Host: Catherine Burns
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Catherine: [00:00:12] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. And I'm Catherine Burns. This week, we have four stories about the push and the pull, life's tension and pressures and creative ways people find to manage them, from a mishap at a funeral, to trouble in a marathon course, to handling anger.
But first, there's nothing quite like a toddler melting down to push someone's buttons. Recorded at a live performance at Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, here's the poet, R.A. Villanueva.
[cheers and applause]
R.A. Villanueva: [00:00:49] In principle, sharing the world with a daughter, raising a daughter, that is strong willed, headstrong, it should be a gift. And so, when my wife and I found out that we were going to have a daughter, we immediately started making lists of names that would be fitting, names that would usher into this world of being some kind of groundbreaking, trailblazing catalyst, someone who would change things. And so, we ended up in antiquity.
We started laughing and thinking about an epic poem by Homer. And in this epic poem, the title character is named Odysseus. He's the one who fights the monsters. He's out for all this time. But as we started thinking and talking and laughing, we realized that actually that the heart of the story is his wife. His wife's name is Penelope. She has ingenuity and creativity. And she owns her role and lives it in her own terms, staving off everyone who comes to take what rightfully belongs to her. And she does it with creativity.
And so, my wife and I said, Penelope. All that sounds great. The idea that someone could represent all of these amazing things. When I look at my daughter and listen to her consistently say no to me, [audience laughter] I got what we wanted. [audience laughter] The issue is that she's two. And so, when we dreamed of this fully formed person who would rise and then bring down the patriarchy, we could not have imagined a little volcano of a person [audience laughter] who refused us at every instant.
“Penelope, do you want the mac and cheese you asked us to make for you?” “No.” [audience laughter] “Penelope, it's the weekend. I think you should take a shower now.” “No, thank you.” [audience laughter] “Penelope, it is now almost midnight. Don't you think it's time for bed?” “Nah.” [audience laughter] We have a daughter who has a thousand ways of standing up for herself. And it's everything we dreamed of. My life as a father is reckoning with this, how do I make room for this force of nature?
The other day, it was my turn to pick her up from school. And so, I went to daycare. At the front of the daycare, there is a little table where you sign your child in and out. When we check her out and sign her out, she looks at where all the pens and antibacterial wipes are, and she takes a couple of the pens and she takes them home. So, when we clean up, we discover a dozen pens just lying around the apartment. So, part of our routine is then to come back and to return the pens to her school.
On this particular day, it was my turn. According to plan, I went outside, I put her in her stroller and I started pushing her down Atlantic Avenue. I looked down just to make contact and to say, “You are safe. I'm with you. I love you.” And there she was, just looking back at me with a grin. I looked at her face and I felt it. I scrolled down, and there in her hands, two fistfuls of pens, [audience laughter] an entire bouquet of pens in each hand. She had taken all of them, including the antibacterial wipes which were spilling out of her pockets.
For whatever reason, this was the moment that I thought, I have to push back. She cannot be absconding with every pen in the entire daycare. And so, I said, Penelope, those are not your pens. You have to return them. And she looked at me, bemused and said, “Nope.” [audience laughter] I said, no, Penelope. And then, I lowered myself to eye level. So, she knew I was serious this time. And I said, Penelope, we have to give the pens back.
When she realized that I was pushing back on her and challenging her challenge to me, all of a sudden, things started moving. Her face changed, something feral activated [audience laughter] and she just started wailing, “These are my pens. I need these pens. These pens belong to me. I need them.” I don't know what a two-year-old needs with that many pens, [audience laughter] but she needed them. She just kept yelling and screaming, singing this primal song, so much so that passersby would walk by me, and make eye contact and just go, “Damn.” [audience laughter] Some actually said, “I'm sorry,” and just walked away fast. [audience laughter] No one could do anything for me.
At this point, she had slid out of her stroller, and was now across the sidewalk with the pens like this, in a Christ sacrifice to the heavens. [audience laughter] I didn't know what to do. This person was the chosen one. She was supposed to be the person who brought the entire-- She was supposed to rage against the machine, not against clicky pens and sanitizer.
And so, in that second, I froze. I didn't know what to do. I have to confess to you, that as this is happening, sometimes I have these flashes. I have these flashes to all the brilliant constellation of women in my life. All the women who are in some way powered by fight, who've stood up for things. She inherits all of that from them. And of all these women, my mom, my wife, my aunts, I think of the one person that Penelope never got a chance to meet, which is my grandmother.
My grandmother's name was Socorro, and she grew up in the Philippines at a time where it was expected of her to just be a wife. The highest place you could hit was to have a family, raise that family and keep a home. She did all those things with grace and with passion, but she wanted more. She was a shoulder to cry on. She was a mediator. She was someone who stood up for people who didn’t have a voice. I didn't know her in that way. I knew her as my grandma. And near the ending of her life--
She was a chain smoker her whole life. Near the ending of her life, she lived with us. I remember that it was hard for her to breathe. The doctors, and all of a sudden, “You have to stop smoking,” but she did what she wanted. And so, there were times where she would have an oxygen tank, and she would call me up to help take care of it. She'd point to it and she'd gesture to me to push it aside. I'd push it aside and then she'd tap on the bed, because she wanted to arm wrestle me. [audience laughter] She would roll up her sleeve and you would see this bicep just like-- [audience laughter]
Her hand would just sort of shroud mine and she'd look me in the eyes and then she would just go-- [audience laughter] and just take me out every time, just merciless. She would laugh so hard that I'd have to wheel the oxygen tank back to give her back her oxygen. That's the woman that she was. Other times, we had to start taking the cigarettes away from her, because it wasn't healthy anymore. And so, we started hiding. Her brand was Parliament. And so, I remember that the little tesserae of dark blue on the carton. We'd hide them, because she would just--
But no matter what we did, she would end up outside just looking at us like-- [audience laughter] We had no idea where she got them from. It became an arms race. We would hide Parliament’s, then we would find Parliament’s. We weren't sure if the Parliament’s that we found were the ones that we had hidden or she'd hidden herself. It turns out that after church, we'd go food shopping for the week, and she would sneak away while we were getting cereal, and she'd go to the pharmacy and just start pocketing, buying and hiding them. It came to the point where we just kept being outsmarted and tricked. The doctors just said, “Let her go. Let her be happy.” So, that's what I'm up against.
Penelope is part of that legacy. I'm thinking about my Penelope, I'm thinking of grandma, and I'm watching Penelope writhe and squirm and boil over on this sidewalk and I don't know what to do. So, I call my wife. [audience laughter] She picks up in her beautiful musical voice, she's like, “Hi, how are you?” And in that second, she hears in the background, “I need these pens. These are my pens,” like Gollum or something. [audience laughter] And so, my wife, Jennifer, just says, “Did you get the bribe chips?” I don't know what the bribe chips are. I said, Jen, I don't know what the bribe-- What are the bribe chips?
And she goes, “Okay. You see where you are in the corner?” She knew exactly where I was. This has happened before. “Look across the street. You will see a bodega. [audience laughter] The bodega's name is Champions. “Put Pen back in the stroller, go back in there and get the bribe chips. Pen will know what to do.” [audience laughter] So, I did everything that my wife said. I picked Pen up. I put her in the stroller. She was still crying. I knelt down beside her and I said, Penelope, would you like some chips? Her entire face just changed. It was like-- [audience laughter] “Yes, father. I'd like some chips.” [audience laughter]
No, but she said, “Yes, chips, yes.” And so, I took her over there in the stroller, walked in the front door of the bodega. The person behind the counter looked at me like, “Hey, this had happened before.” Penelope got out of her stroller, turned to her left and there to her left was a shelf of Pringles. She reached up, got an orange tin, cheddar cheese, put that in her lap. She reached up, and then she got a bright purple one, barbecue. She looked at me and she said, “For my brother.” We paid for them and we walked out.
I think I was supposed to give her one chip per block as a kind of incentive. So, you make it, I'll give you one. But I decided at that moment just to let her have the whole can. And so, she had it in her lap, and she looked at me, and she nodded and I pushed her all the way home. I'm thinking now, reflecting on it as her dad, for me, it's not a bribe. For me, it's not appeasement. For me, it's not a compromise. It seems like this moment that we had and that gift was an offering, that that little small act of defiance, rebellion, mutiny, it's a way for us to understand each other and for me to say, “We hear your voice. We need to make space for you.”
The hope is that these small moments of conversation between us will lead us toward the big things in the future, so that she knows I'm not going to shut her down. I'm going to let her rage if she needs to, but I'm going to be there, so that when the time comes, she has the power, and the agency, and the love behind her to change the world that she'll inherit from me. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:14:33] R.A. Villanueva is the author of Reliquaria, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. His new writing has been featured by the Academy of American Poets, Plowshares, Poetry and Poetry London. He lives in Brooklyn. We met R.A. or Ron, as he's called, through our friends at the gorgeous podcast, Poetry Unbound, which I highly recommend checking out. I bought Ron's book and was struck by how many of his poems tell stories. Here's Ron reading the poem about his grandmother that inspired this story.
Ron: [00:15:07] Socorro one: Grandma's skin, the color of chestnuts, cracked open by mouth and her handing me the flesh inside, pulling at the skin around her knuckles, I marveled at its give. Its smell of Parliament’s, its thinness like rice paper. Every day, she dared me to arm wrestle, tapping the mattress to her left, rubbing the sheets in concentric circles, clearing off an arena for our elbows. Her right palm always shrouded mine, always gave a little before the kill, before I had to wheel the oxygen tank closer to her side of the bed. She would pull the elastic band back, so I could slide my face into the mask, so I could breathe what she breathed, her laughing as I coughed up only air.
Two: When grandpa woke from dreaming of his wife dead for 12 years by now, he made the sign of the cross against his chest, sat on the edge of his bed and listened to a fan push air into a corner, which seemed that morning sharp with lizards. He made no mention of the house duster she wore in last night's vision, its straps loose at the shoulders, or how his wife propped her right elbow up with her left fist, ashes in her knuckles, an unfiltered cigarette at her lips. At breakfast, grandpa watched the dogs gnaw at their leashes, gave us only what grandma sang to him all night. Nakalimutan mo na ako, “You have already forgotten me.”
Catherine: [00:16:52] R.A. Villanueva.
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Coming up, a funeral does not go as planned. And later, trouble on the Philadelphia Marathon course. That's when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
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Jay: [00:17:39] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Catherine: [00:17:50] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. In this hour, we're hearing about tense situations that require a little grace and finesse, just like our next story, which was told by Mary Ann Ludwig at an event The Moth produced in conjunction with Greenwood Cemetery, appropriately enough, as you'll understand. So, if you hear a few airplanes flying overhead or woodsy sounds, it's because we're outside. Here's Mary Ann Ludwig.
[cheers and applause]
Mary Ann Ludwig: [00:18:22] So, it's February 2001, and my husband Herb and I are on our way to my mother-in-law, Nancy's funeral in Queens. We’re very sad, of course. Underneath that is, on my part, some apprehension, because it's the first time I would have ever gone to a Jewish funeral, and I'm not quite sure what to expect.
In addition to that, my husband and his family are all super intelligent. Their IQs are off the chart. Actually, Herb has an IQ of 167 and he's a mathematical genius. But on the other hand, growing up my mom would tell me, “You have potential. Just buckle down. You'll be okay.” So, one on one, we make it work in our marriage. He helps the kids with their algebra and I remind him in the morning to make sure his shoes match. [audience laughter] But I'm going to be in a funeral home with aunts, uncles, cousins, immediate family whose IQs are just unbelievable. And I'm not quite sure if I can hold my own.
So, we arrive at the funeral home. It's a little daunting, because it's huge. It has multiple floors and it has multiple chapels on each floor, Herb tells me. There'll be funerals going on simultaneously, so it does nothing to assuage my anxiety. We walk in. And there is my father-in-law, [unintelligible 00:19:58] in his wheelchair and Cousin Joni. So, we approach Nancy's coffin. And with that, Cousin Joni says, “I don't want to say anything, but that's not Nancy.” [audience laughter]
We all just freeze in place, like this one huge mannequin challenge. After a second or so, we simultaneously lean forward together and take another look and sure enough, this little gray-haired lady is not our Nancy. Nancy is larger than life. She has short hair that she wears straight up like Bart Simpson. I mean Bart, not Marge. She dyes it to match her lipstick and her Lee Press on Nails. This is not Nancy.
So, within a second or two, the funeral director and all the management is over there talking to us, saying, “Don't worry, we're going to figure it out. Just give us some time. Go sit down. Relax.” [audience laughter] So, we all huddle together. Eventually, my husband, Herb and my brother-in-law, Alan, they hatch a plan. I think, oh, no, this is not going to be good, because they're super bright, but they have a little bit of a challenge getting what's in their heads out into any practical application.
So, here's their plan. Their plan is to get a picture of Nancy and go from funeral to funeral and just say, “Have you seen our loved one today?” [audience laughter] I decide, this is a time for the logic of a girl who has potential to show itself and put the kibosh on that, backed up by management.
So, a few hours later, we're sitting there and the whole family and they're scratching their heads and they're trying to figure out what happened, how did it happen, and all this circuitous thinking. I can't take it anymore. So, I go over and I grab my husband's hand, I said, come on, let's go talk to the funeral director. So, we do. And he says, “Hey, we're finding out some information. It turns out that Nancy and another lady by the name of Mrs. Rosen, both died on the same day at the same hospital. And in transporting them here, Nancy was tagged as Mrs. Rosen and Mrs. Rosen was tagged as Nancy.” I think, terrific, we're getting to the bottom of this. Let’s call the Rosens and we'll put the issue to rest, so to speak. [audience laughter]
And then, the funeral director says, “Well, you know, therein lies the problem, because Mrs. Rosen services were earlier this morning, and Nancy was inadvertently buried in Mrs. Rosen's grave.” But I have some good news. He said, “The good news is that the cemetery where Nancy's going to be interred has agreed to stay open no matter how late it takes us to get the state attorney general involved to exhume Nancy, bring her back here for services inter Mrs. Rosen. It's going to be a long day.” [audience laughter] So, we all wait hour after hour after hour. And eventually, just as night falls, they bring Nancy back in the hearse, and we conclude her services and go off onto the cemetery to inter her.
Now, it had been raining all day long. It finally just stopped as the temperature went up. And as if on cue, a fog rolled in. We pull into the cemetery, the hearse ahead of us in the procession behind that. And all the cars, they pull alongside the graves, and there's an open grave for Nancy. So, Herb and his brother, they're helping his dad out of the car and into a wheelchair. And not surprisingly, they put it in the mud. I look at that and I said, well, I'll go over and watch as they take Nancy's coffin out of the hearse. So, I said to the rabbi, by any chance, has anybody double checked to make sure it's actually Nancy? [audience laughter]
Through the fog, I can see him shaking his head left to right and saying, “No, but you know, it's too late now, because we've already started the prayers.” I lean into it and I say, well, with all due respect, rabbi, we have to check. In that moment, I feel like, “Oh, my God, I'm challenging a rabbi.” I would never challenge a priest, because I would know, for sure, the next day I would be in church doing penance. I'm not sure how it's going to go down with a rabbi.
But then, something in me changes and all of a sudden, I feel a little self-confident and I feel like, “You're holding your own, Mary Ann. You're doing okay.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Herb and his brother hoist my father-in-law and his wheelchair up on their shoulders and they're carrying him over to the grave. I think neither Nancy nor I are going anywhere until that coffin is open. And sure enough, they do open the coffin and there is our Nancy, not a hair out of place, ready to be interred in her own grave.
So, eventually, we get home. It's really super late. Just as we enter our apartment, the phone rings and it's the rabbi and he says, “The Rosens called, and they wanted to convey their condolences. They also wanted to let you know that that morning when they inadvertently buried Nancy by mistake through no fault of their own, that it was a lovely ceremony.” [audience laughter] Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:26:46] That was Mary Ann Ludwig. When I asked her for a bio, she sent me this lovely note.
“My mom's side of the family is Irish, and loved telling stories. Every year when we got together for either a barbecue or funeral, it was a large family, so there were many. Out came the bottle of whiskey and the family lore, starting with Uncle Bob serving in the Pacific during World War II, or Uncle Harold regaling us with tales of riding the rails or my mom and her four sisters sharing one date dress during the depression. My degree in English from Penn and years studying with a writer's studio could never replace the beauty and depth of those stories try as I might.”
To see a picture of Mary Ann’s mother-in-law, Nancy, with her lovely red hair, go to themoth.org.
While there, you can pitch us a story of your own. Do you have a story about a time when things suddenly went sideways? Please tell us about it. The number to call is 877-799-MOTH. Or, you can pitch us your own story at themoth.org.
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Now, we're going to hear a story that was told at one of our open mic storytelling competitions in Philadelphia. Here's Steve Clark, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Steve: [00:28:23] I'm from Philadelphia, but I've always wanted to be like one of those ancient Greek heroes. I just never really had the body for it, but my twin brother, Mike, has. In high school, when he made the varsity basketball team, I was doing varsity model UN, [audience laughter] and little league in baseball. He batted second or third. I batted 13th on our dad's team. [audience laughter] I think it was probably even to the point where--
My brother's always been really helpful and generous with his athletic gift. I think when we were sperm, [audience laughter] he probably said something like, “Look, you're not going to make it there in time. Just latch onto one of my buff flagella and I'll take you to victory.” [audience laughter]
So, last June on my birthday, I turned 31 and I realized my time with this awkward unathletic body was running out, so I signed up for the Philadelphia Marathon. I posted about it on Facebook. A lot of people were like, “That's awesome.” But people who really knew me are like, “Steve, are you sure?” [audience laughter] It was great in the summer, because I'm a teacher, and yeah, I get my summers off, so I could run whenever I wanted. But then, the school year came, and I wanted to sleep and I have asthma. [audience laughter]
So, November came. I got up, got dressed for the run, went down and I was like, “I'm going to give this a go.” I wasn't in the best shape, but I was more ready than I would ever be. I was running with a friend, we were in the last pack, the slowest pack, and she said, “You need a mantra.” She said, hers was, “My mind is strong, my Heart is strong, my body is strong.” I'm Catholic, so mine was, Dear God, please let me not die. Amen. [audience laughter]
So, we started running. It's going great for the first little bit, but then I hit mile two. [audience laughter] There's this guy with a sign on his back that says two knee replacements, and he's flying past me. [audience laughter] But at mile six, my brother comes out to join me to run with me. Well, I'm running, he's walking. [audience laughter] He's giving me advice. The way the Philly marathon works is they have the marathon and the half marathon on the same day.
So, we get to mile 13, and there's all these people. Everybody's really excited. And he's like, “Do you want to keep going? You don't have to. You can just get the half.” I'm like, “No, I'm going to keep going.” I go 10 more feet, and there's no one with me, like it feels like I'm in last place. And so, I start running past the art museum, and I get to about mile 17 and I see this van with blinking lights. I ask someone what that is, and they say, “Oh, that's the lag bus that picks up people who are running a pace under a seven-hour marathon.”
So, I get to mile 20 and my legs are broken down. Just about as I hit mile 21 and hit the home stretch down towards the Philly Art Museum, a guy in a tricycle pulls up next to me [audience laughter] and he says, “Steve, right? You are now officially the last person in the marathon.” I'm like, “Greek heroes always have a tragic flaw.” [audience laughter]
So, I really want to give up. But then, I think like, about four or five miles down the road, maybe I'm not a Greek hero. Maybe I'm more like-- I'm trying to think why we idolize Rocky so much in Philadelphia. It's because he's dumb, [audience laughter] and he just took a lot of pain and a lot of abuse. I am in a lot of pain, and this feels like the dumbest thing I've ever done. But I walk up to the guy in the van and I'm like, “I have seven hours, right?” And he says, “Yeah, technically.” [audience laughter] And I'm like, “All right, I'm going to keep going.”
He's three feet behind me, and I'm struggling to move. I get to mile 22, and I get to mile 23. There's a cop there and I ask, “Can you please pull him over?” [audience laughter] At mile 24 and a half, I hit the seven-hour mark, and a van from the cleanup crew pulls in front of me and the lag bus driver pulls up next to me and he says, “You're fine. Just keep going. I'll get him.” [audience cheers and applause]
So, I make it to mile 25 and 26. At that point, there's point two left and the announcer who I thought was a dick about it, said “Though he is well over the allotted time. [audience laughter] The last person who did not make any side routes we checked to finish the 2015 Philadelphia Marathon is Steve Clark.” The mayor comes up to me and he shakes my hand.
He's like, “I just wanted to stay till the bitter end.” He gets out of there. [audience laughter]
Epilogue.
Philly is not experiencing a great era in its sports teams. Though I would never be like my brother, never be this Greek athletic hero, and though I had just lost the marathon to everyone in Philadelphia, [audience laughter] it still felt like a win to me. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
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Catherine: [00:34:25] Steve Clark is a writer, storyteller and high school English teacher from Pennsylvania. He tells us that he works at the best high school in Philly with the best kids in Philly, which makes him super happy. To see a photo of Steve at the finish line, go to themoth.org.
I relate to Steve's story. I took up running a few years ago at age 50. While I'm proud of myself for doing it, I'm a slow runner. I ran the New York City Marathon a few years ago, and it took me over seven hours to finish. At around mile 17, I was running across the Queensborough Bridge and was passed by a woman who was walking the marathon for charity with her 85-year-old mother. She offered me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich she had in her pocket. What that said to me was, A, she's a very kind person, but B, at no point did she think her elderly mother would need that sandwich more than I did at that moment.
But my most embarrassing experience happened during a half marathon a few months before. As I was running the last few miles, I heard someone behind me on a bicycle talking into a walkie talkie, “I'm behind the last runner. No, we're not even to the bridge yet.” I spent the last two miles running with this guy riding behind me reporting my progress into his staff. By the time I made it to the end, they had taken down the finish line. But when they saw me coming around the bend, the cleanup crew, God blessed their hearts, stopped what they were doing and gave me a standing ovation.
Coming up, a young girl can't seem to keep herself out of trouble. That's when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
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Jay: [00:36:43] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Catherine: [00:36:55] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. Our final story, like our first story, was recorded at a live performance at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln center for the Performing Arts in New York City. Here's Amber Phillips, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Amber: [00:37:21] Have some friends in the audience. [audience laughter] So, this one time, I woke up in the middle of the night and my mom was praying over me. Just her in the dark sitting there, having a little talk with Jesus over her badass daughter. See, when I was young, I had terrible anger issues. I was about seven years old, one time, at a family dinner, I'm not sure what my uncle did besides breathe too hard in my direction. I responded by calling him a purple bastard. Yes.
See, when kids act like that, people think something's wrong at home. But honestly, my family was amazing. We laughed as much as we cried. We loved each other boldly and loudly, but we were living paycheck to paycheck, and I hated it.
My mom was a visionary. Truly. She would turn the electric being cut off into her paycheck, into these candlelit dinners. But as time went on, I could start to feel how much she worried, and how hard she worked and how we never seemed to quite have everything we needed. It made me angry. It made me mad. I was acting up at home, at school, even at church. So, my mom decided to take me to therapy. Yes, my black mother took her black child to therapy, okay? That was around the time I was starting to get nervous. 10-year-old Amber was nervous at this point, because I'm like, “My mom is voluntarily taking me to white folks to talk about my issues.” [audience laughter]
I was sure this was the first stop to ending up on Murray, where they yell in the kids face and send them off to boot camp. I really want that for my life. So, she takes me to this children's hospital. As we're about to go in, she looks down at me and she gives her speech of, “Now, don't go in here and show your ass.” [audience laughter] We walk into the building. I sit with this perfectly fine white man for an hour telling him all about my life as this little black girl growing up in Columbus, Ohio, with my two sisters raised by my mom and all of my family members who happened to live in a 10-mile radius of our home.
After I laid my little burdens down to this complete stranger, I'm sorry, my therapist, [audience laughter] my mom came back into the room and he gave her an update. It told the perfect balance of respecting our new patient-doctor relationship while also giving my mom the information she needed. And he says, “You know, Amber shared a lot of feelings of fear and helplessness. And her hostility seems to be rooted in her feeling of lack of control, because she doesn't have any money. So, I think that you should consider giving Amber, an allowance.” [audience laughter]
I instantly felt betrayed. How did I explain this so wrong? If I don't have the money, my mom doesn't have the money. We're broke together. We're in this together. So, we leave. She looks at me and she says, “I will never make you go back there again.” [audience laughter] So, at least, we were on the same page. I think at this point, my mom was really tired of her needs and the needs of her children not being met by these medical professionals. I was tired for her, but not tired enough to stop showing my ass.
So, you should also know that I grew up in the type of family that was always at church. See, if your grandparents weren't on the leadership of the deaconess and deacon board, you simply don't know my pain, baby. We was always at church, okay? And around the height of my behavior problems, my mom became a secretary at our church. But during that time, she became really good friends with a person I would grow to know and love as Aunt Gail.
Aunt Gail attended our church. She was amazing. She was one of those people who knew the Lord personally. Her God had seen her through a couple of things. Her God was like that one auntie who would shake a $20bill in your hand at the family dinner when you were on your last dime and unsure if your gas tank would even make it back home. Her God had seen her through some things. One of the things I loved about Aunt Gail, she could sing the Holy Spirit into any room. She was one of those never shallow, rock cry out in my name praises. She would bring her own instruments to church and would cue up her own solos from the pew even while the choir was singing. [audience laughter] Full choir, full band. [unintelligible 00:42:09] with the tambourine, okay?
I love that about her. I couldn't wait to grow up and have that kind of audacity. But I was also afraid of Aunt Gail, okay? Because Aunt Gail was one of those born-again Christians. Meaning, she was raised in the church, dipped out to have her little fun for a couple years, [audience laughter] and then made her return a resubscribed Christian, if you will, okay? [audience laughter] She was also the type of Christian who carried an Our Daily Bread devotional booklet in her purse next to her pack of Newport’s. And that told me that she was a cussing Christian. And so was I, but I was 10 years, and a kid. Shouldn't have been cussing.
So, another time, when I got a phone call home from school, this time for calling my teacher a turtle looking ass bitch. [audience laughter] Creative. That's when I woke up to my mom praying over me. It wasn't like she started by turning my mental health over to the Lord. She had seriously tried other options. So, she was going to go with prayer and classic family shaming.
Black mothers are known for telling everybody your little business, especially when you have shown your ass. My mom told the last person on earth I wanted to know which was Aunt Gail. Another thing you should know about Aunt Gail, is when she wasn't singing and praising the lord on Sundays and catching the Holy Spirit-- On Wednesday, she was known for crocheting during Bible study. I loved that about her too and wanted to learn.
So, after I had gotten another call home from school, I come to church on Sunday and I see her across the pews. She looks at me and points and gives one of these, “Come talk to me.” So, I drag my feet over just knowing she knew what I did and looks at me and she says, “I hear you want to learn how to crochet.” That was what I was expecting. I look at her and I say, “Yes.” And she says, “Yes, what?” I say, “Yes, ma'am.” The classic call and response between adults who are not your little friend and small black children who are trying their luck. So, she tells me, “Tomorrow you're coming over my house, and I'm going to teach you how to crochet.” I was like, “Okay. Good deal.”
So, my mom picks me up from school, takes me over to Aunt Gail's house. And this time, she let me hop out of the car without giving her, “Now, don't go in here and show your ass” speech. I think we both knew I was no match for Aunt Gail. So, I go into Aunt Gail's house. It has that incense smell. I like to call it Auntie Core, where there's meal on the table, plastic on certain things that don't need plastic for that long. [audience laughter] She tells me her real story, the story underneath her testimony. I don't look like what I've been through. The story is when she only carried that pack of Newport’s. And then, she showed me how to crochet.
She hands me a needle and ball of yarn, and she picks up her needle and ball of yarn, and I watch everything she does as she starts her first row. I copy everything she does. It looks like her hands are in a groove of her pattern as she's starting out her first knits. I think I'm falling until it becomes clear to me that mine looks nothing like hers, and I say, mine doesn't look like that. She looks at me over her glasses and she says, “And getting frustrated isn't going to help it look like that either.” Me, obviously, frustrated, “I'm not frustrated. I just want it to be right. And this looks a mess.”
She puts down her needle and yarn, and she says, “Look at your hands.” I stop right as these tears start to come into my eyes, because I'm getting angry, and I look at my cramping hands. My pattern was inflexible and rigid, whereas it seemed like she was just flowing with her work. And she says, “The number one rule of crocheting is tension. Tension determines what your pattern will look like. If your tension is too loose, your pattern will be loose and have holes in it. And if the tension is too tight, your pattern will be inflexible and rigid.” She says, “Without controlling and maintaining your tension, you can't do shit. You can't make a potholder, let alone a blanket without controlling and maintaining your tension. Do you understand?” I say, yes.” She says, “Yes, what?” [audience laughter] “Yes, ma'am,” I understand.”
See, in that moment, Aunt Gail spoke to my anger, where everyone up until that moment tried to shrink it, even if it meant shrinking me with it. She taught me that you have to use that anger. You can't just get rid of it. And to this day, I'm grown now- [audience laughter and applause] -and I still get very angry. I still feel the tension come into my body when I think about how this country treats poor black people. It makes me angry that in life, George Floyd was assumed to not have $20. But in death, he was able to raise millions. It makes me angry that it took what felt like a literal crack in the universe for people to understand that black folks are human beings who, of course, matter. So, I used tension. I used tension, and I get to the root of my anger and the systematic issues instead of letting it control me. And yes, I still come into places and show my ass. [audience laughter]
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:48:39] That was Amber Phillips. She's a storyteller, filmmaker and creative director, who is devoted to using radical Black queer imagination to create stories, art, culture and community. In 2021, Amber released her first short film, Abundance, about the limitations and radical possibilities of identity.
Amber told her story on the same night that Ron told his story about his little girl, Penelope. We loved how Amber's story seemed to answer the question imposed in Ron's story about why it's so important to teach children, especially young girls, to fight for what they believe in.
That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time for The Moth Radio Hour.
[overture music]
Jay: [00:49:38] This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison and Catherine Burns, who also hosted and directed the stories along with Jodi Powell. Coproducer Viki Merrick. Associate producer, Emily Couch.
The rest of The Moth’s leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, 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 Julia Kent, [unintelligible [00:50:19], Cory Wong and Charlie Hunter, and the Dee Felice Trio. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Special thanks to the Ford Foundations Build Women Leaders Program for its support of The Moth Community program.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And 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.