The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: Mother's Day Special

Episode Date: May 12, 2021

A special edition of The Moth Radio Hour dedicated to Mothers. A woman who has never wanted children suddenly questions her choice, a little girl gets angry at her mother and runs away from home, a son struggles at his mother's deathbed, and a man finds a mother's love in unconventional ways. Hosted by The Moth Radio Hour Producer, Jay Allison (with help from his mom). The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media.  Hosted by: Jay Allison Storytellers: Ophira Eisenberg, Terry Wolfisch Cole, Andie Christy, Samuel Lewis Lee

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. This is the moth radio hour from PRX and I'm Jay Allison, producer of this radio show. This time, stories about something we all have in common, one way or another, mothers.

For starters, I'd like to establish my own credentials. So Mom, what was I like as a little kid? Very imaginative, very cute, very lively. Does that mean like a pain in the neck? No, no, you're a good baby. You're very good. There you have it, the truth from my mom. Evidently, I also like stories. And you like to read, and you like to be read too. Very satisfactory. So mom, you know what the moth is, right? I do indeed. And I love it. How would you describe it? Well, I would say it was certainly unusual and inventive and very personal.

The people who are talking are really telling you what they feel and they do it in a beautiful way. And they were not all tragic. Some of them were very funny and inspiring. So, let's start off with a funny and tragic and inspiring motherhood story from Ophira Eisenberg. She told it for our Moth member show in New York City at the Cooper Union. Here's Ophira. So I never wanted to have kids and when I was in my 30s, all my friends were sweating about having a family.

And they would come and say things to me like, you know, when you see a baby, don't you just want to like grab it and then non, it's pudgy little thighs and inhale, it's forehead, and then just grab it and run away. And I was like, no. Like, what are you talking about? I did not understand their weird Hansel and Gretel fantasies.

I just didn't get it. When I was in my 30s, I had goals and they were to feed and clothe myself and live in New York. You know, I had goals. I wanted to have a bedroom that could have a bed in it, that you could walk around all three sides of. And then like the big item that if I owned,

I thought that would mean I made it, was I dreamed of owning a wine fridge. That was my dream. With wine in it that lasted more than one weekend. So I'm the youngest of six kids and growing up my mother always said to me, never get married and never have kids, Don't ruin your life. It's not exactly what you want to hear from your mother, but what she meant was that she wanted me to be able to have a career. Follow my dreams, not feel pressure to settle down, do whatever I wanted.

It was very much like what she wasn't able to do. And I took it to heart. Now in my 40s things kind of started to gel together. I had a bit of a career. I was married to a guy I loved. I traveled. You know, it felt pretty good. So I ordered a wine fridge. And then the next second, just a sledgehammer went through the whole thing. After a routine mammogram, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, early stage breast cancer, but as you know, there's no such thing as lucky cancer. And I fell apart, thus started a year of hell. And I did not respond to it by having a tignitarial moment

and spin the whole thing into comedy gold. I was destroyed. I fell apart. I dragged myself from one surgery and then another surgery, appointments and tests, and then 30 days of radiation. I completely lost sets of myself. I didn't relate to who I was in the past. I didn't even know if I could think of who I was in the future. And you know, there's this little bit of wisdom people

say all the time, you know, that you should live in the moment. Let me tell you something. There is nothing worse than being forced to live in the moment. Thinking about the future, like, just musing on what could happen next, that is for the happy and the carefree. So at the end of that year, I went to go back to the doctor and of course they don't really use the word remission anymore, but he said, you know, you responded well to all the treatments and things look really good. So, you know, have a good time and we'll see you in another year and we'll start testing again. And I tried to ease myself back into my old life or figure out what then my new life was. And before I could really even get it together, I got pregnant, like by accident, from my husband.

It was unbelievable, mostly because I honestly didn't think my body was capable of ever doing anything that beautiful. Again, I didn't think that I was ever going to be able to do anything normal. I mean, it was like looking out onto a cracked barren soil field and seeing just a little tiny green shoot. And, you know, and I have to admit, I didn't think so much about knowing on Pudgey Thies. I was just so elated that maybe this meant I was supposed to survive. Could I get excited?

Should I be concerned? Before I could even pick one, I'm miscarried. I hate saying that word. I know you hate hearing it. It's so common, though, it makes me think we should talk about it more. But I got a call from my OBGYN saying that the miscarriage was something called a partial molder pregnancy.

That is, it's just a genetic mistake, it's not based on age or prior health history or nothing, bad luck, as she said. What was growing in me wasn't so much a fetus, but a regular group of cells. And what is an irregular group of cells considered? Cancer. My own pregnancy had given me another cancer scare.

And to make sure that it didn't develop into cancer, I needed to go get tested every week by giving blood for six months. I couldn't believe it. I felt like I was never going to be able to move forward. You know, I was depressed. That wasn't that is an understatement. I wasn't suicidal. That wasn't enough. I didn't want to destroy myself. I wanted to destroy everything. I wanted to rip up the sky and light everything on fire and watch it all burn to the ground. It was a very dark time. Pretty sure it was Now, somehow at the end of that, you know, six months has passed. I'm back in my OBGYNs office.

My husband Jonathan is with me. And she delivers a great news like, guess what? It's great. You're cleared. You're good to go. And then she says, so you guys can try again. And we are just sitting in silence, shocked silence. So much so that she goes, well, don't you want to have kids again? So interesting. First of all, we never tried to begin with. Second of all, we're just

trying to get to a place where I just felt normal and in control of my body again. And man, I've been asked, do I want to have kids thousands of times in my life. And I usually just responded with a bit of a joke, to be honest, I would say, sure I do, but who's going to raise them? Or, you know, yes, of course, but I live in New York. Where am I going to put them? But this time I just looked at her right in her eyes and I said, it's too late. I'm too old. And she reminded me that she had many patients

of an advanced maternal age. And she suggested that I go get a egg count test, a blood test, and she ended the appointment with saying, why don't we just see what happens? Now, if anything seemed routine and normal to me, it was giving blood, so I went into quest diagnostics, one of the most casual medical facilities on the planet. I mean, it's hard to believe that that exists.

You walk in and like, there's a woman faxing forms and you say, hey, I'm here to give some blood and she puts down the toner and snaps on gloves. You're like, you know, she fishes out a syringe from a pencil case and there's no diplomas on the walls. There's just lock-up instructions. But she took my blood, and then a few days later I got an email from my OPGYN with a weird number and just a one-line note. And it just said, an encouraging number for someone your age. And I cried because it was the nicest thing anyone in the medical community had said to

me for years. And I looked at the calendar and I thought maybe I'll see if Jonathan wants to try. I told him about the results of the test over breakfast. I said, oh, you know, the omelet you made me reminded me that... You know, when I was like encouraging number, my age encouraging eggs, and Jonathan nodded, and he looked very pensive, and he said, you know, while I can imagine us having a life with kids, you know, I can also imagine us not having a life with kids, and we'd be okay, we'd be okay together, you know, we travel and we do nice things.

We'd have a nice life just the two of us as well. And I know he was being honest, but I also really felt he was trying to protect me. I mean, he didn't want me going through any more thing, he didn't want me to be put another medical situation or something, another physical thing happened to me and I got it. I was equally terrified. I wanted nothing more to just feel like nothing could ever get to me and I got it. I was equally terrified. I wanted nothing more to just feel like nothing could ever get to me again.

But later that day, weirdly, I found myself writing him an email. My own husband, I wrote him an email. And I just wrote, I think we should try. Because we can't guarantee that we're gonna have a kid, we can just try and see what happens, but if we don't try just because we're scared, then the fear has won, and I can't live in that world.

And he responded, great, let's do it. So I will admit though, after month one, when I got my period, I wasn't all like, we can't guarantee it, we'll just try and see what happens. I swore at my period. I swore at my body. I was like, what's going on encouraging eggs? Like I was like, what's going on encouraging eggs? Like I was so mad. And I felt this primal urge in me that I was like, I have to have a baby and it has to happen now.

And then the second month, what I didn't get my period, I was just silently terrified. Now all through all of this, people kept telling me through all of it, they said, you need to think positively. And I would just go, what are you talking about? How can I look at myself in the mirror and light of myself? Because I know what it's like when things don't work out

the way you want them to. But now I kind of understand what that's about, because it really doesn't matter if you think positive or negative, it has zero influence on the outcome. But it certainly changes how you experience the moment. I'm lucky. But it certainly changes how you experience the moment. I'm lucky. I have a one-year-old baby boy at home right now. Woo!

Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo!

Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo!

Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! to be my dream office and he's learning out of walk and he's always tripping over the wine fridge. And he's sweet. You know, he smiles all the time for no reason. And I'm still full of fear. Oh my God. So many question marks loom in the future. But I try to challenge myself.

I try to say, okay, if everything fell apart, if everything went to hell, the worst way possible, would I think to myself, I am so glad I did not let myself experience joy or happiness in the moment because it really protected me from the future. No, life doesn't work like that. So now my goal is sort of like that joke about ruining my life that my mom said to me, my goal is that me,

Jonathan and Lucas, that we all get to ruin our lives together. Thank you. Thank you. Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo!

Woo! Woo! Ophira Eisenberg is a comedian writer and host of NPR's trivia show, Ask Me Another. Ophira's debut, Memoir, Screw Everyone, Sleeping My Way to to monogamy has been option for a feature film. The day after Ophira told this story, she went back for her yearly mammogram and checkup, and all was normal. She was told she was part of the survivorship program. She said she cried so hard they asked her if she understood that it was good news.

This Mother's Day, what is going to happen? You know, it's all so new. I am not going to expect anything. I feel like, honestly, if Mother's Day means that it just can go out for a walk or something, I am so low-key. I'd never want my child to do to me what I did to my mother, which was make her breakfast and bed, of some just terrible, like terrible half-ros scrambled eggs, and some not-toasted toast that the orange juice has fallen onto so it's a little soggy and then you just sit there with wide eyes and make her eat it by staring at her and you know cold coffee. Please Lucas you do not have to do that it's gonna be just

fine. At the end of Mother's Day if I can crack open a nice eight dollar Merlot from the wine fridge and cheers that, you know, another day that we made it through all together. That is the best I can hope for. If for any reason you might want to, you can see a photograph of Ophira's wine cooler with a baby lock on it at themoth.org. In a moment, more true stories for this mother's edition of The Moth Radio Hour, which is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Jay Allison, and this episode is about mothers. Can you imagine telling a Moth story, Mom? No. You sure? I'm sure. Because you're afraid of talking in front of groups or because you wouldn't want to get that personal. Oh, afraid of talking in front of groups. My knees, knocking would be heard across the room. And I think they're brave to get up there and tell them. across the room. And I think they're brave to get up there and tell them. I do too. Our next brave storyteller is Terry Wolfish Cole. At a Grand Slam in New York City, we're a partner with Public Radio Station WNYC. So when I was little, my dad worked late a really lot, and my mom was left to deal with two small kids.

There was me and there was my sister, Lisa, who was not quite two years younger than I was. And my mom, on all these evenings, would feed us dinner and give us a bath together and put us both to bed. And that was the end of that. And one day, one hot summer day, when I was about five years old, I was playing with the kids next door. And I found out that in other people's houses, older kids had later bedtimes. And I was like, what? Even.

So I go home to my mother with my newfound information. And I advocate for policy change. And I am denied. And this is it. I've had it. This big sister thing is not what it's cracked up to be. Every time we both do something together that we're not supposed to do, I get in more trouble. Everybody is always paying attention to her. She's little, she's cute. She's got that eye patch thing going on. And I'm done. And we have to go to bed at the same time.

I've had it. So I go to my room. And from my closet, I take my white vinyl, partridge family sleepover suitcase. And I put it on the bed, and I start to pack. Now I'm an early reader. So into the suitcase goes Nancy Drew, and Amelia Bedelia, and some Barbies.

And by the time I'm done there is no room left for clothes. But I'm leaving forever and I'm running away. So I know I'm going to need a wardrobe. And I put on a parapans, two parav underwear first, because you got to have a change, right? Parapans, a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, a hoodie, a raincoat, and over it all a crocheted poncho with fringes. And I go down the stairs where my mother is in the kitchen and she kind of looks up and she asks if I'm running away and I tell her yes. And she is not nearly as upset by this as I feel she should be.

And she looks at me and goes, are you going to Grammysilvios? Which is the only other place I know how to be, because it's not even a mile away, but I can't believe she can figure this out. She's like some kind of witch. And I don't answer her and I leave. And I go out the front door and down the driveway.

Now remember, it's the 70s, and they have not yet invented suitcases with wheels and mine is full of books. So with every step, I'm dragging my suitcase. And I go down the driveway, left on redwood, left on clear field, left on red oak. And I, with every step, I am sweating and dragging and sweating and dragging, and I am so intent on my mission that I don't realize my mother is like 20 yards behind in her plimit fury following and waving concern citizens on their way. And finally, it's the left-on-world line and I get to number 73,

Grandma's apartment building, and I go up the stairs to the building and before I even knock the door opens and my grandma tells me she's very happy to see me but I'm certainly not living there forever. And I realize my mother has called ahead and I have been betrayed. So I'm in the living room. My grandma, she's like, do you want to drink as long as you're here? So she goes to get me some juice. And I'm in the living room and I'm taking off my layers. And my mother comes sweeping in. And she sits down in my grandfather's winged back chair, and she pats her lap, she goes, come here. And I don't want to go because I am rachiously pissed.

But I'm hot, and I'm five, and I get on my mother's lap. And she pushes my hair back behind my ear, and she says, sweet hurt, what is it? Why have you left? Why have you run away? And it all comes tumbling out. It's not fair and all the time.

Lisa, I get into trouble and she doesn't, we should not have the same bedtime. And my mother, and my mother, who has always known me better than I've known myself, takes my hot red little face in her hands, and she says to me, sweetheart, I don't want you to be so miserable. She says, you came first. If it's that hard for you living with Lisa in the house. Tomorrow morning, I will call the orphanage and we will send her away. Oh, no.

Oh, it's OK. And I realize, I know what orphans are. I read, I know what the orphanage is. And I start to cry, and I beg her. Don't send my sister away! No, no, no! And my mother reluctantly agrees that we'll all go home and we'll give it another try. And that night, that night, my mother feeds us scrambled eggs and spaghettios for dinner.

And she gives us a bath, and she puts us to bed at the same time as she will for many years to come. And in those years to come, Lisa and I will grow to be two halves of the same hole. We will be there through adventures and concerts and boyfriends and divorces and death and everything. But every once in a while, we'll have a fight. And if that happens to this day, and I turn over my shoulder and I say, mom, Lisa's being mean to me,

my mother always answers in the same way. And she says, you had your chance. Thank you. Thank you. Perry Wolfish Cole stepped on to the storytelling stage for the first time last year. And since then, she's won several competitions. She's also the founder of Tell Me Another,

a new show in the Hartford, Connecticut area that encourages ordinary people like her to share their extraordinary stories. [♪ music playing in background, music playing in background, so you're pushing 90, Mom. Yes. Do you still, would you say you think about your mother every day?

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. A lot of you say you think about your mother every day? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. A lot of you have left messages about your mothers on our pitchline at themoth.org. We have a few minutes to hear one now and I'll give you more information about contacting us with your story ideas after this one. My name is Lisa Marie Simmons. I live in Atlanta, the last one in North of Italy. I was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado,

and I was given up for adoption immediately as an infant. I had quite a mutualist childhood, but though I did end up being adopted around the age of eight and grew up in Boulder, Colorado. And I grew up with the conviction that who family is who you surround yourself with, family is who you choose and you can create your family and that blood is not of any particular importance. Recently in Colorado, the laws changed and allow allowing adoptees the access to their birth certificates.

So, of course, I was curious despite my stance and applied and found out the name of my birth parents. So I began this search. And after a couple of calls, I sent off a letter to a woman who turned out to be my mother and I came home from a gig one night or actually woke up the next morning and clearly raised the phone to my eye and in the subject box of my email I saw yes it's me and that was my first communication with my birth mother. communication with my birth mother. As the adventure has begun, she recently, last month sent me a wonderful birthday gift. I got all these birthday cards in the mail and I thought that perhaps she had gotten

the entire family to get together and send me a card. But actually when I opened it up, they were in order for every year of my life and that 50-ton cards. And each one had a beautiful message, age appropriate, like you're starting school now. You're going to have to choose your best friend, choose wisely, and each ended with remember you are so loved. Remember, you can leave a short message telling us a short version of your story about mothers or anything else at themoth.org.

Our next storyteller is Andy Christie. From another story slam where we partnered with WNYC in New York. Here's Andy. So a few months ago, I guess in October, I'm down in Florida, in Boynton Beach. My mother's one bedroom, little condo apartment, she has down there. For the last 12, 13, 14 years, I've been going down there three, four times a month,

a year to visit and fix her toilet plunger and rehang her cabinet doors. Be a son, tell the neighbor to turn it on the fucking TV once in a while while I'm down there. I'm down there for the last six or seven years. One of those visits was always, I would always get there a little bit early. I spent a few days first of being there alone setting up the apartment to make it nice for her when she got back in the hospital, because she would spend a couple of days in the hospital having kind of having her essential systems kind of retuned tuned up. And she came back home as good as new. Or as good as sort of a used but well-maintained, you know, machine. She wound up down there after a pair of not wildly successful marriages that began with my father.

They met at the end of World War II in occupied Austria. He was a five foot six private who worked in the Scottish private, worked in a mess hall. She was a five foot nine Yugoslavia in a farm girl, a refugee. They got married, had a couple of kids, of which I was one, moved to America, and got divorced. So quickly, it was almost like they moved to America to get divorced. And then Eil's figure was kind of like,

once the Nazis were out of the picture, they had finally had time to take good look at each other. But they were just different. They're just different. The kind of the shorthand is she was kind of easily pleased. He was easily satisfied. It's a subtle distinction unless you are both variables in that equation there.

Dad was always kind of like, yeah, that's good enough. And mom was always kind of like, oh, this, that's good. That's good. You know, you're not setting fire to my ancestral home. Thank you. That's good. That's good. You know, the war-chorn experience leaves a mark on you.

And she's like, I enjoyed that. She used the word enjoy a lot. We all say, well, you enjoy your dinners. She would say, I enjoy my dinner. But she used it in a way that was sometimes not just like perfectly on the button. She would say she enjoyed her gravy or something. Because I think she had never lost a little bit of shame

about not being American, about not being so kind of fluent in language, about being a farm girl, being uneducated. And I think she thought the word enjoy, which is a little fancier. And a couple of pages further along in the Slavic American translation dictionary, she enjoyed things. So I'm down there this particular time. in translation dictionary, she enjoyed things.

So I'm down there this particular time and I am setting up the place and it's one of the times when she is away at the hospital. Only this time is a little bit different because I find out after I get there, after I've been there for a couple of days that she is not doing as well as she usually does at the hospital, that she has doctors

that she turned a corner. And I am setting up the apartment to kind of welcome her back home. Only now she is not just coming back home, but she's coming to back home hospice. So I have spent the last couple of days getting rid of her bed and replacing it with the hospital bed bed and taking all of this stuff that has erupted out of boxes, like I say she had never left behind her kind of European Austrian Slavic background. All the stuff that I spent my entire youth telling her that really it's not a very American thing, you know, you really got to put that stuff away, all those sort of like little kind of like tatted doilys that you get from your nieces.

They're a little embarrassing to me. There's not American. We're more hard-edged, you know? But once you move down there and you finally had your life all by yourself, you kind of, these things kind of bubbled up out of these cardboard boxes that we had forced you to store away. And I am now kind of had to get rid of her bed. And I am pushing all of this stuff,

all these artifacts from her background, from her youth, into the perimeter of the room and putting a hospital bed in the middle of it and it's not flowery and it's not soft. It's very hard-edged and very modern and very kind of high-tech. It's kind of as if you had, if you took the roof off of your dollhouse

and you found like a switchblade sitting in the middle of the vanity. And all these things that I also found sort of embarrassing and a little mortifying has suddenly become a little bit sort of sad and beautiful. And she had sort of turned this little one bedroom apartment back into the old country. Another hospital bed in the middle,

but and she is in it and I'm outside on the, I'm the landing smoking cigarette. And she's not spoken, she hasn't eaten for a couple of days. She's hospice, they're just kind of letting her go away. I'm not by myself. There is a nurse, a private duty nurse, and there is a health aid in there with her. I'm smoking out there, remembering that maybe even in this state

she knows that I'm smoking because she could even tell that I was exhaling smoke and not air when I talked to her from New York, you know, with the New Yorker Florida somehow. I'm out there, and this girl walks down the landing, and she has a guitar strap for her back in the shoulder bag, and she says she is the hospice music therapist, and I like her to sing some songs for my mother.

And I think really, there's like kind of like, retro hippie is going to, what are you going to sing? You know, send in the clowns for my mother, who was like, music wasn't a big part of our lives anyway, but one am I going to sing, you know, send in the clowns for my mother, who was like, music wasn't a big part of our lives anyway. But one man can do, okay, let's go in and I go in. And she sits down, my brother and I are in there. And she says, so what kind of music did you like?

Music, again, was not a big part of our lives. I wanted to be a rock musician, of course. My brother wanted to be a drummer. And so my mother got him a accordion lessons. I said, I don't know. Now, do you know any polkas accordion lessons. I don't know. I don't know. Do you know any polkas? She says, I don't know. Does she like show tunes?

And I said, I don't know. She said, what about the sound of music? And Arty and I, my brother, both looked at each other. Sound of music was the only VHS tape we had growing up. And after everything, skipping, after every Christmas, after every Easter, we went into the family room and we watched the sound of music. It's about Austria, it's about our mother's homeland.

And I said, yes, the sound of music. And so this girl, her guitar, and she started playing. And in the most just unbelievably angelic voice. And the sound is she played Adelweiss. And Adelweiss is the kind of song you could easily make fun of until you hear it again. It's kind of like somewhere over the again. It's kind of like, you know, somewhere over the rainbow. It's an unbelievably beautiful song.

And she sang it to my mother and us, the four of us in the room, and my mother again, who had not spoken, had not even, had not, not, not recognized anybody for a few days. Listen to it. And with us, and there was not a dry eye in the room when we left, one of the nurse's aides had to leave leave through the sobbing. I was crying, of course, my brother was crying, and when it was over and there was that kind of, you know, the sort of instinct you have when any performance, I don't care if it's a funeral or whatever, you clap when someone finishes. And we all clapped and my mother who hadn't moved a muscle for a couple of days raised her arms to clap.

And I leaned over, rubbed her head, and I said, did you like that? And she said, after not having spoken for a couple of days, said, I enjoyed it. And the next morning she was gone. And those were her last words. I enjoyed it. Thank you.

Applause Andy Christie is the creative director of Slim Films, an animation and illustration studio. His stories have appeared in the New York Times and the Both anthology, and he's creator and host of the Liarshell, a live storytelling series. To see lots of photos of Andy and his mom visit themoth.org, and right now you're listening to a recording Andy made of the hospice music therapist in his mother's room.

Coming up, our final story for our Moth Mother's Show in just a moment. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin-Geness. This is an hour all about broad mindedness and stepping into the unfamiliar. Many years ago, I was telling a friend about a crush I had on a man who I thought had a crush on me too. My friend said, have you kissed him yet?

And I said, no, I haven't thought it through fully. I remember she was sitting on a bar stool because she laughed so hard at this clear evidence of my non-spontaneous self that she slipped off. So this theme of openness and newness and diving into the strange and unusual is also a good reminder for me to lean in. Dave Moran told this next story about leaning in at an open mic,

Moth Slam in Ann Arbor, where we partner with Michigan Public Radio. Here's Dave, my big fan. As the students filed into the classroom, I tried but failed to stop my hands from shaking. Now, I'm a law professor, so I'm used to seeing students in a classroom. I've given hundreds of lectures to thousands of students. But this wasn't a law class. This was an art class at a community college. And I was seated on a stool in the center of the classroom

wearing only a white robe. And in five minutes, I was scheduled to take it off. How did I get there? Well, as you might guess, it was a midlife crisis I had about a year earlier. When I suddenly decided I needed to find out if I could learn to do something creative, and I ended up taking a drawing class at a community art center. And I hadn't drawn anything since junior high, and my drawings were terrible, but I gradually got better and better as a class went on.

And we ended with drawing a model, a live nude model. And drawing a person I, as I learned, is very difficult. And so as the class went on, the instructor Heather at one point said, I'm going to give Helen the model a break. Anybody want to stand up there, keep your clothes on. Anybody want to stand up there and take a turn posing? And I raised my hand, and I did. And for 15 minutes, I stood up there with my hands

on my hips, twisting my torso. And my mind went blank for maybe the first time in my life. I now know that I discovered a form of meditation, but it felt great. And then afterwards I looked at the drawings that my fellow classmates had made of me, and I liked them. And I thought this was wonderful.

And so after the class was over, I emailed Heather the instructor and said, that was wonderful. Other more opportunities to do that. And she came straight to the point in her email back, are you willing to pose nude? This led to an interesting conversation with my extremely indulgent wife. And ultimately, the answer was, yes, I'd like to see if I have the guts to do that, and I'd like to have that

feeling again. And so fast forward a few months, I made contact with a community college professor, And so fast forward a few months, I made contact with a community college professor and I had a date September 14, 2010, a Wednesday evening. And so I started preparing for it. So I did poses in front of the mirror. I did poses in front of Mike's dreamy, indulgent wife. I went online hoping to find reassurance because I was getting more and more frightened as the date approached and I did not find reassurance online. Instead I found advice such as if you're a male model, whatever you do for God's sake don't think of any sexual thoughts. And if you do think of any sexual thoughts immediately start counting backwards from a hundred while thinking about penguins. And so that didn't help me.

And so we showed up, I showed up on the day at the point of time with my bag, with my robe and my slippers and Kathy, the instructor, showed me to a room where I changed. And I came back out and the students filed in and I looked at them. And they were very lot, all ages from the 18 or 19 to people older than me. And Kathy gave some instruction. So tonight we're going to start with some gesture poses, some two minute action type poses. And then she looks straight at me and says,

Dave, whenever you're ready. That's my cue. And so I stood up shaking my hands shaking violently, took the robe off, kicked the slippers off, and assumed to pose reminiscent, I hope, of discobulous, the discus thrower from Ancient Greece. And as I stood there with my imaginary

discus, every neuron on my brain screamed, grabbed the robe and run. But I managed to fight it off. And after about 30 seconds, the heart rate came down and I started to feel great. And then I did another pose where I was throwing a ball. And I did another pose where I was catching something. I did another pose where I'm reaching for the ceiling

and then to head a break. And then I had a long pose. And then a pose where I get to for the ceiling and then to head a break and then I had a long pose and then a pose where I get to lay down for a while and at the end, Kathy said, you were wonderful. Can you come back again? And I did. And eight and a half years later, I'm still doing it. I still model once or twice a month, the community colleges and local art centers. And so I'm so glad that I overcame the fear because I love the feeling of meditation,

of losing myself, while staring at a wall, while people are drawing me. And I love the fact that this face, this body can produce beautiful art. Thank you. That was Dave Moran. Dave lives in Ann Arbor, where he's a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. He co-directs the Michigan Innocence Clinic, which exonerates people who've been wrongfully convicted of crimes. He loves running, cross-country skiing, and yes, figure-drawing on both sides of the easel.

He always considered himself to be funny-looking. He says he has lots of freckles and a large nose and a gangly body, and he adds, modeling has been the most body-positive experience of his life. He feels much more comfortable in his own skin now. To see photos, PG photos, of some pencil sketches, and art that Dave has inspired, go to themoth.org. Our last story in the Sour is all about the quest for romantic love at any age. Elena Larner told this at an open mic story slam in Phoenix, Arizona, where we partner with public radio station KJZZ. And a note to listeners, this story does have a mention of sex.

Here's Elena, live at the mouth. Not long after my 53rd birthday, I decided that it was time to be in love again, and that the way to go about doing it was to internet date. Why not? I had been married, divorced a long time. I'd been in a couple of relationships at it, fallen apart. And at the end of all of those things, all I felt was hurt, betrayed, disappointed. But still, I'm a pathological optimist.

So I went on match.com and e-harmony and because I was 53, silver singles. None of those things were very successful for a while. I had a number of dates, I made lots of connections, but for the most part, none of them were thrilling at all. I had repeat dates, but nobody I wanted to spend more than 24 hours with. And then, I got this one connection. It didn't seem like it was going to work in the beginning, because he was in his mid-70s. And I was in my 50s. But his profile was interesting to me.

And when he wrote to me, he used a word I'd never heard before and I had to look it up. And that doesn't happen with me often. So that was intriguing and it made me laugh. And so I reached out to him. We connected a couple of times online, and then we decided it was time to meet. And so we did.

We had already discovered with our chats online that we had a number of things in common. We were both Midwesterners. He had grown up in St. Louis. I'm originally from Chicago. We had both come to LA for jobs. He was an advertising creative director and he had just retired after 40 years. For over 20 years, I'd been in TV sales.

And so we had that in common. But when I saw him, all I could think was fragile. He looks fragile. Now, what did I think a 70-year-old white guy was going to look like? He was tall, much taller than I expected. He was thin. He was well dressed, casually well dressed. He wore aviator glasses. He had nice blue eyes. He smiled really nicely. He had a blue eyes. He smiled really nicely. He had a soft voice.

But I kept thinking fragile. We went on a couple of dates. And what we discovered when we began dating was that what we really had in common, besides coming from the same general geographic area area was that we were jazz lovers. And I mean real jazz straight ahead serious jazz. And that bound us together. We would see each other two or three times a week. We'd meet for dinner. We would go to jazz events. And that went on for a few months. The holidays started to come. And I thought, oh, maybe I should go home to Chicago.

My daughter was still living there. I would see my daughter. I would see family and friends. But I hate cold weather. And I hate snow. And 20 years in Southern California had not changed my mind about that at all. And in the end, I decided, OK, I'm just going to stay in LA.

And when I told him that, he was really pleased. And we made plans about how to spend our holidays, our vacation together. But what that made me think about was, oh, if we're going to spend all this time together, we better talk about sex. And I couldn't quite figure out how I was going to handle that because I realized I liked him.

I really liked being with him. And if he wanted something I didn't want or I wanted something he didn't want, it could come to an end. And that would really be sad. So I went about this the same way I go about most things I just jumped in. We were sitting in my apartment a few days before Thanksgiving, sitting on the sofa playing Scrabble. And I sort of cycled up to the question, I said, so...

As this relationship continues, have you thought about intimacy? And does that mean a sexual component? He had a glass in his hand, and he almost lost it, and he started to choke. And he's coughed and he said, yeah. Are you okay with that? And his voice was like a little voice kind of voice. And I said, yeah. But I want to make sure that oral sex is part of this, because if it's not, we got nothing to talk about

And he Started to choke and cough and sputter and I thought oh my god. He's gonna die We aren't even gonna get to sex. And he said, you are really something. I can tell you. And he said, yeah, that's really okay. And he leaned over to me. He put his arm around me.

And he kissed me with a slow, warm, soft kiss, and he wasn't fragile at all. That was Elena Larner, and that word that Don used, that Elena had to look up, it was calipigian, which means having shapely buttocks. Elena and Don dated for a year and then got married. She said they traveled constantly to places neither of them had ever been, so they could have the new adventure together. Sadly, Don passed away after seven years of their marriage.

She said, we were two adults who wanted to love each other, and we did. Elena recently moved to Phoenix to be near her daughter and create another new life for herself. She's now a docent with a museum of contemporary art and she loves to read to elementary students in after-school programs. And for any of you online dating and looking for new love like I am, Alaina says, come up with who you are and what you want. So the right new person is attracted to you. Don't try to twist and turn and make yourself attractive to somebody else.

You can share the stories from this hour or others from the Moth Archive through our website, themoth.org. We hope these stories expand your understanding of others and even yourself and that this year you're open to the possibilities of what life will bring. And maybe you'll tell a story about the journey. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Check out the Moth schedule on our website and find out about our online slams and throw your name in the virtual hat.

We want to hear your stories. For inspiration, we included some first lines from our open-mic story slams and our credits. That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. Your host this hour was Sarah Austin Janess, who also directed the stories in the show, with additional coaching in the Moth Education program by Julie and Goldegan, Tim Lopez, and the Aveyon Walters. Alright guys, this is the way it will work.

You'll come out to the microphone, you'll say your name, and just the first line of your story. The rest of the Moth's directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hixson, and Meg Bowles, production support from Emily Couch. I'm Nicole and a huge cardboard box that we dragged out of the corner of my mother's attic brought me here tonight. The Moth would like to thank the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic art for their support

of the Moth Community Program. Hi, I'm Stacey. So I met this guy on the internet and we were dating for like three weeks when he invited himself on my vacation. Most stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Chronos Cortet with Fode Muso Souso, Swing Growers, Omead Shabani, Jerry Mulligan with Chad Baker, and Oscar Schuster. You can find links to all the music we use at our website. Hi, I'm Oscar. I woke up in the middle of the night, two in the morning when I

thought I was having gasp pains and it turns out I was having a baby in the middle of the hurricane. The Mulothradio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick, at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. I'm Paul. Marcy went out with me again and again, even though she was beautiful. The Mothradio 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. you