Host: Catherine Burns
[overture music]
Catherine: [00:00:12] This is The Moth Radio hour from PRX. And I'm Catherine Burns. This time, help me. stories of the times we cry out for help or when it's offered when we didn't even ask for it. And certainly, after this last year, all of us have had moments of needing a little help.
I remember one winter a while back, it was a freezing cold day in Brooklyn, I'd taken my infant son for a walk in spite of the huge piles of dirty snow that had been left behind by a recent blizzard. I was carrying him in one of those little pouches that hang off your chest. And at one point, we ended up waiting more than 10 minutes to cross the street, because cars were whizzing by through the slush, and I was scared about crossing the icy road with my tiny baby.
There was a man who was shoveling snow in front of his house, and he watched us standing there freezing in the cold. Suddenly, he put down his shovel, got into his car, started it up and backed out of the driveway, blocking traffic in both directions. He motioned for me to cross and I did. I was so grateful. After I reached the other side of the street, the man pulled back into the driveway, turned off the car, got out and kept shoveling. When I tried to thank him, he just shrugged.
And so, our first story of unexpected help. A woman who needed a little love after getting out of a rocky marriage. She prefers to just go by her first name, Cherie. She told this story at one of our open-mic StorySLAMs in Ann Arbor, where we partnered with Michigan Radio. Here's Cherie, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Cherie: [00:01:43] My story starts back in 2014 where I got blindsided by my now ex's addiction. To sum up, the marriage would probably be the one I would have taken a bullet for, ended up being the one behind the gun. So, during this whole process of divorce, he was going to crush me. It was going to happen the way he wanted and how he wanted it. So, it was really difficult. And during this whole process, all I wanted to do was be held. I found that challenging to get met, because it's like I'm not just going to go up to a guy and say, “Hi, I'm Cherie. You want to hold me?” That could be awkward. [audience laughter]
My best girlfriend was in Florida. And I'm like, “Wow.” I just wanted to be held. This was been so stressful. He was pushing and pushing and being outrageous. I kept in my mind thinking, we're going to get in front of a judge. Whatever you say, whatever you write, whatever you do, put the judge there. So, I never reacted to what he did, but it was just building and building and building. I would talk to God a lot about it, like, “Help.”
And so, this one day, I live off of Ellsworth, down from Ann Arbor Airport. I was driving towards State Street, and there's the airport to the right and Casco to the left and this bank and there's this pond that I would always go visit. Ducks and geese go there. If you're from there, the ducks and geese, they're going to cross when they want. They don't wave their little wings. They just go, and one follows the other.
So, I'm in the front line at the light. Everybody's behind me, and there's a whole like eight geese and they're going to cross. Light turns green, but I don't move because they're going to cross. And so, I can see in my side view mirror that this truck is pulling out into the center lane, probably thinking, “What the F? Why are you people stopped?” He doesn't see the geese. And I'm like, “Oh, shit.” He's really coming down. And so, I turn my car into the center lane. And he's still coming.
I don't know, if somebody's going to hurt animals, I become Robert De Niro. [audience laughter] I got out of the car, I made an X. [audience laughter] So, he comes and obviously, he stopped because I'm here. He swerves to the right, and so the truck, he's in a big truck is to the side and he rolls down his window and I'm like, “Okay, here it goes.” [audience laughter] He just goes off on me. I mean, “Motherfucker. Little red headed bitch.” And in my mind, I'm kind of motherfucker. Not really sure that's possible, but little. Yeah. Redheaded, you're going to go Irish on me now? [audience laughter] And Bitch. Yeah, we'll see. [audience laughter]
And so, he paused to get air, and I said, “Do you have a gun?” He didn't do Valley Girl, but that was his like, “No.” And my mouth went off [audience laughter] on its own journey, I was motherfucking him. People are out of their cars. They've got their cameras [audience laughter] and I'm going to be videotaped. This is going to be on the news. “She tried to save the geese, the little motherfucking red headed little bitch.” [audience laughter] And so, it's just going off and it's just going on.
He pauses, and I'm tracking his face, and he stops and he starts to see the geese. He sees them walking across and he goes, “Oh, my God, I see what you were trying to do. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I see what you were doing.” When he did this, I just buckled. I fell to the pavement and I just was bawling, because it's all this tension for two and a half years with my ex never getting out. And so, I was just sobbing.
The next thing I know is I see boots, and he said, “Give me your hands.” And I couldn't. I was spaghetti. I couldn't. He bent down and he literally picked me up. He looks at me and he said, “Well, okay, I should probably ask you if you have a gun.” [audience laughter] And I said, “No.” He just grabbed me and started holding me and he said, “I don't know what's going on in your life, but let it out. Just let it.”
He's holding me and I'm crying and my prayer is getting answered, because I wanted to be held and I wanted to cry. Granted, it's not how I thought God would answer that. [audience laughter] I was looking, still am, for maybe a more long-term solution to that. [audience laughter] So, helped me off the road, traffic resumed and we're friends. So, thanks.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:07:47] That was Cherie. She's a holistic health coach who also likes to blog, write poetry, draw and paint.
[whimsical music]
Next, we have another from our StorySLAM series. This one from San Francisco, where we partnered with stations KALW and KQED. Here's Jon Lehre.
[cheers and applause]
Jon: [00:08:25] It took 326 strangers to help me get over the death of my mother. In 2008, I didn't know much about cancer. But when my mom was diagnosed with colon cancer, stage IV, I found out that cancer doesn't have a stage V. She had a couple of options. She could get chemo, she could get radiation, she could have surgery to remove part of her colon. I said, “Hey, mom, that means you still have a semicolon.” [audience laughter] It was just a silly, dumb thing to say, but it made her laugh and calmed down the mood a little bit.
We put in for the long haul. My sister and I would take her to chemo, but we felt powerless, kind of hopeless. Then we heard about Relay For Life, which is a global fundraiser where people walk around a track raising money for cancer research. We went to it in Santa Rosa in August, and there were over a thousand people there. We made friends. We raised money. We actually felt like we were part of something. When the sun set, they did this slideshow of people's faces set to music. And each face had two words next to it. If they had died from cancer, it said “In memory.” And if there were a survivor, it said “In honor.” When my mom's face came up and it said, “In honor,” I actually had some hope. Maybe she would survive.
But the next year, she was too weak to go to Relay. When her face came up and it said “In honor,” I was afraid that might not be the case next year. And then, something odd happened. During the slideshow, a song came on that just felt wrong. It just didn't fit the tone. Or, as my sister said, “That song? Oh, hell no.” [audience laughter] I began to worry, what if the next year the wrong kind of song came up? Just not understanding what the music should be. A song like Yesterday, or Stairway to Heaven or Smells Like Teen Spirit. I couldn't risk it. [audience laughter] The odds were long, but still I felt like I needed to jump in there. I volunteered rather aggressively to do the slideshow myself [audience laughter] for August of 2010. Then mom passed away in February of 2010.
After her funeral, I took all of the emotions as a good Irish boy, and I shoved them down deep and I shut myself off from the world. I even forgot about doing the slideshow until I started getting these emails in July, “Hi, John, thanks for doing this. This is a picture of my wife, In memory.” “Hi, John. This is my dad, In honor.” They just started coming in, one after the other, one after the other. Every age, every ethnicity, every relationship. It's my aunt, In memory. My uncle, In honor. I didn't cry until the 12th photo. It was a four-year-old boy, In memory.
As I started to put all of these faces into the slideshow, all of that emotion I buried so deep just came bubbling out with each face, and I started finally to heal. I put music to it. And then, at Relay, we did the slideshow, and I said, I will never ever do this again. [audience laughter] So, this is my ninth year [audience laughter]
[applause]
Because I realized it wasn't about me. It was about the people watching it, and seeing their loved ones, and seeing what they needed to see to heal and it building the fuel to their fire to keep walking and raising money and trying to find a cure. So, every year, I do the slideshow, every year I cry, every year I heal and every year, I put in one specific photo right in the middle of that slideshow, the very last one, my mother, In memory.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:14:15] Jon Lehre is a graphic designer from Sonoma County, California. He says, his ongoing midlife crisis inspired him to become a standup comedian and storyteller.
We wanted to give a big shoutout to the organization, Relay for Life. Over the years, volunteers like Jon have raised hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research and support. They do things like provide hotel rooms for families who come in from out of town to take care of loved ones who are in the hospital. Many of their events involve walks, which take place at night, lit by stunning luminaria, candles that have been decorated with the names of cancer patients to remember those lost, celebrate the survivors and show everyone affected by cancer that there's light in the darkness. To learn more about Relay For Life, go to themoth.org.
[softhearted music]
Coming up, two different stories about giving help to strangers and then receiving much needed help right back. That's when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[softhearted music]
Jay: [00:15:56] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Catherine: [00:16:06] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. Like the last story, our next storyteller was also inspired to help others after her mother became ill. We met her through our Boston StorySLAM, where we partnered with WBUR and PRX. Here's Angie Chatman.
[cheers and applause]
Angie: [00:16:28] My mother was skilled at all the needle arts. She can sew, embroider, knit and crochet. Her grandmother, Dearie, taught her. According to family lore, Dearie was such an accomplice seamstress that she sewed for all the wealthy families in Chicago, Armor, McCormick, Wrigley. She was so good she could go in the front door of Marshall Field’s when all the other colored folk had to go in the back door, if they could go at all.
On one of my visits to Chicago to see my mother, I found her floral covered pouch which held her knitting needles. It was underneath a stack of old magazines and around those overdue bills and final notices. I took them home with me to Connecticut. And then, I went downstairs and I took out the blanket she had knitted for me when I went off to college, and I wrapped it around my shoulders and I cried.
As the Alzheimer's continued its unrelenting and cruel mission to turn my mother, my smart and beautiful mother, into this stranger. I knit, transferring the stitches from needle to needle, row after row, was like a rosary or mala beads. It helped calm my spirit and assuage my grief just a little bit. When my mother forgot my birthday, by that time, I had knit six hats for babies in the NICU. When she forgot my name, I had knit 12 scarves for the homeless. And when she couldn't remember anything, I had, by that time, knit a blanket for each one of my three children, just like she had done for me and my siblings.
So, I'd gotten pretty good at knitting, and I wanted to try some harder patterns, like cables and lace squares and diamonds. And so, I went on the internet and I found a site where you could knit. And then, this woman in California would collect all the blankets she asked for everyone around the country to knit and send these lap blankets or prayer shawls and then she would take them to nursing homes in the area and pass them out to Alzheimer's patients.
So, I picked the faith pattern. I went into that project with a fervor, because it was like I was knitting a shield against my sorrow. I wrapped it up and mailed it to Diane. And about a week after, I got this email from her. Now, I had never met Diane, but I pictured her as a gracious and charming lady who was so polished that she would wear pearls in the shower. [audience laughter]
This is not a quote of the email. This is how I interpreted it. “Dear Angie, what the hell happened? [audience laughter] This blanket is a quarter size of what it should be. You might as well not even call it a blanket. It's more like a placemat. [audience laughter] Please send us another blanket.” So, I wrote her back and I explained that my mother had passed a couple months ago, and so I didn't pay attention to this thing that knitters have to do called gauge.
Now, gauge is how tight a knitter holds the string. It's individualized and personal, unique to the knitter as your fingerprint. And so, when it comes to a pattern, you're supposed to check your gauge or against the pattern's gauge. And if it doesn't match, then you're supposed to adjust your gauge by changing the needle size or the kind of yarn or some combination of both. In my grief, I skipped that step.
And so, Diane forgave me. And she said, “You know, get to it when you can.” And another week passed, and she sent me another email. It turns out that the blanket that I had knit, the placemat, had gotten caught up in her delivery bag anyway, and this Alzheimer's patient, Marta, picked it. She needed it for Tonino, her dog. [audience laughter]
Now, nursing homes don't allow dogs. This was a stuffed animal. [audience laughter] But it was very real to Marta and to me. Faith is a very powerful thing, and anything done with love is never wasted. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:21:12] That was Angie Chatman. She's a writer, storyteller and knitter who lives in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston with her husband, Eric, their children and their rescue dog Lizzie. Diane's website that Angie mentions, which offers free knitting patterns for blankets and prayer shawls, is called Alice's Embrace. It's named for Diane's mother, Alice, who also passed away from complications of Alzheimer's.
Angie writes, “Although I still haven't met Diane in real life, she's a kind and gracious woman who let me know via email that she has never worn her pearls in the shower.” To see a photo of Angie and her mother goes, go to themoth.org. While there, you can call our pitch line and leave us a two-minute version of a story you'd like to tell.
Do you have a story about being helped or helping someone else? I personally cannot get enough of these stories about helping. They seem to go straight into my bone marrow and fortify me. The number to call is 877-799-MOTH, or you can pitch us your own story at themoth.org.
[softhearted music]
Next, we have a story from Carla Katz. She told it in New York City, where WNYC is a media partner of The Moth. Here's Carla.
[cheers and applause]
Carla: [00:22:40] So, I grew up in Paterson, New Jersey which is famous for the Great Falls of Passaic, the rapper Fetty Wap and violent crime. So, it was normal for me in elementary school that our teachers would line us up at the schoolhouse door at the end of the day and count off, “One, two, three. Run.” We were supposed to race home as quickly as humanly possible to avoid being shot or snatched by some psycho. Upside is I turned into a lifelong runner. [audience laughter]
I loved school, but things were tough for me at home. My father had a hair trigger temper, and I had what my father referred to as a big mouth. It was not a good combination. My mother would beg me to just don't egg him on, “You know what he's like.” I promised all the time to be quiet, but that was very hard for me.
But when I walked into the schoolhouse door every morning, I felt safe and special. My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Rocker, was this big loving woman. She made me her assistant to help the other kids learn how to read, because I already knew how. I'm not bragging. [audience laughter] All my teachers going up were wonderful until I hit fourth grade. Mrs. Campbell.
Mrs. Campbell, my fourth-grade teacher was thin as a rake and mean as a snake. She was the worst bully and adult that picks on kids. She was mean to all of us, but she had a particular affinity for just torturing this one boy, Paul Boscarino. And Paul was a chubby kid from a big Italian family that lived in my neighborhood. The Boscarino look like Russian nesting dolls if you [audience laughter] pull them apart. Paul and I weren't really close, but we were friends from the neighborhood.
One particular day, Mrs. Campbell called Paul up to the blackboard, and he was moving a little slow and she just started in on her usual sort of barrage of insults, “Move your fat butt. Stop waddling.” Paul was looking down and starting to cry. I was doing everything I could, honestly, to avoid eye contact with Mrs. Campbell, because I just didn't want to be next. I'm looking down into my lap and I just felt something welling in my chest. Before I knew it, I heard myself scream, “Leave him alone, you witch.” [audience laughter]
I'm pretty sure she heard bitch, but-- [audience laughter] She forgot about Paul and she dragged me up to the blackboard and she just started whacking me across the board backside with a yardstick until it broke, because she wanted me to cry. I hadn't cried yet, so she had me turn around and put my hands out and she just beat me across the knuckles over and over trying to get me to cry, but honestly, I'd had a lot of practice at home, sort of defiantly withholding my tears.
Eventually, I just sat down. My hands were throbbing, and my mind was just racing with fantasies of revenge. I was going to go home, I was going to tell my parents, they were going to race to the school, she was going to go to jail and she'd be in a little cell and just drinking water. She'd be even skinnier and turn into a skeleton. [audience laughter] In my eight-year-old head, she was going to be in so much trouble. But when I got home and told my father, he punished me instead for disrespecting the teacher.
I went to my room and cried and hid under the covers, just feeling incredibly small, sort of more stung by my father's rebuke than Mrs. Campbell's yardstick. And then, I heard the doorbell ring. My father yelled, “Carla, door.” I thought I was definitely in trouble again, so I tiptoed out. When he swung the door open though, I could see the entire Boscarino family standing on our stoop. Mrs. Boscarino nudged Paul, forward a little bit, and he looked at me and said, “Thank you for today.” And then, Mr. Boscarino put his hand out to shake my father's hand and said, “We came as a family to thank Carla, but also to thank you and Mrs. Katz for raising a kind and caring daughter.”
And in my head, I just was fervently hoping that my father was ashamed for having just hit me, and also, I guess hoping that he was a little bit proud. But he never said anything and he's gone now, so I'll never know. But what I do know, is that that moment changed everything for me. Because in that moment, I suddenly stopped feeling so afraid. And in that moment was the first time I felt a real sense of my own personal power. And that's the moment, when I look back, that I attribute to my becoming an advocate.
And years later, I became a union organizer and a union leader and a political activist and a labor lawyer. And five decades have passed and I'm still at it. I still have a big mouth, but in my deepest heart, I'm still that eight-year-old girl standing on the stoop in Paterson, New Jersey, finding her mighty new voice. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:28:54] Carla Katz is a comic actor and Moth StorySLAM champion who lives in Hoboken, New Jersey. Her stories have been featured on many of the podcasts put out by our storytelling friends, including Story Collider and Fish Out of Agua. In her other life, Carla is still a labor attorney and professor, a political activist and a union organizer.
[upbeat music]
Coming up, Top Chef's Padma Lakshmi talks about how she got her famous scar. That's when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[upbeat music]
Jay: [00:29:56] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Catherine: [00:30:08] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. Our final storyteller in this hour is author and television host, Padma Lakshmi. I was introduced to Padma through a mutual friend. I was a little nervous, because she was the first storyteller I'd be working with since giving birth to my son. I was extremely sleep deprived and worried that I wasn't on my A game. But then, the first time we spoke, I found out that Padma had a baby too. Her daughter, Krishna, had been born the day after my son, Harry. So, Padma wasn't getting any sleep either.
We ended up working out the beats of her story over the phone with our babies sleeping in our arms, trying to get through without either of the babies crying or us crying. As it turns out, Padma wanted to tell a story about her own mother. A warning, it includes a description of a pretty nasty car accident. Here's Padma Lakshmi, live at The Moth.
[applause]
Padma Lakshmi: [00:31:05] People often ask me how I got the scar on my arm. And what happened was, when I was 14 years old, I got really sick. And no one could figure out what was wrong with me. I was very ill. And finally, after a week of not getting better, my mother took me to the hospital. And I, after many tests, was finally, days and days later, diagnosed with a hyper allergy, something called Stevens-Johnson syndrome. And once they finally found out what was wrong with me, they treated me for it, but not before I had spent weeks in the hospital, weeks blind and mute, as well as being fed by tubes and having to sleep sitting up, so that I wouldn't choke on my own saliva.
My mother, in her fashion, moved into the hospital to be by my bedside and slept every night in the hospital to take care of me. She wouldn't leave my side. And finally, when I was released on February 1st, I remember it was a Friday. As we were riding home in our car, she said, “I've made a promise to God that if God delivers you safely out of the hospital, that I would go and I would do a penance and I would go to the temple and make an offering to give thanks for delivering my child home safely. So, I know you're really sick, but I'm going to see if your stepdad can drive us on Sunday to the temple.” I just nodded in my very ill way, and I said, “Okay.”
And on that Sunday, February 3rd, my stepfather and my mother and I drove in our red Ford Mercury car with the black interior to the Hindu temple. I was very ill. I was very, very weak and frail. That was long enough ago, I was 14, a long time ago when they still had the front seat that was a couch seat. So, my mother wedged me in between her and my stepdad, because she wanted to take care of me. I was still really sick. I could barely hold my head up. I had lost a lot of weight. I was so weak that she said, “You stay in the car. I'll do the offering.” She went. She did the prayers, she did the flowers, she rang the bell, she got the food. They came back in the car, and she handed me this squeaky round Styrofoam plate with a bunch of yellow rice on it and some vegetable curry or whatever it was.
Off we went back down the highway. I remember thinking what a beautiful sunny Sunday it was. I was trying desperately to concentrate on this plate of food, and my mother said, “Just try and have a couple bites of it. It's blessed. It's from the puja we did.” As I was eating this rice, suddenly I heard a loud bang. I looked up and I can remember the plate flying and yellow rice everywhere like confetti. As the rice came down, all I could see was this beautiful blue sky, this crystal-clear blue sky. No clouds, no cars, no road in front of us, no trees, nothing. Just endless, miraculous blue sky and these yellow grains flying all around.
And then, all of a sudden, I heard another thud and then I kind of [onomatopoeia]. And it was us. We were flying, and then were airborne, I realized. And then, what stopped our fall was this tree and then we went down further down this embankment and then finally came to a last thud. And there was just stillness. I strained my neck and I could see my mother to my right. We were all pinned very closely together. My mother had her eyes closed, and her mouth open and blood was trickling out of the side of her mouth. And to my left, my stepfather was saying over and over again this mantra of, “Where are we, Vijay? What happened, Vijay? Weren't we driving, Vijay? We were at the temple, Vijay.” “Vijay, Vijay.” My mother.
And from my mother emanated this profound and nauseating silence. I started to scream at my mother, I started saying, “Mom, are you awake? Are you awake? If you're awake, say something. Say something, please. If you're not awake, I love you, Mommy. I love you. If you are awake, I love you, but please say something.” And in the back of me screaming was this chorus, this nonstop loop of my stepfather. Almost like that cliche image or track that-- You know, the cartoons, when a bird or a cartoon character is hit on the head and they say, “Where am I? What's going on?” That was exactly what he was doing. And he just kept repeating this.
It was all of a sudden, I started feeling things. I started feeling hot, and cold, and wet, and sticky, and itchy and burning. All I could feel from my mother was this silence emanating from her that kept getting louder and louder, this silence. Then, I finally heard a man call down to us and say, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” I said, “Yes, we're alive. We're alive. Please get help. Please, please get help.” And then, a bunch of firemen came and I remember hearing the crunch of their boots down the leaves, on the leaves, down the embankment. And they came and they got-- I heard chainsaws. I heard a helicopter in the distance approaching. I heard blowtorches. I would later learn that they had to use these famous things called the Jaws of Life to cut open the roof of this red Ford Mercury Zephyr.
And so, I got taken to the City of Angels and my parents got taken somewhere else. Because were pinned so tight, my arm had flown across my mother's chest. And so, my arm was just shattered in many pieces. I lay there for hours and hours not knowing what happened to my parents, not knowing if my parents were okay, if my mother was alive. I remember being incredibly uncomfortable in a cold hospital bed with glass everywhere in every crevice of my body, under my nails, in my hair, in my ears, just shattered glass everywhere and I remember--
In the emergency room, I remember vague bits and pieces of what people said like, “Well, I don't think it's worth doing, but I question the mobility of that arm or well let's leave it alone,” whatever. And we were home. It took us a long time to heal. My stepfather broke his leg, his left leg in four places, his hip in two. My mother had to come home and still have a hospital bed at home for weeks and months. We had one-to-one nursing 24 hours around the clock at home, because of course, my mother this time could not care for me, could not be by my side. Indeed, she had her own hospital bed. But my mother was determined.
They said that they weren't going to do any surgery on my arm, because they thought it wasn't really worth it, that it would probably be dormant, be semi lame at my side. I was so young I could learn to do everything with my left hand. And so, my mother was determined not to let this happen. And so, she, from her hospital bed at home, ordered me to go to another orthopedist whom she had found on the phone through colleagues. And he said, “Well, she's so young. We should do it.” He decided to do surgery on my arm. I got this very beautiful thin scratch of a surgery incision, and there was a cylindrical metal plate that was put on. As my arm got better, the scar got worse.
I was very awkward to begin with and I was feeling-- I was 14, I had all these hormones and feeling off about my body. I knew that the scar on my forearm was looking bad. And so, I knew what was to come with this scar. And so, anyway, years go by and I had to have multiple surgeries on the arm, every time the arm got more and more better and every time the scar got longer and thicker and ropier and darker. I found ways to look normal while hiding it. [audience laughter] I would go on dates in college, and I would have to really about whether I was going to wear a short sleeve blouse or a long sleeve blouse.
And then I was studying abroad and I started modeling, of all things. I wasn't a fancy model. I graduated from college and then I really started modeling to pay off my college loans. I was a fit model, a workaday model. And then, this weird thing happened. An agency called me and they said, “Guess what? Helmut Newton wants to shoot you.” I was young and I was like, “Who's Helmut Newton?” They said, “You know, Helmut Newton, the guy, he's great. He does these beautiful, sexy, dangerous, edgy pictures of women and he wants to shoot you.” [audience laughter] So, before my agency would--
When they were calling around so they would get comments like, “Yeah, she's pretty, but that scar.” Those same people were calling, going, “Can we book the girl with the scar?” It's amazing that somebody else thinking you're cool can make you think differently of yourself. So, all of a sudden, I was doing all these runway shows. I was doing Alberta Ferretti and Hervé Léger and all these great. And so, my salary went up. And all of a sudden, I was the girl with the scar. So, maybe the scar was this mixed blessing in a way, because it paid off my college loans, it bought me an apartment, paid off my mom's mortgage, a lot of cool things. So, I thought that was great.
I was thinking about all of this recently, because I found myself on my back in another hospital bed staring at another white ceiling. I was told that I would probably never have children, naturally. And that was very upsetting, as many women can understand, and men too. And then, I got pregnant, which was a real surprise, but a happy one. And then, I was told it would be a difficult pregnancy. And then, it was a really difficult pregnancy. I was ordered on complete bed rest the last trimester of my pregnancy. And my mother, in true fashion, moved in with me the next day. [audience laughter] Yeah, it's true. When your mother moves in with you at 39, it's a completely different experience. But there she was valiant in her nurturing.
It was a very scary last few weeks of the pregnancy. I wind up going to the hospital more than once before I had the baby, and one time for five days with a fetal heart monitor and tubes everywhere and staring at the ceiling and thinking to myself, God, please get me out of here. Please deliver me and my child intact and healthy out of this hospital. I recently, miraculously found myself again with my mother in an another car, this time going to fly Flushing, Queens [audience laughter] to another temple, but this time [audience laughter] to give thanks for the safety and delivery of my daughter. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:46:03] That was Padma Lakshmi. She's the executive director, producer and host of the long running TV show, Top Chef, which has been nominated for 32 Emmys. She's also the author of numerous best-selling cookbooks and the memoir, Love, Loss, and What We Ate. She is now the creator and host of Taste the Nation, a gorgeous Hulu series which tells the story of America through the lens of immigration and food. It serves as a living cookbook focusing on the people and cultures which have contributed to American cuisine.
We recently honored Padma at a virtual version of our annual gala, which we lovingly refer to as the Mothball. Ha-ha. Longtime Moth host and storyteller Mike Birbiglia introduced Padma and we thought we'd include some of their remarks here.
Mike: [00:46:52] Not only does she tell her own stories, but she's creating space for other people to tell their stories. And that culinary and television artistic creation is ultimately feeding our souls. She's also someone who uses storytelling as an activist. She's an ambassador for the ACLU, she focuses on women's reproductive health and immigration issues. And for all those reasons and more, it is an honor and a privilege to present Padma Lakshmi with The Moth Award, her authenticity and her candor and bring out the courage and strength in others to share their stories. And by showing her humanity, Padma makes it a little easier for us to show ours. And for this, we thank her.
Padma: [00:47:51] Hi, everybody. I am so honored, and beyond happy and excited and elated to get this award from The Moth. I love what The Moth does. It tells the stories of our lives and it allows people to share who they were, and who they hope to become. One of the reasons I did Taste the Nation is because I wanted to tell stories that I didn't feel were being told in mainstream media. There was so much vilification of immigrants and others that I just felt I needed to share a positive light on how immigrants across this country are living their lives and contributing to our culture and our nation.
I'm so excited and flabbergasted to get this award, because I know the amazing people who have received it before me, like Roxane Gay and Zadie Smith. I am so humbled, really, to be in such company. The Moth is such an important organization to me. And to be recognized by them in this way is really probably the best thing that's happened to me this year.
Catherine: [00:49:11] That was Padma Lakshmi, the winner of the 2020 Moth Award. And that's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time for The Moth Radio Hour.
[overture music]
Jay: [00:49:38] Your host this hour was the Moth's artistic director, Catherine Burns, who also directed the stories in the show. Additional GrandSLAM coaching by Larry Rosen.
The rest of the Moth's directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Emily Couch.
Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Blue Dot Sessions, Julian Lage, Michael Hayes Quartet and Rudresh Mahanthappa.
The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the public radio exchange, prx.org. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.