Host: Jay Allison
[Uncanny Valley by The Drift]
Jay: [00:00:12] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this radio show. This time, stories about something we all have in common one way or another, mothers. For starters, I'd like to establish my own credentials.
So, mom, what was I like as a little kid?
Barbara: [00:00:32] Very imaginative. Very cute, very lively.
Jay: [00:00:35] Does that mean like a pain in the neck?
Barbara: [00:00:37] No. No, you were a good baby. You were very good.
Jay: [00:00:41] There you have it. The truth from my mom. Evidently, I also like stories.
Barbara: [00:00:46] And you like to read. You like to be read too. Very satisfactory.
Jay: [00:00:50] So, mom, you know what The Moth is, right?
Barbara: [00:00:53] I do indeed. I love it.
Jay: [00:00:56] And how would you describe it?
Barbara: [00:00:59] Well, I would say it was certainly unusual and inventive and very personal. The people who are talking are really telling you what they feel, and they do it in a beautiful way. They were not all tragic. Some of them were very funny and inspiring.
Jay: [00:01:13] So, let's start off with a funny and tragic and inspiring motherhood story from Ophira Eisenberg.
[applause]
She told it for our Moth member show in New York City at the Cooper Union. Here's Ophira.
[applause]
Ophira: [00:01:28] So, I never wanted to have kids. When I was in my 30s, all my friends were sweating about having a family. They would come and say things to me like, “When you see a baby, don't you just want to grab it and then gnaw on its pudgy little thighs and inhale its forehead and then just grab it and run away?” And I was like, “No. [audience chuckles] What are you talking about?” I did not understand their weird Hansel and Gretel fantasies. I just didn't get it.
When I was in my 30s, I had goals. And they were to feed and clothe myself and live in New York. I had goals. I wanted to have a room, a bedroom that could have a bed in it that you could walk around all three sides of. [audience laughter] And then, the big item that if I owned, I thought that would mean I made it was I dreamed of owning a wine fridge. [audience laughter] That was my dream with wine in it that lasted more than one weekend. [audience laughter]
So, I'm the youngest of six kids. Growing up, my mother always said to me, “Never get married and never have kids. They'll ruin your life.” [audience laughter] It's not exactly what you want to hear from your mother. What she meant was that she wanted me to be able to have a career, follow my dreams, not feel pressured to settle down, do whatever I wanted. It was very much like what she wasn't able to do. And I took it to heart.
Now, in my 40s, things started to gel together. I had a bit of a career. I was married to a guy I loved. I traveled. It felt pretty good. So, I ordered a wine fridge. [audience laughter] And then, the next second, just a sledgehammer went through the whole thing. After a routine mammogram, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, early-stage breast cancer. But as you know, there's no such thing as lucky cancer. And I fell apart. Thus started a year of hell.
I did not respond to it by having a Tig Notaro moment and spin the whole thing into comedy gold. I was destroyed. I fell apart. I dragged myself from one surgery and then another surgery, appointments and tests and then 30 days of radiation. I completely lost sense of myself. I didn't relate to who I was in the past. I didn't even know if I could think of who I was in the future.
There's this little bit of wisdom people say all the time that you should live in the moment. Let me tell you something, there is nothing worse than being forced to live in the moment, thinking about the future, like, just musing on what could happen next, that is for the happy and the carefree.
So, at the end of that year, I went to go back to the doctor. And of course, they don't really use the word remission anymore, but he said you responded well to all the treatments and things look really good. So, have a good time and we'll see you in another year and we'll start testing again.
I tried to ease myself back into my old life or figure out what my new life was. Before I could really even get it together, I got pregnant by accident from my husband. [audience laughter] It was unbelievable. Mostly because I honestly didn't think my body was capable of ever doing anything that beautiful. Again, I didn't think that I was ever going to be able to ever just do anything normal. I mean, it was like looking out onto a cracked, barren soil field and seeing just a little, tiny green shoot.
And you know what? I have to admit, I didn't think so much about gnawing on pudgy thighs. I was just so elated that maybe this meant I was supposed to survive. Could I get excited? Should I be concerned? Before I could even pick one, I miscarried. I hate saying that word. I know you hate hearing it. It's so common though, it makes me think we should talk about it more. But I got a call from my OB/GYN saying that the miscarriage was something called a partial molar pregnancy, that is-- It's just a genetic mistake. It's not based on age, or prior health history or nothing. “Bad luck,” as she said. What was growing in me wasn't so much a fetus, but a regular group of cells. What is an irregular group of cells considered? Cancer.
My own pregnancy had given me another cancer scare. And to make sure that it didn't develop into cancer, I needed to go get tested every week by giving blood for six months. I couldn't believe it. I felt like I was never going to be able to move forward. I was depressed. That is an understatement. I wasn't suicidal, that wasn't enough. I didn't want to destroy myself. I wanted to destroy everything. I wanted to rip up the sky, and light everything on fire and watch it all burn to the ground. It was a very dark time. [audience laughter] I'm pretty sure it was summer. [audience laughter]
Now, somehow at the end of that, six months has passed, I'm back in my OB/GYN's office. My husband Jonathan is with me. She delivers a great news, like, “Guess what? It's great. You're cleared, you're good to go.” And then, she says, “So, you guys can try again.” We are just sitting in silence, shocked silence. So much so that she goes, “Well, don't you want to have kids again?” So interesting.
First of all, we never tried to begin with. Second of all, were just trying to get to a place where I just felt normal and in control of my body again. And man, I have been asked, do I want to have kids? Thousands of times in my life. I usually just responded with a bit of a joke, to be honest. I would say, “Sure, I do, but who's going to raise them?” [audience laughter] Or, “Yes, of course, but I live in New York. Where am I going to put them?”
But this time, I just looked at her right in her eyes and I said, “It's too late. I'm too old.” She reminded me that she had many patients of an advanced maternal age. [audience laughter] And she suggested that I go get an egg count test, a blood test and she ended the appointment with saying, “Why don't we just see what happens.”
Now, if anything seemed routine and normal to me, it was giving blood. So, I went into Quest Diagnostics, one of the most casual medical facilities on the planet. [audience laughter] I mean, it's hard to believe that that exists. You walk in, and there's a woman faxing forms and you say, “Hey, I'm here to give some blood.” She puts down the toner and snaps on gloves and you're like-- [audience laughter] She fishes out a syringe from a pencil case. [audience laughter] There's no diplomas on the walls. There's just lockup instructions. [audience laughter]
But she took my blood. And then, a few days later, I got an email from my OB/GYN with a weird number and just a one line note. And it just said, “An encouraging number for someone your age.” [audience laughter] I cried, because it was the nicest thing anyone [audience laughter] in the medical community had said to me for years. I looked at the calendar and I thought, maybe I'll see if Jonathan wants to try.
I told him about the results of the test over breakfast. I said, “Oh, you know, the omelet you made me reminded me.” [audience laughter] And I was like, “Encouraging number my age, encouraging eggs.” Jonathan nodded. He looked very pensive and he said, “While I can imagine us having a life with kids, I can also imagine us not having a life with kids. And we'd be okay. We'd be okay together. We travel and we do nice things. We'd have a nice life, just the two of us as well.”
I knew he was being honest, but I also really felt he was trying to protect me. I mean, he didn't want me going through anything more. He didn't want me to be put in another medical situation or something, another physical thing happened to me. And I got it. I was equally terrified. I wanted nothing more, to just feel like nothing could ever get to me again.
But later that day, weirdly, I found myself writing him an email. My own husband, I wrote him an email, and I just wrote, “I think we should try, because we can't guarantee that we're going to have a kid. We can just try and see what happens. But if we don't try just because we're scared, then the fear has won and I can't live in that world.” And he responded, “Great. Let's do it.” [audience laughter]
So, I will admit though, after month one, when I got my period, I wasn't all like, “We can't guarantee it. We'll just try and see what happens.” I swore at my period, I swore at my body. I was like, “What's going on, encouraging eggs?” I was so mad, and I felt this primal urge in me that I was like, “I have to have a baby and it has to happen now.” [audience laughter] And then, the second month when I didn't get my period, I was just silently terrified.
Now, all through all of this, people kept telling me through all of it, they said, “You need to think positively.” And I would just go “What are you talking about? How can I look at myself in the mirror and lie to myself?” Because I know what it's like when things don't work out the way you want them to. But now I understand what that's about, because it really doesn't matter if you think positive or negative. It has zero influence on the outcome. But it certainly changes how you experience the moment. I'm lucky, I have a one-year-old baby boy at home right now.
[cheers and applause]
His name is Lucas. His crib is taking over the room that was supposed to be my dream office. He's learning how to walk and he's always tripping over the wine fridge. [audience laughter] He's sweet. He smiles all the time for no reason. I'm still full of fear, oh my God. So, many question marks loom in the future. But I try to challenge myself. I try to say, “Okay, if everything fell apart, if everything went to hell, the worst way possible, would I think to myself, I am so glad I did not let myself experience joy or happiness in the moment, because it really protected me from the future?” No, life doesn't work like that.
So, now, my goal is sort of like that joke about ruining my life that my mom said to me. My goal is that me, Jonathan and Lucas, that we all get to ruin our lives together. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jay: [00:15:22] Ophira Eisenberg is a comedian, writer and host of NPR's trivia show, Ask Me Another. Ophira's debut memoir, Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy has been option for a feature film. The day after Ophira told this story, she went back for her yearly mammogram, and checkup and all was normal. She was told she was part of the survivorship program. She said she cried so hard. They asked her if she understood that it was good news.
Ophira: [00:16:00] This Mother's Day, what is going to happen? It's all so new. I am not going to expect anything. I feel like, honestly, if Mother's Day means that just can go out for a walk or something, I am so low key. I'd never want my child to do to me what I did to my mother, which was make her breakfast in bed of some just terrible half raw scrambled eggs and some not toasted toast that the orange juice has fallen onto, so it's a little soggy. And then, you just sit there with wide eyes and make her eat it by staring at her and cold coffee. Please, Lucas, you do not have to do that. It's going to be just fine.
At the end of Mother's Day, if I can crack open a nice $8 Merlot from the wine fridge and cheers that another day that we made it through all together, that is the best I can hope for.
Jay: [00:17:03] If for any reason you might want to, you can see a photograph of Ophira's wine cooler with a baby lock on it at themoth.org.
In a moment, more true stories for this mother's edition of The Moth Radio Hour, which 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 this episode is about mothers.
Can you imagine telling a moth story, Mom?
Barbara: [00:17:37] No.
Jay: [00:17:38] You sure?
Barbara: [00:17:39] I'm sure.
Jay: [00:17:40] Because you're afraid of talking in front of groups, or because you wouldn't want to get that personal?
Barbara: [00:17:45] Oh, afraid of talking in front of groups. My knees knocking would be heard across the room, and I think they're brave to get up there and tell them.
Jay: [00:17:55] I do too.
Our next brave storyteller is Terry Wolfisch Cole at a GrandSLAM in New York City, where we partnered with public radio station WNYC.
[cheers and applause]
Terry: [00:18:10] So, when I was little, my dad worked late a really lot and my mom was left to deal with two small kids. There was me and there was my sister Lisa, who was not quite two years, younger than I was. And my mom, on all these evenings, would feed us dinner and give us a bath together and put us both to bed and that was the end of that.
And one day, one hot summer day when I was about five years old, I was playing with the kids next door. I found out that in other people's houses, older kids had later bedtimes. [audience laughter] And I was like, “What?” So, I go home to my mother with my newfound information and I advocate for policy change. [audience laughter] And I am denied.
And this is it, I've had it. This big sister thing is not what it's cracked up to be. Every time we both do something together that we're not supposed to do, I get in more trouble. Everybody's always paying attention to her. She's little, she's cute, she's got that eye patch thing going on. [audience laughter] And I'm done. We have to go to bed at the same time. I've had it. So, I go to my room, and from my closet, I take my white vinyl Partridge Family sleepover suitcase, and I put it on the bed and I start to pack.
Now, I'm an early reader, so into the suitcase goes Nancy Drew and Amelia Bedelia and some Barbies. By the time I'm done, there is no room left for clothes. But I'm leaving forever and I'm running away, so I know I'm going to need a wardrobe. I put on a pair of pants, two pair of underwear first, because you got to have a change. A pair of pants, a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, a hoodie, a raincoat. And over it all, a crocheted poncho with fringes. [audience laughter]
I go down the stairs where my mother is in the kitchen, and she looks up and she asks if I'm running away, and I tell her yes. [audience laughter] She is not nearly as upset by this as I feel she should be. She looks at me and she goes, “Are you going to Grandma Sylvia's?” which is the only other place I know how to be, because it's not even a mile away, but I can't believe she can figure this out. She's like some kind of witch. [audience laughter] I don't answer her, and I leave, and I go out the front door and down the driveway.
Now, remember, it's the 1970s and they have not yet invented suitcases with wheels, and mine is full of books. [audience laughter] So, with every step, I'm dragging my suitcase and I go down the driveway, left on Redwood, left on Clearfield, left on Red Oak. And with every step, I am sweating and dragging and sweating and dragging. I am so intent on my mission that I don't realize my mother is 20 yards behind [audience laughter] in her Plymouth fury [audience laughter] following and waving concerned citizens on their way. [audience laughter]
And finally, it's the left on Old Lyme, and I get to number 73, grandma's apartment building. I go up the stairs to the building. Before I even knock, the door opens, and my grandma tells me she's very happy to see me, but I'm certainly not living there forever. I realize my mother has called ahead and I have been betrayed. [audience laughter]
So, I'm in the living room. My grandma, she's like, “Do you want a drink as long as you're here?” So, she goes to get me some juice. I'm in the living room, and I'm taking off my layers and my mother comes sweeping in. She sits down in my grandfather's wingback chair and she pats her lap, she goes, “Come here.” I don't want to go, because I am righteously pissed. But I'm hot and I'm five and I get-- [audience laughter] And I get on my mother's lap. She pushes my hair back behind my ear and she says, “Sweetheart, what is it? Why have you left? Why have you run away?” It all comes tumbling out, “It's not fair and all the time. And Lisa, I get into trouble and she doesn't. We should not have the same bedtime.” [audience laughter]
And my mother, who has always known me better than I've known myself, takes my hot, red little face in her hands and she says to me, “Sweetheart, I don't want you to be so miserable.” She says, “You came first. If it's that hard for you living with Lisa in the house, tomorrow morning, I will call the orphanage and we will send her away.” [audience laughter] I said, “Okay.” I know what orphans are. I read. I know what the orphanage is. I start to cry and I beg her, “Don't send my sister away. No, no, no.” My mother reluctantly agrees that we'll all go home and we'll give it another try. [audience laughter] [audience applause]
And that night, my mother feeds us scrambled eggs and SpaghettiOs for dinner, and she gives us a bath and she puts us to bed at the same time, as she will for many years to come. [audience laughter] And in those years to come, Lisa and I will grow to be two halves of the same whole. We will be there through adventures, and concerts, and boyfriends, and divorces, and death and everything. But every once in a while, we'll have a fight. And if that happens to this day, and I turn over my shoulder and I say, “Mom, Lisa's being mean to me.” My mother always answers in the same way, and she says, “You had your chance.” [audience laughter] Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jay: [00:24:24] Terry Wolfisch Cole stepped onto the storytelling stage for the first time last year. And since then, she's won several competitions. She's also the founder of Tell Me Another, a new show in the Hartford, Connecticut, area that encourages ordinary people like her to share their extraordinary stories.
Jay: [00:24:46] So, you're pushing 90, Mom.
Barbara: [00:24:49] Yes.
Jay: [00:24:51] Would you say you think about your mother every day?
Barbara: [00:24:54] Oh, yeah. Oh, yes.
Jay: [00:24:56] A lot of you have left messages about your mothers on our pitch line at themoth.org. We have a few minutes to hear one now, and I'll give you more information about contacting us with your story ideas after this one.
Lisa: [00:25:09] My name is Lisa Marie Simmons. I live in Torre del Lago, in the north of Italy. I was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I was given up for adoption immediately as an infant. I had quite a tumultuous childhood, but though I did end up being adopted around the age of eight and grew up in Boulder, Colorado. I grew up with the conviction that family is who you surround yourself with, family is who you choose and you can create your family and that blood is not of any particular importance.
Recently, in Colorado, the laws changed allowing adoptees access to their birth certificates. So, of course, I was curious despite my stance and applied and found out the name of my birth parents. So, I began the search. After a couple of false starts, I sent off a letter to a woman who turned out to be my mother. I came home from a gig one night, or actually woke up the next morning and blearily raised the phone to my eye and in the subject box of my email I saw, “Yes, it's me.” And that was my first communication with my birth mother.
And the adventure has begun. She recently, last month, sent me a wonderful birthday gift. I got all these birthday cards in the mail, and I thought that perhaps she had gotten the entire family to get together and send me a card. But actually when I opened it up, they were in order for every year of my life, and that's 52 cards. And each one had a beautiful message, age appropriate, like, “You're starting school now, you're going to have to choose your best friend, choose wisely.” And each ended with, “Remember, you are so loved.”
Jay: [00:27:14] Remember. You can leave a short message telling us a short version of your story about mothers or anything else at themoth.org.
[soft ambient music]
Our next storyteller is Andy Christie from another StorySLAM, where we partnered with WNYC in New York. Here's Andy.
[cheers and applause]
Andy: [00:27:46] So, a few months ago, I guess in October, I'm down in Florida, Boynton beach, at my mother's one-bedroom little condo apartment she has down there. For the last 12, 13, 14 years, I've been going down there three or four times a year to visit, and fix her toilet plunger and rehang her cabinet doors, be a son, tell the neighbor to turn down the fucking TV once in a while I'm down there.
I'm down there for the last six or seven years, one of those visits was always, I would always get there a little bit early and I would spend a few days first being there alone, setting up the apartment to make it nice for her when she got back from the hospital, because she would spend a couple of days in the hospital having her essential systems retuned, tuned up. [audience laughter]
She'd come back home as good as new or as good as a used but well-maintained [audience laughter] machine. She wound up down there after a pair of not wildly successful marriages that began with my father. They met at the end of World War II in occupied Austria. He was a 5’6” private who worked in the Scottish private, who worked in the mess hall. She was a 5’9” Yugoslavian farm girl refugee.
They got married, had a couple of kids of which I was one, moved to America and got divorced, so quickly it was almost like they moved to America to get divorced. [audience laughter] I always figured it was like once the Nazis were out of the picture, they finally had time to take a good look at each other. [audience laughter] But they were just different. The shorthand is she was easily pleased, he was easily satisfied. It's a subtle distinction unless you are both variables in that equation there. Dad was always like, “Yeah, that's good enough.” And mom was always like, “Oh, that's good. That's good. You're not setting fire to my ancestral home. Thank you. That's good. That's good.” [audience laughter]
You know, the war-torn experience leaves a mark on you. And she was like, “I enjoyed that.” She used the word enjoy a lot. We all say, “Well, do you enjoy your dinner?” She would say, “I enjoy my dinner.” But she used it in a way that was sometimes not just perfectly on the button, like she would say she enjoyed her gravy or something. Because I think she had never lost a little bit of shame about not being American, about not being so fluent in language, about being a farm girl, being uneducated. I think she thought the word enjoy was just a little fancier. A couple of pages further along in the Slavic American Translation Dictionary, she enjoyed things.
So, I'm down there this particular time and I am setting up the place, and it's one of the times when she is away at the hospital. Only this time, it's a little bit different, because I find out after I get there, after I've been there for a couple of days, that she is not doing as well as she usually does at the hospital that she has-- The doctors said she turned a corner, and I am setting up the apartment to welcome her back home. Only now she is not just coming back home, but she's coming to back home hospice.
So, I have spent the last couple of days, getting rid of her bed and replacing it with a hospital bed. Taking all of this stuff that has erupted out of boxes, like I say, she had never left behind her European-Austrian-Slavic background. All the stuff that I spent my entire youth telling her that, “Really, it's not a very American thing. You really got to put that stuff away. All those little tatted doilies that you get from your nieces, they're a little embarrassing to me. This not American. We're more hard edged, you know?”
But when she moved down there and she finally had her life all by herself, these things bubbled up out of these cardboard boxes that we had forced her to store away. Now, I had to get rid of her bed. I am pushing all of this stuff, all these artifacts from her background, from her youth, into the perimeter of the room and putting a hospital bed in the middle of it. It's not flowery and it's not soft. It's very hard edged and very modern and very high tech, it's as if you took the roof off of your dollhouse and he found a switchblade sitting in the middle of the [audience laughter] vanity.
All these things that I also found sort of embarrassing and a little mortifying has suddenly become a little bit sad and beautiful. She had turned this little one bedroom apartment back into the old country. And now, there's a hospital bed in the middle of it and she is in it and I'm outside on the landing smoking a cigarette. She's not spoken. She hasn't eaten for a couple of days. She's in hospice. They're just letting her go away. I'm not by myself. There's a nurse, a private duty nurse, and there is a health aide in there with her. I'm smoking out there, remembering that maybe even in this state, she knows that I'm smoking because she could even tell that I was exhaling smoke and not air when I talked to her from New York, between New York to Florida, [audience laughter] somehow.
I'm out there, and this girl walks down the landing and she has a guitar strapped to her back and a shoulder bag and she says she is the hospice music therapist. I like her to sing some songs for my mother. I think really like this retro hippie is going to, “What are you going to sing? Send in the Clowns for my mother, who was--" [audience laughter] Music wasn't a big part of our lives anyway. “But what am I going to do?” I said, “Okay, let's go in.” I go in and she sits down. My brother and I are in there and she says, “So, what music did you like?” Music, again, was not a big part of our lives. I wanted to be a rock musician, of course. My brother wanted to be a drummer. And so, my mother got him accordion lessons.
I said, “I don't know. Do you know any polkas?” She says, “I don't know. Does she like show tunes?” And I said, “I don't know.” She said, “What about The Sound of Music?” Artie and I, my brother, both looked at each other. Sound of Music was the only VHS tape we had growing up. After every Thanksgiving, after every Christmas, after every Easter, we went into the family room, we watched The Sound of Music. It was about Austria. It was about my mother's homeland. And we said, “Yes, The Sound of Music.”
And so, this girl ran her guitar and she started playing. And in the most, just unbelievably angelic voice and the sound she played Edelweiss. And Edelweiss is the kind of song that you could easily make fun of until you hear it again. It's like somewhere over the rainbow. It's an unbelievably beautiful song. She sang it to my mother and us, the four of us in the room.
My mother again, who had not spoken, had not eaten, had not recognized anybody for a few days, listened to it with us. There was not a dry eye in the room when we left. One of the nurse's aides had to leave. She was sobbing. I was crying, of course, my brother was crying. When it was over, and there's that instinct you have when any performance, I don't care if it's at a funeral or whatever, you clap when someone finishes. And we all clapped. And my mother, who hadn't moved a muscle for a couple of days, raised her arms to clap. I leaned over, rubbed her head and I said, “Did you like that?” And she said, after not having spoken for a couple of days, said, “I enjoyed it.” [audience laughter] And the next morning, she was gone, and those were her last words, “I enjoyed it.” Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jay: [00:36:04] Andy Christie is the creative director of Slim Films, animation and illustration studio. His stories have appeared in the New York Times and The Moth Anthology, and he's creator and host of the Liar Show, a live storytelling series. To see lots of photos of Andy and his mom, visit themoth.org. And right now, you're listening to a recording Andy made of the hospice music therapist in his mother's room.
[Edelweiss song]
Coming up, our final story for our Moth mothers show, in just a moment.
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 in this show, we have stories by and about mothers.
If you did get up and tell a Moth story, Mom, what do you think it might be about?
Barbara: [00:37:23] [chuckles] I really wouldn't-- My life has been so simple that I can't really think.
Jay: [00:37:32] That's not true. Nobody's life is simple.
We will leave my mother's stories for another time if my mother can be persuaded to tell them publicly, which I doubt. Here then is our final story, told at a showcase in New York city as part of The Moth’s Community Program.
[cheers and applause]
It's told by Samuel Lewis Lee.
Samuel: [00:37:55] It's 1964. So, I'm a 14-year-old kid going to visit his mother in the hospital. Mother was in hospital. She had cancer. She had been in the hospital since I was 10. So, going to see her in the hospital was the highlight of my day.
So, this particular day I go to see her in the hospital and I play this game where I avoid the hospital staffs and I sneak up the stairs. When I come out the stairway, her room is right across the hall. So, on this particular day I come out the stairway and I notice that her bed is empty. So, my thing is, I asked the nurse, “Well, where is my mother?” So, the nurse said she was gone. So, my response was, “Gone where? Gone to another floor, gone for X-rays?”
So, the dietician pulled me to the side and he says that your mother died, that you should go home and talk to your family. He didn't know that-- My home was like a-- My father was a violent alcoholic and my family was my friends. So, I tried to make my way home. I had tears in my eyes and I was crying. I find myself in front of a bus that's screeching, stopping. So, I just walk in front of this bus to try to get home, and the bus driver had to stop short and he got out the bus to curse me out.
So, then when he figured out that something was wrong with me, he asked me what was wrong. So, I told him I just found out that my mother died. So, he put his hand on my shoulder, put me in the front of the bus and told me everything was going to be all right. So, he made sure I got home.
So, after the funeral, I'm hanging out on a stoop. This lady comes up to me and she introduces herself. She says, “My name is Rose. I know who you are and I owe your mother a favor, because she got the NAACP to stop an eviction process.” She says, “I want you to come by my house and hang out.” So, she asked me was I hungry. So, she bought me a sandwich and a soda and some cookies and took me to her stoop, which she lived at.
So, she said, “I want you to come by here every day, so I can look out for you.” So, I would come by every day after school, but it didn't take me long to figure out that Rose was a prostitute. Right. [audience laughter] And she says, “I'm going to look out for you. I want you to come by, I'm going to take care of you.”
So, after my mother died, I started messing up in school. So, Rose says, “Well, I'm going to take you to school, and talk to your guidance counselor and see what the problem is.” So, she says, “I want you to meet me on the stoop tomorrow at 8 o'clock and we're going to go to your school.”
So, the next day, I'm sitting on her stoop and this lady comes by with this big flowery dress on and this nice hat and this pocketbook. It was like really going to church. I didn't recognize her. So, she turns around and says, “Come on, Junior, I don't have all day.” So, when I noticed it was Rose, I was saying she looked distinctively different than when she's going to the school than when she's working. [audience laughter] So, she takes me to the school--
She's not really able to do anything, because she's not my biological mother. She doesn't have to paperwork. So, we come back to the house. So, she sits me on the stoop, she says, “Well, just stay out on the stoop for a minute, I'm going to go in the house and change.” So, she goes in the house and she changes. She comes out, sits on the stoop with me and she says, “Well, listen, you got to find a job. I got to get you a job.” So, I said, “Okay.” So, she got me a job with some of her best tricks, some of her best customers. So, one job was sweeping up in Nathan's on 42nd street at night. Another job was sweeping up in the pool room. But the most memorable job that she got me was working in a shooting gallery.
So, a shooting gallery for the visuals is a two-room apartment with anywhere from 5 to 30 people in there, young, old, black, White, Spanish, Asian, a very diverse crowd. They are in there to shoot dope or coke or both. Shooting gallery is definitely an equal opportunity destination. And so, my job was to clean the coffee cans out, change the water from the bloody water to the clear water. That was my job.
So, one day on the job-- You can call it that. So, I hear a lot of commotion. And these two drug addicts are fighting each other. One drug addict gets thrown out the window. So, I'm a little kid, so I back up, I stay out the way. And the guy who ran the gallery, his name was Red, light-skinned guy with red hair. So, he says, “Do you know what just happened?” And I said, “No, I don't know.” He said, “Well, one dope fiend stole a piece of cotton from another dope fiend, and you just can't do that in here.” So, he asked me, “Did I learn anything?” I said, “Sure, I learned that thou shalt not steal.” So, that was a lesson I learned from that incident.
So, I started hanging out with Rose and I started working at the shooting gallery. So, I started the job when I was 14. So, I worked there until I was 17. So, when I became 17, Rose says, “Okay, you know enough. You go on your own and just do your own thing.” So, as a result of working in a shooting gallery and being raised by a prostitute, my natural vehicle of economic development was selling drugs. So, I sold drugs for a few years. I sold drugs for about five years, had a good run, apartment, cars and all that stuff. But five years later, I find myself in jail under the Rockefeller law.
So, I find myself in jail for selling drugs. They have pictures of me selling drugs to undercover cop in my pajamas in front of my house. My thing was I wasn't going to cop to it. At that time, we had a governor by the name of Nelson Rockefeller. And so, this was the first year that he implemented the Rockefeller law. So, that means I was guaranteed to do 20 years. So, when I went in front of the judge, the judge says, “Look, you're going to cop out to 20 years and you start.” So, my thing was, I wasn't going to cop out to it. So, I hung out for two months before I decided I might as well take this plea and start to do this bid.
I am in my cell. I figured everybody in jail knows God, so I'm praying. And so, I got my hands on the bar. I'm not praying for me so much. I'm praying for other little kids to come out of the community who didn't have no parents wouldn't wind up like me. So, I'm holding the bars and I'm praying. Then when I open my eyes and I look down, I see a pair of cowboy boots outside my cell. I look up and it's this white boy with a collar. So, he says, “Well, I apologize. I didn't want to bother you while you were praying.”
He said, a friend asked me to come and check on you and see how you doing. I said, “Well, who was that?” He said, “Well, Rose.” So, he said, “Do you remember a lady named Rose?” I said, “Of course, I remember Rose. How is she doing?” He said, “Well, she's dying. And on her deathbed, she asked me to come and check on you. I checked on the judge. You got a real rough judge. He's a real racist guy. He's going to give you the maximum 20, 25 years, but I will be in court the next day with you, because somebody should be in court with you.”
So, the next day, I go to court. The presiding judge. So, they have a substitute judge sitting on the bench and he can't figure out why I'm there. The DA doesn't have my records. So, he's mad at the D.A, like, “Why has this guy been here for two months, and he hasn't been sentenced and he hasn't started no jail time anywhere?” So, he asked me, “Well, why was I in jail?” So, I thought about it for a minute. I wasn't going to tell him I was in jail for selling drugs. So, I told him I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
So, what happens was, is that he looked out into the courtroom and he says, “Is anybody here for Mr. Lee?” So, the white guy got up with the collar and says, “Well, I talked to Mr. Lee, and now I'll be responsible for him if you release him.” So, the judge released me to this guy. So, I come to find out that the guy he released me to was Father Pitt, the founder of Samaritan Halfway Society. And so, the moral of the story, is that from the day that my mother died, who was my protector, to the day when my other protector, my other mother was dying from her deathbed, sent this guy to save me, is that there's nothing stronger than a mother's love. I will hope that they are sitting upstairs side by side, looking down and are proud of what I've become. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jay: [00:47:48] That was Samuel Lewis Lee. He told his story as part of The Moth’s Community Program in 2016. These days, Samuel is a digital media consultant and produces short form documentaries through his company Encounters in Black Traditions. Those who know Samuel describe him as, “a touchable example of resilience.”
Samuel: [00:48:11] I know my story is a non-traditional story. I know my story is probably a little different than other people's stories, because my life experience has been distinctively different. But I would just hope that sharing my story, it was therapeutic for me. Because I never really shared the entire story until I had the opportunity to do it through the showcase. So, it was like therapeutic for me.
Jay: [00:48:39] To see photos and hear more of that interview with Samuel Lewis Lee, visit themoth.org.
Do you think it's important to listen to the stories of other people?
Barbara: [00:48:50] Absolutely.
Jay: [00:48:51] Why?
Barbara: [00:48:52] It's good for anybody to hear of somebody else's point of view, problems. Particularly, if you've led a sheltered life like mine, you should be aware of that and sympathetic to it.
Jay: [00:49:04] I want to thank my mother, Barbara Allison, for pitching in on this hour about mothers. And we'll put up a little story or two she told us about her mother on our website.
That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from The Moth.
[Uncanny Valley by The Drift]
Maggie Cino and Jenelle Pifer directed some of the stories in this show. And the rest of The Moth’s directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Timothy Lou Ly.
Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Bill Frisell, Jan Johansson, Penguin Cafe Orchestra and The Black Keys.
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 National Endowment for the Arts. It was presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.