The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour - Fathers: Daddy, Dad, Paw-Paw, Pops

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

In this special episode celebrating fathers, a man embraces his father's music; a new dad has a breakdown in the grocery store; a young father struggles with his emotions; a son flies to Ghana for his father's funeral, a daughter reveals an embarrassing truth, and an uncle steps in to play an important role. Hosted by The Moth’s Artistic Director Catherine Burns. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Hosted by: Catherine Burns David Kendall inherits his love of music from his father. Chris Myers rides out his emotions after the birth of his daughter. Nestor Gomez struggles to pick out his baby among a group of newborns. Karan Chopra learns to live his life by his father's example. Amanda Hamilton Roos confesses her sins to her father, literally. Jack Marmorstein realizes the role he must play in his nephew's life.

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 theMoth.org forward slash Houston. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Katherine Burns and on today's show we'll go on a road trip with dads.

We'll start out in a small town in rural Tennessee, then move on to a whole food market in Milwaukee. We'll visit Ghana by wave India and Atlanta Georgia, touch base with a Mormon bishop in Idaho, and indifference a basketball court in Philadelphia. Up first, David Kendall. He told his story in an open-might story slam competition. We produced in New Orleans with our friends at WWNO. Here's David. The first time I fell in love, it wasn't with a girl, and it wasn't with a person. I was eight years old, and I lived in my hometown of Cottage Grove, Tennessee. It was a tiny little dot up in the northwest corner of the state.

There were 110 people that lived in Cottage Grove. There was one store, there was a post office, there was a gas station, there was one school, there were four churches. And that's the kind of place it was. And I realized early on, I don't want to live here the rest of my life. I don't fit in. And I wondered, are there other people that feel like I do? Well, as it turns out, there were other people.

I never asked, but one of those people, I'm pretty sure, was my father, Ralph Kendall. And I realized this when I remembered how he used to sit in front of the stereo at night, go through his record collection and play music while drinking fall staff beer, smoking cool cigarettes. And he would sing along and he would laugh. And sometimes he'd cry if it was Hank Williams. And I realized at that point, I don't think other daddy's in cottage Grove Tennessee do this.

As soon as I got old enough, I started listening to music with him. Because I loved the sounds, and also because I desperately wanted some way to connect with this very hard to no man. And through him I first heard Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Bob Wilson, the Texas Playboys, Jim Reeves, all classic country artists that I would learn to appreciate the older I got. But the night I remember the most, and the night that changed my life, was the night that he went into the closet, and he brought out a box of old 78s,

and he started rummaging through them, and he pulled one out, and he said, I've forgotten I had this. I never listened to it very much. He said, but I got a feeling that you'll like it, Hoss. He called me Hoss after Hoss caught right on Bonanza. He took the record out of the sleeve. He put it on the turntable.

He put the needle on it. And the hiss and the crackle and the pop of the old vinyl gave way to this glorious raucous epic opening salvo car rat guitar riff of Chuck Berry's Maybelline. And those killer lyrics, as I was a motivator, I saw Maybelline in a coop deville. Cadillac rolin' on open roll, nothin' out of runin' my V8 foe. Wow, I never heard anything like this in my life. And as a kid raised in a Southern Baptist tradition, I was pretty sure I wasn't supposed to like it. But I sure did like it.

And when the song ended, he reached to take it off the record player. And I said, daddy, no, no, no, play it again, play it again. Please, the song ended, he reached to take it off the record player. And I said, Daddy, no, no, no, play it again, play it again. Please, please, please, play it again. He said, I figured you'd like that horse. Yeah, I'll play it again. He played it again. And he played it again, and again, and again.

And I don't know how many times I made him play that. But I know he played it until my mama walked in the room. And she looked at him a certain way. And he stopped playing it then. Y'all know what I'm talking about. Well, it wouldn't be too long after that until I would get my first guitar. And I would try to recreate those sounds I heard on that record.

But it was really hard. And I didn't think I was very good. When it came to musical talent, I did not consider myself gifted. And it would take me 20 long years to escape the clutches of Goddard Grove, Tennessee. But when I finally left, I headed for a music city. I went to Austin, Texas. It was Labor Day of 1989. Had McCarpacked. I was ready to go. And I was standing on the front porch of my parents' house about to say goodbye.

And my dad, he said, hang on, Hoss, I got something for you. He walked back in the house. He came outside and he said, I know how much you love this and I thought you might want it. And he handed me that 78 of Chuck Berry's Maybelline. And it was a wonderful present. It was the best present I ever got. But the real gift that I got all those years ago was a love and appreciation for good music. And it's a gift that I could never wear out and I could never lose and I could never outgrow.

And I regret that I didn't tell him this when he was alive. So I'm going to say it now. Thank you Ralph Kendall. Thank you. Thank you. That was David Kindle with his tribute to his late father and the late Chuck Berry. David is now a singer-songwriter and musician in Austin, Texas, where he's lived for most of the last 30 years with Stinson Guatemala, Costa Rica, and New Orleans thrown in. He wrote, My Early Years, Spent on the Farm in rural northwest Tennessee, have been

a great source of inspiration for stories and songs. I told another story featuring my father at a local storytelling event here in Austin, and that went well. So my father's definitely been a good source for material. He'd probably be happy about that. I told him I was a part of the heart of the boat. Before God had hiding what he didn't do no move. He couldn't got his town and started to rain. I threw him a horn for the past and lay him. Marine water blowing all around him. Next up, we have a story from Chris Myers.

He told it at the story slam in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where we partner with Wisconsin Public Radio in 889 Radio, Milwaukee. Here's Chris Myers. In the run-up to my first daughter's birth, I discovered that the gulf between how I thought I should feel and how I did feel was getting wider and wider. It wasn't so much that I felt blue or sad or anything. It was just that it was a little bit beyond my reach.

So this came to a quick head as two weeks before she was born. My wife and I, late one evening, were hanging out, she sits down and says, oh, and it is the most significant, oh, I'm ever going to hear my life. Because we spend three and a half hours trying to figure out if we're in labor. Now I'm just going to tell you, if you're planning on having a kid or if you're on your way to having a kid, if you're spent three hours if we're in labor. Now, I'm just gonna tell you, if you're planning on having a kid or if you're on your way to having a kid, if you spend three hours, if you spend two hours

trying to figure out if you're in labor, you're in labor. So, we rush to the hospital and about 45 minutes after that, I'm holding my daughter, Eleanor. And I'm relieved. I'm happy in a sense, but I'm not really feeling the joy. It's still kind of beyond me. Well luckily my wife steps in and she sends me to go get her some non-hospital food.

And so I go across the street to Whole Foods, which is a bastion of drama. And there, in I-O, I think it was seven, I'm reaching for an Italian soda and as I reach for it, I hear a drum beat on the radio, and a keyboard and a baby's cry. And it's this throwaway song that I've never paid attention to for the most part. But I fall to my knees sobbing because it's Stevie freaking wonders, isn't she lovely?

And I am suddenly clobbered by the reality of what is hit. And frankly, I'm flo is hit and frankly I'm floored. And as I'm having my epiphany, I'm sitting there and I can hear in the back of my head this voice saying something of the effect of there's an incident in aisle seven. And I'm looking around thinking I'm the only guy in aisle seven. There's nothing going on. Oh. I'm the only guy in aisle seven. There's nothing going on.

Oh. Good parenthood moment, I'm gonna mention it. I didn't drop the bottle. Cradled. Sobbing over my lemon lime, Italian soda. I get this 19 year old kid, he's kinda geeky looking and comes up,

very whole foodsy. And he's like, are you okay, sir? And I'm creating a bottle of Italian soda and trying to explain to him the beauty, the depth, the grapes of what 10 fingers and 10 toes is suddenly meaning to me. And I'm not doing a good job of it. And finally, I just settle for, I'm fine. I spend a lot of time at the floor of Whole Foods, aisle seven, cradling bottles of Italian soda. He goes away. He's glad that I tell him I'm fine. But the problem is still in aisle seven.

So I rate a little bit higher, and I get the manager who looks like Rush Limbo's angrier brother. And so I decide honestly is the best policy this time around. And as soon as he gets up there I try and stand up. Standing up looks like you're in control. And so I turn to him and I'm like look man I just had my first daughter born not an hour ago across the street from here, and this song is playing. And he hasn't heard it. It's background noise to him.

But suddenly he does. And his face is blank for a second. And then I am buried in man. And my shoulders get wet. And all he can say about to me is, mine was born three months ago too. That was Chris Myers. Chris is a high school teacher and since that day in the supermarket, he says he's been madly in love with both Eleanor, the baby in the story, and his second daughter Abigail, who was born two years later. She bought a apple in the sea precious.

Let's spend one million. I never bought through love with thee, making one as lovely as she. But he doesn't she love me. Come on, let's get along, leave me alone. Coming up, a Guatemalan immigrant sees his new baby and faints. And a young man from Ghana gets to know his elusive father through the story's told after his dad's death, when the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and

presented by PRX. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns, and our next storyteller is Nester Gomez. He was born in Guatemala, but has lived in Chicago since the mid-Avies. Here's Nester live at the Moth. I woke up on the waiting room in the hospital, a little bit confused. And immediately I ran to the room with the nurses kept the babies looking for my new-born baby boy. The first baby that I saw when I entered the room

was an ugly looking baby. This baby had facial hair. His skin was all wrinkled up. His ears were wrinkled up like discarded pieces of paper. And every time that he breathed, he makes this ugly noise. I felt sorry for whoever were the parents of that baby, and I continued looking for my baby. I made it all the way to the middle of the room

when I heard my mother's voice in the entrance of the room. Minieto, my grandson, she was looking at the ugly baby. I took her around and I asked my mother, why do you teen that's my son? Mendoza, Thomas, he looked just like you when you were born. I ignored my mother's comments and instead of starting to think why had I walking up in the little waiting room. So I started to trace back my steps. I had just got in home the night before from work, from working alone, I was tired, I was sleepy, I was hungry. I got into bed and my head just hit the pillow when my

wife say, my wife is broke. So I got up and I got our 11-month-old daughter ready and my wife ready, and I dropped it to my in-laws' house so they could babysit my daughter when I took my wife to the hospital. Now, I wasn't too worried about this whole delivery team because I had been there before already, yes, 11 months before.

It wasn't really my idea to be there when my daughter was born. It was the doctor's idea to have young parents present at the delivery of the babies. So they could think twice before they get another baby. Of course, I'm a hard Latino young man, and that didn't work for me. So 11 months later, I was there again with another baby. And like I said, I wasn't too worried about the whole thing because I had been there before. The only thing that I was worried about was that I had so much love for my daughter and so much love for my daughter and so much love for my wife.

That I kept thinking to myself, how am I going to get love for this other baby in my heart? There's no way that I can make room for him in this heart. This is too much love already. Maybe I'm going to have to grow another heart. But I wasn't too worried about the delivery. Until the pain started and my wife started complaining a lot. Several times she told me that she was going to die and she told me to take care of her daughter

and her other baby. But thanks to God, nothing happened to her. Our baby was born. And I started to walk toward the baby was, but instead of saying something good, the only thing that I managed to say was the room spinning. Next thing I know, I woke up in the little waiting room because I passed out.

So that's how I happened to wake up on a little way in the room. I asked the nurse if that was really my baby, and the nurse kept telling me, bringing me that that was my baby. After 24 hours, my wife, me, and my baby were giving the OK to go home. my wife, me and my baby were giving the okay to go home. My mother put some socks on my baby's ears because this was an all-wife remedy to fix the ears. So when I got out of the hospital with my baby, he looked even uglier than when he was

born. But a couple of weeks later, the team with the socks in the ears actually worked and his ears started to look normal. The facial hair fell off. The skin was nice and smooth. He was a really good-looking baby. He kind of looked like me. I was like, this is a cute baby.

Probably my son. However, the breeding never got better better in fact, it got worse. My wife took our baby to the hospital where he was born, under doctors in the hospital, say, don't worry. Yes, a little cold, don't worry about it. So she came back with a baby. But then night, the baby started to tomblue. So we took the baby to another hospital.

In that hospital, they told us that the baby had asthma and they put him on the intensive care unit. For two weeks, my baby almost died. He was giving medicine. He was putting in a crib with a big cover. I couldn't touch him. I couldn't hold him. Little by little he got better. Until one night I was finally able to hold him in my arms. And I pray to God, I don't care if his baby is ugly. I don't care if he's beautiful, he's mine. I just want him to be healthy. As include the doctor walking to the room and say, I think your baby is going to be

okay. And you're going to be able to take him tomorrow home. I started to cry at a happiness. The doctor looked at me and asked me if I was okay and I answered more to myself than to the doctor. I think I just grew another heart. Thank you. Applause Thank you. Nesca Gomez holds the record for the most Chicago Moth story slam wins, and is also a two-time Chicago Moth Grand Slam winner.

Because you asked Nesca, he will tell you that his biggest accomplishments are, his kids, making his mother proud, and winning the heart of his fiance. And the little baby in the story, he recently graduated from Grinnell College. Our next storyteller is Karan Chopra. We met Karan when he was a 2015 Aspen, New Voices Fellow. Here's Karan, live at the Moff in Washington, DC. I was in my dorm room at Georgia Tech getting ready to take a final exam when I got a call from Ghana.

I was told that my dad had had a hard attack and had passed away. In a matter of hours, just like that, he was no longer there. I wasn't shocked, but arrangements had been made. My dad's boss had booked me on the next flight out to Accra to be with my mom. My dad had moved to Ghana in the early 1980s to be a maintenance engineer on a manufacturing plant. The money was much better than what he was

earning in India so he moved halfway across the world. A year after I was born, my mom and I joined him in Accra, and that's where I grew up. So our lives in Ghana centered around my father, but growing up, we didn't spend much time together. He would leave for work early in the morning, return late at night, often before I was awake, and after I was asleep. Six days days a week and Sunday was a half day

But I remember Sunday evenings When he would take me to a restaurant called sunrise so I could have my favorite meal Chichinga Which are these skewers of meat like kababs marinated in local spices. These would all be memories now. On the flight over to Ghana, I couldn't help but think that we didn't have enough of these memories in our years together. See, my dad was not a very emotional person. He was not the one to say, I love you,

talk about his day, talk me into bed, take me to a soccer game. He was consumed by his work, but that's what he needed to do to put food on the table. I wanted to spend more time together. I wanted to get to know him more. I had questions. What was it like to rebuild your life in a place that was so different from what he was used to?

Did he like sports? Was he troublesome in school? When he was a young man, how did he decide what he wanted to do with his life? Question that I would now have to wrestle with in college. These are all unanswered questions. Over the next few days, something incredible was happening. Something I can only appreciate looking back.

Every day someone different would bring home cooked food to our house, not just for us, but for the many others who came to pay their respects. There were people who helped my mom and I with things that I didn't even know needed to be done, getting a debt certificate, washing the body, organizing a cremation. We decided to hold these Hindu prayer sessions for 10 days in a row. And on the floor of our living room house, there were tens of people crammed, Indians and Ganyans alike on mats in a small room. Some of these people I was seeing for the first time. Who are they?

And why, what brought them here? After one of these sessions, a lady came up to me and said she was a sales agent in the place where my dad used to work. And she told me that my dad was the reason she was able to send her kids to school. She said she was out of work and no one would give her a chance. And it was my dad who gave her a job that paid school fees. A skinny tall man was a driver on the factory floor and he said that he could build his house because of my father. My father had given him a personal loan so he could build his home. And in Ghana, having a house is a sign that you have arrived in this world.

I knew that he cared for the people he worked with, that he was respected, he was the guy who could get things done, but I didn't know he was in the business of giving out loans. Mr. Singh is a manager that was hired to run the factory working for my dad. And for the first three months that Mr. Singh was in Ghana, my dad made sure that he got a home-cooked meal every evening for three months, because he knew what it was like to move halfway across the world

and he wanted him to know that he had a home away from home. The day of the cremation, I was standing on the porch of our house and I was looking outside and there must have been at least 100 people in our front yard through the gate and onto the dirt road outside. Indians wearing their all white curthas, ganyans in the traditional red and black funeral attire. And they wanted to carry his body from our home to the cremation ground, which was about 10 kilometers away.

See, my dad was not a politician. He was not a village chief. He was not an NGO leader. but he had built a community. He had touched the lives of these people in profound ways. And it is in these stories that they were telling me that I was finding my purpose. A deep understanding of service, of what it means to help others who may not have the same opportunity. What is left of us when we leave are the memories that we have with the people we work with. And it's this purpose and meaning that inspires my work.

It inspires the work I do now here with underserved communities to get them jobs. It's what inspired me to go back to Ghana to build a business there so that farming communities could earn more money and have a better life. And the general manager of that business, it's none other than Mr. Singh. And Mr. Singh reminds me that my father guides our work in the community.

My dad also guides our community at home. My father's name is Sorindra, and we named our daughter Serena. And his spirit is in her every day. Thank you. That was Koran Chopra. Koran's company, Gadko, which he co-founded, is now helping Ghana's poorest farmers make more money off their crops by providing them with seeds and fertilizer than buying their crops and selling them around the world.

Karan was named a 30-end or 30 social entrepreneur by Forbes magazine. He's currently the co-founder and executive VP of the new company Opportunity at Work. What I love most about Karan's story is how it highlights how we can get to know someone who has died by hearing stories about them. As a Moth Story Director, I've heard many stories about people who have died years before, sometimes even before I was born. And even though I never met them, they live on in my mind through the stories their loved ones tell about them. Coming up, a young woman must make an embarrassing confession to her father. An uncle in Philadelphia becomes a father figure.

That's next on the Moth Radio Hour. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, PRX.org. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns, and our next story is from Amanda Hamilton-Rews. A warning to parents who may have little ones in the car, this story has a moment where teenagers explore their sexuality. It's mild, but we wanted you to know.

Here's Amanda, live in Pittsburgh who we partner with WESA. I come from a long line of cougars. BYU cougars, that is, you know, BYU that Mormon college that's out in Utah. No, no drinking, no drugs, no sex, but lots of wacky board games. And it's also the alma mater of my mom, my dad, my grandparents, my aunt, my cousins, everyone. So when I was thinking about going to college, that's where I pictured myself going. I grew up on Idaho, but we would go down to Utah for BYU football games, and I went to

a couple of girls camps there and volleyball camps. So when it came time for me to play to college, that was the plan. But then, when I was 17, my dad was called to be a bishop of our Mormon congregation in Jerome, Idaho. See, Mormon bishops are called because it's not a full time or a paid position, but they're in charge. It's like being a priest, which meant that when I was 17 and I needed to go to confession, I had to confess to my dad.

Now luckily, I was very good girl. I didn't drink or smoke crack. I got straight A's. But I did have two tiny faults. One was that I drove obscenely fast. And two was that I really liked this boy Steve a lot. But still, I avoided confession because, well, it's my dad, right? So, but there was one confession that I couldn't avoid. So, in order to go to BYU, you need a Bishop's recommendation.

So, because they have this set of standards that they require everyone to follow, I had to have my Bishop vouch for me, right, to say that I could follow these standards. So, my dad took me into his office, which was really just this double-wide trailer we had in the backyard. See, I didn't grow up in the kind of house that has an office or a study. I grew up on a farm. In fact, we have this great picture that the local newspaper took of him once, and so you can kind of picture this. He's this big guy, 6'4", and he's sitting on a wooden fence in his bib overalls and tucked under his bushy beard. He's playing a violin.

To a giant bowl that's in the background. That's my dad. He would have never chosen to be bishop. He's this gentle and unassuming guy. He writes his own music. He plays the violin. He laughs really easily and he loves puns. He had a poor, is telling people what to do. But he loves telling them something very interesting

that he's read lately. But he's also a guy who does what he thinks is right without any drama. So when the time came, when they called him to be bishop, he accepted the call and he shaved off his beard and he started wearing proper pants. So that was good. And okay, so there we are. We go into his office for this interview, for me to get into BYU, the all a matter of

everyone. And he starts going through all the normal questions, do you believe in God? Are you morally clean? Do you abstain from alcohol? And it would have been so easy. This is my dad. Don't we lie to our parents all the time? It was her fault.

Of course, his parents are gonna be there. I'm late because I was stuck behind a tractor on the way home, right? Like, don't we say those lies all the time? But, um, so he gets down to the very last question and he says, well, Mandagirl is there. Any reason I shouldn't sign your recommendation

to go to BYU? And I should have just said, nope, we're good to go, dad. But this is my dad, you know, and I'm looking him in the eye, and I just crack. And I inhale, and I exhale a sob. Steve touched my boobies. I think we heavy-peded. Heavy-pedding. That was my big confusing crime. I've had three children and I still am not sure what heavy petting is. It's... It seems like such a silly thing to confess, right?

But it was bigger than that and I knew it. I knew that if this was my passage into adulthood, that I wanted to do it right. And I wanted to be the kind of adult who doesn't get by and have truths or try to whizzle her way out of things. I wanted to be real. I wanted to look my dad in the eye.

So my dad kind of paused and said, well, you know, in this double-wide trailer, I am your bishop, you know, but when we walk out that door, I'm going to be your dad again. And your dad doesn't need to know about what you just told me. And your mother certainly will not know. This is between you and your bishop, and I'm glad you told me. You did the right thing, everything's gonna be okay. And we hogged and he told me he loved me, and he did not sign my recommendation to go to BYU.

So that changed everything. I didn't go to BYU, I didn't marry my high school boyfriend who incidentally his bishop did recommend for him to go to be why you It takes two to heavy pet I think I'm still not entirely sure But more importantly it started me on my journey to becoming the kind of adult that I hope I am today And you know my dad upheld his end of the bargain. He never grounded me.

He still shook Steve's hand when he came over. And I don't know if he ever talked to my mom about why he didn't sign my recommendation. But I believe he did not, because my dad is honest, just like his daughter. Thank you. Thank you. That was Amanda Hamilton-Rose.

Amanda is a freelance education consultant, writer, and blogger. She's still very close to her father, but has not needed to confess anything in a long time. She and her husband and kids now live in Mexico. Our final story was told as part of a mock community showcase. We met our storyteller, Jack Marmerstein, at a workshop we did in Philadelphia with Funders Network and the William Penn Foundation. The story speaks to the many different circumstances that can lead a man to act as a father to a child.

Here's Jack, live as a mom. It's the summer after I graduated high school. And I'm shooting hoops in my driveway with a buddy. I ask him, why don't you leave him for school? Says, I don't know, month maybe. I'm shocked. Not because this is actually happening, but because he doesn't know when. I know exactly when.

I've been counting the hours for months. It's my release date from a family, from a mother who's had a hard time letting go. If leaving for school is going to be the best day of my life, it's really going to be the worst day of hers. She's sort of half Jewish mother, half tiger mother, half helicopter mother. She's been kind of looking over my shoulder and done an okay job. She's my grades have been good. I got good SATs. I got to do a good college. It's not really that. It's the little things that have driven me crazy. I'll be on my way to the refrigerator to get myself a snack. And she'll get there before me open the door.

Are you hungry? Are you hungry? Can I get you something? And I can sense this desperation to feel needed. And I just feel desperate to do something by myself. A month later, I leave leave for college and I never really look back. I spend a lot of time by myself and get a job that takes me all over the world, England, France, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, China. I end up living in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. My bedroom overlooks the Blue Ridge Mountains where I run, run my bike, camp with my dogs. It's beautiful, I love it. I'm looking out my window when my sister calls one

morning. My mother's health has taken a turn for the worse, and she's dying. Over our doctor's objections, my sister has figured out a way to fulfill my mom's wishes. She wants to be cared for at home by family. And my sister has it all figured out. She has the hospital bed, the IV pole, feeding tube, as wound care supplies, ventilators. And my sister is the head of her academic department and she's a single mother of a two-year-old.

She's going to need my help and I'm not going to say no, but I'm not happy. We're going to run a hospice for a vent dependent quadriplegic in a tiny row house in Philadelphia. My mom is unconscious most of the time, and when she's paranoid that we're not taking every measure humanly possible to prolong her life. It's going to be rough, but I pack my roller bag, arrive at my sisters on a sweltering August day, blow up an air mattress on her tiny guest room floor, look at the child's desk where I'm going to telecommute. And I begin counting the hours because the doctors haven't given my mom long. They're amazed.

She's made it this far. Days, maybe a couple weeks. So my sister, though, she runs a tight ship. She has rules. She has it all figured out. And I'm horrible at it all. I can't keep the sterile from the not sterile, how sold waste, from medical waste, let alone get near my mother's airway.

I'm like demoted to like the laundry and the dishes. And Jonah. And that's my nephew. He's two years old. He's wonderful. We were scared to bring this into his life. We were scared. We would bring death and dying, fear, anger, tears. But he's the one who lifts us up. He's the one who keeps us going. His spirit, he's unstoppable. And it's good because weeks become months, summer becomes fall, becomes winter.

And on Jonah's birthday, he gets the best birthday present. He gets this basketball who for our living room, little basketball. And we spend the rest of that winter playing basketball. He calls it a basketball with Uncle Dach. And all he wants to do is play a basketball, a basketball with Uncle DAK. All he wants to do is play DASKIPAL, DASKIPAL with Uncle DAK. And we work on his passing and his shooting and his ball handling. And it just keeps us going.

He's so obsessed with basketball. The whole world becomes kind of a wears-woldo of basketball. We'll be driving through the city. He'll see people playing basketball hundreds of feet away. He'll look through my New Yorkers just on the off chance as a cartoon about basketball. He spots it no matter where it is. One morning, my mom's vent alarm goes off. It's like a siren in the house. And that happens a lot, but this time I can tell the nurses scared my sister's scared.

And I scoop up Jonah and I carry him upstairs, but even he can tell something's going on. He's looking around the corner, mommy, mommy. And I think I've got to distract him. Now my sister told you she runs a tight ship, lots of rules, no screen time for Jonah, no TV, no computer, no iPad. He's never seen it. But desperate times, I pull my phone out of my pocket. I remember a video I've seen that money I pressed play.

It's Stefan Curry, the NBA star, dribbling two balls and one in each hand behind his back through his legs. Jonah is transported into another world. It's a window into like a universe he didn't know existed. He forgets all about what's going on downstairs, but I don't. And I'm listening and I hear the alarm stop. Things calm down. My sister has saved my mom's life again.

It takes a lot to pry Jonah away from that video, but we've got him downstairs, finished getting him dressed, take him to daycare. But that afternoon, Jonah's obsessed with We've got him downstairs, finished getting him dressed, take him to daycare. But that afternoon, Jonas obsessed with Daskipal. He wants to go to the big boy court. He wants to take his big boy ball to the big boy court. There's a basketball court around the corner. And the days are a little longer.

It's spring time and the sun's still shining. We hustle to get there before dinner time. And now normally, the ball's so big. Jonas to hug it to even carry it. He can barely lift it over his head, those 10 foot baskets. He's not really shooting much. But we dribble a little bit, we pass a little bit. Then he often will get a little distracted by a mud puddle or a stick or something. But on this day, there are 10 guys on the court. They're playing ball, they're playing a pickup up game 5 on 5, and Jonas transfixed.

And I don't know if I mentioned, Jonas adopted, he's a little African American boy, and these are 10 African American men playing basketball, and Jonas is looking at them like they're gods. And I'm thinking this is great, Jonas will be able to impress them with his moves. He's going to dribble, he can dribble with both hands, he keeps his eyes up when he's dribbling, he's going to knock their socks off. But the ball's dribbling away, rolling away from him. He's just obsessed with them. And more than that, they're playing shirts for his skin, half of them are shirtless. And I look down at him and all he's trying

to do is take off his shirt. And now, my sister has rules, right? She runs a tight ship. You have to be dressed to be outside. Not just pants, she's shirt. I look down at him, I look at those guys. I reach down, help him pull off that shirt. He looks down his little belly, he looks out. There's a man, he looks down his little belly.

He is blissing out. If there's a happier boy on the planet, I look around, I see those men, I see Jonah, I see the chain link fences, the Philly Row houses, and I think I'm a long way from Virginia, but I'm doing something right. My mom doesn't last much longer. She passes away a few weeks later, and we've done it.

We took care of her at home. We, she was taken care of by family. And as my release date, I'm done. I can go back to Virginia, start up right where I left off. But I call a realtor putting off on a house. And I live a half block from Jonah, and a half block from the basketball court.

And I've never been closer to my family. And I've never felt more free. Thank you. That was Jack Marmerstein. I wrote and asked Jack how he and his family are doing. He has two daughters of his own, Pippa and Sadie, who wonder why they're not in the story. He says, Jonah is great. He's now four years old and loves books and construction vehicles almost as much as he

loves basketball. We still get out to the court whenever we can and sometimes take him to 76er or U-Pin basketball games. He's a new little sister who is beautiful and mighty in her own right. And my remarkable and heroic sister is still single parenting, cheering academic department. It doesn't allow any screen time or exposed skin and warm weather without sunscreen. To see a picture of Jack and Chona,

go to themof.org. I really related to Jack's story. My own dad, Frank Burns, is amazing, but I also am lucky enough to have a second dad. My stepdaddy Wayne, he started dating my mom when I was nine, and even though he actually grew up on the small farm in rural Alabama, they didn't even have running water until he was 12. He's a pretty sophisticated guy.

I remember he'd go on business trips to New York City when he was dating my mom, and he would bring me back trinkets from the big city, which always blew my mind. When I went to college, he was the one who drove me to Boston and insisted we stop in New York City for the night to check it out. People sometimes ask me how a small town Alabama girl like me ended up in the big city and I always attribute it to my stepdad. He's turning 70 in a few weeks, so happy birthday Wayne, I love you. Do you have a story about your dad or stepdad or anything else?

A lot of our stories come to us through our pitch line. If we get them from all over the world and we love hearing them, we listen to every single one and many of the people who call have been invited to tell their stories on our main stage. Just call and leave a two minute voicemail with a summary of your story. Number to call is 877-799-Moth, or you can pitch us the story right at our website, moth.org. My best friend is a child who's my grandpa. The mother and I lived with my grandparents

for a few years after I was born. He taught me how to hammer a nail in his workshop. I learned trust games like how to jump off the top of the refrigerator to him. My grandmother hated that game. In fact there wasn't anything I could jump to him from the top of his truck, the refrigerator, and even once the roof of the garage. It was a low roof. Whenever we would have a meal I would sit next to him because he would eat the gross food that I had when no one was looking. It got me out of eating brussel sprouts on a number of occasions. If he got caught eating off my plate, he would just say, I was testing it to see if it

would fit for human consumption, or I was checking it for poison. One day, we were in his workshop and he had a beer and I walked over and said, hey, grandpa, I better check that for poison. He looked around cautiously and he let me have a sip. I immediately decided that this was another gross food and it was not for me. I loved everything about my grandpa. He talked to me like I was a person, not just some kid.

When the time came, he gave me away at my wedding. In late 2003, my grandpa was diagnosed with mesopheleoma. That's a lung cancer that is caused by asbestos. In 2004, he was very sick and I was pregnant. He lived about three hours away from each other and he couldn't travel. After I had my son, I took him to meet my grandpa in mid-December. My grandpa got to hold his great-grandson once before he died in January.

I'm grateful that they got to meet each other. Aside from me, they had something else in common. You see, my son was born on my grandpa's birthday. that they got to meet each other. Aside from me, they had something else in common. You see my son was born on my grandpa's birthday. Again, you can pitch us your own story by calling 877-799-Maw, or by going to theMawth.org. That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. Your host this hour was the most artistic director, Catherine Burns.

The stories in the show were directed by Larry Rosen. The rest of the most directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jeness, Jennifer Hickson, and Meg Boles, production support from Timothy Lulee. The Moth would like to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their support of the Moth Community Program, as well as Andrew Quinn and Rachel Stretcher from the Aspen Institute. Moth Stories are true, is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. The story from our pitchline came from Tina Ben Susan.

Other music in this hour from Poké LaForge, Chuck Berry, Stevie Wonder, Rye Couter, V.M. Bot, Duke Levine, and Tin Hat. You can find links to all our music at our website. The mouth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick, Edit Atlantic Public Media, and 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.