Host: Jenifer Hixson

[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift]

Jenifer: [00:00:13] This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Jenifer Hixson. In this hour we'll be hearing stories by and about mothers, the matriarch, your most insightful critic or your greatest defender, often both at once. Consider the archetype Mama Bear: fiercely protective, running on instincts, able to fend off your worst enemies and soften your darkest hours. Sometimes the mama bears in our lives are our grandmas or our sisters, our neighbors. There was a crossing guard in the town I grew up in. I pity the impatient driver who'd honk or inch up while us kids were crossing. Nah ah, not on her watch. 

[cheers and applause] 

We met our first storyteller, Donald Harrison, in Philadelphia. Here he is at St. Ann's Church in New York City.

Donald: [00:01:03] The year I turned 30, I decided it was about damn time I got a job playing the piano and singing in a gay bar. [audience laughter] Sometimes you just reach that phase of your life, you know? It wasn't any gay bar. It was a Philadelphia institution called Tavern on Camac. I had always loved Tavern. It is a medium-sized gay piano bar. Back then, every wall and surface was covered in mirrors. There's a baby grand piano off in the corner, and piano players every night accompanying themselves. There's also a guest microphone next to them, and customers can come up and do a solo with the piano player. It's great. This seemed like the dream side gig for me. I mean, a chance to perform every week, people clapping at me on a regular basis. Free drinks? Yes, please. So, I auditioned and, to my amazement, I got the job. 

When I first started working at Tavern, I inherited a small crew of regulars. My shift was happy hour on a Friday, which meant that my crew of regulars was mostly older gentlemen, men who had been going to that same bar, though the name and layout had changed over the years, for decades. They were 20, 30, 40, sometimes 50 years older than me. They could remember when the piano was over here, when the piano was over there, and they could recite the long lineage of piano players who had preceded me, just as you might the kings and queens of France. [audience laughter] 

My regulars terrified me. I wasn't, what you'd call, a seasoned or very professional singer when I first started working there. In fact, on my third Friday on the job, one of these inherited regulars, Pity, tipped me a single dollar and then stormed out of the bar after he told me that my performance of On the Street Where You Live was perfunctory. [audience laughter] My background in English meant I understood this word, [audience laughter] and I understood it to mean that I had sung without feeling. My background in being anxious meant I was rather destroyed by this bit of feedback. [audience laughter] However, this man went on to say that my perfunctory performance also proved I had no respect for the American songbook. [audience laughter] That's right. I wasn't just bad at a single song, but I was lousy at the entire canon I was attempting to perform. Cool. 

I thought, thanks for the note. I'll just keep going. [audience laughter] But what I wanted was to do that job well, and that meant making men like him happy. Because not only was this the generation of gay men who had preceded me, who had spent decades of their lives fighting for our rights and our visibility, living their lives in such a way so as to make comfortable the life I have today, but this was also the generation of men who had kept alive this grand piano bar tradition, singing the same songs, making the same requests, belting out Over the Rainbow for the 50,000th time, [audience laughter] holding on to this brand of music and live performance no matter where the piano was or who the piano player was. Inside those mirrored walls was their space and their tradition, and I wanted to be a part of it.

One of these regulars was named Mike. Do you know that line from the Christmas song Do You Hear What I Hear that goes, With a voice as big as the sea? Well, Mike has that sort of quintessential Pacific Ocean kind of voice. [audience laughter] It's wide, it's deep, and it's capable of totally drowning out everyone around him. [audience chuckles] But Mike isn't just loud. He is also guilty of what I like to call the "I Could Have Danced All Night" power move. The last line of "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady is, as maybe you know, hopefully you know, "I could have danced, danced, danced all night." [audience laughter] 

The person performing the song gets to decide how long that little beat is at the end. "I could have danced, danced," hold for drama "all night." [audience laughter] The "I Could Have Danced All Night" power move occurs when someone who's not performing the song decides that, from their spot out in the audience, they will decide when to come in on that final note. [audience laughter] The person who comes in ahead of the piano player does not do it by accident. No, he does it to assert his dominance. [audience chuckles] This is a type of musical theater conquest. And it's during these moments in so many songs that Mike takes over. But Mike's music is joyful music, and I love him for it. Yes, he overrules my timing. Yes, he sings too loudly. But there's no question that he means well, that it's inside of Tavern that he's living his best life.

So, one night, a few months into my tenure there, it's 07:30 on a Friday, and I've got one person sitting at the piano with me, the one fan I have earned in all the weeks of playing so far, my mom. [audience laughter] My mom was there the first night I ever played there, which was not, incidentally, also her first night in a gay bar. [audience laughter] She had been back a few times since, and she would tell anyone who would listen that she was there to hear her baby sing. [audience aww] So, there she is, perched alone at the piano when in walks Mike. 

These two had not yet arrived there on the same night, but I had envisioned their meeting, and I had envisioned it in much the way an astronomer might the meeting of celestial objects. [audience laughter] I watched as Mike crossed the room, got a drink at the bar, and then sat down across the piano from my mom. It was just the three of us at this point. What could I do but begin to play Lullaby of Broadway [audience chuckles] in my timid and perfunctory way. So, I start, Come on along and listen to… and then Mike joins in, [sings in a bold voice] The Lullaby of Broadway. I glance over the sheet music at my mom's eyes, and my mom's eyes say, “What the fuck?” [audience laughter] I continue, The hip-hooray and ballyhoo, and Mike continues, The Lullaby of Broadway. I look at my mom, my mom eyes say, “What? This cannot be happening. How are we all accepting this? Where is the manager?” But Mike's still like, The Milkman's on his way.

I can see outrage really starting to build up in my mom. She begins by giving Mike a less-than-savory look, a look I myself have received many times throughout my life. This does nothing. So, then she starts gesturing toward that guest microphone. And the message for Mike is, “Go up there, do your own solo, then sit down and shut up.” I shake my head at her. “Please, Mom, no. This is the way of the world here, [audience laughter] and so it has been since time immemorial, and so it ever shall be. We must endure this.” But she persists. And before long, Mike finally clocks her disdain, and he says something like, "Do you have a problem, lady?" And my mom says, "I'm just trying to listen to my son." And then, they start to argue over the piano.

I decide my only power in this situation is my ability to overwhelm them with my show tune. [audience laughter] So, I play louder. They argue louder still. The lyrics are an absurd mismatch to what's unfolding in front of me. It's "All the daffodils who entertain at Angelo's and Maxie's…" Through this, I hear Mike say something like, "Do you know how long I've been coming here, honey?" And I think, shit, we have already reached a "honey" point in this gay bar argument. [audience laughter] I myself am starting to sweat and I'm starting to get very angry, because you know what? It's hard enough to come in here week after week and play these songs for these men and get called inadequate in all manner of vocabulary words that are fancy AF. [audience laughter] But now, now, I have to do it with my mom coming in and causing trouble for me.

So, I get angrier at her because, of course, Mike sings too loudly, we all know that, but he is a regular. This is the one place he should be able to go to escape the judgment and scorn of middle-aged suburban straight ladies from New Jersey. [audience laughter] On the other hand, Mike does sing way too loudly. My mom is in the gay bar for the fifth time in her life. She wants to hear me sing and I'm proud of her and she's proud of me and she should be able to do it. But still they're going at it over the piano and my Lullaby of Broadway is getting really insane. I'm all, You’ll occupy your day and your Broadway baby 'round 'til everything gets hazy…

I'm not wanting the song to end, because then what's ongoing, what's this ridiculous fight going to sound like when the piano is quiet, the stupid new bad piano player and his mom coming in and yelling at everybody? But then, then I'm worried is Mike going to say something truly hurtful to my mom? Or is my mom, who is a personal trainer, going to beat up Mike? [audience laughter] I watch as my mom stands up and begins to move toward him. I wouldn't say that she looks like a lioness stalking over for the kill, but I wouldn't not say it. [audience laughter] I feel powerless to stop whatever is about to happen. I reach the end of the song, what else can I do but finish? Two other people clap.

My chest is heaving in that way it does after the big final notes of show tunes, all up there by myself, like, [heavy breathing] And my mom gets close to Mike and Mike looks up at her and then they hug. [audience chuckles] They hug. Now, my own eyes say, “What the fuck? [audience laughter] What incredible transformation has occurred while I was so savagely pounding out the last few lines of Lullaby of Broadway?” In a moment I would learn that Mike's question, "Do you know how long I've been coming here, honey?" had led them to discuss their respective ages, a very mature place to take this conversation, I might add. But this conversation about their ages led them to discover that they had been born within hours of one another. [audience aww] 

My mom and Mike were not two comets doomed for mutual annihilation in the midnight sky. They were birthday buddies. [audience laughter] And it was on this common ground that we could all begin to try to get along. It's been almost 12 years since my mom and Mike met that night at Tavern on Camac, and I've played there almost every Friday we've been open since. A lot of regulars have come and gone over the years, some are no longer with us, but my mom and Mike are still two of my most faithful. Many times, over these years, people have come up to my mom and they've told her how awesome it is that she's there, a mom watching her son play piano in a gay bar. My mom talks to them and she hangs out with them and they tell her their own moms wouldn't come to a place like this.

My mom threatens to text them and ask them why. [audience laughter] This is a territory she's found for herself around that piano. Mike is still exactly the same. [audience laughter] He still sings way too loudly. My mom still gives him the stink eye. But a couple years back, they went out to dinner together to celebrate their birthdays. [audience aww] It turns out that there continue to be timeless standoffs across that piano, whether my mom's involved or not. But in the end, keeping that grand piano bar tradition alive is about coming together, this glorious mishmash of ages and generations, to make that loud and joyful music together. And for that, I'll be home on Friday. Thank you.

[cheers and applause]

Jenifer: [00:13:42] That was Donald Harrison. In addition to being a pianist, he's a writer who also works in learning and development. To see a picture of Donald and his mother, visit themoth.org, where you can also download the story or pitch a story of your own. 

Several years ago, Donald's mom started doing her own number at the mic. Her go-to song, When You're Good to Mama. How fitting. 

Our next story is from mother of two, Luanne Sims, who told this at a StorySLAM in Philadelphia. The theme was Celebrations. Here's Luanne.

[applause] 

Luanne: [00:14:30] We were sitting around the dinner table trying to come up with a theme for my son's fourth birthday party. He mentioned Star Wars, but I dismissed it. Star Wars parties are a dime a dozen. We need something more original. My dad put a bite of asparagus in his mouth and said, "Why don't you have an asparagus party?" [audience laughter] That's ridiculous. We're not having an asparagus-themed birthday party. Eddie doesn't even like asparagus. "Yeah," my son said, "I don't like asparagus. I like broccoli." And so, it was settled. [audience laughter] 

The next day, I Photoshopped my son's face onto a crown of broccoli [audience laughter] and sent invitations to all of our family and friends, "Please come to a broccoli party." I decorated all in green, of course. There was a broccoli-shaped cake and a photo cutout thing where you could put your face in, get your picture taken as a stalk of broccoli. [audience laughter] There was even a broccoli-shaped piñata. The kids were all anxious to hit the piñata. But before I let them, I gathered them around to tell them the legend of Captain Broccoli. [audience chuckles] 

Captain Broccoli was just a regular guy who wanted to be a superhero. But when he went to apply for the job, he found out that all of the good, important superhero jobs were already filled. So, the only thing left for him to do was to become the superhero for times that aren't that important. So, if you're trapped under a dresser, you want to call for Superman, or maybe Jesus, to come and help you. [audience laughter] But if you get the wrong flavor popsicle, you want to call Captain Broccoli. [audience laughter] And the way that you call Captain Broccoli is like this, "Teba tuba, taba tuba," which is a nonsense phrase from my childhood. Finally, it was time to hit the piñata. 

Now, they don't sell broccoli-shaped piñatas, so I had to make it. Apparently, this was a piñata of steel, because the kids went through the line three or four times each, [audience chuckles] and nobody could even make a dent in the piñata. Everyone was getting really frustrated, so we decided to let the birthday boy, my son, just hit it until it opened. So, he hit it eight or nine times, and finally there was a little crack at the top and the kids started to get really excited. "Hit it again!" we yelled, and they started chanting his name. "Eddie! Eddie! Eddie!" And he hit it again, and the crack got bigger and the kids got in their ready positions with their loot bags open. "Hit it again!" And he hit it again, and finally the piñata cracked open and the kids were foaming at the mouth. You should have seen their little faces when nothing came out of that piñata but raw broccoli. [audience laughter] [audience applause]

I thought that it would just be funny, [audience laughter] but it turned out to be a fascinating psychological experiment. [audience laughter] Some of the kids hit the ground immediately and started grabbing as much broccoli as they possibly could. [audience laughter] Now, these kids, they might be from vegetarian families, but I think there's a population of children that no matter what it was, it could be dog poop flying out of that, if it comes shooting out of a piñata, they're going to fight other children for it. [audience laughter] Most of the kids stood there dumbfounded, [audience chuckles] not knowing what to do. My husband is in the background saying, "It's broccoli. It's good for you." [audience laughter] I saw one little girl reluctantly bend down and fill her bag, only to dump it out again when she thought no one was looking. [audience laughter]

But I started to feel bad when I noticed that some of the kids were actually crying. [audience laughter] I heard one little girl say, "I thought it was going to be candy." And I thought, no kidding, that's the joke. So, I reminded them, "Who do you call when you need help?" And they just glared at me and said, "We're not playing this game. You've done enough damage." [audience laughter] I said, "Trust me, who do you call?" And one angry little boy said, "Captain Broccoli." "And how do you call him?" Nobody remembered. I reminded them, "Teba tuba, taba taba tuba." Again: "Teba tuba, taba tuba taba." Again: "Teba tuba, taba tuba taba."

And on the third round, Captain Broccoli, the actual Captain Broccoli in the form of my slightly inebriated brother, [audience laughter] wearing green tights, a magnificent cape, a black Zorro mask, and a tremendous two-foot-high crown of broccoli, [audience laughter] came running out the back door, leaping off the deck and spreading candy to all of the crying children. [audience cheers and applause] 

The following year we had a Star Wars party. Thanks.

[cheers and applause] 

Jenifer: [00:20:01] And the Oscar goes to Luanne Sims for most creative execution of a four-year-old birthday party. Luanne Sims lives in Pennsylvania, where she's an occasional co-host of the morning show at WCHE Radio. Luanne's brother Jim, dba Captain Broccoli, was so popular that he went on to make appearances at other children's events. He ultimately retired when no one wanted to store the costume with the giant broccoli floret hat. To see pictures of Captain Broccoli with Eddie at the party, the piñata, and an actual shot of a shocked little girl as she beheld that broccoli, visit themoth.org. 

In a moment, a story about a son's passion for baseball, I mean, he's really passionate, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

Jay: [00:20:58] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Jenifer: [00:21:07] This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jenifer Hixson. Next up, Muneesh Jain hopes that his obsession with sports can lift him out of a depression. From a show in Traverse City, where we partner with City Opera House and Interlochen Public Radio, here's Muneesh.

[applause]

Muneesh: [00:21:27] My parents are from India. So, in our house, that meant we had a high bar set for academic achievement and a specific type of professional success, doctor, lawyer, engineer. By the time my sister was 12, she knew she was going to be a doctor, just like my dad. When I was nine, I called a family meeting to let everyone know I was never going to be a doctor, [audience laughter] or a lawyer, or an engineer. I was going to be a gymnast. My parents, they tolerated it, but told me that one day I was going to have to grow out of it. But I went to the gym six days a week, five hours a night. And by the time I was a teenager, I was training for the Olympics. And multiple injuries ended my career. My folks, they said, “All right, you got that out of your system. Now, it's time to focus on your education.”

I needed them to be impressed with me the way they were my sister. I couldn't wrap my head around doing it their way. So, I came up with a bigger idea. When I was 19, I got a job with ESPN. I was producing live segments for SportsCenter, ESPN News, hanging out with my sports idols. My folks, they kept reminding me, “Don't let this get in the way of your schoolwork.” [audience chuckles] All right, fine. If that wasn't good enough, I came up with a bigger idea. I left the network and moved to Detroit, Michigan, a city that I love, and I started a sports magazine. I sold ads, I found distributors. I built a staff with grown-ass people who had kids older than me. [audience laughter] 

We were killing it. We were up to 50,000 subscribers. People were recognizing me on the street. Hell, Muhammad Ali said he liked my magazine. [audience aww] But every time I'd see my parents, they'd just ask me, “When are you going back to college, get that degree?” This time, there was no bigger idea. I had to make this work. I doubled down, worked twice as hard, which also meant that I pretty much stopped sleeping entirely and started drinking and drugging the nights away to manage my stress levels. When I was 24, my doctor told me that I was six months away from a heart attack. I either had to get rid of the magazine or die. So, I gave up. And something broke inside of me, and I couldn't face my parents. 

I took the money I'd saved from ESPN and the magazine and I ran away. I moved to New York into a tiny 160-square-foot studio apartment where the windows didn't even open. And it was there that my self-imposed exile began, slowly losing contact with every human I'd ever met. The delivery guy would just leave the food outside my apartment, because I couldn't even make eye contact with him. I was a failure. My parents would call and I never knew what to say. My dad would lecture me that I wasn't even a part of the family anymore, my mom would yell at me that I needed to get my life together. And every conversation just ended in tears. So, I stopped answering their calls. Then they started sending me money to keep me alive, and I took it, and that made me hate myself so much more, and so I just stopped leaving my apartment entirely.

The TV would be on 24 hours a day. I wasn't watching it at all. I just needed flashing images and noise to block out the constant stream of shame, regret, self-loathing that was clanging around the inside of my skull. And that became my life, every day, all day, living in near isolation for five years. One day, a baseball game just happened to be on. Now, I hadn't watched a sporting event of any kind since the death of my magazine. It was always just too hard. But on this day, I was so broken, I just stared emotionlessly at the screen in front of me. And within a couple of innings, something strange was happening. I felt myself sitting up in my bed, engaging with something outside of my own head. I was smiling. I mean, actually, smiling for the first time in five years.

By the time the game ended, I'd already ordered the MLB TV package, and just started mainlining baseball. [audience laughter] I was watching every game, reading every article, going back over the last five years to see everything that I'd missed. In the middle of it all, I remembered that dream I had when I was six. One day, I'm going to see a baseball game at all 30 MLB stadiums. It's one of those silly things that a lot of baseball fans want to do, but few actually get a chance to do it. And the ones who do, do it over the course of a lifetime, like a normal human person. [audience chuckles] But in this moment, nobody even knew that I existed. I could disappear off the planet and no one would notice. So, I said, “Screw it. I'm going to do it, and I'm going to do it in one season. I'm going to drive 17,000 miles in 95 days and go to a baseball game at all 30 ballparks.”

I started obsessively poring over maps and schedules, planning out my route. Every time I'd go down to the bodega to buy another pack of cigarettes, instead I would take that money out of the ATM, go back up to my apartment, shove it underneath my mattress. By the time the next baseball season came around, I'd saved $6,000 and quit smoking. [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

I was ready to go. I called my parents to let them know what I was doing, and they really didn't know what to say. They were just happy that I was alive. I hit the road. Every 48 hours, I was in a new city. But I didn't want to just sit in the ballpark alone. I needed a way to reintegrate myself into society. The problem was I had completely forgotten how to even have a conversation with somebody else. So, I invented a podcast. I couldn't have cared less if anybody actually listened to this thing, I just needed an excuse to go talk to strangers. And it was working. People were talking to me about the stats of their favorite ballplayers, the histories of their ballparks. One kid at Citi Field at a Mets game spent 20 minutes meticulously breaking down why it was that the Yankees sucked. [audience laughter] 

As I bounced from ballpark to ballpark, I noticed that my conversations, they were evolving. I talked to a father and son in Baltimore, where after our official interview, the father pulled me aside to quietly confide in me that he didn't really have a relationship with his eldest son, but his youngest, his youngest loved baseball. So, he knew that at least they'd be able to talk about that. [audience aww] I talked to a mother and daughter in San Francisco who'd been going to games together for 20 years. Three generations of women in Texas, the grandmother proudly shoving little Laney, her nine-year-old granddaughter, in front of my microphone, saying, "Little Laney, tell the nice man, what do you do all your school reports on?" And little Laney excitedly screams out, "The Texas Rangers!" I realized we weren't really even talking about baseball anymore. We were talking about family connection.

By the time I got to LA, I'd already driven 8,000 miles on my own. I was halfway done with my tour. But this, this was my hell week. Because the Angels and the Dodgers rarely play at home at the same time, I had to catch a game in Anaheim, drive 17 hours up to Seattle, turn back around, drive 17 hours back to LA, then 30 hours to Minnesota. [audience aww] It's 4,000 miles in 10 days. But I was a man possessed, nothing was going to stop me. After my Angels game, I hopped in the car and headed up north. But about halfway into the drive, my vision starts to get blurry and my body starts to uncontrollably shake. I pull over just in time to open the door and projectile vomit all over the side of the highway.

I didn't know what to do, so I called my dad. He just sighed into the phone and said, "You have food poisoning. What am I supposed to do from here? Gatorade and Pepto-Bismol." My mom gets on the phone and starts screaming at me, "This is ridiculous. You need to take better care of yourself," and I hung up. I wasn't in the mood for another lecture. I made it to Seattle in time for my game by double-fisting Gatorade and Pepto-Bismol. I was staying with some family friends, so I knew they'd be able to take care of me. The next day, I hear a knock at the door. Nobody's home, so I walk upstairs and through the glass door I see the silhouette of a 4’10” 90-pound little woman. I open the door and just say, "What are you doing here, Mother?" [audience chuckles] And she says, "I'm here to help you drive." 

Now, she must have seen the panic on my face, because she followed that up with, "And I've been listening to your podcast. I know you don't take bathroom or food breaks when you're on the road, so I'm not going to take any breaks either. We're going to stay on your schedule." I didn't know she was listening to the podcast. And then, she said one more thing, "I'm driving the whole way. So, you've got two options. You sit next to me and you can sleep, or we can talk." Now, I honestly can't remember the last time my mom and I had been in the same room together without it devolving into tears. So, I said, "Okay, Mama." I got in the car and I immediately went to sleep. [audience laughter] 

I slept the entire way to LA. When we got there, she said, "I'm not going to go to the baseball game with you." I said, "Why not?" She said, "Because you've got work to do. And if people see you there with your mother, they're not going to want to talk to you." I said, "You're being ridiculous. Of course, you're going to come," and I got her a ticket. We're at Dodger Stadium, and I start interviewing the gentleman sitting next to me, as I'd done at every ballpark before. My mom, she moves to the seat behind us to give us some space to chat. 

And after the interview is over, I can hear her talking to her new seatmate. And her new seatmate's asking, "Wow, you must be a huge baseball fan to do this type of road trip." And my mom just answers, "No, I really don't like baseball. I like watching my son watch baseball." [audience aww] I pretended like I didn't hear that. After the game was over, we're walking back to the car, and she stops me. She wants to show me a picture she'd taken during the game. I looked down at her phone, and it's actually a picture of me and the guy that I'd been interviewing. And she just said, "Look, you're smiling." I said, "When are you going home, Mama?" And she said, "No, no, no, no. I'm going to drive with you to Minnesota, too." This time there was no panic on my face. I said, "Okay, we're going to split the drive and let's talk."

As we made our way out east, I started talking to my mom the way that I'd been talking to these strangers at the ballpark these last couple of months, asking her stories about her life. This woman, she survived three wars between India and Pakistan. I didn't know that. She told me the story of how her and my dad's arranged marriage came to be. I knew they were arranged, I just never knew how or why it happened. I don't know why I never bothered to ask her that. 

Right before we got to Minnesota, we made a quick pit stop in South Dakota at Mount Rushmore. As we're walking up to the monument, my mom peeled off to call my dad. I was eavesdropping, and I could hear her say, “As immigrants to this country, we'd always wanted to see Mount Rushmore. We just never found a reason to make the trip. This is all so exciting. I can't wait for you to be able to see our son. He's just so happy." Thank you.

[cheers and applause]

Jenifer: [00:32:42] That was Muneesh Jain. His mom flew home after getting him safely to the next stadium, and he eventually finished the tour, fulfilling his dream of seeing all 30 stadiums in one single season. Since their mother–son road trip, Muneesh talks to his mom or someone in his family almost every single day. Each summer since, Muneesh travels to ballparks across the country, taking pictures, talking to fans, and eating ice cream out of a mini helmet. He's currently at work on a memoir on how baseball saved his life. To see some pictures of Muneesh with his mom, visit themoth.org, where you can also download the story. 

In a moment, the bride and her mother are at a crossroads, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

Jay: [00:33:41] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Jenifer [00:33:50] This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jenifer Hixson. We're highlighting stories about protective mothers. Sometimes they save the day, and sometimes they mean well, but it gets complicated. 

Our next story is told by Xochitl Gonzalez. 

[cheers and applause] 

You may recognize her name as the author of critically acclaimed novels Olga Dies Dreaming and Anita de Monte Laughs Last. But before she was a published writer, she spent some years as an acclaimed wedding planner. Here's Xochitl.

Xochitl: [00:34:22] So, years ago, I was a wedding planner. Wedding planning obviously requires you to be detail oriented and have excellent time management skills, but you also need to really learn how to deal with some batshit situations. [audience chuckles] So, this particular batshit happened in 2009. And I remember, because it was the end of the recession, and I was broke, and I was just finishing up my divorce and starting to date again. And so, one day my office phone rings, and nothing good starts with a whisper, but the woman on the other end says, [whispers] "My daughter's getting married in a few weeks and you've got to save this wedding." [chuckles] 

She refuses to give us any more details, insisting that we must come uptown to her apartment, because only then will we understand the scale of her conundrum. While this sounded crazy, I realized that I was broke. And so, I agreed to go. [audience laughter] As she was hanging up the phone, she says, [whispers] "By the way, I'm very, very, very rich." [audience laughter] And she was. Because when we got there, she lived in one of those grand old apartment buildings on Park Avenue, the kind with the doorman with the uniform and the cap, and he opens the brass door, and there in this giant lobby, there's only two elevators, because each elevator goes up and opens into its own apartment. And so, we get up to the apartment and the maid in the maid outfit, greets us and takes us down a long corridor into the library that's really just a room for books. [audience laughter] And there, waiting for us alone, is the mother of the bride. 

We're going to call her Mia, just for sake of convenience. And Mia says, “This is dire.” She's embarrassed of all of it. Not the library or the maid, per se, but her daughter was embarrassed of being rich. She had been living as a closeted rich person her entire adult life. [audience laughter] None of her friends knew that she was rich. Her future in-laws didn't really have any idea. This has been driving Mia crazy. She's refusing my finery, she's living in squalor, she's refusing Mia's clothes, she's walking around in Old Navy, [audience laughter] and it's just been a nightmare. It's the cross that poor Mia's had to bear for the last two decades. Only now everything is coming to a head with this engagement. Because last year Mia's other daughter got engaged, and Mia threw her a giant wedding at the Pierre and plastered the ballroom in orchids.

And so, now, this daughter realizes, “Well, I can't let my mother have anything to do with this, otherwise the jig is up. Everyone's going to know that I'm rich.” And by the way, this impoverishment posturing isn't completely new, nor new to me. As long as I've known rich people, I've known people like this. In fact, probably amongst us now, someone just asked you to Venmo them $5 for Starbucks and next week they'll secretly be skiing with their rich parents in Aspen. [audience laughter] But in any case, [chuckles] Mia's daughter decides she's going to take matters into her own hands and plan this wedding herself. Armed, of course, with Mia's checkbook. And so, she goes along. And now, the wedding's a few weeks away and Mia finally goes to the tasting, and Mia finally sees the venue, and Mia finally realizes this is a piece of shit. [audience laughter] 

She turns to her daughter and she's like, "You can pretend to be poor all you want, but I can't have my friends and family coming to this." And so, they get into a giant fight. They agree that the only way to resolve this is by hiring a wedding planner. And the only wedding planner that the two of them could agree upon was my company. [audience chuckles] Now, I want to say that I was surprised by this, except that at the time, a lot of my competitors were really doing opulence, as in plastering the ballroom of the Pierre with orchids. We were known for doing what I like to think of as understated luxury, which in 2009 meant we knew how to make a barn seem like a five-star restaurant. So, that this landed in our lap didn't completely surprise me.

And at the time, we would take turns with the batshit. The turn was mine, and so now it's me. The reason why the meeting was so urgent was because Mia had to get to us before her daughter did. Her daughter was planning on calling us on the morrow and hiring us for this affair. And Mia was like, "I needed you to get here, so I could explain to you how things were going to work, and they were going to work like this. ‘You say yes to everything she says. If she asks what it costs, you say it's already included in the contract. And then secretly, you and I are going to plan the wedding that I want.’” [audience laughter] 

Now, I would have felt badly about this, except that the next day when I met the daughter, she actually did have terrible taste, [audience laughter] or at the very least, mildly insulting ideas of what she thought poor people would do at their weddings. [audience laughter] She would have had everybody sitting at picnic tables and drinking out of jam jars if she had her chance. And so, I felt like I could do a service here, because Mia was kind of a riot. And as I said, I was broke. Plus, Mia took an immediate interest in my love life, which I really appreciated at the time, because my friends, after having just survived my divorce, were over it, and I had just met this guy. 

I'd been married to my ex-husband for 10 years, and so I'd never online dated. I went on the Internet, and I met this guy. He was charming and he was handsome and he had a great job and above all, he had this thing that I used to really look for in a guy at that time, he had a sadness about him. [audience laughter] I don't know why I needed that. I just did. It was so sad. [audience laughter] He married his college sweetheart. They'd always intended on having a big family. Year after year after year goes by, there's infertility problems. Instead of bringing them together, it pulls them apart. He's so open, and he's so vulnerable, and he's so sad. [audience laughter] 

I just was all in. We're texting, we're calling, we're running all over Manhattan, traipsing around at all hours of the night, arguing the existence of God, all in. And Mia couldn't get enough. She was making up reasons to have meetings to get me to come uptown. We'd share three bottles of wine and I'd tell her all about it. Everything was great until everything was terrible, because Mia's daughter decides that she wants to reduce the carbon footprint of the wedding. [audience laughter] She wants to do this by having edible escort cards, so that we don't waste anything. 

The escort card, for those of you who don't know, is the little piece of paper that's at the cocktail hour that tells you what table to sit at when the dinner starts. Mia's daughter decides that we're going to save the environment by having bacon-wrapped dates with a toothpick in them and a teeny little tag that has your name and then the table number, and then you're just going to eat it. And so, I did what I was supposed to do and I said, "Oh, yes, oh, that is a great idea." And then, immediately, when she left, I emailed Mia and said, "What are we going to do? It's going to look like a table full of floating turds." [audience laughter] And Mia replies, "Oh, Jesus Christ, I wish you were my daughter." [audience laughter] 

Now, they say that there's no accidents, but that night, Mia forgot to log out of her Gmail, and her daughter went on the computer and saw the correspondence, and insisted, as one would imagine, that I be fired immediately. Except that Mia couldn't quit me and I don't know that I could quit Mia. [audience laughter] And so, instead we devised this elaborate ruse, more elaborate than the original ruse, [audience laughter] and we’re going to have one of my employees-- And I'm not proud of this, but we had one of my employees pretend that she worked for the caterer. We sent an email introducing them and saying that I was hands-off, it's all in this woman's hands. They go off and she tells this woman all of her hopes and dreams and nothing that the bride and this woman say holds any water, because the only thing that matters is what happens between me and Mia. And so, they're off planning this modest, eco-friendly wedding, and Mia and I are planning this lavish, I mean, environmentally unsound affair. [audience laughter] 

We are making custom-made furniture. We've got flowers imported from Holland wrapping around the windows of this loft. We're re-flooring the floors. We're landscaping a deck. It was going to take three days to just set this party up before it even happened. And in the meantime, I'm still dating this guy. Only it's starting to get weird. This divorce is starting to feel very, very complicated. It involved real estate and a soft real estate market. And only in New York does somebody say to you, "Well, it's so difficult because of the soft real estate market," and you say, "Of course." [audience laughter] But I was starting to feel like I was unwittingly sleeping with a married man. It didn't feel good. And so, I was like, "Why don't you let things settle? See how long this takes, let things settle or let the market perk up, either one, [audience chuckles] and then call me and let's see where we are? You never know."

I really was trying to be very Zen about the whole thing, because I was really into him. But it was hard, because he was also kind of rich and I was also kind of broke. He never said that he was rich, but he said things. He talks about how he'd gone to this prep school, he had a big wedding of his own at the Plaza. I could put two and two together. And so, could Mia. She was really cheering this on. She'd grown up poor, so she was like, "Marry rich. It's so fun. It's so fun." [audience laughter]

So, a couple of days after this breakup of sorts, Mia calls me, as usual, frantic, urgent, panicked. "Napkins. We've got to talk about napkins. You've got to get uptown to this linen store and we need to talk about these napkins." We are there being persnickety about napkins for, like forever until we then go and have our usual lunch where we split a salad and two bottles of wine. [audience laughter] She's asking about the guy, and I tell her about what happened and how I had to make the break. And I was like, “I'm holding out hope. You never know. Love finds a way." 

All of a sudden, I just remember something that I couldn't believe I'd never brought up before. And I was like, "You know what, Mia? It's so funny. He actually went to the same prep school as your fake poor daughter.” I was like, “I wonder if you know him." Know him? Does Mia know him? The elevators. Mia lives on 17 South. His parents live in 17 North. She had just seen him the weekend prior in the Hamptons with his wife and their six-year-old son. [audience aww] Mia remembered the son's age, because she had been at the kid's bris. There is no divorce, [chuckles] there is no apartment on the market, there is nothing but this guy being a terrible, terrible person. Which, at this point, I'm also not that sure that Mia and I aren't, [audience laughter] because we are still going behind her daughter's back to plan this wedding.

We are not only having this adulterous mother–daughter affair, but [audience laughter] we're running a con on this poor girl whose worst sin is that she's got terrible taste in escort cards. I just was starting to feel terrible, but I was in too deep. So, the day of the wedding comes, and I'm there setting up, and I'm folding the beautiful napkins, and I'm fixing the forks, and everything is perfect. The flowers are fully in bloom, and the $100 bottles of wine are all chilled. I've got five staff members there secretly disguised as waiters. And very nice-looking waiters, because Mia didn't like the original uniform. And so, we upgraded, obviously. 

Now, clearly, I couldn't be there because the bride never wanted to see my face again. So, I take myself to a restaurant a few blocks away and I'm calling in orders to my staff. I'm texting with frantic Mia, who's like, "She's going to find out what we've been up to. She's going to find out what we've been up to." I am assuring her, "Mia, we're almost at the finish line. It's going to be a beautiful day. Just a few more hours to get through. She's never going to find out." 

Now, I didn't realize that the reason why Mia was so confident that her daughter was going to find out is because Mia was going to get drunk and tell her. [audience laughter] And so, halfway through the reception, she pulls her daughter aside and confesses the entire scheme. And this poor girl on her wedding day realized that her life these last few weeks has been a lie. She's surrounded by traitors everywhere she turns. And she, of course, sees red. Who can blame her? Take it from me, finding out that you've been deceived does not feel good. And she says to Mia, "I refuse. You can never see her again. You can never talk to her again. If I find out that you're having any more contact with the wedding planner, I'm cutting off all contact with you." 

And so, Mia acquiesces and she agrees to family therapy and individual therapy and she's never going to see me again. She sends me a dramatic text message that says, "She knows everything. This is goodbye." [audience laughter] Except Mia being Mia, of course, it wasn't really goodbye. I still hear from her every now and then. Maybe a call, sometimes a text. But in looking back, I sometimes can't help but wonder, was this gorgeous lavish wedding really worth it, culminating in a fight between mother and daughter? Would they have been better off with picnic tables, and jam jars, and escort cards that looked like turds? [audience laughter] Then again, relationships can be mended, but wedding photos are forever. [audience laughter] Thank you very much.

[cheers and applause]

Jenifer: [00:47:49] That was Xochitl Gonzalez. Xochitl eventually left the world of hors d’oeuvres to become a writer, cultural critic, producer, screenwriter, and best-selling author. 

To all the mothers out there who fiercely defend and protect, support and, okay, sometimes overstep, here's hoping your efforts are received as love. 

I asked my daughter about her earliest memory. She said she was about three and had an ice cream cone and I asked her for a bite. And get this, the bite I took was too big. I'm sorry, Annabelle. But in my defense, I'm sure I only took that big bite to prevent the cone from toppling over. I'm forever looking out for you, kid. 

That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.

[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift]

Jay: [00:48:47] This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Jenifer Hixson, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show, along with Larry Rosen. Coproducer is Viki Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch. 

The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Marina Klutse, Lee Ann Gullie, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Kaza. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. 

Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Stan Whitmire, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Duke Levine, and Larry Goldings and John Snyder. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. 

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special thanks to our friends at Audacy, including executive producer Leah Reis-Dennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story, which we always hope you'll do, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.