The Moth - The Date Jar: Alyssa Hursh

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

In this episode, Alyssa Hursh tells us about her summer of dates. This episode is hosted by Jodi Powell. Storyteller: Alyssa Hursh

Attention Houston! You have listened to our podcast and our radio hour, but did you know the Moth has live storytelling events at Wearhouse Live? The Moth has opened Mike's storytelling competitions called Story Slams that are open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night's theme. Upcoming themes include love hurts, stakes, clean, and pride. GoodLamoth.org forward slash Houston to experience a live show near you. That's the Moth.org forward slash Houston. Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm your host for this week, Jody Powell. This episode we have a story from the Moth main stage.

Alyssa Hirsch told the story in Anchorage, Alaska, where the theme of the night was on Chartered Territory. Here's Alissa, live at the month. My boyfriend started telling me bedtime stories because my insomnia had gotten so bad that I wouldn't even try to fall asleep without having something to listen to. He told one story in particular that I really loved the story that we had made up together over time, the story of a sloth. A little girl sloth who did not have insomnia.

Every night her friends took her on a magic carpet ride all across the world, but every night she was too sleepy to enjoy the sights. They took her to Egypt and she slept through the pyramids. They took her to Peru and she slept through Machu Picchu. Every night he would look at me and he would say where to and I would give him a list of destinations. Morocco and Tiguah and Ardaka and he would describe the sights and I would sleep right through it. list of destinations, Morocco, Antigua, and Artica, and he would describe the sights and I would sleep right through it. If there was an end of that story,

I never heard it once. We've been dating for a while and things were going really well. He showed up at my house so often with flowers that I almost got sick of it. We had this really fun and flirtatious dynamic together, even a couple of years in. And so one morning we were in bed, just kind of wasting the day.

And I looked at him and I said, wait here. And I came back with a court mason jar and a stack of index cards. And I handed him those index cards and I said, right at date idea on every one of those cards, we're going to make a date jar. The thought was that if we were ever too stuck in a routine or we wanted an adventure but we didn't know what, we would pull an idea out of that jar and we would do whatever it said. We decided that literally anything counted as a date idea and we also agreed that we wouldn't tell each other what we were writing down. We filled the whole jar. We did a lot of hiking together and when I hiked with him, I like to ask him questions,

questions about how he was doing, about how we were doing. And one day I asked him if there was anything that was missing for him with us, if there was anything that he needed and he wasn't getting and he said, no, no. He said, well, actually there is one thing. I wish that we watched more television together. Now I am accommodating and that is a pretty easy request to accommodate. And so a couple weeks later we were watching an episode of TV before bed and the episode ended and that Netflix screen came up, the one that says, are you still watching? And I was with him and I said, are we still watching?

And he said nothing. I said, do you want to watch another episode? He said nothing. I said, what is going on? And he said, I think I need to move to Chicago. Now that almost made sense. He had a lot of friends in Chicago. He traveled there really regularly to visit them

But he knew I didn't want to move to Chicago my friends my family my career my whole life was in the Pacific Northwest I also got the impression that he wasn't inviting me to come with But I said if you think you need to move to Chicago, then we need to get you there on a trial Could send you there for four months spend the summer see what you think and then we need to get you there on a trial. Could send you there for four months, spend the summer, see what you think, and then we'll figure it out. He fell asleep first at night. He fell asleep without telling me a story. And he fell asleep with a smile on his face, this smile of relief.

And he slept with that smile the whole night, which I know because I did not sleep. I tossed it and turned looking at him, and then looking at my nightstand and sitting on my nightstand that day jar full of adventures that we hadn't gone on. But the next morning we got up

and I got to work helping him make plans. I took photographs of his house and wrote the posting to sublet it on Craigslist. I coached him on talking to his boss about working remotely. I started planning him a going away party. I wanted him to know that he had my unconditional support, no matter what that meant for us, but I wanted that support to be the reason that he came back home to me.

We decided that we wouldn't talk to each other during the summer. I knew that I couldn't go with him. I knew that I couldn't give up the life that I had built for myself to follow him there. And I wanted him to know what it would be like if he actually left to me. So we decided that we would have one phone call a month, while he was gone, and took about six weeks to get the plans together. And in early May, I took him to the airport and dropped him off, and I said, have a good summer.

But during the time that I was planning his good summer, I was also planning a good summer of my own. See, I had that jar of date ideas. And I knew that if he didn't come home to me, I didn't want to get stuck with it. I wanted to stay busy. I wanted to spend that time with my friends. I wanted to have stuff to do.

And I knew that even though we weren't going to be in communication with each other, that he was still going to creep on my social media profiles. I wanted him to see what I was doing and I wanted him to feel like he was missing out. And so the day he left, I sent an email to 40 of my closest friends and I said, it's true. I said, I'm going to need your help. There are 31 dates in the jar and I have 16 weeks to do every single one.

My best friend Jen took the first date. We went swimming in the Columbia River. It was May, so it was cold, and the Columbia is not a swimable river. I wrote that date idea. And technically the card said, get your head wet in the Columbia. And technically we did. Date two, my friend Hoyt and I took a card game to the bar

where Hoyt was dating the bartender. We tapped two strangers on the shoulder and we asked them to play with us. We played the game, we sat around telling stories, just shooting the shit, it was a really nice night. Date four, Ellie, a game of horse at the basketball courts in our neighborhood that ended in so much laughter I almost died from not being able to breathe.

Every single one of these dates I thought about him, especially the dates that he had written, but I was busy and I was having fun. Date 7 Katie and I made Strawberry Ice Cream from scratch. 11 Theresa took me to John Bajous. 12, Jillian and I climbed trees in the park. At that point we'd had one phone call, he and I. And things were going really well. He'd found a place to live.

He'd found a desk in a co-working space. He bought a bicycle and he was using it to get to know the city. He didn't ask me about the dates that I was going on, but I know that he knew. Fifteen, Shannon, the top of Rocky butte at sunset with a picture-perfect view of Portland's three volcanoes. We were wearing sparkly capes that I had borrowed from my three and five-year-old neighbors. Again, my date idea. 16 David invited a bunch of his friends over,

cooked dinner. They sat in absolute stillness, listening to me tell all of the stories of the dates I'd been on so far. And then we played Pictionary. That was the date. And then they took me out for ice cream on tandem bicycles. But at that point, we were halfway through the summer, it was July, and it was time for our second phone call.

I remember the day exactly, I remember being so nervous, but so excited to get to hear his voice, and that evening he called me, I was sitting on my front porch. He called me, and he said, I've made a decision. I'm breaking up with you. I remember feeling like my stomach had fallen out of my body or like my body had fallen into a black hole. I remember thinking, no, I remember saying no.

I don't know how we got off that phone call. I remember getting into bed and just crying. It was a Wednesday. I had plane tickets for Friday to go to San Francisco to visit a couple of friends and do a couple more dates. And I almost canceled. I thought, what the hell am I doing? Why am I doing this to myself?

But I kept those plans and I'm so glad I did. That weekend, my friends passed me from one to the next, like I was a baton in a relay race. My old friend Rob picked me up from the airport, date 17. We spent a defined period of time together in silence. So we are a date idea, right? But it was really good.

We walked the entire length of the Golden Gate Park from the D Young Museum to the ocean without speaking. And when we got to the ocean, we took off our shoes and we put our feet in the sand and we sat down and I put my head on his shoulder and I watched the tide go out. Rob handed me to Jesse, date 18. Jesse and I put together a pinhole camera.

And then we went around the city taking panoramic pictures on 35 millimeter film. The first half of the date had felt like I had something to prove to myself or something to prove to him. And the second half of the date felt like my friends had something to prove to me. You can imagine that I was not sleeping through the night.

I felt like death. I wanted to cancel everything, but they wouldn't let me. 20, Laurel and I went to Astoria to see the shipwreck on the coast. 25, Kevin and I pretended to be newlyweds and went house hunting. We argued about where we were going to put the nursery.

30, Liz and I played Putt Put Put Golf at the Art Museum. By then it was September. At that point he had moved home and I had exactly one date left in that jar. It was a date that I had been saving for him. It was a date that I couldn't do with anybody else. 31, right down my bedtime story. So I sent him an email and I said,

will you do this date with me? He said, yes. He picked me up at my house. We drove out the Columbia River Gorge to the Dog Mountain Trailhead. We hiked to the top and we sat on the summit. You pull that a notebook and he looked at me and he said, where to?

We started writing down that story. I looked at him and I said, you know, I actually don't know how this ends. He said, I've been telling you the ending this whole time. In the end, Sloth wakes up as if the whole thing was just a dream. I looked at him and I said, I don't like that ending. That's not my ending.

In my ending, there's always room for one more adventure. In my ending, there's always room for a sequel. In my ending, her friends keep showing up. We hiked back to the car. He drove me home. He dropped me off at my house and that was it. It was over. You don't always get the ending that you wanted. But I did get a couple of things. I got rid of that date jar.

And I had the summer I set out to have 31 dates in 16 weeks. It was a summer full of adventure, a summer full of friends who just kept showing up. Thank you. That was Elissa Hirsch. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with a small flock of chickens and a foster pit bull named Blue. We followed up with Elissa and she told us that after the break up, she wanted to prove to herself that she was indestructible.

So Elissa took classes in mountaineering, became a long distance bagpacker, went back to school to become a software engineer, among a series of other adventures, just to prove that she could. Alissa wrote to us from a remote part of New Mexico, where she was just 170 miles away from completing the great divide mountain bike route. It's the longest off pavement route in the world, stretching from the Canadian border in Montana to the Mexican border in New Mexico. When we heard from Alissa, she got already biked

over 2,000 miles. To see some photos from Alissa's summer of dates and her current bike track, head to our website, themoth.org slash extras. That's all for this week. Until next time, from all of us here at The Moth, have a story worthy week. Jody Powell is a producer on the Moth's main stage in StorySlam teams. Jody also directs and teaches with our community and education teams. She says the spark that ignites her is that moment when a storyteller is center stage and

you can feel the audience listening. This episode of the Moth podcast was produced by me Julia Purcell with Sarah Austin Janess and Sarah Jane Johnson. The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Katherine Burns, Sarah Heyberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bulls, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina, Cluche, Suzanne Rust, Branding Grant, Inga, Glutowski, and Aldi Kaza. Month stories are true as remembered and affirmed by story tellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

The Moth podcast is presented by PRX, the public radio exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.