The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: Unexpected Gifts of December

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

A special Holiday Hour from The Moth. The unexpected gifts of December: holiday customs, brand new traditions, flying cows, fruit, luminaries and a magical forest. Hosted by The Moth’s Executive Producer, Sarah Austin Jenness. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Hosted by: Sarah Austin Jenness Adam Ruben is at a loss when it comes to buying Christmas gifts. Pierre Epstein is a little boy tracking the progress of his Uncle Igor's escape from Nazi-occupied France. Ed McCarthy break sinto the house he grew up in to rescue a precious box of Christmas decorations. Katie Fales grandfather is a rancher who was to rescue a bunch of stranded steer. Catherine McCarthy finally admits she's homesick during Christmas in Thailand. David Frieberg and his son are amazed by an accidental forest during a blizzard in NYC. Denise Scheurmann has a terminally ill father but her neighbors don't forget to light her Christmas luminaries.

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. I'm Sarah Austin-Geness. Moth Shows started in 1997, and ever since we've been gathering to hear folks tell true stories without notes, in

community rooms, grand theater spaces, and downtown bars. In this hour, seven stories that take place in December and involve all sorts of unexpected gifts. Some of you might celebrate winter holidays with family and have very specific traditions. Some may take time off to travel or just to reflect. No matter how you spend your days in December, it's a fertile month for stories. Many stories in this hour were told that open-mic slams, where anyone can take the stage for five minutes if their name is picked from a hat.

Our first story was told that a slam in Washington, D.C. were repartner with Public Radio Station, W.A.M.U. The theme was celebration. Here's Adam Rubin, live at the mouth. I am horrible at selecting Christmas presents. For two reasons, there might be obvious just from looking at me. One is I'm Jewish, so not how to lot of practice with it. The other is I'm a man.

So I'm really pretty bad at anything interpersonal at all. A few years ago, I was dating a woman who knew I was a horrible gift-gatherer because for her birthday, I got her a box of pairs. The fruit, pairs. And I remember she opened this box and she says, why? Did you get me a box of pairs? And I had my reasons too.

She was living in a graduate dorm and she was complaining she had no access to fresh food. So I thought I'd get her in abundance of her favorite fruit. What is it? And I asked her, she said it's figs. She said, yes, this is direct quote. Fresh figs are like the bounty of the earth. But her birthday is in late October. There were no figs.

With the entire internet at my disposal, there was nearly a fig to be had in the world. I'm on the phone with fig wholesalers. I'm learning about refrigerated shipping. I can't get her any figs. So while I'm waiting for the clock to tick down to her birthday, I've got the Harry and David's catalog open on the couch. And I see these beautiful looking pair, and that's my counter. And in retrospect, I can see why that was a bad choice,

because it doesn't look like the gift you give a girlfriend. It looks like the gift you give a client. You know, it doesn't say happy birthday, sweetie. It says, thank you for trusting Wacovia with your 401k. So the following year for Christmas, she said very explicitly, I would like a piece of jewelry. And that is how I found myself in a mall looking through these little glass shelves,

all the bracelets and necklaces and earrings, and even which probably would have been a good choice. And instead I said, oh, I should get her that. And I remember a Christmas morning, she opens the little box and she says, why did you get me a pocket watch? And I answered honestly, I said, I don't know.

But she asked the valid question. She said, do you know any other woman who carries a pocket watch? No, but you're not like any other woman. The following year for Christmas, No, but you're not like any other woman. The following year for Christmas, a month in advance, her mother sent me an email saying she would like an Anclet, 14-carat gold, a thin chain. They sell one just like the one she would want at Value City.

It's $40. Do you need directions? So, I bought her the Anclet and then broke up with her. A couple years later, I was dating another woman, a woman named Marina. So I bought her the egglet and then broke up with her. A couple years later I was dating another woman, a woman named Marina. And Marina and I had only been together for a couple of months, but I thought she might be the one. And then she invited me to her parents' house for Christmas.

And I knew I was going to have to get her a gift, a good gift, a gift like people give to people. Not like financial institutions give to people. Not like financial institutions give to people. And I remember her saying that she regretted not having a piano in her apartment because she liked to play piano. And I couldn't get her a piano, but I thought I'm gonna go and get her the best electric keyboard I can find. So I go to Best Buy and I get this giant keyboard in a box and the stand for it and the pedal and everything. And we're opening presents around her family's Christmas tree at her parents' house, with me

and her and her brother and her parents and her grandfather. And as they start opening presents, I noticed there's something a little bit different about the presents at Marina's house. For them, Christmas is not here I got you the latest iPad, especially because it was 2003 and the thing hadn't been invented yet. But for them, Christmas is more like, here I bake those cookies I know you like. Here's a book I just finished reading.

I thought you might enjoy reading it next. I made a donation in your name to Public Radio. And as I'm sitting there, I can feel the weight of this giant keyboard under their tree, throbbing like a tumor, crushing their tiny presence. I feel like I brought something horrible and alien into their idyllic little Christmas. And Marina opens the keyboard. She likes it. She says, thank you.

But I can see her parents give each other a look. And it's a look that either says, what does this man expect our daughter to do to earn this keyboard? Or it says what is our daughter already done for this man to earn this keyboard? Then she gives me her gift and it's it's a scrapbook of the first couple months of our relationship It's beautiful. It's got pictures inside jokes every page is something that makes me smile and I learned that there are two different types of people Who give Christmas gifts. There are those who give the gift that's expected, or at least the gift that's expensive,

and then there are those who give a gift because that's something that struck them as special. And all this time, I thought I was the wrong type of person. It turned out I was just with the wrong type of person. Maraine and I have been married for eight years. In 2011, she gave birth to our daughter Maya, and then in 2014, our son Benjamin. She keeps finding a way to give me the perfect gifts.

Thanks. Applause. That was Adam Rubin. Adam is a writer, comedian, and molecular biologist. He hosts outrageous acts of science on the science channel. And he's the author of two books, surviving your stupid, stupid decision to go to grad school. And a new book, Pinball Wizards, Jackpots, Drains,

and My Descent into the Cult of the Silver Ball. Adam and his family celebrate Hanukkah every year. They sing songs around the menorah and they try to keep every dreidel in their collections thinning at the same time. Then they go to his in-laws house for Christmas. Before telling this story at the Moth, Adam shared a version with a Maryland-based group,

so a big shout out to stoop storytelling in Baltimore. ["Must Be a a Lot of Years"] Next, a story from a Moth community workshop held at the New York Public Library. In these workshops, we craft stories of people who don't always think they have stories to tell. This story takes place in 1940 and ends on Christmas Day.

Here's Pierre Epstein, live at the mall. Egor was my Russian uncle. He wasn't reading my uncle, but I called him uncle because like many a child, I'd found somebody outside of my family who I thought was marvelous. The best friend I could have. I met Igor in France when I was a child of seven. My mother was French and we used to go to France every summer. And we were having lunch, and I heard my father speaking Russian, which he rarely did. And I turned and saw this very elegant man with a beautiful jacket and an elegant silk scarf. And my father and he were just having a good old time of it

because I found out later they shared something which was escape from Zara's Russia and a hatred for Stalin's dictatorship. My father and my parents became good friends with Igor, and whenever he saw me, he always saluted me very nicely with a little bow and called me Monsieur Pierre. Or sometimes he would look at me with a big twinkle in his eye and say, hello, Piotr Veliki. Piotr Veliki means Peter the Great in Russian. When we were in Paris, Igor used to take me around

to buy a nice present to go back to New York with. We would go to the zoo together and ride the little trains. We would go to the grunk in your puppets and look some bargardons, but best of all, you would take me to Foucaix's, the Shahzid-i-Zay, for ice cream. That idyllic period ended when France surrendered to the Germans, and most of my family's friends and relatives disappeared from view, including Uncle Igor. I asked my father, do you know where Igor is? He said no. But I have an idea. I think he may be hiding somewheres. And if you write

him a letter, maybe he will get it, somebody will find it and give it to him, and then he will write back to you. So I wrote a letter to Uncle Igor hoping beyond hope that he would get it. And I signed it, Piotr Veliki. The letter came back stamped undeliverable. and my father had a grim look and he walked out of the room and said, hope Egor hasn't fallen into the hellhole of a German concentration camp. I know what he meant and I was afraid. Then one day we got a letter with a return address in Lisbon. My father opened it and it was from Egor.

He told him his escape just ahead of the Gestapo and he got to Lisbon. But now he was broke and the landlord was going to throw him out in the street. And he ended his letter with a simple plea that seemed so powerful. In huge capital letters he wrote at the end of his letter. Edim wa help me. Papa I said can we help you go of course now we can get him to New York. Hooray I said.

My father had friends in the State Department and he'd done a lot to help people get from Europe to the United States. He also gave me a map and show me where Lisbon was. And then he told me to read the shipping news in the New York Times every day. Because that way I could tell him where Egor was day by day. So on the day Egor said, say it from Lisbon, I rushed into my father and said, Papa, Egor is on his way, it sits so in the shipping news. And Egor stopped about four or five places before he got to New York. And finally, the day before he was to arrive in New York, I told my papa, Igor is coming, he's coming,

he's coming, he's almost here. So we went down to the pier where the ship was going to come in. My mother had a beautiful bouquet of roses for him. When the passengers started coming down the gang plague, I looked and looked and waved and waved and Egor never showed up. What I didn't know was that they had taken him off the ship to Hoboken and on Hoboken they put him on another ship to Cartagena in Columbia. I never even got to see him. I asked my father, are we going to be able to

say Igor? It's going to be difficult, he said. And I was scared. I did not want Igor to go into a German concentration camp. And then one day, we got a telegram from Igor and he said that they were going to put him on a ship back to France where he would face certain imprisonment. And I looked at my father and I said, Papa, what can we do to save Igor? He said, I'm trying. Then for some mysterious reason,

we will give it information that the ship was going to go to Vancouver in Canada before leaving for France. And it's a long trip. And I said to my father, Papa, Papa, Igor can get off in Vancouver and he can come here. And that is exactly what happened. And that is exactly what happened. Egor worked down the gang plank in Vancouver, melted into the crowds of people that you find on a dock, and disappeared a free man. I never, ever did find out how it happened. A few weeks later, Egor came to New York on Christmas Day 1940. And it was a crowd of about 30 people in our house, all of whom were friends of Igor,

who couldn't wait to see him, and they were also refugees. He bounded up the stairs, and when they saw him, they embraced him, they hugged him, they kissed him. They spoke passionate Russian, animated French, they kissed and they huged. And finally he saw me and he picked me up. Kissed me and both cheeks and said, Piotr Veliki, her summer fae placeilder te voire. I'm so happy to see you.

Somebody then yelled out, how did you escape Igor? And he told a very complicated story of Chris Gossi, France, ahead of the Gestapo, and finally getting to Lisbon. The part I liked the best was when he included me in this story. He was trying to get some food from an old peasant lady who said she had nothing. And you know me, friends, he said, and he's very heavy, Russian accent. I don't give up so easily. I talk to her some more and then out of the corner of my eye

I see a little boy has come into the room and you know what Peter Veliky he looked just like you. He reminded me of you and that gave me courage. So I told the old lady all kinds of stories about you, what a wonderful person you are. And I said, wouldn't it be great if the two boys could become friends and play together? And I looked at her and she was crying. And she said, you know what? I think maybe I can find some food for you.

And they were cheers in the crowd and applause. Ego's appearance was transformative. When he told the story, I was escaped from the Nazi nightmare. It was perhaps the first time since the fall of France that a glimmer of hope lit up the eyes of all those refugees gathered in our home. Christmas Day 1940 was a magical moment. Igor was safe and in America, and he was sleeping in my room.

That was Pierre Epstein at a Malk community event in New York City. Pierre is an actor who's been in over a 15 Broadway plays and films like Indicent Proposal and Splash. Igor stayed with Pierre's family for a few months before moving on to his own place. He played cello and taught music for years in New York. To see an old black and white photograph of Pierre and Igor together, go to the moth.org. Pierre was 11 and the photo was taken six months after Igor came to America. Next up, a home break in and a few flying cows, really, when the Moth Radio Hour continues.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media and Woods Hole Massachusetts and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, PRX.org. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin-Jones. The next few stories include a home invasion, but don't worry, no one gets hurt, flying cows and a trip to Thailand. I know, just what you might think of for a holiday special. First up, Ed McCarthy at a Story Slam in Los Angeles, where we partner with Public Radio Station KCRW.

The theme of this night was jewelry. Here's Ed live at the mall. So my friends politely pointed out that jail was a real possibility if I attempted to break into the house. But the house was in the middle of renovations at the time. There was no family there to call it home. And the last family that called it home did so for 19 years. And that family was my own.

I remember being in that kitchen for the last time, hugging my parents as we cried, and my mom later confessed that she felt like they failed us kids when they had to sell that house. She envisioned her future grandkids coming to visit and her telling them stories about the events that filled each room. But Long Island was no longer a place for lower middle-class families. So my parents had to pack their truck and the car and their guilt, and they moved to St. Louis where my mom's brother lived.

They thought life would be easier. I went back to NYU where I was a junior, taking out an additional loan so I can dorm. A couple months later, I visited them. Mom was distant, her joyous smile gone, and she started to cry as she told me they forgot some things in the attic, and the new owner was not being cooperative. There was only one item that could have that much power over her. It was the bin that contained all the Christmas tree ornaments.

Most were devoted to her kids, Jimmy, Billy, Danny, and myself. She even kept those awful ornaments we created out of macaroni and popcorn in art class. Her tears revealed her fear that she'd never see them again, but her next words revealed the biggest fear of all. Billy won't be a part of Christmas anymore. My brother, Billy, had died six years earlier, and since then, she took his ornaments and hung them on the front of the tree,

so he'd be a part of the holiday. It was in that moment I knew what I had to do. So a few weeks later I was in front of the house and I looked similar but far in at the same time, you know, like visiting your high school a year or two after you graduate. And I remember several times a week growing up, I'd forget my keys and I'd go to the back of the house and break in through the basement window because that lock was always busted. So that's what I did I'd go to the back of the house and break in through the basement window because that lock was always busted So that's what I did. I ran to the back, but I was taken aback by what I saw Brand new windows even the sliding glass door was new. I

Tried every window and door I can find, but it wouldn't budge. I was so close to that bin But I couldn't get in. I felt like a failure, so I walked to my car. But then I felt something jabbing my thigh, and then I remembered next to my dorm room key. I still had the house key, and I looked at that lock and I'm like, nah, but I went to the door and I put that key in. And then I turned and the door opened. A adrenaline took over and I ran through that kitchen that was awaiting new cabinets and

new appliances. Through that dining room that was somehow now open concept, through that living room. And then I stopped at the stairs. I looked at the space that was now barren, torn down to the studs, and I thought how this was a setting for every single Christmas I could remember. I could still see the stereo that played Johnny Mathets records all day long. And the Christmas tree by the window, when my brothers and I sat, Jimmy opening up a model airplane, Billy of video game, Dania, GIO, and me, a transformer.

And I could see that couch, where my parents sat, my mom, MISTI, and a huge smile, because he genuinely believed that joy was in the giving. That gave me another burst of adrenaline, and I ran up those stairs to that closet that had access to the attic. Amongst several boxes there was this big, gray bin that you can find at any home depot, but in that moment it was the holy grail and I was Indiana Jones. I grabbed that, I ran out of the house into my car, drove away, no jail time for me.

I drove to my friend's house a few blocks away and I borrowed his phone. And I'm like, mom, when she picked up and she sensed urgency in my voice, and she said, what's wrong? I didn't know what to say, so I just opened that bin and I grabbed a handful of bells and I shook them aggressively and the room filled with the sound of Christmas. She immediately started the cry, but these were happy tears, these were happy sobs, and I could feel her smile from a thousand miles away. And then she said to me, thank you for giving me back Christmas. Thank you. That was Ed McCarthy.

Ed lives in Los Angeles and he shared this at the mouth the December after his mom died. He said telling the story was a way for her to still be present during my holiday. On our website, there's a picture of Ed and his three brothers in front of their tree. He said, mom's favorite ornament was a small manger, which you can see in the photo. That ornament, along with some of the others in the photo, were rescued. Next, Katie Fales at aSlam in Portland, Oregon, where we partner with Oregon Public Broadcasting. Here's Katie, live at the mall.

So, I'm from Colorado and thanks. I grew up on a cattle ranch and my grandparents had the ranch adjacent to ours. And we did a lot of work with them. And there are sort of a few rules that are instilled when you grow up on a ranch of what's really important. My parents and my grandparents took a lot of pride in their work. And you know, you had to have your fields irrigated so that there were no brown spots, so they were all green all the way across.

And your hay bales had to be tight, and you couldn't have any hay left. But the most important thing was that you had to bring all your cows home. That's like the universal rule. Like you can't leave your cows out anyway. You have to do where all your cows are. We're generally pretty good at that. But so we, all of our cows in the summer have to go out to the forest because we grow hay on the ranch in the summer. And I had a, as my grandfather got older, he like, you know, let more things slide. He wasn't breeding all his own cows.

And my cousins were always like coming up with these deals. They'd go to Arizona and they'd find like some steers at a sale that were really cheap. So they'd bring them back and send them to my grandfather to run for the summer. So we ended up one summer with about 15 yearlings, which are one year old cows from Arizona that were so widely like they were more wild than the L They were that wild like they would do that like

So like you'd be riding out like gather the steers in in the fall and these ones would see you coming and they would take off 15 feet. They would just go uphill straight up a cliff and you'd be like, how am I supposed to get those back? So normally we ride for about 10 days in the air to gather all of our cows back. That fall, this is like 2003, we rode for 20 days, just looking for these 15 spheres. Like, we gathered a few of them in, but it's like November,

the snow was starting to come, and five of them were still missing. So my grandfather's pretty mortified, because everybody knows. Like it's just like a small community. Everyone knows that you've like abandoned your cows out there and it's a total joke. And it's like a really, it's just crushing him. But you know, he kind of moves on. Christmas comes. It's December. And one of my second cousins is home from college, and he's this epic Nordic skier.

So he's out 15 miles from any road. He's up at 12,500 feet on Haystack Peak. And he finds these five yearlings. And they're totally snowed in. There's trees called Croom Holtz, which are kind of windblown. And there's these five cows, and they're just bunker down in there. They're like, I can't walk anywhere else out of the Croom Holt because there's, you know, like, this much snow.

And so my second cousin sees them, and he's like, well, found the cows. And he skis-skis, they back down, and he tells my grandfather. So this like puts everything back into motion. They're like scheming. It's like this epic Christmas where we're spending the whole time, like 95% of our conversations are like,

how are we gonna get these cows out? And no one has any idea. So they organize a big ski party. Like, 20 people go in with sleds and hay, just to like keep them alive while we figure out what we're going to do. And my dad grew up on the East Coast and his family is visiting, and they think he's totally deranged.

Because this is all he talks about now. Like my grandfather and my dad are like, are we gonna like, you know, build a giant toboggan, are we gonna fly in? Like, you know, and then they remember there was this movie that my sister and I watched all the time when we were kids, Operation Dumb O Drop. I don't know if anybody's seen it, it's like from 1990s, it's like Dennis Leary, and they have to fly an elephant through Thailand. Dead serious.

But to my grandfather, he's like, in his late 80s, at this point, he latches onto this idea. He's like, we are going to fly these cattle out of there. He's like, we are going to do it. They're in wilderness, mind you. Like designated wilderness. Like, you can't have machines in there. They're that high up.

But he starts making phone calls. And he finds a helicopter pilot who's just like thinks it's the funniest thing he's ever heard. And he agrees. He's like, okay, I'll do this. I will fly these five cows out of the mountains for your pride so that you can die happy.

And so Bruce Gordon, who's the helicopter pilot agrees, but it's like pretty treacherous. They're 15 miles from like any road. They're at over 12,000 feet. They can't land because it's really snowing. So they make this epic plan. My dad and two friends get in the helicopter. And they have to jump out of the helicopter

with a tranquilizer gun. I tranquilize the cow and then swing one cow at a time and hang it below the helicopter and then the helicopter has to fly 15 miles to the nearest corral and drop the cow off and then go back to pick up the next one. So they do this successfully and everyone who drives by just keeps stopping because their cows literally flying through the air. And it's Colorado in the winter, so it turns into a huge party because everyone's like,

oh, I'm just going to go to my car and get an algae and full of tequila from the trunk. And everyone's like, they're drinking tequila, like chips or materializing, like big thermoses of coffee. And my grandfather probably did not break even on this proposition, flying these five cows with no economic value left anymore. But he preserved his pride and he had a great party. Katie Fales grew up branching in Western Colorado and since then has tried her hand as a barista, grant manager, cheese maker, teacher, and doula. Katie told me her grandpa Gann had one other cow incident.

Once when he was 40, he had a cow escape in downtown Denver, but he managed to find the cow and rope him while sitting on the hood of a cop car driving around in the dark. Maybe we'll get her to tell that story one day. Up next, another storyteller from our Los Angeles slams, Catherine McCarthy. The theme this night was taboo. Hi.

Okay, so nervous. Okay, so in my family, it was kind of a tradition, not to say when anything was wrong. We were kind of like, keep it all happy and smile as kind of family. So after college, I moved to Thailand for a year. I was going there to teach English. And when I got off the plane, the first thing I saw was a sign at the airport that said

welcome to Thailand, the land of smiles. And I was like, I can do this. And I got to my town and I met my first Thai friend her name was Locke. And she actually explained to me that that was a cultural taboo. It was not super kosher to admit that things were wrong. It was really more about like smiling and pretending everything was okay and I was like that is so great. I know exactly how to do that and so and so that's what I did. I was really good at it like the first phrase that I learned was Maibun and I which means like don't worry everything is fine. It's like Akuna Matata basically and and I, which means like, don't worry, everything is fine. It's like Akuna Matata, basically, in TIE. And I was like, I was good.

Until about six months in, it was December. And I was skyping with my parents from my little tin roofed apartment. And they were talking about how everyone was getting together for Christmas. And it hadn't occurred to me when I booked that one-year round-trip ticket that I was going to be missing Christmas with my family for the first time. And it hadn't occurred to me when I booked that one year round trip ticket that I was going to be missing Christmas with my family for the first time.

And they were talking about everyone getting together and all of our traditions. And of course, I pretended nothing was wrong. And I said, that's so great. I'm having a great time. Goodbye. And, but I got off the phone and I was really homesick. I wanted to be home. I wanted to be with my family.

And I started to realize as December rolled on, I was not only missing Christmas with my family, I was actually missing Christmas altogether. We had just celebrated this really awesome Buddhist holiday in November. But Christmas was just, it was not a thing. But of course, I went on, my been, my everything's great. And so one day it was a few days before Christmas

and I went on a bike ride with luck. It was something we did a lot. We would go through the mountains, through our little town and go off into the countryside. And there we were, we were biking along and there were like these bright green rice patties and teak wood houses like on stilts in the fields and temples glittering in

the distance and it was like, it was beautiful. And I was like, fuck all of this. I wanted candy cans. I wanted it to be like a little cottage with like smoke coming out of the chimney and I wanted snow. I wanted all that green to just be covered in a blanket of white. I wanted it to be a white Christmas. And luck, as usual, was like, so how's everything going? And I was about to say, everything's fine, everything's fine. And I just couldn't.

And I said, actually, I'm really wish I were home right now. And she'd never, she'd always lived in non-art town. And she'd never been away from home when she was asking me what that was like. And I was explaining to her that sometimes it felt like there was this like weight trying to pull me back. And I was telling her about snow

and she'd never seen snow. And I was explaining what it's like to see it fall and that magic that happens when everything is just covered. And she gets this like funny look in her eye. And we're biking along. And she gets this funny look in her eye. And we're biking along. And she's like, come this way. And she just takes me on this other road. And I was like, all right.

And we get to this lake that I've never seen. And the sun is setting. And she just asks me to park my bike. And we're sitting there. And we're just watching the lake. And this one white bird comes from the distance and flies over the lake, low on the lake, and then lands in this field. And then she points in the sky and there's like two more of these white birds, these big,

beautiful, pure white birds. And the sun is going down and I swear, like, bird after bird, hundreds and hundreds, come across that lake and land on that one field, like just this one spot. And she says, we don't know why they come at this time of year, but every December, these birds land here in our town. And I look and it looks like snow. Thank you. That was Katherine McCarthy. She said that this year she's looking forward to Christmas in good old Houston, Texas, where there will be no snow and no birds that look like snow that there will be family. She can be found singing with her band M and the Fates in New York City.

You're listening to their music now. So sweet to that my lady So sweet and so fine And if you wanna kiss me, baby You gotta wake up After our break we'll hear about a forest on West 89th Street And a surprise involving little paper bags Stay tuned. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. Welcome back to the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin-Geness.

We're ready for our last stories about the unexpected gifts at the holidays. David Freiberg told the story at the very first slam I produced for the moth in February of 2005. It's a loving tribute to David's son Gabriel who was just a baby when the story took place. Here's David Freiberg live at the moth. The neighborhood I grew up in, people actually knew their neighbors. Sometimes they loved them, they liked them, sometimes they disliked them. But the point is they knew them, they knew them well enough to have opinions about them. They knew their names, they knew their street numbers, they knew what cars they drove, they knew their front yards and their back yards,

they even knew the pets they owned. But that was a long time ago in another time, another city, another country, Canada, your neighbor to the north. I now live in the Upper West side with my wife and my two children. And sometimes I try to inject my Canadian neighborliness into the equation, raising my kids up there. And this is the story of one of those examples. The blizzard we had a few weeks ago, the previous big blizzard in New York, the most recent one, was nine years ago.

I remember because I watched the weather very carefully as my wife was in her ninth month. And the snow plows kept piling up bigger and bigger and bigger piles of snow and swallowing up cars whole on the Upper West Side where we live and burying them for weeks on end. And around the same time, you know, my son was born, but he had the good sense to not to be born on a snowy day. So we were able to get to Mount Sinai in a taxi, not a snow plow. We came back to the apartment and we burrowed in, and we really got cozy, and we felt the joy of being new parents, and the warmth from our eighth floor,

corner window, we looked down on 89th in West End, and saw the howling snow, and the cars trying to navigate the really narrow sort of paths on 89th street that have been sort of carved between the six foot high snow and ice piles. And it was on one of my evening, frequent evening walks to the local store, health food store, pharmacy to get baby stuff. And noticing that another New York tradition,

a sad one was taking place, and that was the discarding of once proud, but now dried up Christmas trees. And there they were fighting for space on the curb with the snow drifts and buried cars. And then it struck me the idea that, I'd like to sort of do something for my son in honor of my son and maybe a little neighborhood improvement project or gesture.

So I took the largest most noble spruce that I could find and I climbed the tallest part of the entrance to the snow drifts, the snow banks on 89th Street. And I slammed the tree into the snow bank, and there it stood, giving it life again. And that clamored to the other side of the road, and I grabbed another beautiful noble Douglas fir. And I slammed that into the other side, and here these giant entranceway to 89th streets

are snaking down where these beautiful trees living again. I went upstairs and I pointed out to my wife and my weak old son that I did that in his honor. And the next morning when I woke up I looked outside hoping that they still stood there and in fact overnight two more trees appeared. And during the course of the day I planted a few more trees and it started snaking down 89th Street towards Broadway. And the next night about half a dozen more trees appeared. And when I woke up in the morning. And at the end of three or four days,

there were over 30 trees stuck in, going all the way from West End halfway down 89th Street to Broadway. And no one could pass without commenting or stopping or smiling or laughing or starting up a conversation. And at this point, people were dragging trees from other blocks because there were no more Christmas trees on our block.

And the forest just kept growing and growing and growing. And it all started, just the sort of neighborhood humanizing. For two weeks in the middle of a cold winter, it just sort of became a kind of a warmer, funnier, happier, sillier neighborhood. And it was strange because six years later I was in California working with some animators finishing up a TV commercial and one of the animators was a transplanted New Yorker who was sort of longing for her old city and neighborhood and I said where did you

grow up in New York and she, 89th and West End. And I said, wow, I live on 89th and West End. What building? For seven years, we had lived in Kitty Corner buildings. I was on the Northwest and she was on the South East corner of 89th. And the very next day, she brought in a stack of personal photos. And as she handed it to me, the first photo was of Gabriel's Forest. And the next 10 pictures documented how the forest grew and grew and grew and grew.

And it was my own little miracle on 89th Street. Thanks. That was David Fryberg. He wrote to tell us, Pannaka is also about little miracles. The single day's oil that stretched and lasted for eight days. Each day, the light grows as we add a candle to the menorah, kind of like our little spreading forest on West 89th Street. Well, here we are, it's time for our last story. Live at a Moth Slam in Pittsburgh, where we partner with Public Radio Station, W-E-S-A. Here's Denise Sherman.

Thank you. Christmas Eve, driving home from church on Christmas Eve, was the most magical time of my life for the first 14 years of my life. But let me tell you what happened in 1971. The price of gasoline was 36 cents per gallon. And there was an energy shortage. So it was long lines.

If you know the parkway, you'd be in line from route 22 to route 22, waiting for your turn to buy gas if your license plate ended in the right number that day. So along with the energy crisis, it was unpatriotic to have Christmas lights. slights. Previous to this year, driving home on Christmas Eve, we would see all the beautiful Christmas lights. And we would comment, this is the best one I've seen so far. No, wait, you haven't seen that one. Best part was it was always dark by the time we're driving home. But 1971 was a different year for more than just the reason about the energy crisis. My father went into the hospital the day after Thanksgiving and he wasn't doing

very well. So it was kind of a tough Christmas season. So I read in a local little green sheet of our hometown that since lights were not patriotic in our community, we're going to do Luminaria. How many of you know what Luminaria are? Bye, applause. Okay. For those of you that don't know, it's a brown paper bag with some sand in it and a candle.

You put the brown paper bag in the front of your yard, you put the sand in that holds it in place, put the candle in and you light it. I read about that in the green sheet and I said, that's the dumbest idea I ever heard. And the idea was, we will light our town with luminaria and it will guide the baby Jesus home. And I thought, I'm not buying it.

It sounds like a fire hazard. Sounds dumb. But on that Christmas Eve, as we were driving home, and there were no beautiful Christmas lights to look at, we saw a luminaria. And people had placed them like every six feet along their property lines, just streets were lined and as we got closer and closer to home, imagine what an airport runway looks like when you see just the lights leading the planes that

way. That's how the roads in my hometown were starting to look. My brother was 18, I was 15. He says, oh look, there's a house that doesn't have any. And I'm thinking in the back of my mind, you know what? We don't have any. But I didn't say that out loud. I just kind of sat there and thought, rut row. But as we got closer and closer and closer in our house, we're seeing more and more and more and more in more luminaria. I mean, my hometown did it upright. We were showing the baby Jesus where to find the way home.

When we get to our street, I am like sweating bullets. Because I know we're going to pull up, oh, there's a house with no luminaria and it would be our house. But as we got closer and closer to our home, we saw the most amazing thing. Our neighbors who knew how sick my dad had been had stepped up and bought luminaria to place in our front yard. And I was so touched by that that it wasn't till last year I could tell that story without bursting into tears. Thank you.

I want to append my story. Thank you. By telling you, that was a tough Christmas because my dad was very sick and did die in January. But 2001, 30 years later, was going to be one of the first Christmas I was dealing with after a divorce. And everybody's saying, oh, Merry Christmas, have fun with your family. I thought to myself, this is going to be a tough Christmas. But I remembered how thoughtful our neighbors had been with the Luminaria. And somebody at work said, Denise, I know you don't have anybody.

Here's my phone number. Keep it in your back pocket. And call me if you get too lonely on Christmas. So, what am I asking each of you to do? Write your phone number on a piece of paper and give it to someone that you think may need it this Christmas. Thank you. Thank you. Denise Sherman works at a hospital lab in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Denise's story reminds me how important reaching out to someone else can be, especially

this month, and the importance of tradition. Traditions can be stories that are passed on, and stories are a way to keep our loved ones present, to keep them with us. So with that, happy holidays from the Moth, and we hope you'll join us next time. Your host is Auer with Cicera Austin, Gen.S. The stories in the show were directed by Jennifer Hickson and Larry Rosen with additional coaching in our Community Workshops program by Dawn Frazier. The rest of the most directorial staff includes Katherine Burns, Sarah Haberman and Meg Bulls, production support from Moodz80 and Miles B Smith. Most stories are true, is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift.

Other music in this hour from the modern Mandolin quartet, Stelwag and Symphonet, Tim Sparks, the Nutcracker Suite, Ennio Marconi, M&The Fates, and Chris Bodie and YoYoMaw. You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth Radio 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 Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world.

The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, TheMoth.org.