Host: Catherine Burns
[overture music]
Catherine: [00:00:12] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns And this time, we're going to hear about occasional magic, those moments of wonder and clarity that we sometimes stumble upon in life. We're just going along in the day to day, minding our own business and then bam, suddenly something happens and we discover a piece of truth in our lives. These moments often sneak up on me, and I can miss them entirely if I'm not paying attention.
Magic is definitely at play in our first story told by Chenjerai Kumanyika. He told the story at a Moth event we produced in Las Vegas, where he partnered with Nevada Public Radio and the Black Mountain Institute.
[applause]
Here's Chenjerai Kumanyika, live at The Moth.
Chenjerai: [00:00:54] So, I was at this family barbecue earlier this summer. I don't know if y’all go to Black family barbecue. Frankie Beverly Maze is playing. I was eating a second plate of mac and cheese. I promised myself I wouldn't eat. [audience laughter] I was doing some card tricks for my seven-year-old nephew, Jonathan. After a couple tricks, Jonathan looks up at me and goes, “How did you do it? How did it work?” And I was like, “Ah, you know, It's magic.” He got excited. He's like, “Ooh, magic.” He kept asking me. I'm doing more tricks, he kept asking me.
And then, for some reason, I started to think, well, maybe he's asking me something bigger than the card trick. I was projecting. I mean, you know. [audience laughter] And so, for some reason, I went way too dark on this. [audience laughter] I started to go, “Hmm, this kid's got to know. This is the time for this seven-year-old kid to understand, like, this is a trick.” So, I called him, I was like, “Yo, come here.” I showed him how the trick worked and then I was like, “Look, man, this is a trick, man. But you got to deal with reality.” [audience laughter]
You just saw, like his seven-year-old face just drop and I knew that I had failed as an adult human. [audience laughter] I told him that there was no magic. It's funny that I would be the one to deliver that, because my own relationship to this question is much more complicated. You see, when I was about 13, my aunt went to go live in Senegal. She invited me to come stay with her for a month or so over the summer.
Now, like a lot of African-Americans, I don't really know exactly where my ancestry is from, but I'd never been out of the country. So, it was so exciting to go to Africa. When I landed in Dakar, it was like everything was new. I'm talking about like just to go get some bread from the store was like an adventure. It's like, you can see everything, new buildings, new languages and smells.
My aunt was going to be really busy while I was there, so she hired a guy to look out for me. And his name was Ron. He's about 30 years old. He was a chaperone. So, during the time I was there, Ron was like my big brother. He told me about his life. Not just in Dakar, just as an older man. I told him about my life, because things were starting to change a little bit. I was coming to terms with what it meant to be a guy in this black male body that looked tough, but I had the heart of a podcaster, like a Lord of the Rings fan [audience laughter] or something.
I was trying to also figure out how I would make decisions. Could I trust myself? I mean, my parents had done a pretty good job of sheltering me from the ugliest parts of life, but I was living in Baltimore in the 1980s, and it felt like the danger could walk right up to your door. I told Ron about the time I was just playing tag with my friends, and the police had followed us home and questioned my mother. I told him a lot of my friends knew drug dealers, and had seen people killed and some even had guns. Ron was horrified. This wasn't the America that he knew about. He wanted to get some protection for me.
So, Ron knew of this elder who was skilled in making certain special talismans that could actually protect you from guns and knives. He’s like, “People in Senegal have these things,” and he wanted to get one for his African-American little brother to protect me from the violence of America.
So, the next morning, we found ourselves on a bus going out to the outskirts of Dakar. We got off the bus and walked into this small white house. When I walked in, I met this elder. I was instructed to go into the bathroom by myself, take a bath. I put on this robe. When I came out, they handed me this white towel, and it was filled with this little black powder. Ron and I took that towel to a local tailor and had it sewn into animal skin belt. I remember when it was done, just holding it in my hands, feeling its power, like, yeah, now I'm going to be protected.
But then, Ron told me there was a catch. He goes, “In order for this belt to work, you have to believe in it. And in order for you to believe in it, we got to go back to the heel, to the elder, you got to put the belt on and then I'm going to have to shoot you.” [audience laughter] “What? Ron?” “Little brother, no, I wouldn't put you in harm's way.” Look, I know what you're thinking, like, this is supposed to be a real easy decision for me. I mean, I wasn't the most street savvy kid, but I did know rule number one, don't let people shoot you, [audience laughter] even if they ask nicely.
But I wanted that belt to work too. Can you imagine going back as a kid to Baltimore with this belt, that was like some Marvel comic type stuff. I was like, wanted that to work. And then, also, why was Ron doing this? Like, Ron knew my aunt. There must have been-- What was going on? I didn't understand. I thought about it over and over and I was like-- I just pictured myself looking down the barrel of a gun while Ron shot and I was like, “Hell, no, I can't do that. [audience laughter] Can't do it.” I told Ron he was disappointed, and we went back to Dakar.
At this point, I made an executive decision not to tell my aunt that the chaperone she had hired just asked if he could shoot me. [audience laughter] I did want to know what my aunt thought, because my aunt was like a real no nonsense person. So, I was like, “Surely, she'll validate my responsible choice here.” So, I asked her, “Hey, auntie, what do you think about talismans or those kind?” She said, “Well, actually, I think they work, but only if you believe in them.” [audience laughter] So, I was like, “Man.”
After the summer was over, I went back to Baltimore. I kept this belt. For some reason, I held onto it even as I got older, moving from house to house. Sometimes I would put it on, look in the mirror and I would just wonder if it works. It was really frustrating, because I felt like I had just missed this chance to know, should I have trusted Ron? Should I have trusted myself? I would never know.
A couple years later, my aunt went back to Africa, this time to Ghana to live for a couple years. And once again, she invited me to come stay with her. This time, we were in Ghana, and I spent a lot of time with a friend of mine named Kwabena. Ghana is a very religious place, but Kwabena could never quite figure out what my religion was. All he knew was I had long dreadlocks and I didn't eat meat. So, he just decided I was a Rasta. “A pure Rasta.” That's what he used to call me. He would yell at anybody tried to give meat, “He's a pure Rasta. Leave him alone.” [audience laughter]
Kwabena and I got closer. I wanted Kwabena to know that wasn't really the whole story. So, I told him, I said, “Kwabena, I respect the Rastafarian tradition. I really do, but I'm not a Rasta.” And he was like, “Well, what are you? Are you a Christian?” He was a Muslim, so he was like, “Are you a Muslim like me?” I was like, “No.” He said, “What is it?” I said, “Well, I respect traditional African religions, because I feel like that's what was taken away from us.” When I said that, Kwabena's eyes got real big. He was like, “Oh, you practiced the traditional religion.” He said, “Well, my family practices this religion too. I want to take you to my village and show you how it really goes down.”
So, once again, I found myself on a bus [audience laughter] early in the morning, headed to the outskirts of a West African town. And this time on the bus, Kwabena’s telling me, he’s like, “Man, our family's ways are a whole system. It's not just tricks, but there are some things that to your eyes are going to seem like magic.” We got off the bus. It was early in the morning, it was dark. He said, his grandfather had been the keeper of the family secrets, but his grandfather had passed the secrets down when he died to a young priest, and that was who we had to find.
But after walking from house to house and knocking on doors, we quickly learned that this isn't the kind of person that you find. He has to find you. And at 11 o’clock at night, we're in a bar, pretty much having given up and he found us. He walked in. He had an assistant with him. And at that point, I was disappointed, but I was also relaxed, because I hadn't known what was going to happen. But then, he walks in and I was like, “Oh, shit. Oh, shit.” He comes in and he goes, “Look, I knew you were here the whole time.” He told Kwabena, he had to verify that he was really family and he verified that. He said, “I heard about you too. I did some divination. I have something I want to show both of you.”
Then we walked out of the bar. As we walked down this long dirt road, because now it's night, it's dark, and his assistant stops at this little vendor and buys a machete. I was like, “Oh, that's interesting.” [audience laughter] We walked a little further and we stop outside of this shed. They explain that we're going to go in that shed and there's going to be an initiation, and that initiation is going to involve the machete.
Then his assistant starts sharpening that machete. I don't know about y’all, but something about that metal scraping on metal like that just brings everything into focus. And I started thinking, I was like, “Okay.” He goes in the shed. I'm like, “Huh.” On one hand, I'm like, “Man, I could die out here.” But I also had spent all these years just wondering about the belt and I was like, “I'm here again.” So, I was like, “I'm going to go into shit.”
I can't tell you everything that happened inside the shed, but I'm going to tell you a couple things that went down. First, there were some prayers made in the shed. Second, there was a point where I was given a word by the young priest. He told me that when I was ready, I should say the word and then he was going to take that cold, sharp blade of the machete and press it against my chest. And then, he would take a piece of wood and bang the machete really hard into my chest. And that if I said the word, it wouldn't cut. And then he asked me if I was ready.
I took a deep breath, then I said, “I'm ready” and I said the word. He put the machete, pressed it, I felt it going into my skin, the sharp blade. He pulled back, seemed like in slow motion. Bang, knocked it into my chest. Bang, he knocked it on the other side of my chest. Bang, he knocked it on my arm. Bang, on the other arm. I looked at my arms, looked at my chest and there were no cuts. So, I made it out of that shed alive.
When I reflect back on that night, I don't feel like I'll ever fully understand totally what happened, especially because I'm a person who really believes in science, like I believe in climate change, all epidemic, like everything, disease. I really believe in that, but I had this experience that I can't explain. I also want a do over for what I told my nephew that day. He's not here right now, but I want to pretend y’all are Jonathan and here's what I would tell him if I had to talk to him right now. I would say, “Jonathan, listen, a lot of decisions you're going to have to make in life, the safe route is the best route to go. But there are going to be those moments when you got to take that leap of faith, because there is magic. When the time is right, it'll find you.” Thank you very much.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:14:25] Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika is a scholar, journalist and artist who researches and teaches in the Department of Journalism at New York University. He is also the cohost, co-executive producer and co-creator of Gimlet Media's Peabody Award winning podcast Uncivil. He's a collaborator for seeing on radio's influential Season 2 Seeing White and Season 4 on the history of American democracy.
I first met Chenjerai when he wrote an article at transom.org called Vocal Color in Public Radio. The article later trended on Twitter and spawned a nationwide discussion about diversity in public media. If you'd like to read that article and see a picture of Chenjerai’s famous belt from the story, go to themoth.org.
Coming up, a watermelon seed spitting contest leads to trouble. And later, a scientist has a profound moment while scuba diving in Antarctica, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[ambient music]
Jay: [00:15:41] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Catherine: [00:15:53] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. And in this show, we're talking about experiencing moments of magic in our lives.
Our next storyteller, Edgar Oliver, has been telling stories of The Moth for more than 20 years. He told this one in an evening we produced outside at night in the lovely Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
Greenwood is a nature preserve. At one point, a red-tailed hawk actually flew across the stage and bats fluttered around overhead. There were rugs placed on the hills beside the stage and people sat on the graves listening to the stories. That might sound odd, but one of Greenwood Cemetery's mottos, is that Greenwood is a place that the dead create for the living and their caretakers have been producing magical events inside the cemetery for more than a century.
[cheers and applause]
Here's Edgar Oliver live under the stars at Greenwood. We're going to leave the intro in, so you can hear how host, Tara Clancy, introduced him.
Tara: [00:16:47] So, I should just say this quickly. You may have noticed that I have an interesting voice. It used to not be very interesting, but now, people like to comment on it and ask me about it and all.
Our final storyteller also has an interesting and wonderful voice. My voice is real. His voice is real. Please don't ask us if our voices are real. [audience laughter]
[applause]
Catherine: [00:17:15] Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, Edgar Oliver.
[cheers and applause]
Edgar: [00:17:30] Hi, everyone. [audience laughter] I'd like to tell you a story from my childhood. I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, with my mother and my sister, Helen, in a house surrounded by beautiful old trees. One day, I think I was 10, so Helen was 11, we were all three on the back porch eating watermelon. Helen and I were having fun spitting watermelon seeds over the railing.
We grew inspired by the many watermelon seeds, and we began planting them all over the backyard, digging holes in the dirt with kitchen spoons, and then pouring in watermelon seeds and then covering up the holes, thinking that in the fecund earth of Savannah, watermelon vines would sprout effortlessly and that by the end of the summer there would be huge watermelons all over the backyard. [audience laughter] We waited and waited. But at the end of the summer, to our great disappointment, no watermelons had sprouted.
The next summer, we decided to set up one of those collapsible swimming pools. So, we got one and we set it up in the backyard. This huge drum of corrugated iron that came up to here on me, up to my neck with a bottom of swimming pool, blue rubber. And then, we turned on the hose and began filling up the pool, which took hours. [audience laughter] We watched in fascination as the water rose. Filling the pool was probably the most satisfying thing about it. [audience laughter] Before it was half full, we jumped in and let the water rise around us.
But after a few days, we barely used the swimming pool. We were on the go in the car so much, driving to Hilton Head or to the beach at Tybee or to swim in the Ogeechee River. Sometimes we go downtown and get fried chicken at the Woolworths on Broughton Street, and go with our sketch pads to the colonial cemetery to picnic atop the family vaults that were all shaped like gigantic brick bedsteads.
Helen and I loved to climb on these strange bed shaped vaults, and lie on the gently curved bellies of the vaults and play at being dead. [audience laughter] While we played, mother sketched in her sketch pad. It was beautiful to lie there feeling so alive, pretending to be dead. [audience laughter] Meanwhile, the water in the swimming pool grew opaque. [audience laughter] Ink black, leaves and branches floated across its surface and God knows what lurked in its depths. [audience laughter] It was more forbidding than a swamp no one in their right mind would have gotten into it. It remained brim full as well, replenished by the summer's many rains.
All through that summer, the pool exercised a strange fascination over the backyard. It was tall and mysterious. The rain went across it, and its mystery was stirred and we wondered at its depths. I would gaze at the black surface of the pool and imagine strange monsters lurking there, ghastly things. I know Helen did too. I know mother did too. [audience laughter]
Finally, one day, we destroyed the pool. [audience laughter] We attacked it gleefully, [audience laughter] bashing down its sides and watching in delight as the black water poured out in all directions. We kept waiting for monsters to be revealed. I think we were all three convinced there was a human corpse [audience laughter] hidden in those waters, but there was nothing in the pool. It was empty. But at the bottom of the pool, a mystery entirely unexpected awaited us.
The rubber bottom of the pool, now, black with sludge, rose up in strange humps everywhere. [audience laughter] There were things underneath the pool's bottom, [audience laughter] what could these things be? [audience laughter] The thought was horrifying. [audience laughter] We all three grabbed the sides of the pool and began heaving it up, peeling it from the ground. What we saw was more horrifying than anything we could ever have imagined. [audience laughter] There were watermelons everywhere. [audience laughter] Huge watermelons. [audience laughter]
[applause]
But they were white. [audience laughter] Absolutely white. Albino watermelons. [audience laughter] The watermelons we had planted had been growing there, trapped under the swimming pool. Trapped, growing blindly in the dark. [audience laughter] Their whiteness was as horrible as the horror of their fate. [audience laughter] We could not bring ourselves touch them. And the thought of slicing one open to see what it was like inside was unimaginable. [audience laughter] How we got rid of them, I don't remember. [audience laughter] Such was the fate of the albino watermelons.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:26:04] That was Edgar Oliver. Edgar is a writer and performer who has lived and worked in New York City for many years. The New York Times lead theater critic, Ben Brantley, called Edgar a living work of theater all by himself.
Not long ago, Edgar appeared as a butler in a mattress ad which also starred football legend Tom Brady. You can find it by, well, googling Edgar Oliver and Tom Brady. It's a trip. I sit down with Edgar in the cemetery to talk about his story. You'll hear him mention Bonaventure, and he's referring to the famous Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia.
I'm sitting here in the middle of Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. It's about 8 o’clock at night, surrounded by beech trees and candles and graves. I love graveyards, and I think you do too. What is it about graveyards that draw you in, sweetie?
Edgar: [00:26:56] Well, I love all the trees and the desolation. I love the solitude of graveyard.
Catherine: [00:27:10] Yes. I know that you lost mother when you were fairly young, right?
Edgar: [00:27:16] Yeah, I was 26.
Catherine: [00:27:18] Yes.
Edgar: [00:27:19] Mother was 62, which is how old I am now.
Catherine: [00:27:23] Oh, wow. That's haunting.
Edgar: [00:27:25] Yeah.
Catherine: [00:27:28] So, is mother in a graveyard somewhere, Edgar?
Edgar: [00:27:31] Well, no. Well, part of mother is in Bonaventure. Some of mother's ashes I buried on top of our father's grave in Bonaventure. Some of mother's ashes are in the glove compartment of Helen's car in Italy. And then, Helen scattered some of mother's ashes in Greenport and also, some of mother's ashes Helen scattered in Sicily.
Catherine: [00:28:10] Oh, beautiful. I love that your mother, at least part of her is spending, at least so far, eternity in the glove compartment of Helen's car in Italy, because when I think of your mother, I always think of her as driving.
Edgar: [00:28:24] Mother loved to drive.
[laughter]
She did. So, that's why Helen decided to put some of mother's ashes in the glove compartment of the car.
Catherine: [00:28:34] It's perfect.
[00:28:35] Our interview was being recorded by our talented intern, Mia Figueroa. And she asked Edgar if he ever regretted not cutting open the watermelons.
Mia: [00:28:44] -opening the watermelons.
Edgar: [00:28:45] Well, in retrospect, yes, it would be amazing to know whether they were red inside or not. But at the time, they just seemed so repulsive. It would have been inconceivable to cut one of them open. But yet, I do very much wonder.
Catherine: [00:29:11] That was Edgar Oliver. To see a photo of Edgar and his sister, Helen, as children, go to themoth.org.
Next, we're going to go to one of our StorySLAM competitions in Melbourne, Australia, where we partnered with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
[cheers and applause]
Here's Matt McArthur, live at The Moth.
Matt: [00:29:32] I'm standing beside a hole. And inside the hole, it's cold and dark and there's no air. A lifelong fascination with Antarctica and a love of working underwater have collided, and I'm standing on the shores of Ross Island, about as far south as you can go and still work as a marine biologist.
I take my deep breath and step into the dark, cold, airless hole and descend through 3 meters of sea ice and 12 meters of sea to begin my work on the sea floor. And my task engrosses me. I know what I'm doing. I'm calm. So, long as I don't think too much about where I am and what I'm doing, I stay calm. And then, I feel the current go past. It gives me a bit of a knock. Normally, when I feel that, I think shark. But I'm too far south for sharks. I'm too far south for orca. It's cool. Nothing's going to eat me. [audience laughter]
I'm probably the biggest thing nearby. And then, I look up and there's a Weddell seal. I'm not the biggest thing nearby, the Weddell seal is the biggest thing nearby. 400 kg of seal has just swum over the top of me. Underwater, they look like a hot water cylinder, almost a perfect cylinder of blubbery meat. They do this neat trick where they look at you over their back, I can't quite pull it off. Big dark eyes to take advantage of what light is available. And it watches me as I watch it and then it touches the sea floor.
Now, we've brought our warmth and our oxygen to this spot by very different paths, both in terms of what we did that morning to prepare for this dive that brought us together, and in terms of the huge arc of evolutionary history that separates us all the way back to the last time our ancestors met. But the seal and I are watching each other, and I don't think the seal is watching where it's going and it hits the sea floor, and the sea floor is covered in anchor ice.
Now, we normally think of ice as floating, but anchor ice doesn't, because it's anchored. Ice just forms wherever it's cold enough for ice to form and anchor ice forms on the rocks of the sea floor. It is buoyant, it wants to float, but it can't until it reaches a size that it's able to loft the rock that it's attached to. So, sometimes you'll get a rock drifting past in the current, or sometimes it'll peel up like an old carpet. But in this case, it's been dislodged by the seal that wasn't watching where it was going, it was watching the monkey.
Anchor ice forms incredibly beautiful interlocking plates and facets. They're very delicate. So, as the seals hit it, this anchor ice has shattered. And under its own buoyancy, it begins to rise. It's rising in a shaft of light. The water that the seal and I are diving in is almost optically pure. It's probably the clearest water on earth. You could see for kilometers if there was light to see by, but there's not. The sea ice and the snow on top of it block the light.
And other than the hole that I came in through and the hole that I'm going to leave by, it's like someone's dropped a dark curtain through the water, black velvet. You can't see a thing, except underneath these holes with the bright sunlight of the Antarctic summer is streaming through this clear water, and these ice crystals are now rising into that shaft of light. This beautiful coruscating chandelier starts to loft. Each facet of the ice is catching that light and splitting it and rotating as it rises. And this incredible kaleidoscope is on the rise. It's the most beautiful thing that I've ever seen. I don't know if anyone else that can communicate with language has ever seen it.
While as a scientist, you train very hard not to anthropomorphize. You're not supposed to put human values onto the organisms that you observe. It's hard not to think that the seal might have gone out of its way to show me this, that it wasn't just an accident of navigation, that it's thought to itself, “Hey, monkey, watch this.”[audience laughter] It's almost impossible not to feel incredibly privileged to have shared this moment alone under the sea ice, but for this Weddell seal, and to feel grateful to that seal for what it showed me. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:34:33] Matt McArthur's fascination for the seventh continent developed early, when he first understood the concept of there being a land of ice to the south of his Australian home. He spent two summers as a diver at Scott Base, New Zealand's research station on Ross Island.
Matt wrote to tell us, “I feel tremendously privileged to have visited Antarctica and work hard to share the experience in the hope that I might engender in others a sense of ownership and concern for that wild place.”
Matt has his own podcast called Ice Coffee: The History of Human Activity in Antarctica.
Coming up. While fleeing a soon to be war torn country, a mother tries to distract her young daughter with a little magic. That's next on The Moth Radio Hour.
[soft piano music]
Jay: [00:35:38] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Catherine: [00:35:53] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. In this hour, we're talking about moments of occasional magic.
Our final story was told by Sofija Stefanovic at the gorgeous St. Ann's Church in Brooklyn Heights. Here's Sofija, live at The Moth.
[applause]
Sofija: [00:36:15] So, I was five years old when I left Belgrade. My dad had left a couple of weeks before us, so it was just me and my mother and my newborn sister. We were leaving Yugoslavia and going to our new home in Australia with a fuel stop in Singapore.
At the airport, my grandma, Xenia, held my face in her hands and she said, “You will never see Grandma again.” [chuckles] When my face crumpled at this, she said by way of consolation, “That's because I'm very old and I will probably die soon.” [audience laughter]
So, [chuckles] the last time that we had been at the airport had been under happier circumstances. We were going for vacation in Croatia. But now, there were tensions between the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Serbia, where we were from. And some people, including my dad, thought that there might even be a war, which is why instead of going for one hour to a place that we knew and loved, we were picking up all of our things and traveling for about 30 hours to the other side of the world to start our lives again.
And in the plane, I cried a lot. Not just because of what Grandma had said, but because I really liked my life up until then. I really liked the little communal yard, where I would play with the kids from the surrounding buildings. I loved how in the winter, Belgrade smelled like snow and cigarettes and chestnuts, and I loved that all our family and friends lived there and I was scared about going somewhere new. And so, for the first half of the journey, I basically cried and vomited and pulled on my mother's sleeve while she tried to get my newborn sister to sleep.
And finally, we landed for our fuel stop in Singapore. We miserably trudged out of the plane and hit this-- We went through this tunnel, this air-conditioned tunnel, and suddenly, we were at Singapore Airport. And that is the moment that my life as I knew it completely changed.
So, my first five years had been spent in socialist Yugoslavia. I had loved it, but that's because I had never been to Singapore airport. [audience laughter] And it was amazing. Welcome to capitalism. I realized that actually my whole life up until that moment had sucked [audience laughter] and that this was the best place on earth.
So, I forgot about grandma and Yugoslavia [audience laughter] and all that stuff. And I just started taking in all of the things around me. And my mum said, “Wow, it's as clean as a pharmacy,” which is what we say in Serbian when a place is clean. [audience laughter] I had to agree with her. It was like we had been plopped into one of the Disney films that my dad used to get for me on the black market. And then, she said “You could eat off the floor.” I had to agree. Like, I felt like actually doing it. I felt like getting on my butt and sliding across the beautiful gleaming tiles, I wanted to jump on the escalators and travel up and down singing and dancing to the beautiful music that was playing everywhere that we went.
I was amazed that no one else was marveling in the way that we were. [audience laughter] And my mom said, “Look, orchids.” I looked around and actually everywhere, like every few steps, there were these beautiful flowers growing out of planters. I realized that the world was this big and beautiful place and that I had been confined to this small gray corner of it up until now. And everything smelled like perfume. Copying my mother, I put my wrist out and this beautiful Singaporean woman in a suit spritzed us with perfume.
We walked around looking at these beautiful glass fronted stores that had this beautiful colorful apparel in them and there were these massive screens everywhere. And on the screens, there were ads for all the latest stuff that you could get, like, entertainment systems and shoes and Walkman’s. And then, this ad came up that just stopped me dead in my tracks. And on this screen, there was this ad and there were these little kids about my age and they were all laughing and having this great time while this tiny, gorgeous squiggly worm toy just wriggles around everywhere.
I was just watching this ad and up close, the worm, its face is really beautiful and pointy and it has these little googly eyes and this soft pink fur and it's the most amazing thing I've seen. Apparently, at that moment, my mother becomes an immediate convert to consumer culture, [audience laughter] because she grabs my hand and we march over to the currency exchange counter and she slams down her Yugoslavian Dinar, get some dollars, we go into a store and she buys me the worm.
Now, this is pretty unheard of. I know that if my dad had been there, there would have been an argument between them. There would have been a discussion about money and how we didn't have much and how we were moving to a whole new country that was expensive. But with just us there, my mother doesn't even look at the price tag. She just gets the worm and buys it for me.
And on the plane, I'm trembling with excitement. I'm not thinking about Grandma anymore or any of that stuff that has happened in the past. I'm just thinking about how as soon as we take off, I get to open this box and the worm comes in this little round box. I open it up and it's coiled inside. I touch it and its fur feels like the softest feathers. I whisper to it in one of the three English words that I know, so I say, “Girl, girl.” I expect it to come to life and start wriggling around like in the ad. [audience laughter]
My mum's looking at me with this weird expression, because I guess she thought that I was smart. [audience laughter] She explains to me that the worm isn't, in fact, alive, but that it has this little invisible string that's attached to it and that's how it moves around. And so, once I get the hang of this, it does actually move around in this adorable way that it had done on the ad. When I get the hang of it, I get the attention of this little boy across the aisle in the plane and I stick my arm out and I make the worm crawl up it and he watches very solemnly, suitably impressed. I think, this is pretty, pretty amazing. I decide I'm going to carry this little worm around in my pocket like a gorgeous fuzzy secret.
I start to think about my life in Australia, and I think maybe the kids will love me. I imagine this beautiful classroom with these little kids and I imagine them saying to each other, “Wow, did you see that new magic girl?” [audience laughter] I'll be standing there with my worm, the new kid on the block. [audience laughter] And on the plane, I practice the three English words I know, so, girl and hello, and tomorrow. [audience laughter] I think this is the start of my new life and I think that we can agree it's a pretty good start.
Meanwhile, my mother, she puts her arm around my shoulders, and she wipes tears from her eyes and looks out the window as we travel further and further away from our little world.
Cut to the present day. I'm in my new home in New York, pregnant, having another consumer experience in which, basically, I'm being sold things left, right and center. And I'm panicking, because I think that I'm not going to be a good mother in advance that if I don't buy a machine that heats up butt wipes for babies, [audience laughter] or if I don't buy this special mobile with elephants, that speak in French and sing. [audience laughter] And the more I'm stressing about this, I suddenly remember the best toy that I ever had, which was the worm.
So, while I've got my computer in front of me and I Google magic fuzzy worm, and it comes up immediately. [audience laughter] And so, remember when I first saw this worm, it was like the best thing that I had seen in my entire life. And now, I feel very confronted, because this image that has come up in front of me, the worm looks really crap. Like, it just looks like this piece of matted fuzz with this piece of fishing wire coming off it and these little eyes that are stuck on with like bits of glue coming off the side of them. And the image is so disturbing to me that I don't even know what to do with it. I'm really upset by it.
So, I immediately pick up the phone to call my mother in Australia, even though it's the middle of the night, but this is an emergency. [audience laughter] So, I call her up and she picks up and I say, “Hey, mum, do you remember that worm that you got me at Singapore airport?” And she says, “Of course, I do.” And I say, “Well, I have just found it on the internet, and it looks really terrible and I can't believe that I loved it so much.” My voice does this involuntary wobble because I'm thinking about how much I loved the worm at the time and how pathetic it all seems now. [audience laughter]
There's a little pause and my mum says, “Impossible. The worm that we got in Singapore was wonderful. You must be looking at a completely different worm.” [audience laughter] And then, I think back to that time and I remember me crying, and then Singapore airport and how impressed I was by this worm. And for the first time, I think about what it would have been like for my mother. I realized that she was also leaving her whole world behind and we were traveling to a whole new country, a whole new language. She was leaving behind everyone, Grandma, who happened to be her mother. It must have been really frightening for her as well, but she didn't let on. She kept it together. And even more than that, she managed to offer me a distraction and make me less scared in that moment.
Even now, decades later, when I have called her as this distressed adult who's waddling around on the other side [chuckles] of the world, my mother is still trying to protect me by keeping the myth of the worm alive. [audience laughter] And for some reason, I think of that Belinda Carlisle song, Somewhere in my heart, I'm always dancing with you in the summer rain. I remember me at the airport and my young mother holding my hand. I think about how when we got to Australia, the kids didn't actually love me like my those three words didn't really help me out much. [audience laughter] I got laughed at and I got bullied and kids called me stupid and dummy and things like that, because I couldn't speak English.
I know that I can't actually protect my future kid from the world. Like, I'm sure that he'll get teased, because maybe he'll have big ears like his dad or he'll have a big nose like me. There are plenty of far worse things that he's going to have to learn about in the world that I can't protect him from. But what I can do is offer some protection in the form of that magic that my mother offered me, a way of seeing the world as a wonderful place instead of just a frightening place. I know that it works, because somewhere in my heart that worm is still dancing like it did that day and it is still the most magical thing that I have seen. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:49:01] That was Sofija Stefanovic. Since telling this story, she had her baby and published a memoir of her childhood called Miss Ex-Yugoslavia. She also hosts a monthly show called This Alien Nation at Joe's Pub in New York City. Sofija says she's finding motherhood to be even more magical and terrifying than she imagined.
That's it for this edition of The Moth Radio Hour about Occasional Magic. Speaking of which, The Moth has published an entire collection of stories in a book called Occasional Magic. We believe that Moth stories are best told out loud, but we think they're pretty fun to read too. So, we hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from The Moth.
[overture music]
Jay: [00:49:52] Your host this hour was The Moth's artistic director, Catherine Burns. Catherine also directed the stories along with Kate Tellers. Additional GrandSLAM coaching by Michelle Jalowski.
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's stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Hot Sugar, Mark Orton, Ludovico Einaudi and Penguin Cafe Orchestra.
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 PRX. For more about our podcast for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.