The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: The Push and the Pull

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

In this hour, stories of strength of will, crystallizing under pressure, and the power of intentionally directed anger. This episode is hosted by Moth Artistic Director, Catherine Burns. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Hosted by: Catherine Burns Storytellers: As he raises his strong-willed daughter, R.A. Villanueva remembers the other powerful women in his life. Mary Ann Ludwig reaches her potential during a funerary mishap. Self-described unathletic man, Steve Clark, signs up for the Philadelphia marathon. Amber Phillips learns the art of tension.

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 Review Hour from PRX, and I'm Catherine Burns. This week we have four stories about the push and the pull.

Life's tension and pressures, and creative ways people find to manage them. From a mishap at a funeral, to trouble an marathon course, to handling anger. But first, there's nothing quite like a toddler melting down to push someone's buttons. Recorded at live performance, Adalis Tully Haul at Lee consider for the performing arts in New York City. Here's the poet R.A. Philanueva. In principle, sharing the world with a daughter, raising a daughter that is strong willed, head strong, it should be a gift.

And so when my wife and I found out that we were going to have a daughter, we immediately started making lists of names that would be fitting. Names that would usher into this world of being some kind of groundbreaking trail-bracing catalyst, someone who would change things. And so we ended up in antiquity. And we started laughing and thinking about an epic poem by Homer. And in this epic poem, the title character is named Odysseus. He's the one who fights the monsters. And in this epic poem, the title character is named Odysseus.

He's the one who fights the monsters, he's out for all this time. But as we started thinking and talking and laughing, we realized that actually, that the heart of the story is his wife. His wife's name is Penelope. She has ingenuity and creativity, and she owns her role and lives it in her own terms, staving off everyone who comes to take what rightfully belongs to her and she does it with creativity. And so my wife and I said,

Penelope. And all that sounds great. The idea that someone could represent all of these amazing things. And when I look at my daughter and listen to her, consistently say, no to me, I got what we wanted. And the issue is that she's too. And so when we dreamed of this fully formed person who would rise and bring down the patriarchy, we could not have imagined a little volcano of a person who refuses us at every instant.

Penelope, do you want the mac and cheese you asked us to make for you? No. Penelope, it's the weekend. I think you should take a shower now. No, thank you. Penelope, it is now almost midnight. Don't you think it's time for bed?

Nah. We have a daughter who has a thousand ways of standing up for herself. And it's everything we dreamed of. My life as a father is reckoning with this. How do I make room for this force of danger? The other day it was my turn to pick her up from school. And so I went to daycare and at the front of the daycare there is a little table where you sign your child in and out. And when we check her out and sign her out she looks at where all the pens and antibacterial wipes are,

and she takes a couple of the pens, and she takes them home. So when we clean up, we discover a dozen pens just lying around the apartment. So part of our routine is then to come back and to return the pens to her school. On this particular day, it was my turn, according to plan. I went outside, I put her in her stroller, and I started pushing her down Atlantic Avenue. I looked down just to kind of make contact and to say, you are safe, I'm with you, I love you, and there she was just looking back at me with a grin.

And I looked at her face and I felt it. I scrolled down and there in her hands, two fistfuls of pens. An entire bouquet of pens on each hand, she had taken all of them, including the antibacterial wipes which were spilling out of her pockets. And for whatever reason, this was the moment that I thought I have to push back. She cannot be absconding with every pen in the entire day

care. And so I said, Penelope, those are not your pens. You have to return them. And she looked at me, bemused, and said, nope. And I said, no, Penelope. And then I lowered myself to eye level. So she knew I was serious this time. And I said, Penelope, we have to give the pens back. And when she realized that I was pushing back on her and challenging her challenge to me,

all of a sudden things started moving. She's her face changed, something feral activated, and she just started wailing. These are my pens. I need these pens. These pens belong to me. I need them. I don't know what a two-year-old needs with that many pens. But she needed them and she just kept yelling

and screaming, singing this kind of primal song. So much so that pastors by would walk by me and make eye contact and just go, damn. I'm sorry. Some actually said, I'm sorry, and just walked away fast. No one could do anything for me. At this point, she had slid out of her stroller and was now across the sidewalk with the pens like this and a kind of like Christ-like sacrifice to the heavens. And I didn't know what to do. This person was the chosen one.

She was supposed to be the person who brought the entire, she was supposed to rage against the machine, not against clicky pens and sanitizer. And so in that second, I froze. I didn't know what to do. And I have to confess to you that as this is happening, sometimes I have these flashes. I have these flashes to all the brilliant constellation of women in my life.

All the women who are in some way powered by fight, who've stood up for things, I, she inherits all of that from them. And of all these women, my mom, my wife, my aunts, I think of the one person the penalty never got a chance to meet, which is my grandmother. My grandmother is in Musacoro, and she grew up in the Philippines at a time where it was expected of her to just be a wife. The highest place you could hit was to have a family, raise that family, and keep a home. And she did all those things with grace and with passion, but she wanted more. And she was a shoulder to cry on.

She was a mediator. She was someone who stood up for people who didn't have a voice. I didn't know her in that way. I knew her as my grandma. And near the ending of her life, she was a chain smoke of her whole life. And near the ending of her life, she lived with us. And I remember that it was hard for her to breathe. And the doctors and all of a sudden you have to stop

smoking, but she did what she wanted. And so there were times where she would have an oxygen tank and she would call me up to help take care of it. And she'd point to it and I would just read me that sort of push it aside. I'd push it aside and then she'd tap on the bed because she wanted to arm wrestle me. She would roll up her sleeve and you would see this bicep, just like, and her hand would just sort of shroud mine, and she'd look me in the eyes, and then she would just go. And just take me out every time, just merciless, and she would laugh so hard that I have to wheel the oxygen

tank back to give her back her oxygen. That's the woman that she was. Other times, we had to start taking the cigarettes away from her because it wasn't healthy anymore. And so we started hiding. Her brand was parliaments. And so I remember the little tessere of dark blue on the carton. We'd hide them because she would just,

but no matter what we did, she would end up outside just like looking at us like, we had no idea where she got them from. It became an arms race. We would hide parliaments, then we would find parliaments, and we weren't sure if the parliaments that we found were the ones that we had hidden or she'd hidden herself. And it turns out that after church,

we'd go food shopping for the week. And she would sneak away while we were getting cereal. And she'd go to the pharmacy and just start pocketing, like buying and hiding them. It came to the point where we just kept being outsmarted and tricked, and the doctors just said, let it go, let it be happy. So that's what I'm up against. Penelope is part of that legacy.

And I'm thinking about Penn, my Penelope, I'm thinking of grandma, and I'm watching Penelope ride and squirm and boil over on this sidewalk and I don't know what to do so I call my wife And she picks up in this in in her her beautiful musical voice. She's like, hi, how are you? And in that second she hears the background, I need these pens. These are my pens, like golem or something. And so my wife, Jennifer, just says,

did you get the bribe chips? I don't know what the bribe chips are. I said, Jen, I don't know what the bribe chips are. I said, Jen, I don't know what the bribe chips are. And she goes, okay, you see where you are in the corner? She knows exactly where I was. This has happened before. Look across the street. You will see a bodega. The bodega's name is Champions. Put Ben back in the stroller, go back in there, and get the bribe chips. Ben will know what to do. So I did everything that my wife said.

I put a pick pen up. I put her in the stroller. She was still crying. I knelt down beside her and I said, Penelope, would you like some chips? And her entire face just changed. It was like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Yes, father, I'd like some chips. No, but she said, yes, chips, yes. And so I took her over there in the stroller, walked in the front door of the bodega, the person behind the counter looked at me like, hey, this had happened before. A penelope got out of her stroller, turned to her left,

and there to her left was a shelf of pringles. She reached up, got an orange tin cheddar cheese, put that in her lap. She reached up, and then she got a bright purple one, barbecue, and she looked at me and she said, for my brother. We paid for them, and we walked out. I think I was supposed to give her one chip per block.

As a kind of incentive, right? So you make it, I'll give you one. But I decided at that moment just to let her have the whole can. And so she hid in her lap, and she looked at me, and she nodded. And I pushed her all the way home. And I'm thinking now, reflecting on it as her dad, I, for me, it's not a bribe,

for me it's not appeasement, for me it's not a compromise. It seems like this moment that we had and that gift was an offering, that that little small act of defiance, rebellion, mutiny, it's sort of a way for us to understand each other. And for me to say, we hear your voice, we need to make space for you.

And the hope is that these small moments of conversation between us will lead us toward the big things in the future, so that she knows I'm not going to shut her down. I'm going to let her rage if she needs to, but I'm going to be there so that when the time comes, she has the power and the agency and the love behind her to change the world that she'll inherit from me. Thank you. Our A Villainuiva is the author of Rila Quaria, winner of the Prairie Scuner Book Prize. His new writing has been featured by the Academy of American Poets, Plow Shares, Poetry and Poetry London. He lives in Brooklyn.

We met our A, or Ron, as he's called, through our friends at the Gorgeous Podcast Poetry Unbound, which I highly recommend checking out. I bought Ron's book and was struck by how many of his poems tell stories. Here is Ron reading the poem about his grandmother to inspire this story. So, Coral, one. Grama's skin, the color of chestnuts cracked open by mouth and her hand to me the flesh inside.

Pulling at the skin around her knuckles, I marveled at its give. Its smell of parliaments, its thinness like rice paper. Every day she dared be to arm wrestle tapping, the mattress to her left rubbing the sheets and concentric circles clearing off an arena for our elbows. Her right palm always shrouded mine, always gave a little before the kill, before I had to wheel the oxygen tank closer to her side of the bed. She would pull the elastic band back so I could slide my face into the mass so I could breathe what she breathed, her laughing as I coughed up only air.

Two. When Grampa woke from dreaming of his wife, dead for 12 years by now, he made the sign of the cross against his chest sat on the edge of his bed and listened to a fan push air into a corner which seemed that morning sharp with lizards. He made no mention of the house thusher she wore in last night's vision. It straps loose at the shoulders, or how his wife propped her right elbow up with her left fist, ashes in her knuckles, and unfiltered cigarette at her lips. At breakfast, grandpa watched the dogs naw at their leashes,

gave us only what grandma sang to him all night. Nakali mootan mo nako, you have already forgotten me. Are a villainy wave up. R.A. Villanueva. Coming up, a funeral does not go as planned, and later trouble on the Philadelphia Marathon course. That's when the Moth R 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. In this hour, we're hearing about

tense situations that require a little grace and finesse. Just like our next story, which was told by Mary Ann Ludwig at an event the Moth produced in conjunction with Greenwood Cemetery, appropriately enough, as you'll understand. So if you hear a few airplanes flying overhead or woodsy sounds, it's because we're outside. Here's Mary and Ludwig. So it's February 2001, and my husband, Herb and I, are on our way to my mother-in-law's Nancy's funeral in Queens. And very sad, of course, and underneath that is on my part some apprehension because it's the first time I would have ever gone to a Jewish funeral, and I'm not quite sure

what to expect. In addition to that, my husband and his family are all super intelligent. Their IQs are off the chart. And he has, my actually Herb has an IQ of 167, and he's a mathematical genius. But on the other hand, growing up, my mom would tell me, you know, you have potential. Just buckle down. You'll be okay. So one-on-one, we make it work in our marriage.

He helps the kids with their algebra. And I remind him in the morning to make sure his shoes match. But I'm going to be in a funeral home with aunts, uncles, cousins, immediate family, whose eye cues are just unbelievable. And I'm not quite sure if I can hold my own. So we arrive at the funeral home and it's a little daunting because it's huge. It has multiple floors and it has multiple chapels on each floor, herb tells me, and there will be funerals going on simultaneously.

So it does nothing to assuage my anxiety. We walk in and there is my father-in-law high in his wheelchair and cousin Joni. So we approach Nancy's coffin and with that cousin Joni says, I don't want to say anything, but that's not Nancy. And we all just freeze in place, sort of like this one huge mannequin challenge. And after a second or so, we simultaneously lean forward together and take another look, and sure enough, this little gray haired lady is not our Nancy. Nancy is larger than life. She has short hair that she wears straight up like Bart Simpson and I mean Bart not Marge and she dies at Tamacho Lipstick and her Lee Press on

Nails. This is not Nancy. So within a second or two the funeral director and all the management's over there talking to us saying don't worry we're gonna figure it out. Just give us some time, go sit down, relax. So we also do a huddle together and eventually my husband, her, and my brother-in-law, Alan, they a plan. And I think, oh no, this is not going to be good because they're super bright, but they have a little bit of a challenge getting what's in their heads out into any sort of practical application. So here's their plan. Their plan is to get a picture of Nancy and go from funeral to funeral,

and just say, have you seen our loved one today? And I decide, you know, this is a time for the logic of a girl who has potential to show itself, and put the cabochon that backed up by management. So a few hours later, you know, we're sitting there in the whole family and they're scratching their heads and they're trying to figure out what happened, how did it happen, and all this are cutest thinking, and I can't take it anymore. So I go over and I grab my husband's hand. I said, come on, let's go talk to the funeral director. So we do. And he says, hey, we're finding out some information. It turns out that Nancy and another lady by the name of Mrs. Rosen both died on the same day

at the same hospital. And in transporting them here, Nancy was tagged as Mrs. Rosen. And Mrs. Rosen was tagged as Nancy. And I think terrific. You know, we're getting to the bottom of this. Let's call the Rosen's and we'll put the issue to rest, so to speak. And then the funeral director says, well, you know, they're in lies.

The problem because Mrs. Rosen's services were earlier this morning, and Nancy was inadvertently buried in Mrs. Rosen's grave. But I have some good news. He said the good news is that the cemetery where Nancy is going to be interred has agreed to stay open no matter how late it takes us to get the state attorney general involved to exude Nancy, bring her back here for services, inter Mrs. Rosen, it's going to be a long day. So we all wait hour after hour after hour and eventually just as night falls they bring Nancy back in the hearse and we conclude her services and go off onto the cemetery to enter her. Now it had been raining all day long and it finally just stopped as the temperature went

up and as if on cue a fog rolled in. We pulled into the cemetery, the hersahead of us, in the procession behind that, and all the cars they pull alongside the graves, and there's an open grave for Nancy. So herb and his brother, they're helping his dad out of the car and into a wheelchair, and not surprisingly, they put it in the mud. And I look at that and I say, well I'll go over and watch as they take Nancy's coffin out of the hers. So I said to the rabbi, by any chance has anybody double-chipped to make sure it's actually Nancy. And through the fog I can see him shaking his head left to right and saying no, but you

know it's too late now because we've already started the prayers. And I sort of lean into it and I say, well, with all due respect, Rabbi, we have to check. And in that moment, I feel like, oh my God, I'm challenging a rabbi. And, you know, I would never challenge a priest because I would know for sure the next day I would be in church doing penance. And I'm not sure how it's going to go down with a rabbi. But then something to me changes and all of a sudden I feel a little self-confident, and I feel like, you know, you're holding your own Mary, and you're doing okay.

And out of the corner of my eye, I see her, and his brother, hoist my father-in-law, and his wheelchair, up on their shoulders, and they're carrying him over to the grave. And I think neither Nancy, nor I are going anywhere until that coffin is open. And sure enough, they do open the coffin. And there is our Nancy, not a hair out of place, ready to be interred in her own grave. So eventually we get home and it's really super late. And just as we enter our apartment, the phone rings, and it's the rabbi.

And he says, the Rosen's called, and they wanted to convey their condolences. And they also wanted to let you know that that morning, when they inadvertently buried Nancy by a mistake through no fault of their own, that it was a lovely ceremony. Thank you. That was Mary Ann Ludwig. When I asked her for a bio, she sent me this lovely note.

My mom's side of the family is Irish and love telling stories. Every year when we got together for either a barbecue or funeral, it was a large family, so there were many. Out came the bottle of whiskey and the family lore, starting with Uncle Bob serving in the Pacific during World War II. Our uncle Harold regaling us with tales of riding the rails. Our mom and her four sisters sharing one date dress during the Depression. My degree in English from Penn and years studying with a writer's

studio could never replace the beauty and depth of those stories, try as I might. To see a picture of Mary Ann's mother-in-law Nancy with her lovely red hair, go to themoth.org. While there you can pitch us a story of your own. Do you have a story of it a time when things suddenly went sideways? Please tell us about it. The number to call is 877-799 moth, or you can pitch us your own story at the moth.org. Now we're going to hear a story that was told at one of our open-mike storytelling competitions

in Philadelphia. Here is Steve Clark, live at the mom. I'm from Philadelphia, but I've always wanted to be one of those ancient Greek heroes. I've just never really had the body for it, but my twin brother Mike has, like in high school, when he made the varsity basketball team, I was doing varsity model you in. Little league in baseball. He batted second or third. I batted 13th on our dad's team.

Like I think it was probably even to the point where, I mean my brother's always been really helpful and generous with his athletic gift. Like I think when we were sperm, he probably said something like, look you're not gonna make it there in turn. Just lash on to one of my buff, Ligella, and I'll take you to victory. I'll take you to victory. I'll take you to victory.

So last June on my birthday, I turned 31, and I realized my time with this awkward, unethylatic body was running out. So I signed up for the Philadelphia marathon. And I post about it on Facebook. A lot of people were like, that's awesome. The people who really knew me are like, Steve, are you sure? And it was great in the summer because I'm a teacher. And I get my, yeah, I get my summers off so I could run whatever

I want it. But then the school year came. And like, I wanted to sleep. And I have asthma. So November came. And I got dressed for the run, went down, and I was like, I'm going to give this a go. And I wasn't in the best shape, but I was more ready than I would ever be. And I was running with a friend. We were in the last pack, the slowest pack. And she said, you need a mantra. And she said, hers was my mind is strong, my heart is strong, my body is strong.

And I'm Catholic, so mine was, dear God, please let me not die. Amen. And so I'm starting running, it's going great up for the first little bit, but then I hit like mile two. And there's this guy with a sign on his back that says, uh, two neighbor placements and he's like flying past me. But at mile six, my brother comes out to join me to run with me.

Well, I'm running, he's walking. And he's giving me advice and the way the filio marathon works is is they have this the marathon and the half marathon on the same day So we get to mile 13 and there's all these people Everybody's really excited. He's like, do you want to keep going? You don't have to you can just get the half met on like no, I'm gonna keep going and I go like 10 more feet And there's no one with me like it feels like I'm in last place And so I start running past the art museum and I get to about mile 17 and I see this van with blinking lights and I ask someone what that is and they say

oh that's the lag bus that picks up people who are running a pace under a seven-hour marathon. So like I get to mile 20 and my legs are like broken down and just about as I hit mild 21 and hit the home stretch down towards the Philly Art Museum. A guy in a tricycle pulls up next to me and he says, Steve, right? You are now officially the last person in the marathon. I'm like, Greek hero's always have a tragic flaw. So I really want to give up. But then I think like about four or five miles down the road, you know, maybe I'm not a Greek hero.

Maybe I'm more like, and I'm trying to think why we idolize Rocky so much and fill it out here. And it's because he's dumb. And he just took a lot of pain and a lot of abuse. And I am in a lot of pain. And this feels like the dumbest thing I've ever done. But I walk up to the guy in the van, I'm like, I have seven hours, right?

And he says, yeah, technically. And I'm like, all right, I'm gonna one who's the most famous thing I've ever done. But I walk up to the guy in the van, I'm like, I have seven hours, right? And he says, yeah, technically. And I'm like, all right, I'm gonna keep going. And he's like three feet behind me, and I'm struggling to move. And I get to mile 22, and I get to mile 23. Woo-hoo! And there's a cop there, and I ask, can you please pull him over?

And... No. No. At mile 24 and a half, I hit the seven hour mark and a van from the cleanup crew posing front of me. And the light bus driver pulls up next to me. And he says, you're fine, just keep going, I'll get him. So I make it to mile 25 and 26 and at that point there's point two left and the announcer, who I thought was kind of a dick about it, said, though he's well over the allotted time, the last person who did not make any side routes, we checked.

To finish the 2015 filled-up you marathon is Steve Clark. And the mayor comes up to me and shakes my hand. He's like, I just wanted to stay till the bitter end. And he gets out of there. Apple log. Eppolog. Philly is not experiencing a great era in its sports teams. And though I would never be like my brother, I'd never be this Greek athletic hero. And though I had just lost the marathon to everyone in Philadelphia,

it still felt like a win to me. Thank you. It's Steve Clark, is a writer, storyteller, and high school English teacher from Pennsylvania. He tells us that he works at the best high school in Philly with the best kids in Philly, which makes him super happy. To see a photo of Steve at the finish line, go to themock.org.

I relate to Steve's story. I took up running a few years ago at age 50, and while I'm proud of myself for doing it, I'm a slow runner. I ran the New York City marathon a few years ago, and it took me over seven hours to finish. At around mile 17, I was running across the Queensborough bridge and was passed by a woman who was walking the marathon for charity with her 85-year-old mother. She offered me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich

she had in her pocket. What that said to me was, A, she's a very kind person, but B, at no point did she think her elderly mother would need that sandwich more than I did at that moment. But my most embarrassing experience happened during a half marathon a few months before. As I was running the last few miles, I heard someone behind me on a bicycle talking into a walkie-talkie. I'm behind the last runner. No, we're not even to the bridge yet.

I spent the last two miles running with this guy riding behind me, reporting my progress into his staff. By the time I made it to the end, they had taken down the finish line. But when they saw me coming around the bin, the cleanup crew, God bless their hearts, stop what they were doing, and gave me a standing ovation. Coming up, a young girl can't seem to keep herself out of trouble. That's when 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. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns.

Our final story, like our first story, was recorded at a live performance at Alice Telly Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. Here's Amber Phillips, live at the mall. Thank you. Thank you. I have some friends in the audience. So this one time, I woke up in the middle of the night and my mom was praying over me.

Just her and the dark sitting there having a little talk with Jesus over her bad-ass daughter. See, when I was young, I had terrible anger issues. I was about seven years old one time at a family dinner. I'm not sure what my uncle did besides brief too hard in my direction. And I responded by calling him a purple bastard. See, when kids act like that, people think something's wrong at home. But honestly, my family was amazing.

We laughed as much as we cried. We loved each other boldly and loudly. But we were living paycheck to paycheck, and I hated it. My mom was a visionary, truly. She would turn the electric being cut off into her paycheck, into these candlelit dinners. But as time wore went on, I could start to feel how much she worried and how hard she worked and how we never seemed to quite have everything we needed. And it made me angry. It made me mad.

I was acting up at home, at school, even at church. So my mom decided to take me to therapy. Yes, my black mother took her black child to therapy, okay? And that was around the time I was starting to get nervous. Ten-year-old Amber was nervous at this point, because I'm like, my mom is voluntarily taking me to white folks to talk about my issues. I was sure this was the first stop to end up on Mary

where they yell in the kids' face and send them off the boot camp. I really want that for my life. So she takes me to this children's hospital, and as we're about to go in, she looks down at me, and she gives her speech of, now don't go in here and show your ass. We walk into the building, and I sit with this perfectly fine white man

for an hour telling him all about my life as this little black girl growing up in Columbus, Ohio, with my two sisters raised by my mom and all of my family members who happened to live in a 10 mile radius of our home. And after I lay my little burdens down to this complete stranger, I'm sorry, my therapist. My mom came back into the room and he gave her an update and it told the perfect balance

of respecting our new patient, Dr. Relationship, while also giving my mom the information she needed. And he says, you know, Amber shared a lot of feelings of fear and helplessness. And her hostility seems to be rooted in her feeling of lack of control because she doesn't have any money. So I think that you should consider giving Amber an allowance. I instantly felt betrayed. How did I explain this so wrong? If I don't have the money, my mom doesn't have the money. We're broke together, we're in this together. So we leave and she looks at me and she says, I will never make you go back there again. So at least we were on the same page.

And I think at this point my mom was really tired of her needs and the needs of her children not being met by these medical professionals. And I was tired for her, but not tired enough to stop showing my ass. So you should also know that I grew up in the type of family that was always at church. So if your grandparents weren't on the leadership of the deaconess and deacon board, you simply don't know my pain, baby. We was always at church, okay? And around the height of my behavior problems, my mom became a secretary at our church.

But during that time, she became really good friends with a person I would grow to know in love as Aunt Gale. And Aunt Gale attended our church, and she was amazing. She was one of those people who knew the Lord personally. And her God had seen her through a couple of things. Her God was like that one auntie who would shake a $20 bill in your hand at the family dinner when you were on your last diamond.

Unsure of your gas tank would even make it back home. Her God had seen her through some things. And she sang, one of the things I loved about her girl, she could sing the Holy Spirit into any room. She was one of those never-shallow, rock cry out in my name, praisers. She would bring her own instruments to church, and would cue up her own solos from the pew,

even while the choir was singing. Full choir, full band, by Argyl with the tambourine, okay? And I loved that about her. I couldn't wait to grow up and have that kind of audacity. But I was also afraid of our gal, okay? Because our gal was one of those born-again Christians, meaning she was raised in the church, dipped out to have her little fun for a couple years. And it made her return a re-subscribed Christian, if you will.

She was also the type of Christian who carried an art daily bread devotional booklet in her purse next to her pack of new ports. And that told me that she was a cousin Christian. And so was I, but I was 10 and a kid. She didn't the big cousin. So another time when I got a phone call home from school, this time for calling my teacher a turtle looking ass bitch. I'm creative. That's when I woke up to my mom praying over me.

And it wasn't like she started by turning my mental health over to the Lord. She had seriously tried other options. So she was going to go with prayer and classic family shaming. Black mothers are known for telling everybody your little business, especially when you have shown your ass. And my mom told the last person on Earth

I wanted to know, which was Aunt Gale. Another thing you should know about Aunt Gale is when she wasn't singing and praising the Lord on Sundays and catching the Holy Spirit. On Wednesday, she was known for crocheting during Bible study. And I loved that about her too, and wanted to learn. So after I had gotten another call home from school, I come to church on Sunday, and I see her across the pews. And she looks at me in points and gives one of these.

Come talk to me. So I dragged my feet over, just knowing she knew what I did. And she says, looks at me, and she says, I hear you want to learn how to crochet. That was what I was expecting. And I look at her and I say, yes. And she says, yes, what? I say, yes, ma'am.

The classic call response between adults who are not your little friend and small black children who are trying their luck. So she tells me, tomorrow you're coming over my house and I'm gonna teach you how to crochet. I was like, okay, good deal. So my mom picks me up from school, takes me over to Aunt Gell's house,

and this time she let me hop out of the car without giving her, now don't go in here and show you a speech. I think we both knew I was no match for Aunt Gell. So I go into Angelle's house and it has that incense smell. I like to call it anti-corr, where there's mail on the table, plastic, on certain things that don't need plastic for that long.

And she tells me her real story. The story underneath her testimony, I don't look like what I've been through. The story is when she only carried that pack of new ports. And then she showed me how to crochet. She hands me a needle and ball of yarn, and she picks up her needle and ball of yarn. And I watch everything she does as she starts

her first row. And I copy everything she does. And it looks like her hands are in a groove of her pattern as she's starting out her first knits. And I think I'm falling until it becomes clear to me that mine looks nothing like hers. And I say, mine doesn't look like that. And she looks at me over her glasses. And she says, and getting frustrated isn't going to help it look like that either. Me, obviously, frustrated. I'm not frustrated. I just want it to be right in this looks a mess. So she puts down her ball. She puts down her needle and on yarn and she says, look at your hands. I stop right as these tears start to come into my eyes because I'm getting angry and I look at my cramping hands.

My pattern was inflexible and rigid, whereas it seemed like she was just flowing with her work. And she says, the number one rule of crocheting is tension. Tension determines what your pattern will look like. If your tension is too loose, your pattern will be loose and have holes in it. And if the tension is too tight, your pattern will be inflexible and rigid.

She says, you can't make a, without controlling and maintaining your tension, you can't do shit. You can't make a pot holder, let alone a blanket, without controlling and maintaining your tension. Do you understand? I say yes. She says yes what? Yes ma'am, I understand. See, in that moment, Aunt Gell spoke to my anger,

where everyone up until that moment tried to shrink it, even if it meant shrinking me with it. She taught me that you have to use that anger. You can't just get rid of it. And to this day, I'm grown now. And I still get very angry. I still feel the tension come into my body when I think about how this country treats poor black people.

It makes me angry that in life, George Floyd was assumed to not have $20, but in death he was able to raise millions. It makes me angry that it took what felt like a literal crack in the universe for people to understand that black folks are human beings who, of course, matter. So I use tension. Ooh, I use tension. And I get to the root of my anger in the systematic issues, instead of letting it control me. And yes, I still come into places and show my ass. That was Amber Phillips. She's a storyteller, filmmaker, and creative director

who was devoted to using radical black queer imagination to create stories, art, culture, and community. In 2021, Amber released her first short film, Abundance, about the limitations and radical possibilities of identity. Amber told her story on the same night that Ron told his story about his little girl Penelope. We loved how Amber's story seemed to answer the question posed in Ron's story, but why it's so important to teach children, especially young girls, to fight for what they believe in. Dad's it for this episode.

We hope you'll join us next time for the Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Katherine Burns, who also hosted and directed the stories along with Jody Powell, co-producer Vicky Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch. The rest of the most leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin-Geness, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Cluche, Leanne Gully, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Caza. Most stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is

by the Drift, other music in this hour from Julia Kent, Croca, Corey Wong and Charlie Hunter, and the D. Feliz Trio. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, special thanks to the Ford Foundations Build Women Leaders Program for its support of the Moth Community Program. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything

else, go to our website, Thomoth.org.