growing Up With My Grandfather: Memories of Harry S. Truman and Dear Harry, Love Bess: Bess Truman's Letters to Harry Truman. Clifton is working on a book about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You can see photos of Clifton and his grandfather at themoth.org.
[Alma by Gustavo Santaolalla]
We'll be back in a moment with stories about trying to be a good dad in the little time we have.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison.
What do you think makes a good father?
Milo: [00:30:50] Good personalities.
Jay: [00:30:52] What qualities?
Milo: [00:30:54] What does that mean? [chuckles]
Jay: [00:30:56] What are the things in a person's personality you would look for in a father?
Milo: [00:31:02] Like, amazingness.
Jay: [00:31:05] Our next story is about trying to be as amazing a dad as you can be after you're divorced, the ways you try to raise your kids and the precious bits of time you may get. It comes from Nestor Gomez and he told it in the StorySLAM series we produce with Chicago Public Radio. Here's Nestor Gomez.
[cheers and applause]
Nestor: [00:31:28] I heard the phone ringing. When I look at it, I realized that it was my ex-wife that was calling me. That was very strange, because my wife and I really didn't talk to each other. I only talked to her over the weekends when I had to pick up my 11-year-old son and my 12-year-old daughter. And this wasn't the weekend. This was the weekday. So, she's probably calling me for some bad news. I answered the phone and immediately she started to go off. "Yes, yes, I'm listening to you.” “Something about our son.” Yes.” “He got something on the mail, a little doll, a package.” “Yeah, that was last week, okay?” “$15, okay?” “Okay.” “And today, you look at your credit card balance.” “Oh, he used your credit card.” “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll talk to him.” “No, no, no. Not right now. Let me think about this, okay? I'll call you back."
So, my son had taken the credit card and paid with it for some doll that he bought. I knew that I had to do something about it. But what should I do? I knew what my father would have done. My father would have called me, grabbed the belt, and then he would whoop my ass. [audience chuckles] And because of that, I was very lenient with my son and with my daughter. Whenever I had to tell them something, I didn't scream at them. I used to go like, "Okay, just don't do that anymore." [audience chuckles] But I knew that in this occasion I had to find a balance between the kind of discipline that my father gave me and the discipline I was giving my kids. So, I thought about it for a moment, and then I called my ex-wife and I say, "I'm going to pick them up this weekend. I'll talk to him then."
So, that weekend, I drove over to my ex-wife's house and I pick up my kids. But instead of taking them to the park, or to the amusement park, or to the house, so we could watch some movies, I took them to an apartment that a friend of mine had that needed to have the floor fixed. We needed to take the floor out and we needed to put new flooring on it. So, I told my son, "You know why I'm bringing you here?" he’s like, "Is it because of the $15?" "Exactly. You need to learn that your mother works really hard for her money, and you can't just go about spending her money on things that you want to buy. You need to learn to respect that."
And then, my daughter goes, “And why am I here?" [audience laughter] And I said, "Well, because sometimes the actions that we take have repercussions on those around us, just like your brother's actions have repercussions on you now. And that's a lesson that you need to learn." She didn't like my explanation, [audience laughter] but she went ahead with it anyway. So, we spent the first half of the day on this apartment that had no heating, it was the middle of the winter. On our knees, scraping the floors, making sure we took every single square of the floor out. And then, we took every nail and every piece of garbage and we polished the floor. And then, we spent the other half of the day putting the new floor on.
By the end of the day, we're exhausted. We're cold, we're hungry. It was a long day, but we were done. And then, I called my friend, so he could come over and look at the floor. He came over, he looked at the floor, he's like, "Okay." He gave me that $100 that he was going to pay me, and then I took my kids out to the car. But before we went into the car, I called my daughter, and I gave her a $20 bill. And at first, I thought, it's only $20. Maybe it's not enough. But she got so happy that I thought maybe I gave her too much. [audience laughter]
And then, I called my son. And before I gave him the $20 bill, he goes, "Yeah, I know. That money, so I could pay my mother back." I'm like, "Exactly. You're learning." And he goes, "But I still have $5 left, right?" I said, "Yeah, you do." So, he asked me to drive him to the store, so he could buy something. I'm like, "Okay." So, we drove to the store, and my daughter and I, we stayed in a car while my son went into the store. He bought something, and he came back into the car. I was too tired to care, and I dropped them back to the house, and then I say goodbye and I drove to my house.
But as soon as I got to my house, the phone started ringing again. And I answered the phone. It was my ex-wife. She's like, "Your son came over and he paid me the $15." And she started to cry. So, I started to feel bad about her, and I said, "You know what? Don't worry about it. This is what happened. They were working in the house and in this apartment and we're cleaning the floor and I gave him $20. But don't worry, he has $5 left to spend on him, and he bought something." And she's like, "Yes, I know. He bought a greeting card that says, 'I'm sorry, Mom.'" [audience aw] Then it was my turn to start crying. [audience chuckles] For a while, I was silent. I didn't know what to say. And then, my ex-wife said, "You know, you and I, we didn't really get along very well, but you're a damn good parent to your kids." That day, I started to get the balance on how to raise my kids, and I also started to get the balance on the relationship with my ex-wife. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jay: [00:36:33] Nestor Gomez was born in Guatemala, and lives in Chicago. He's a self-taught poet and writer, who started to tell stories as a way to get over stuttering. He is a Chicago GrandSLAM champion. We asked Nestor how he'd like to be remembered by his kids. He said, "I guess all this time, I've been trying to make things right and just be remembered. Period."
I know you never met my dad, but do you feel like you know him a little bit because of stories I've told you about him?
Mason: [00:37:08] I know him a lot.
Milo: [00:37:10] He's very smart, and he's goofy and awesome.
Jay: [00:37:15] [laughs]
[applause]
Jay: [00:37:17] Our last story is about the history passed on from father to son and passed on again. It was told at a Mainstage show in Seattle by Glenn Rockowitz.
Glenn: [00:37:29] Hi. So, when I was 26 years old, I watched my grandmother die. She had colon cancer. It was a fairly slow death. And at the time, I was living in New York City and I had been doing comedy for many years. So, I made it my goal that every day I went to visit her, I was going to make her laugh. And one day in particular, I was visiting the hospital and she was off on some rant, as my people tend to do, and she was talking about something super important, like pudding or whatever. [audience chuckles] And I said to her, "Listen, old lady, you keep it up. I'm going to wheel you out to the parking lot and leave you there."
She laughed, because she had a very dark sense of humor, which I love and probably, well, definitely inherited. She kept on with her rant. So, I stuck her in a wheelchair [audience laughter] and I brought her out through the front door of the hospital, across the parking lot to the far end of the parking lot. I faced her against a brick wall, I locked her wheels, and I left her there. [audience laughter] I just stood back about 20ft and just watched her laugh, [audience laughter] just belly laughing at the absurdity of it.
That night, she was telling me that the few seconds or minutes during the day when she could laugh, that it felt like everything was going to be okay, that she felt like, in her words, that she was being let out of jail. And so, a little 2-watt light bulb went off in my head and I said, “Hmmm.” And shortly after she passed away, I started an organization in New York City. Basically, what we did is we brought comedians to perform for people who were homebound with AIDS or cancer in the last weeks and days of their lives.
So, we would bring three comedians. We had an actor playing a waiter and an actor playing a heckler, and we would recreate a comedy club in people's living rooms. [audience laughter] It was a pretty amazing experience, especially for me at this age, to get to spend time with people at the very end of their lives, because what I saw in people was they were not scared anymore. They were open and had made peace, I think, with the fact that it was over, and so much so that they could allow joy into their lives. That was a pretty amazing thing.
We did probably 30 to 40 hours a week of these shows. And then, I had a 40-hour week job. And then, on top of that, my wife got pregnant at the time [audience laughter] and realizes that came out didn’t-- So, I was exhausted, to say the least. I had never been this kind of tired before. It was more than just you work 80 hours a week tired. The best way I could describe it, is that it's like my blood felt like it was electric. Like, I could just run and run and run and run and never stop, but I couldn't get out of bed. It was a really bizarre feeling. And so, in the insistence of a friend, I went to go see a doctor.
Now, this was a doctor who had become my friend through the organization. We had done hundreds of shows for his patients, so he was now going to see me as a friend. He ran all the blood work and the scans and poked and prodded. He called me a few days later at my apartment, and I picked up and he said, "Hey, kiddo, why don't you come on down in my office and let's just talk about this stuff." And I said, "Okay." Not sure I said it like that, [audience chuckles] but I definitely agreed. I took the subway up to his office.
When I walked in, I remember seeing the light box behind him with my films on it. I had no idea what they meant. But as I turned my head and looked at him, I saw that he was crying. It's not a great sign [audience laughter] when your doctor is crying. I feel like if you're on a flight and it's super turbulent and the pilot runs out crying from the cockpit, [audience laughter] that's how it felt.
So, he told me that I had a very aggressive form of cancer that was in its late final stages. And if he had to put a time frame on it, he would say I had roughly three months. So now, I was 28 years old, my wife was eight and a half months pregnant, and I was looking at three months. I don't really remember getting home that day. I remember being on the subway and it being very blurry. And I remember this mantra that I kept repeating. "Don't tell Jen. Don't tell Jen. Don't tell Jen." Jen was my wife. And her mother had been diagnosed with cancer and given a three-month prognosis and died three months later. So, her only framework for this disease was you get an expiration date, you hit the expiration date, and that's it. So, I decided I wasn't going to tell her.
So, when I walked in the apartment, she was cooking, and she turned to me and her belly turned to me, and she said, "How did it go?" And I said, "Fine, everything's good." I couldn't keep the secret to myself, so I decided I was going to tell my father. So, I took the train to Boston. We went for a walk. It was so quiet. Like, all I could hear was just the crunching of our feet on the snow. And at a certain point, I turned to him and I told him. I'll never forget the look on his face, because he had these beautiful green eyes that suddenly just went black. His eyes got wide. I could see my reflection in his eyes. And he started crying. I'd never seen my father cry. I started crying. He just held me like I was eight years old again. And we stood there.
That night, I went to bed in the upstairs of his house, and I heard him come up the stairs, and I heard him go into his room, and I heard him crying, and I heard him talking, but I knew he was alone. I also knew he was a devout atheist, so that prayer was not probably something he was doing. But I found out the next morning that he had, in fact, prayed, and he had asked God to take away my cancer and give it to him.
Seven days later, I got a call at my apartment. I was back in Manhattan, and he was in Boston. He was crying. He had news of his own. The abdominal pain that he had felt that he'd been dealing with for the last eight months, the doctors had been treating his heartburn turned out to be pancreatic cancer. And the doctors couldn't tell him how long he had, other than the fact that he could not survive this cancer. So, he started treatment in Boston, and I started in New York.
And my very first day of chemo, I went to the hospital by myself. I went and I sat in the infusion chair, and they started the IV, and they started the poison into my blood and I just cried, because I was so scared. Scared shitless of what was coming. As the day was winding down, I got a call on my cell phone. I looked down and it was my wife. I picked up the phone and she said, "It's time." So, now she was in labor. I got in a cab and I went home as quickly as I could and I walked in the door. She looked like she was in so much pain. She was timing the contractions. I grabbed her hand and I grabbed the bag that we're told to prepare weeks before. We went to the hospital. It didn't take long. Once we got there, this child was determined to be out into this world. I was grateful, because I knew how little time I had. I'll never forget the look, just the visual of his head emerging and his shoulders coming out and that moment when I'm holding him, and I thought, oh my God, I have a son, and he's never going to know his father, and I will probably lose mine as well.
I just held him there and I just kissed him a million times on the forehead. I love this little boy so much. I just kept kissing him and kissing him, and I wanted to swallow him up and protect him from everything. I eventually told my wife, and she didn't talk to me for a few days. She eventually forgave me, and told me she loved me and felt that I did the right thing and that she wouldn't change anything. And she thanked me.
I went to Boston to spend time with my dad. We're both in a race to the finish line at this point. It was a pretty amazing thing, because as we laid in bed together, I thought about the patients that I had worked with and I thought that I genuinely can say that I made peace with the fact that I was dying. I know he had made peace with the fact that he was dying, but I know that neither of us had made peace with the fact that each other was dying.
About two weeks later, we took him to the hospital because he had what was going to be a fairly routine bowel obstruction surgery. I knew when we're driving that I was never going to see him again. And that last day, that last night when I held him and I just kept kissing his forehead, and then he was gone.
We were at his funeral. I looked across the grave, and I saw my wife and my son there, and I thought, the next funeral they're going to be at is mine. I got a call on my cell phone and I let it go to voicemail. After the funeral was over, I walked up to a hill in the cemetery and I listened to the voicemail. It was my doctor telling me that based on the most recent scan, it appeared that my cancer was now in remission. And it was. It was gone for now, but it wasn't for long. I have struggled with it ever since. But I think about that little boy whose head I saw emerge into the world, and just two months ago, that kid started his freshman year in high school. [audience applause]
The other night when I was putting him to bed, I was telling him how much I loved him. And I loved who he is. He's a very shy, introverted kid with this huge heart. He's so sweet. I was just telling him how much I love him. And I said to him, "You know, buddy, someday you are going to be a great father." He mumbled and gave me this devious little smile and said, "You know what, dad? One day you're going to be a great father, too." [audience laughter] Thank you so much.
[cheers and applause]
Jay: [00:49:42] That was Glenn Rockowitz. He's a former TV writer, comedian, and author of the best-selling memoir Rodeo and Joliet. He currently serves as the Director of Clinical Advocacy for the Healthcare Rights Initiative in Seattle.
[00:49:58] What makes you remember a story?
Milo: [00:50:00] Well, usually, they're my favorite stories. They just get stuck in my head somehow.
Jay: [00:50:06] And that's exactly what we're aiming for here at The Moth. That's it for this hour. I'm Jay Allison. I hope you'll join us next time.
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift]
The stories in this show were directed by Catherine Burns. The rest of The Moth's directorial staff include Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Mooj Zadie. Thanks to my little boys, Mason and Milo for their help in this show, and to my bigger kids, Lily Walker and Hope, for all the interviews they've given me over the years. Finally, to Peter Allison, my own dad, now gone, I still tell your stories.
Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the Storytellers. Recording services by Argot Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest.
Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Blue Cranes, Gustavo Santaolalla, Bill Frisell and John Zorn. You can find links to all the music we use at our website.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Viki Merrick, at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.
The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.