Host: Catherine Burns
[overture music]
Catherine: [00:00:12] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. And today, we're going to hear stories about the ties that bind. It's a topic that seems to come up a lot at The Moth dealing with our families, a subject that generates story after story.
First up, the writer Sharif El-Mekki. He told this story in a community workshop we did with the William Penn foundation and Fundraisers Network. Here, live from Philadelphia, Sharif El-Mekki.
[applause]
Sharif: [00:00:41] Good evening. From early on, I knew my parents and teachers had the expectation that I was going to be a revolutionary. My earliest dreams were about protest, and civil unrest and boycotts. They should have been nightmares when I was a kid, but they were just dreams of a child who knew he was supposed to be a revolutionary.
My parents met and got married in the Black Panther Party. I was enrolled in a school that was founded by activists and revolutionaries. It was called [foreign name] It was in Queen Lane. We didn't have gym at that school. We had martial arts. [audience laughter] Baba Changa, my martial arts teacher would always say, “If you're going to speak the truth, you got to be able to defend the truth.”
By the age of 10, I had met some of the most amazing revolutionaries who were not locked up and still alive. Angela Davis, Sonia Sanchez, members of the Wilmington Ten. Move members in a playground was really a parking lot in the back. As kids, we would chant, “We are soldiers in the army. We're going to fight, although we got to die.” I remember being 10, in my kitchen, my mother showing me a picture. As I looked at the picture, she said, “This is your dad is in this picture.” I'm looking at it.
The first thing that stood out to me is Afros and seven guys and handcuffs. I felt such pride. I had a lot of emotions. I was proud that I was the son of this handcuffed revolutionary who I knew stood for something and stood for social justice, he and his friends. Also, I had rage. I had raged that someone had did this to my father and his friends. And also, in the picture, what really got me upset was a police officer with a shotgun. You could tell he was yelling something. I just imagined that he was yelling something foul and racist to my father. I was angry.
So, I grew up, and I continued to be really upset. Furious, actually, about all the social justice issues that I would see. But I was also really confused, because I didn't know how to become a revolutionary. So, meanwhile, I graduated high school, I got a full academic scholarship to a state college. One day, in October after I graduated from college, me and some friends were playing pickup football in a field, actually Bartram High School's field in southwest Philadelphia.
We were playing. Quite often I would channel my rage through football, because that's what men do. At some point, I tackled someone really hard and I celebrated. And all of a sudden, I felt this blow in the back of my head. When I looked up, everyone from the field was running. And so, I turned around to find out what were they running from. I had a gun in my face. He didn't like being tackled like that, and so he got a gun from his friends who happened to be in the stands waiting for something to jump off. I grabbed a gun, and we're wrestling with it. He just starts pulling the trigger. I was shot three times. It severed an artery.
So, I was in the hospital for a month and 20 plus surgeries to try to save my leg. Periodically, I would talk to my father, who was in jail. My mother would come visit me, but I couldn't find any answers as to what to do next. I would think about the person who shot me, because at revolutionary training, I figured I would get shot by the police or something one day. But the guy who shot me did not look like the police officer in that picture. The guy who shot me looked like me. Eventually, after getting out of the hospital, a group called Concerned Black Men had a contract with the school district, and they were looking for Black men to become teachers.
Although previously I had never thought of being a teacher, I thought about the young man who had shot me and I said, “I'm going to do this.” So, I became a teacher. I thought about all the times when I was younger and just said, “There's something wrong with the planet I'm in.” Like, God had it all wrong. I wasn't supposed to be born in 1971. I was supposed to be born in 1951. So, I could have been part of the struggle of my parents and all these heroes.
But on the first day of school, I realized that there were no mistakes. My revolution was to be a Black man by a blackboard in southwest Philadelphia, in the same part of town where that young man had shot me. I am a revolutionary.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:07:07] That was Sharif El-Mekki. Sharif has spent more than a quarter century as an educator. For the past 10 years, he's been the proud principal of the Shoemaker Campus branch of Mastery Charter School in West Philadelphia. He's married with six children.
The events in the story took place nearly three decades ago. And I asked Sharif what he thinks about it all now. He wrote, “I guess the only thing that add to the story is it it has never escaped me that Derek, the young man who shot me, could have had a different story. He could have become a teacher. I believe there are plenty of young men who, if supported, might choose to leave classrooms and schools.” To that end, Sharif has worked to launch something called The Fellowship Black Male Educators for Social Justice.
To see the picture of Sharif's father that he mentioned in the story, go to themoth.org.
Next, we have a story from NeShaune Lasley, whose nickname is Binet. She told it at her open-mic StorySLAM competition in Louisville, Kentucky, where he partnered with Louisville Public Media.
[cheers and applause]
Here's NeShaune Lasley, live at The Moth.
NeShaune: [00:08:15] “Open up your arms, relax your stance, spread your legs, keep going.” “Oh, my God, Daddy, if you don't shut up, I'm going to come across this fence and show you how relaxed I am.” [audience laughter] Mind you, I'm in the middle of a 400-yard dash, which I don't know how anybody dash is 400 yards in high school. [audience laughter] And mind you, this is also a race I did not want to run, but because I was fast, but not superfast, I got to run the 400-yard dash. So, I didn't want to go. The person who was supposed to be there just didn't show up, which I was wishing I had done at that moment. [audience laughter] But I was there.
And from the moment I stomped to my place in line to the starting little thingies, runners, my dad was there yelling, “Open up your hands, open your stride. Go, Binet, go.” I wasn't here for it, like, the first couple of laps. But there's something about my dad, he has always been my cheerleader. He was a coach. So, everything he told us came out like in “Go, you can do it. Do your best.” He always repeated everything. I can tell you everything. He always told us, “Keep your eyes wide open, expect the best from people, but be prepared for the worst.” Like, he told us the same thing over and over, but it was all to make us better people and to encourage us.
I remember one time when I came home from college, my dad was sitting in the living room watching a documentary on Beyoncé. [audience laughter] So, this was pre-queen bee status, but I was still digging her. So, I sat down to watch with him. We were just enjoying it, just sitting down like fathers and daughters do, I guess, watch Beyoncé. [audience laughter] And at one point, Beyoncé tells when her birthday is. I'm born 1981. Beyoncé was born September 4th. Everybody knows that 1981. [audience laughter]
And so, at that moment, my dad just looks over at me, like, looks back at Beyoncé, and he looks at me again and he looks back at Beyoncé, and he's like, “She's the same age as you.” I'm like, “Yeah, we just both heard in 1981.” He looks at me, “You know how many millions she's made?” [audience laughter] So, I looked at my dad and I said, “You realize her dad is her manager, right?” [audience laughter] Okay. [audience cheers and applause]
Being my dad, he laughed it off and he's like, “No, I'm just trying to get you to understand. She's the same age as you. You know, she was a little girl, and then she grew up and she followed her dreams. You know, you can do anything that you want to do, anything you put your mind to.” But back to that race, [audience laughter] I am running begrudgingly. But it seems like-- If you know how you run track, it's a circle, right? But there are corners. If you're running, that's the way it helped me break it up to think of it as little corners and I would count the corners, and that's how I know how soon I would be done. [audience laughter]
And at every dang corner, there is my Daddy. He's 50 years old. I promise you, at every corner. I'm running as fast as I can. I'm like, “How were you just here? And now you hear [audience laughter] and telling me, ‘Go, Binet, go.’” I really wanted to yell, “Shut up, Daddy.” Like, “Just let me run.” But I just like, “Okay, the best way to shut him up is to run.” I was way behind to start, because I did not want to run. But he's still there and he's just yelling, “Go.” So, I just start going. I'm just cooking and booking. Like, “I can't wait to get to the end of this thing, so I can tell him to leave me alone. Don't ever do that when I run again.”
And then, suddenly, I look up and I realize, “Oh, crap. I'm close. I could win this thing. Here's the girl that's supposed to win.” Here's everybody else, “I don't even know how this happened.” [audience laughter] But I'm like, “There's no way I'm beating her.” I wasn't close to her though. She's up there. But it was just me and her. And so, then I hear my dad, “Come on, Binet, you can take her. You can take her.” And I'm like, “No, I can't, Daddy, she's up there.” [audience laughter] But I was like, “Okay, whatever, forget it. I'm going to do it.” And so, I just start booking. And I'm like, “Okay.” Daddy said I could do it. I can do it. It's always been true my whole life. I could do it.
And sure enough, we're toe-to-toe. And homegirl looks over at me like, “Hold up. Where'd you come from?” [audience laughter] Like, “This is my race.” She was taking all the things my Daddy was saying and like, “My name's Binet.” [audience laughter] And so, I'm just going. And I'm like, “I can do this.” I promise you it was something you see on TV. Like, it was her, then it was me, then it was her, then it was me and then I hear my Daddy, “Go, Binet, go.” And so, I went. It just so happened. There was the line, and I won. [audience cheers and applause]
I was so pumped. I'm really super-duper sad to tell you that my dad passed in 2008. When I think about on all those times that he repeated things to me, it got on my nerves and I'd be like, “Daddy, shut up. You tell me that every day, you always telling me that.” But I feel like somewhere in him he must have known or God knew that I was going to need those things, because I lost him when I was 27 and he's not there to repeat those things to me anymore. But I don't have to worry, because every time I get to a corner and I think I'm not going to make it, I can hear the most beautiful voice in the world, saying, “Go, Binet, go.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:14:04] That was NeShaune Lasley. She's a wife and mom. She wrote us. “I'm a teacher by trade, but somewhere inside is a writer and speaker trying to be all God wants me to be.”
NeShaune wanted us to share that when she set off for the StorySLAM, she wasn't sure she was even going to tell a story. But on the way there, she heard the Bill Withers song, Lovely Day on her car radio. It's a song she used to sing with her father. She said, “He'd bust out his old moves and make me dance with him. I'd pretend to hate it.” But in the car, she just kept replaying the song until she arrived at headliners in Louisville. Sitting in the crowd, the memory of the story just came to her like it wanted to be told.
Coming up, Barbie dolls and needless worrying, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[Lovely Day song]
Jay: [00:15:11] The Moth Radio hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Catherine: [00:15:21] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. In this show, we're hearing about families.
And our next story is about the long-standing tradition of kids trying to get their parents to buy them a coveted toy, in this case, a Barbie doll. We met our storyteller at a StorySLAM competition in Melbourne, Australia, where we partner with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
[cheers and applause]
Here's Caitlin McNaughton, live in Melbourne.
Caitlin: [00:15:49] Mum and dad banned Barbies, and my sister and I wanted a Barbie more than anything in the world. Mum, a feminist, thought that they created unrealistic beauty standards for young women. Dad, a Math teacher, wasn't a fan of the Barbie slogan, “Math class is tough, let's go shopping.” [audience laughter] So, instead, they tried to distract us with other forms of entertainment. Mum tried reading me The Lord of the Rings trilogy. [audience laughter] We didn't get past The Council of Elrond. Dad would throw a ball at us, sometimes we'd throw it back. [audience laughter]
We had a lot of math-based computer games in our house. Number Munchers was my favorite, which was basically Pac-Man, except instead of eating delicious fruit, you ate prime numbers. [audience laughter] So, despite all of their best efforts, they couldn't quelch our overwhelming need to have a Barbie. Because in the 1990s, if you didn't have a Barbie, you were nobody. [audience laughter] There were all kinds of Barbies. There was Gymnast Barbie, Workout Barbie, Cool Shopping Barbie, Princess Barbie, Babysitting Barbie. I would have taken any Barbie. I just wanted a Barbie. [chuckles]
I mean, I get it now, obviously. I mean, I was a scrappy little brown haired, freckle faced, big boned, short legged, flat-footed kid. I was never going to be a Barbie and I guess my parents didn't want me to feel like I had to be. But that didn't mean anything to me then. [chuckles] I was sure that feminism was great, but also Gymnast Barbie could move her limbs in literally any way. [audience laughter] So, to me, my parents were just these villains that were doing everything in their power to stop me and my sister from being happy, essentially. [audience laughter]
But my childhood wasn't as tragic as I'm making out. Perhaps, in their biggest attempt at distracting us, my parents took us to Disneyland in 1995. And looking back, I would like to query my mum's thoughts on the feminism of the Disney franchise. But anyway, we went to Disneyland. [audience laughter] It was amazing. It's a small world ride and the teacups probably a log flume. But the best part of it was the Disneyland gift shop. My parents said that my sister and I could each pick one thing.
So, after hours of deliberating, making pros and cons lists and narrowing down our options, we both arrived at the checkout with our choices. She had in a big clear box, Mary Poppins doll and I had a Belle from Beauty and the Beast doll. We got our dolls, we got in the car, we unboxed them and we gave each other a big triumphant grin. We had just orchestrated the Trojan horse of child dolls, [audience laughter] because when you took off Belle's plain blue dress and white apron and Mary Poppins's red and white, it's a jolly holiday dress. Underneath was the unmistakable 1-inch waist, 5-inch thigh gap, [audience laughter] and the feet permanently set as a high heel of our very first Barbie dolls. [audience laughter]
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:20:00] That was Caitlin McNaughton. Caitlin is an arts administrator from Wellington, New Zealand. Even though Caitlin doesn't currently own any Barbies and considers herself a pretty good feminist, she still occasionally clashes with her parents over her love of the TV show, The Bachelor.
Our next storyteller is Rebecca Barry. She told this story in an evening we produced in Ithaca, New York, where she lives with her family.
[cheers and applause]
Here's Rebecca, live at The Moth.
Rebecca: [00:20:35] So, I'm a worrier. I worry about my kids, I worry about my husband, I worry about the planet. I've been doing it for a long time. I'm really good at it. [audience laughter] But the person I've probably worried about most in my life is my mom. It's ironic, because my mom is really one of the strongest people I know. She's been a psych nurse for most of her life. And in her 70s, she decided to go to prison to teach nonviolence. Her volunteer work is driving people to and from jail who don't have cars to see their loved ones.
It's not just what she does that makes my mom so amazing. It's the way that she is. She's kind of like Buddha. She has this really calm and compassionate way about her that really quiets people down, and makes them feel really safe and calm. Except me, [audience laughter] because I'm her daughter and I worry about her. I've been worried about her health. My worry about her was always about her health, because my mom was overweight for most of my life, and she had high blood pressure and she worked in the psych ward where there was a lot of second-hand smoke. And I worked in New York writing and editing for magazines. So, I was reading all these studies about how obesity and second-hand smoke and high blood pressure are really dangerous. And so, I'd worry.
My mom thought that was funny, because she doesn't worry at all, which I think is easier when you have somebody to do all the worrying for you. So, she's driving all over the place. She's going to Africa on safari. She goes to China. She does all this stuff. I'm following her around, saying, “Mom, do you need to be so busy? Mom, could you slow down? Mom, have you gotten checked for diabetes?” And she's like, “Oh, Becky, I'm fine. You worry too much.” We're both kind of right.
Like, there were times when she ended up in the hospital, because she was doing too much and she had a surgery that nearly killed her. But for the most part, she was okay. But we were locked in this dance. And then, she got diagnosed with kidney failure. Kidney failure is manageable. You can live with it for a while, but it's a chronic disease and it will kill you. The thing that can happen is when your kidneys really stop functioning, is you can stop eliminating fluid and you can fill up with fluid and drown from within.
And so, one day I get a call from my dad saying, “Mom's in the hospital, and she was having some shortness of breath and they think they found fluid in her lungs.” I leave the house, and I go to the hospital and I get there to my mom's room right around the time that my dad is coming back from the cafeteria. He's got a little sandwich in a plastic bag and I've got my purse and we meet at my mom's room. And the doctor had just been there. So, we come in.
I think at that point, my dad and I were both hoping that it was maybe her medication or something. And so, we go in and my dad says, “Well, what did the doctor say? What is it?” And my mom goes, “It's the progression of the disease.” And my dad goes, “What does that mean?” My mom just looks at him, and he looked at her and they looked at each other for a long time. It was such an intimate look. I almost felt like I shouldn't be there. It was two people who've been married for 50 years looking at each other, and I'm thinking, what it means is this is the beginning of the end.
And then, around Thanksgiving, I call my dad to see how she's doing and he says, “Not well.” And this time, I say the words I've never dared say. And I say, “Dad, is she dying?” And he says “Yes. The doctors say she won't make it to Christmas.” And I thought, damn it. The thing I've been worried about my whole life is finally happening and it's awful. And I said, “Dad, what are we going to do without her?” And he said, “I don't know, Becky. I don't know.” So, I got off the phone. I was up all night. I'm making like 25 million deals with God, like, “I will never say a bad word about anybody again. Please, please, please let my mom stay past Christmas, please, or just five weeks. I don't care. Just make her live longer. I'm not ready.”
The next morning, I'm trying to get my kids ready for school. My younger son won't get ready, he won't get dressed. And my younger son has a way of gauging the stress level in the house, and then reacting to it by sitting down and refusing to put his pants on. [audience laughter] And so, he's standing there. I can roll with this. He's been doing this for a long time and I can roll with it. But this morning I'd been up all night, I just got this news that my mom's dying and I can't handle it. And so, I just lose it. “This kid is sitting there, he won't get dressed,” and I'm just-- I lose it. I say, “Dawson, get your pants on. What's wrong with you? How can you be a nine-year-old who doesn't know how to dress himself? Get ready for school. You're going to be late. I can't do this today. I just can't. “
Dawson's standing against the radiator in our hallway, and he's not looking at me and he says, “Is Grandmama okay?” I looked at him and I just said, “Just go to school.” Dawson put on his backpack and he walked out the door. I watched him walk away and he had this resigned nine-year-old walk, like, “Adults are so stupid.” I watched him go and I thought I didn't handle that very well at all. What did I just do? That's my kid. It's not his fault. And he left his lunch at our house. So, I thought, okay, I'll take the lunch to school.
I take it to school, and I go into the front desk, and the secretary's there and I say, “Can I see Dawson? I have his lunch.” And she's like, “Oh, sure, I'll take it.” And I said, “No, I need to speak to him. Can you please bring him? Can you send him in?” She says, “Sure.” So, Dawson comes out and I give him his lunch and I lean down next to him and I say, “Listen, Dawson, I'm so sorry I yelled at you. Are you worried about Grandmama?” And he goes, “Yeah.” And I said, “Oh, me too.” I put my arms around him and we're both crying and we're hugging each other and the woman at the front desk says, “Do you two need a room?” [audience laughter]
So, we go to the room, this break room, and there's a microwave and all these different Bigelow tees. I sit down and I say to Dawson, “It's true, your grandma isn't doing well. She is 80 and it's sad, but there's a lot of love in our family and we're going to be okay.” I thought that was kind of mature. Dawson looks at me and goes, “Yeah, but I don't want to hear anything more, any more details about being sick or dying, because then you spend all this time being sad before you need to be sad, and being sad before you need to be sad is the worst.”
I look at him and I'm like, “Leave it to the kid who won't put his pants on to [audience laughter] tell a 47-year-old woman what she needs to hear.” He's nine. And so, it didn't actually stop me from worrying. I think I'm wired that way. But it did really help me shift that sentence. I need to spend as much to enjoy my mother as much as I can, because she doesn't have much time left to. I want to enjoy my mother, because I love her. And so, once a week I drive her to dialysis-- That doesn't sound like much fun, and in some ways it's not. But the great thing about it is that I get to have all these hours to talk with her.
It's just made it so clear to me and reminded me that the thing that I think is so amazing about my mother, aside from all the other things, is that she is the kind of person that you cannot, you cannot sit down next to her without telling her everything that's in your heart. You see people at a party, and mom will sit down and they'll say, “Hi, I'm about to get a divorce.” [audience laughter] It's like, you can't do it. Mom just says, “Yeah, okay.”
The other day I went over there. It was a snowstorm, and I spent the night at Mom's house, which is the house I grew up in. My husband took the kids home, and so I'm there with my mom and my dad. We're in the stove room, which my dad put together in the 1970s. My mom's in her blue chair that she likes to sit in and I'm on the couch. My dad's in a rocker. Mom and I start talking, dad goes to sleep. We started talking. I was telling her about how I see all these other mothers who are so good with their kids. They're so patient and soft. And she said, “You're a great mother. Your talents are different. [audience laughter] You're special. [laughs]
And that got us to talking about marriage and raising boys and then that got us into fixing up old houses and then we got on our favorite topic, which is psychological disorders and who has them, [audience laughter] which we can talk about for hours. And then, it was 02:00 in the morning, and I go, “Mom, I got to go to bed. I have to drive you to dialysis tomorrow.” So I go to bed, and the next day we're driving, and I say to Mom, “I can't believe how late we stayed up last night.” And mom goes, “I know. I felt like a school girl. I felt like I was in college.” And I said, “I know. That's how I felt too.”
It made me think, that time I was worrying about her. What I meant was, don't die. I don't want you to die. Because if you die, who will be the person that I will just be able to sit down next to and say whatever in my heart. Who will do that? Don't go. Stay as long as you can. I didn't say that. I said, “Why don't you try water aerobics?” [audience laughter] which is not the same thing. [audience laughter] But I can say it now. When you go, I will miss you so much. [sobs] But you're here and I see your brightness and it's so beautiful, it lights up the room. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:31:26] That was Rebecca Barry. Rebecca is an artist, creative coach and the author of two books, Recipes for a Beautiful Life and Later, at the bar. She's currently working on illustrated novel and stories for children based on a letter subscription service she created called Veronica the Cat.
As of this recording, we're thrilled to report that her mother is still alive and in good spirits. Rebecca tells us that she still drives her mom to dialysis once a week, and it's completely transformed their relationship. She writes, “We've gotten to know each other much better as women. The other day I was dropping her off at the house I grew up in and I realized that mom and I are friends, it felt like a small/big, magnificent gift.
A man raised by a mother who doesn't believe in cuddling babies must figure out what kind of father he wants to be. That's next on The Moth Radio Hour.
[soft melodious music]
Jay: [00:32:45] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange prx.org.
Catherine: [00:32:58] This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. In this hour, we're hearing stories about how our families can influence the way we see the world.
Our final story was told on stage at the beautiful Majestic Theater during the San Antonio Book Festival.
[cheers and applause]
Here's Warren Holleman.
Warren: [00:33:17] My mother believed that it was wrong to hold a baby. She said, “Holding babies makes them soft, it makes them weak and it makes them dependent.” She said, “Cribs were much better. They fostered independence and self-reliance.” To her, life was hard and parents did their children no favors by coddling them. The job of the parent was toughen up the child. If we went out in public and she saw a young couple kissing and cuddling with their children, she would just get so irritated and agitated. If she saw them holding a baby for more than two or three minutes, she'd say, “They need to get a crib for that baby.”
She didn't believe in kissing either. I never saw her kiss my dad. If she kissed me, it was just a peck on the cheek, which isn't bad if you've been pecked by a chicken. That's what it felt like. [audience laughter] But it didn't exactly feel like a kiss. What I later learned was a kiss. She thought kissing was bad for your health, because it spread germs. As for my father and his side of the family, there's a very telling story about my dad's return home from World War II that pretty much says it all. He's been away for three years. He's anxious to get home.
The war ends, he has to take this long boat ride across the Pacific Ocean. Then he has to take this long train ride across the United States. And on top of that, he has to walk 40 miles through a snowstorm. He was supposed to take the bus, but the buses weren't running, because the roads were closed because of the snowstorm. He wants to get home. He picks up that big duffel bag and just starts walking. And two days later, after dark, he arrives at the home place.
The family's not realizing he's about to show up. They're eating dinner. The door flies open and there stands my dad, Carl Holleman. And here is how his mother, with her rich North Carolina accent, welcomed her son home from the war. “Well, there's Carl. We got plenty of food in the kitchen. Put your stuff down and go in there and get yourself a plate and come join us.” [audience laughter] And that was it. [audience laughter] There were no hugs, there were no kisses, no nothing.
Now, don't get the wrong impression. My parents, my grandparents, had many fine qualities, but they were not the warm and cuddly type. I think the way that affected me, is that as I went through adolescence especially, I had a lot of trouble with hugs and kisses, a lot of embarrassing moments, a lot of awkward moments. I found myself longing for this something I couldn't even name at the time. I later learned it was warmth and tenderness. My friends, it seemed to come easily to them, not so easily to me.
I got lucky and met this wonderful woman. We got married. A few years later, we're in the delivery room and she's about to give birth to our first child. It's June 1987. The midwife turns to me, she says, “Get ready. As soon as I catch this baby, I'm handing her to you, because--” And then, of all the things she could have said to me, “Because it's your job to hold your baby.”
So, my head is doing this. [audience laughter] Part of me honestly wants to give it a try. I'd seen my wife's family do it, [audience laughter] and I thought it was one of those life experiences everybody should have. [audience laughter] But honestly, those tapes were still playing in my head of my mother and I guess my grandmother. I muddled through. That's about the best I could say. And would you believe that of all the names we could have chosen for that little girl, we chose Annie. I'm sure it was influenced to some extent by the musical, but the real reason was that's my mother's name.
So, the nice thing about having your baby birthed by a midwife, is that you get this special private suite for the next 24 hours in the maternity suite of the hospital. It had some nice name, like the family bonding room or something like that. That was the perfect place for me. I got 24 hours of practice learning to hold that baby, defying my mother every single minute. [audience laughter]
But what my wife and I realized was that once that 24 hours was over, we would have to leave that wonderful cocoon and we would have to leave that drama, that drama of wonderful new beginnings, and become a part of a second drama. It's a drama I haven't even told you about yet. I mentioned 1987. I mentioned, well, that we'd be going home to our apartment in our neighborhood. That drama was, of course, the AIDS epidemic.
We lived in Montrose, the so-called gay neighborhood of Houston. And at that time, it seemed that every young man we knew wasting away and dying. It just seemed so wrong. I'm talking about young men who are in their 20s and 30s. There was a Walgreens pharmacy on Montrose Boulevard. It's still there. Over the next few years, it would sell more AZT than any other drugstore in the entire United States. So, we were in the middle of what would be recognized over the next few years as one of the worst epidemics in American history.
Of course, many of our friends and neighbors were dying of this disease, but the one we knew and loved best. Excuse me. We'll call him Charles. Charles shared an entryway with us in our apartment enclave, and we spent many great times together. When he got sick, he moved into a home hospice arrangement that was a few blocks away. But we continued visiting. At first, even going out to dinner together. He was so supportive when he found out that my wife was pregnant. Honestly, [chuckles] I think more supportive than I was.
He was so emotionally connected to the whole thing in a way that I didn't even comprehend at the time. But looking back, he was a mentor for me through that process. He was so excited about the baby and getting a chance to meet the baby. Well, there was a rule that after the baby's born, there's a period in which the baby needs to develop its immune system. So, we were going through that, and we were nearing the end of that, when one day the phone rang. This was our friend, Martha, who was the friend who was coordinating Charles home hospice care. And she said, “I got some bad news.” She said, “He's taken a turn for the worse.” I said, “Well, we'll be there tonight.” She said, “I need to warn you, something's happened with his mind. He won't even recognize who you are.” So, she said, “That's particularly bad, because he was so looking forward to meeting your new baby.”
The other thing she said she needed to warn me of, was that she said she kind of whispered in the phone, “His mother, she's here.” I knew what that meant. So, we went that night. And we took our baby. It was as it always had been. Charles was in the center of his living room, lying on his back on a hospital bed. His shirt was off. And in the corner of the room, as far from her son as she could possibly be, was his mother. She was sitting on a folding chair. The chair wasn't even facing her son. It was turned sideways.
If she ever looked toward our way, it was just to stare at the floor. And I tell you, that seemed so wrong too. Martha had told us that she was afraid to touch him because of the disease and because of her prejudice against him being gay. And as for Charles, it's true he did not recognize us. But the thing was, we barely recognized him. As I said, he was lying there with his shirt off, and you could see every bone. He was as skinny as a person can be and still be alive. He had these awful sores in his mouth, and breathing-- Every breath was a struggle. It would take about three efforts to raise his chest, and then it would collapse down. You just knew it would be the last. And you hoped it would be the last, so he wouldn't have to suffer anymore.
As for his mind, it was clear that the Charles we knew was no longer there. He just babbled. It didn't make any sense. So, in a short period of time, we realized he wasn't there. So, we stood around him and talked over him to each other. After a while though, he started doing this one thing that made some sense. I was standing there holding our baby, doing a good job like this, and he would look at her out of the corner of his eye. And in time,, he started looking more. I could swear, it was almost as if he was trying to flirt with her. [audience laughter]
And one by one, we started recognizing that our conversation ended, because that was so much more interesting than whatever were talking about. And then, we got curious, what does his mother think of all this? She was sitting over there, staring at the floor. Her son is making this connection with our child, but she is making no connection at all. And that just seems so wrong. Even, by that point, the only thing I wanted to do was to hold and touch our child, and she was afraid or unwilling to do that.
So, my wife and I were frankly offended by his mother. We felt sorry for her, but were also offended. So, we had the same idea at the same time. It just was one of those things. We took our baby, we thought we got to do something about this. So, we laid our baby face down, her chest on Charles chest. Her face fit right in the cavity of his long neck. He was 6 foot 5 inches tall before he got sick. He was the best looking, friendliest and humblest person you could ever meet. And the funniest. Everybody loved him. And of course, now, that's why we didn't recognize him.
So, we placed our baby there and her little arms dangled over his bony chest. We stood closely by, because we really didn't know what would happen. What happened at first was actually scary. He started doing this, and then we realized he's having this spasm because he is trying to remember how to use his arms. He hadn't used them for a while. But in time, the spasm, he got control of it. And those scarecrow arms started doing this. And then, he got good control and they formed this arch over our baby. And then, his arms just relaxed and they relaxed around our baby. As his arms relaxed, his breathing relaxed, the painful expression on his face went away and we actually recognized that old Charles again. He looked so contented.
I've often said, “If that's all that had happened that night, it would still be one of the most amazing or memorable experiences of my life.” But one more thing happened. This time, Charles spoke. And his words made sense. He said, “Annie” and then he smiled. And then he said, “Came to see me. Annie.”
Sorry. So, we went home that night, went to bed. Middle of the night, I woke up. I had this huge jolt of energy. I couldn't get back to sleep. I went outside, sat on the back steps with our dogs. Sun came up. Phone rang, and it was our friend, Martha, again, the same one from yesterday. And she said, “I wanted to call you earlier, but I thought I should wait till the sun came up.” She said, “I wanted to let you know that, excuse me, at 4 o'clock, he died. Charles died.”
Now, I've had 30 years to think about this, and I still don't understand how a young man who has severe advanced dementia awakens out of that and has a moment of perfect clarity just hours before he dies. But I know what I believe. I'll always believe that it has something to do, sorry mom, with the healing power of human touch. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:49:35] That was Warren Holleman. Warren grew up in Eastern North Carolina pretending not to listen to the stories his father, uncles and other “Old” people told as they hunted quail. He says it recently dawned on him that he's now one of those old people retelling those stories and a few of his own.
That's it for our show. We hope you'll join us next time for The Moth Radio Hour.
[overture music]
Jay: [00:50:07] Your host this hour was The Moth's artistic director, Cathrine Burns, who also directed the stories with Maggie Cino and Larry Rosen. The rest of The Moth’s directorial staff includes 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 Stellwagen Symphonette, Bill Withers and Iván Reséndiz.
The Moth Radio Hour 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.