Host: Dan Kennedy

Dan: [00:00:01] Welcome to The Moth podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. This week, we're talking about togetherness on the podcast. And I don't just mean the obligatory family dinner during the holidays. Instead, we're looking at what it feels like to really connect with your loved ones. And if you're anything like me, you're experiencing some tightness in the chest right now, shortness of breath, bear with us. Or maybe I'm just projecting onto all of you well-adjusted Moth listeners. But you're going to find out with these stories that while it's an intimidating prospect to connect with our loved ones, it can be deeply rewarding.

First up, Luke Rodehorst tells a story. And he told this at a StorySLAM in Ann Arbor, where theme of the night was “love hurts.” Here's Luke live at The Moth.

[audience cheers and applause]

Luke: [00:00:56] There was something different in her voice when she said, “Luke, you need to sit down.” I picked up the phone and it was my girlfriend of three years. And she said that she had cheated on me while she was on her summer break. And she was my first everything. The first person I said “I love you” to. We loved each other very much. And it was one of these desperate, desperate loves for me, and this was towards the end of high school, where everything was more dramatic. 

And just to give you an example of how desperate this was, I used to keep a journal. And every time we would do something together, I'd come home and I'd write about it in the journal. So, it was this journal to us. It was never about me. It was always about her. This relationship was truly the center of my universe. And when that all comes crashing down, your world ends in a way. And I thought I have this journal, and I planned on giving it to her, and I was going to propose to her down the line because of course, we were going to get married. But I thought maybe this journal could save this relationship.

So, I gave it to her. And it didn't save the relationship. [audience laughs] But I was still in it. I would still try to make it work, even though that was the first act of infidelity. But three or four later, I was still thinking, “You know what? We can make this work.” Again, the center of my world was completely outside of myself.

And then, I came to the realization that if the center of my world is out there, not a part of myself, then I need to refocus. I need to really get happy with myself and not have my happiness dependent on something outside of myself. And then, reflecting on that, I thought, “Wow, my poor parents, this whole time, I've really cast them aside, all these friends from high school aside, for this relationship that had been going on for quite a while now.”

So, I finally broke it off for real this time. I decided I needed to commemorate this occasion. So, I hosted a funeral for our relationship. [audience laughs] And I invited all of my family who I'd been neglecting for all of these years when I was so all consumed by this relationship. So, I actually sent out actual invitations. [audience laughs] There was a picture of the Poussin painting, the Et in Arcadia ego where all the sad shepherds are crying over this tombstone in paradise. And there was a whole-- There were readings. There were various readings. I was going to give the homily. [audience laughs]

And there was this big casket, which was this big box where I just put all of my shit from our relationship. So, it's like all the love letters and all of the gifts. My stepfather and my stepbrother were the pallbearers, so [audience laughs] they carried this box out to the backyard where I had been slaving away for hours just digging a hole that had to be substantive enough to fit this pretty large size box. I'm sweating and I'm dirty and I'm crying. I made my mom carry this little boombox with this CD [audience laughs] that was playing Lacrimosa from the Mozart Requiem. [audience laughs] My stepbrother and stepdad, they're carrying the casket, and I'm leading them out there to this grave that I've dug. The song is playing.

Once the song is over, we all sort of sit there in silence. And I read this poem. It's called Love After Love by Derek Walcott, which is a phenomenal poem. And then, I welcome everybody to also throw something into the grave that was somehow representative of our relationship so that they could let go of that too. [audience laughs] 

And so, my mother, she's a psychologist. So, she says something that a psychologist would say. [audience laughs] My stepfather, he's a psychologist too. So, he says something to psychologists who say. My stepbrother, he had a piece of paper, and he pulls it out, and it says on it “Two words.” I'm just like, “Two words? Tell me more, Adam. What does that mean?” And he said, “You dated her for three years, and the most I ever heard from her were two words.” So, he throws that into the grave there. And we all take turns taking the dirt and shoveling it over and I dust our hands off and I leave. 

And I think the words of that Derek Walcott poem are really words I go back to this day when I think about that. And it is, “Give your heart back to itself, to the stranger that has loved you all your life, who you ignored for another who knows you by heart.” Thank you. 

[audience cheers and applause]

Dan: [00:06:51] That was Luke Rodehorst. Luke has written one haiku every day for the past 2,997 days and counting. He and his wife, Lily, have two kids, August and Eliza, who are often the subject of his haikus. When he's not thinking about poetry, he helps sports leagues, Broadway shows, and performing arts organizations tell better stories through his work at Google. I could barely get through that bio because I'm so in love with that story. I can't describe my love for the story, Love After Love, it was incredible. 

Up next on the podcast, Katiana Ciceron tells a story. We met Kat through The Moth’s Education Program where we craft stories with high school students, and she told this story at our first ever education showcase in Brooklyn just a few months ago. The theme of the night was “betwixt and between.” Here's Kat live at The Moth. 

[audience cheers and applause]

Kat: [00:07:54] My family is originally from Haiti, and I am the youngest out of three beautiful daughters. I am also the first to be born in America. Now, growing up in kindergarten, I was the most curious, enthusiastic, energetic kid you could ever meet. And I was always asking questions. And whenever I got the answers to them, I always wanted to share it with somebody, whether it be my friends, my family, especially my mom. However, sometimes that would be a bit of a challenge because me and her had a language barrier between us. 

Now, of course, she spoke the basics of English and I spoke the basics of Haitian Creole, but there were times where I wouldn't be able to understand her, and she would be asking me to do something for her, I'd be like, “What? What are you saying? I don't understand.” And if you have Caribbean parents, you would understand that they get irritated pretty quickly. [audience laughs] So, that resulted in me getting a butt whooping sometimes. And of course, that led to my sisters and my dad being the translators for us. If one wasn't there, then the other one would translate. However, sometimes, my family's very busy, and if nobody was there, then sometimes we would just walk past each other in the hallway like it was a ghost town and not say anything to each other at all. 

And you can imagine how frustrating that is, especially for a kid who's in kindergarten, because I just wanted to tell my mom everything. Like, how I learned two plus two is four and not eight. And how I mix red and blue, which makes purple. And how I learned how to jump rope because, I'm telling you, I was the worst jump roper known to mankind ever. And so, that was so important for me. But because of the fact that I couldn't properly communicate with her, it was so frustrating. 

So, one day, I decided to ask my sisters and my dad to teach me Haitian Creole. That didn't last very long. [audience laughs] Like I said, I was very curious, and I asked way too many questions, apparently. Like, “Why is the sky blue? And why does grass grow out the ground and not the walls? And why is my name pronounced Kaa-tiana in English but Ka-tiana in Haitian Creole.” And of course, my sister's being busy getting ready for college, and my dad just working a lot, they were like, “Okay, child, you asking too much.” And they didn't completely give up on me. If I had questions, of course, they would answer. But I was basically left on my own. 

So, my mom and my dad, like I said, worked long hours at work, and whenever they came back home, they always needed help around the house. And so, me being the youngest, I would have to help them out. However, that was frustrating for me because that interfered with the time of me teaching myself Haitian Creole. So, what I would do is I would lock myself in the bathroom, pretend like I had a stomach virus or something, and just keep practicing. But they just kept calling me, so it didn't really work out all the time. 

So, fast forwarding to January 1st. It is also known as Haitian Independence Day, and it is tradition to drink soup joumou, pumpkin soup. Now, me being the picky little American that I was, I was like, “Eww, I don't want to eat that. That looks nasty, yellow and thick. Get out of here.” [audience laughs] And so, I asked my mom to make me something else. However, my siblings always made in front of me and I’m like, “Girl, you missing out. This tastes so good. Look at all the meat and the soup. Oh, my gosh.” I was like, “Damn, girl, we really try in this house. Let's really try this.” 

When I had the soup for the first time, I was like, “Damn, girl, where you been all my life? [audience laughs] Tastes so good.” And I remember us sitting at the table, and it was set up as if we were like a mafia mob family. Like, my dad sitting one side, the devious kid sitting in the middle, and the wife sitting at the other end. And I remember sometime during dinner, my mom asked me in Haitian Creole, “Èske manje a bon?” “Is the food good?” And for me, in that specific moment, everything kind of stopped because I was like-- I understood what she just said. I really understood what she just said. And me not realizing that I was kind of taking quite a while to respond back to her, my sisters were getting ready to say, “Okay, so she said--" I was like, “No, no, it's okay. I got it. I know what she said.”

And so, I gathered up all that I was learning and teaching myself in the little bathroom and I said, “Wi, manje a bon.” “Yes, the food is good.” And the table kind of got quiet, everybody's surprised. And my mom’s eyes are bulging out of her head ready to pop out, but they're not going to fall out yet because she's really surprised that I really responded to her. Of course, I have a lisp and when I was younger, it was really, really bad, so I kind of mispronounced a couple of words. But she still understood what I said. At that time, you expect your family to support you but no, my sisters being the sisters that they were, they said, “Oh, the fake Haitian that don't speak Creole. Oh.” [audience laughs] And so, that tore down my little confidence as a kid.

However, that moment was very inspirational for me because that gave me a piece of hope and also showed me that I just broke down a piece of the language barrier that's stopping me and my mom from having a closer relationship. And now, that's showing me that I can now take it a step further and continue to teach myself and completely tear it down. So now, fast forwarding today, I am proud to say that I can speak fluent Haitian Creole [audience cheers and applause] and my mom can speak fluent English and the language barrier no longer exists between us. And we are as close as close could ever be as a mother and daughter should. Thank you.

Dan: [00:14:34] That was Katiana Ciceron. Katiana is now a high school senior and she's co-directing a play called Love/Sick by John Cariani for her school. She has plans to study psychology or sociology in college and minor in theater and film. We had a couple of questions for Katiana after listening to her story. Exactly how did she learn Creole at such an early age? We sat down with Kat backstage after she told this story live at The Moth.

Katiana: [00:15:05] My sisters always played Haitian music. We always listened to Haitian televisions and dramas and movies. And also, although I wasn't really allowed to listen to the adult conversations that were spoken in Creole, I always kind of asked questions like, “Hey, what does this mean? How is this pronounced? Am I supposed to say it this way or the other way?” That's basically how I began to pick it up. 

And you need to have patience, especially when it comes to learning a language. And also, especially if you don't start out as young as I did in my story. Kids are known for falling and getting right back up and basically that's what I did. However, it gets more frustrating when you get older and kind of just give it all up. And that's something that I learned throughout the story and with my family in real life. 

Dan: [00:15:55] Storyteller Katiana Ciceron. You can learn more about The Moth's Education Program and all of our Moth programming on our website, themoth.org. That's it for this Week on The Moth podcast. If you're looking for more Moth or have a story that you'd like to pitch us, you can always visit our website, themoth.org. We're also on Facebook. On Twitter, you'll find us @themoth, and Instagram is @mothstories. Until next time, from all of us here at The Moth have a story-worthy week.

Voiceover: [00:16:28] Dan Kennedy is the author of Loser Goes First, Rock On, and American Spirit. He's also a regular host and storyteller with The Moth. 

Dan: [00:16:36] Podcast production by Julia Purcell. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.