Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Jason Reynolds Loves Being a Crybaby

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Jason Reynolds writes stories that don't talk down to kids. In young adult books like "Long Way Down," "Ghost" and two Miles Morales Spider-Man novels, there is a clear understanding: kids are complicated people, and Jason treats them that way. His newest audio-only book is called "Soundtrack." He talks with Rachel about the value of being a crier and the advice about rest he got from LeVar Burton. To listen sponsor-free and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

How easily do you cry? If the ASPCA commercials, come on, you're going to say something. The moment I see them dogs, I can't help it. I am a crybaby of all cry babies. It is my favorite thing about myself. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wild Card. The game where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life.

Questions pulled from a deck of cards. they're allowed to skip one question and to flip one question back on me. My guest this week is poet and author Jason Reynolds. Rest feels a little bit irresponsible. It feels a little disrespectful to all the people who want to be sitting where I'm sitting. For the people who deserve to have their stories told, but for whatever strange reason won't get their moment. I want you to think back to when you were a kid.

Was there an adult in your life who didn't talk down to you? Someone who instantly just treated you like a person with your own, perspectives and life experiences. Jason Reynolds has built his entire career around not talking down to kids. His bestselling and award-winning young adult books include Long Way Down, Ghost, and two Miles Morales Spider-Man novels. All of his stories come out of his own experience as a black kid growing up outside Washington, D.C. Kids are complicated people, and Jason Reynolds treats them that way. Jason won a MacArthur Genius Award in 2024. His most recent release, is an original audio book called Soundtrack.

It is my pleasure to welcome Jason Reynolds to Wildcard. Thank you for having me. Are you ready to play our game? I'm sorry. So you don't know this about me, but I'm such a competitive. I love any kind of game. You do? I do.

Okay, great. Then we're off to the races. I mean, you're sort of like competing. I don't know what you're competing. You're competing with yourself. That's even better. It's even better. Okay.

First three cards. one, two, or three. Let's go with one. One. Yeah. Is there a meal from your childhood that brings back strong memories? My mom had this thing. I don't know where she got it from, by the way.

She had a weird obsession with feeding us turkey wings. And so we would have turkey wings like every night. Turkey wings and like a broccoli every night. A turkey wing? Yes. Like that's a particular choice. It's not a turkey leg. No, no.

My mom would make a whole pan of wings on Sunday, and we would eat off that pan for the rest of the week. Turkey wings and broccoli every single night for dinner. And at some point, it gets a little boring and gross and it's fatty and it's weird, and you're like, I don't want any more. And no one else is eating turkey. So everything is that no one else is eating turkey wings, right? It's like you go to your friend's house. Right. Like a chicken wing.

No one else is eating turkey wings every night. And so what it brings back memories of is just the symbol. complicity of my life, even in the midst of actually, it's funny because it was complex. It was simple, but it was, but it was torrential at the same time. But the turkey wings is what kept it grounded. I just talked about this in therapy last week. We were talking about this same, it's a similar question, right? But it was a question around safety and where do I, where can I go to in my mind to where I would feel the most safe.

Yeah. And it would be back to that table and that version of my mother, which is long gone, that version of my older brother, which is long gone, and that version of me, which is long gone. And there's a part of me that becomes, that gets very emotional thinking about it, only because in these moments you realize that life is moving and it's changing. And it's this strange amorphous thing that I really don't have that much control over. It's like I can control what I can control, but this thing is going to change. And there's nothing I can do about it, right?

The taste of my mother's turkey wings will never change. Every single thing around those wings is different now. What was going on in life that felt turbulent, that the table felt safe? I mean, my dad, my parents split. You know, you go through that thing that so many of us go through around that age, right, 10, 11 years old. My grandmother dies. I'm experiencing death for the first time. The first of many, many, many to follow.

I mean, my teenage years were full of death. But I'm starting to, so I had my first moment with. it. I'm finding whatever my vehicle of communication and expression is, because this is also the year I find writing, and I start tapping into this new thing that would eventually change my life for the better and save my life, arguably. I've got family in and out of the house who are living with me, people dealing with different things, you know, and no matter what was, I'm being bullied in my new school, I'm going to a new school because my parents split and my mom felt that to raise these boys without their father around

was a bit more dangerous. And so she sent me to Catholic school, which I was not for because I'm a neighborhood kid who missed my neighborhood friends. And, you know, I'm failing school. And, you know, all of this kind of stuff. That's a lot. It's a lot.

But those turkey wings were there every night. But those turkey wings were there every night, right? And there's something, you don't see it at the time. It's so interesting what you don't see as a child, right? You don't see it at the time. but as an adult I look back and I'm like, God, they were an anchoring point. Your mom knew that, though. My mom.

She knew that. She definitely knew that. It was important to put a meal on the table and have people gathered together. Yep. And a turkey wing and some broccoli. That's a healthy meal. Exactly. Shout out to my mom.

I'm going to tell my kids that when they complain about having the same chicken every night. This is your stability. Exactly. You don't appreciate it now, but you're going to look back and remember that. Remember that this is your safety net. That was lovely. Three more cards. One, two, or three.

Two. How do your parents show up in you? Oh, God. I have an answer to this question, and I will answer it. But I'm curious, this is because I like you. I want to hear this. I want to hear you at. This is my flip time.

This is your flip. Yeah. How do your parents show up in you? Thank you for that one. I mean, very strongly. Like, I really feel half and half of my parents. Both my parents were really religious people. My dad was like a very establishment Presbyterian attorney.

That's what he was. He was like a tax lawyer who always sort of thought he had a calling to God. So I have like a very, I was about to say I have a really strong spiritual life. I don't know if I actually do, but I'm keen on those questions because of him and my mom. And I like people. I'm really deeply curious about people,

and that's my mom. My mom was an artist. She was endlessly fascinated in why people are the way they are. So those are just some examples. That's awesome. That's awesome. For me, I like to say that, my mother taught me how to think about the world.

And my father taught me how to be in the world. My dad was life with a party. He had such a golden personality. And he was such a sweetheart. He was a progressive, open-minded, open-hearted man at a time when that was a no-no. I mean, a man covered in tattoos. in a black man, specifically, covered in tattoos in the 1970s.

But on the flip side, my dad was also a psychologist. So he was grounded in like he would go to work every day. He was very sort of like, this is sort of what life is. We try to understand each other. But also tattoos, motorcycles, fast cars, craziness, right, rock and roll, rock and roll, rock and roll. Then my mom, this Southern woman who has worked the same job since she was 15 years old, she's the one who is like, you know, I put on my suit every day. I go to work, conservative, right?

And then I'd come home from school and there's like, you know, it might as well be, my house is like an ashram because my mother was very much into all things that were sort of, you know, all sort of Eastern spiritual practices and all this other stuff. So she'd go to work in her very fancy, you know, conservative business suit to work in insurance. So she didn't have a fancy job, but she would put on her suit, right? And then she would come home and it would be all about like helping me understand the law of Dharma, right? And talking to me about the Bahagavad Gita and asking me if I had any questions about the eightfold path. And if I wanted to have conversations with her about, you know, like it's about anything that is that in today's time, by the way, it's very much on vogue, right?

Yeah. It's hard to overstate how unusual that was. It's so unusual. I'm like, I, totally. I grew up in a house where my mom was smudging our home every morning with Sage and Palo Santo. Oh, really? Yes, I grew up like that. And crystals, crystals everywhere.

My mom is very much this sort of hippie-dippy woo-woo lady. Yeah. And has been since the 1960s. And so I was raised in this house. Did you take any of that with you? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Not as much these days, but as a foundational part, like as part of my foundation, The idea that the idea of belief, despite my logic and reason, has been really healthy and helpful for me only because I'm smart enough and I have enough enough sort of critical thinking skills to know that I'm choosing to believe in these things as coping mechanisms.

I am choosing, right? It isn't that I believe that without a shadow of a doubt, all of these things are true. it's that I am choosing to practice them as ways to balance and manage my life. And to me, that feels healthier than a blind faith. My ideas around all of this stuff is like, look, life is hard. And it helps to believe that there is something more intelligent than I am. It helps to believe that the universe is some sort of grand mathematical equation far beyond my ideas and my capacity to understand.

It helps to have faith in each other, let alone in the natural processes that we live, the natural rhythms of our lives. Like, these things are just, to me, they feel very practical, but also I'm choosing this as a way to manage the complex life that will get, no, that will never, ever, ever, ever, ever be simplified. Yeah. And that's because of my mom. Do you drive a motorcycle? I've always wanted to. And then I got past the point where I got too old. You know, some things you got to do when you're young, when you got the courage.

And now, now, I talked to my buddy the other day, like, I think I want to get a motorcycle. And then I was like, because my dad's dead now. And I like, I'm always looking for ways to connect to him. Yeah. And I'm like, I should just get a motorcycle. And I'm like, I don't, I just, my hoods, but isn't what it used to be, you know. I know. Okay.

So before we get to round two, we're going to pull back and talk about soundtrack. Okay. Because this is your latest project. This is a new thing to make an original audio book. You can't get the book. No, there's no book. It's an audio experience. Yes.

Can you give me the snapshot of these characters and what's going on with them? Yeah, it's, I mean, simply, it's just, this is a story about a young man named Stey. And he, you know, it's funny, because the more I talk about it, the more I realize it's really a very standard story structure about a kid who's looking for a community. It's no different than, like, the little rascals. or, you know, we've seen this many, many times where it's like, these are kids who need each other, right? They're kids who don't have much and they don't have many people,

but then they find each other, they find soulmates within themselves, and the glue to each soul is the music, right? They're all musicians. And they use this music to sort of build family amongst each other as they tour underground, physically underground in the New York City Subway system, and they become the soundtrack to the city, you know.

And it's just an homage to New York City and homage to young musicians, which I, you know, I dabbled the music as a kid, you know, and loved me. Yeah, you're a musician. Yeah. And it's an homage to what I believe is our most potent form of self-expression, which is music. Though I'm a writer for a living and I love writing and I will always dedicate my life to literature. I don't think it's up for discussion or argument what the universal language is. Other than food, other than food, I would argue, is music. It calcifies in the brain longer than

anything else than any other physical expression, right? You could have dementia, but you will remember your favorite song. Right? It's special in that way, and I wanted to honor music because I'm so grateful for the alchemy of it all. They could have been into anything these kids in this story. They're into jazz. Yeah. Are you a jazz guy? I'm a jazz guy. Yeah, yeah.

My musical taste, my dad introduced us to everything. You know, like my dad was the man. My dad introduced me to Nirvana. Right, my dad, right? So I always am so proud because I, you know, when you get older, you realize who the cool parents were. And I'm like, it was my parents. I had the cool parents.

And everybody in the neighborhood knew this, but I was living there. So it's like, like, you don't see it, right? And then you wake up one day and you're 28, you're, 30 or 40 or 50 and you're like, oh wait, it was my parents. My dad is the one who would play Tracy Chapman's 1988-18, Tracy Chapman album, right? When he was cutting my hair, that's what we listened to when he cut my hair. He would play the Tracy Chapman album on a cassette tape.

And then one day he said, hey, I want you to listen to this. And it was Nirvana. Right? My dad is who introduced me to Phil Collins and Hall of Notes, and I listened to all that, Zeppelin and Clapton, Bob Marley, and Hendricks, Muddy Waters and Howland Wolf Taj Mahal, right? The blues, the jazz, we listen to Miles Davis, listening to John Coltrane.

Like, Lee Morgan, my dad is playing all of this in the house. And so, you know, I love it all. I see value in it all. And I'm grateful for him for opening us up like that and really exposing us to the beauty and the diversity of music. So these kids, like you said, are playing in the subways on the platforms. Getting huge crowds. Are you someone who stops and listens to the buskers, to the street performers, to the people playing on the subway train?

If you make me, right? You've got something that catches your ear. You got to be, if you tapped in, it'll work when it's supposed to work. Look, we all, if you're in New Yorker, you know there's this one guy. I don't even know if he's still around who would play the horn, play the trumpet. Along the F line, he would be on the F train downtown. And there was no way you couldn't stop and listen to this man, played his horn, because it seemed like an extension of him.

He seemed like a man who had fallen on hard times, and this was his way of crying out. Instead of him asking for money, instead of him telling you his story, this was his way of telling you what he'd been through. This was his way of crying out and saying, I am dealing and coping the best way I can. Can't you hear the beauty in this brokenness? Can't you hear the brokenness in this?

beauty, right? It's really difficult as people who live in the city that is, that is 100% challenging to not gravitate to a person that is trying to tell, he's playing your story. It's not just his. You waiting on a train in a hundred degree weather underground. Is he playing your story, too? You wiping tears from your eyes trying to figure out how you're going to make the rent this month. Or you just found out that your landlord is selling a building and you got to figure out where you're going to go in the most expensive city in the world. Or you, like, this is a real, you see what I'm saying? Like that, that.

Oh, yeah, totally. I think of those people as my, they're like big, big stop signs for me. Like New York is, everyone's just doing their thing. Everyone's just trying to get from point A to point B and you're moving and everyone's anonymous and it's got to stay that way because there's so much to absorb and there's so many people that if you absorb all the people's stuff, then you'll just explode. and what stops me is when someone is playing something or singing in particular gets me. It's amazing.

You're using your voice, that instrument. And it's like, you must stop and acknowledge the vulnerability that that person's putting out there. And the humanity that they are projecting into this cacophony of the New York City subway system. And it's just, it's so powerful for me. So I also, I'm obsessed with thinking about those backstories. of each one of those people who in that moment is giving that gift to people of music? Yeah.

It's a beautiful thing. And, you know, it kind of breaks my heart these days because now New York, much like D.C., years ago, we had phone lines in the subway, where you could talk on the phone in the subway. This was a long, long time ago. New York has finally figured that out, and they've got that together.

And I kind of wish they didn't. They need to, for safety purposes, it's important to be able to communicate while you're underground. But it also means that everybody is sort of on their phone, when the buskers are busking. And it's like there was something about being suspended. Everything was frozen while you waited for the train. Yes.

And so they could capture an audience differently. That's right. Because you had to just wait. And then you were sharing this experience with all these random strangers. With random strangers. One beautiful, ephemeral moment. Amazing. Okay.

We got to get back to the game. Let's do it. Let's do it. Round two. Round two. Insights. Let's start with two or three. Let's start with two.

Two. Are you good at being alone? My favorite thing in the world. When you, I think when you... Truly? Truly. Truly. I think that when you work as a writer, you value time to be alone.

I need to think and I need to, I mean, I'm a person. I spend a lot of time by myself and I love it. I love it. And I love being around people too. But that requires a different kind of energy. To refill the well, I need some alone time. I go to the gym in the morning every day, and then I come home and I take a bath. Every day I take a bath, like an actual bath.

Every day, sometimes twice, sometimes, sometimes at night too. Two a day bathing. Yeah. With the bath, like bubble bath? Just straight water? Listen, I put everything in there. I put, listen, I'm one of those people. I got all kind of salts and flowers and all kind of.

I really, there's something about sitting in that, and I have a very, I'm a very, I'm a large person. I'm a big guy, so I have a very big stone tub that I sit in. And it's something about being enveloped in a stone cocoon.

Mm-hmm. And I just sit there. I just sit there into the water is cold. And I just think or I just be and breathe or I imagine

and daydream. I think we really underestimate the importance of imagining, of just taking a moment to imagine and to be weird in that imagination.

Yeah. Everything's a go if it's just inside your brain, right? So, like, the things that I would never say or do outside of my brain, I get to sort of be a different person in my mind. I get to imagine, and that shows itself in my stories. It's like, I can't write these things if I can't take a moment to imagine what would happen if this, this, and this went down. Yeah.

I need that. It taps into a part of my youth and my playfulness and my childish, my childlikeness. and sometimes my childishness, which are not the same things. Because I think when I was a kid and I had lots of friends in the neighborhood, but we still, our imaginations were easily accessible. It was much easier for us to go outside,

take a walk or go get candy from the store and pretend the candy made us stronger. Or go, you know what I mean? The power pellets, these are our power pellets. So we could, right, the imagination was always right at the sort of, you were always brimming with it. It was right at the lip, right, of your side. psyche, and now it's not that way. I have to go and tap in. And that requires silence.

Few more cuts? One. You knew right away. One. How easily do you cry? If the ASPCA commercials, come on, you're going to say something. The moment I see them dogs and that. I don't know why I'm laughing. They are very sad. I can't help it. I am a crybaby of all cry babies. Are you a crying? It is my favorite thing about myself. Why? Because it reminds me that the expectations of masculinity didn't get me. That I avoided it, that somehow, some way I was able to maintain a sense of freedom.

I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful. And there are moments in which perhaps it puts me in precarious and embarrassing situations. but the people who love me and the people who are around me understand me well enough to know that he's going to need a moment to get this out and that's it. There's nothing to talk about. There's no, I don't need, I'm fine. I just need a second to shed these tears and to feel what I'm feeling and then we can move on with the conversation. I have no problem crying publicly in front of audiences of people because I don't mind telling people that I appreciate folks bearing witness to a man who is able to somehow remain free.

I'm grateful for it. I really, really, really am, and I'm grateful for my mother and father and for my friends that I grew up with who are still my same friends today for allowing me space to be myself without forcing me into a box that I do not belong in. So, yes.

That makes me cry. I am also an easy cry. But I love that as the mother of two boys. Yeah. I love it. And I want to. I want to lift that up and it's hard. It's hard to be a boy.

Oh, my God. Tell me about that. But this is the reason why I am grateful to have writing. I can put it somewhere. That's what it did for me when I was 10. That's the reason I started writing in the first place. It's because my mom was crying. I was okay.

I mean, I was going through what I was going through with my dad, but it was my mom who was hurting. And I was trying to figure out how to make her feel better. and that's the reason I started to write poems for her to try to figure out how to help her, right? So I think as long as, you know, it's important for people like us to just make sure we have a canister for this.

We have to put it somewhere. And then, you know, we'll be able to manage our health differently. Yeah. Okay. Three more. One, two, or three. Let's go with three this time.

Is there anything you long for? Rest. Rest. Yeah. Rest. You're not getting enough of that, huh? No, I don't get enough rest. And there's a part of me that's also just not at peace.

And I don't know. I've been working on it, you know, just trying to sort it all out. I've been, I take my mental health very seriously. And, you know, because I'm one of those people who have to, you know. And I think I'm restless. And I'm okay with being a restless person. cake. Some of us are just restless. Our lives are circuses forever. And I'm totally cool. I would love to sign up for an interesting life more than anything, right? Like my life doesn't have to be

perfect. It just has to be interesting. But I need to find some peace in that. And I haven't quite sorted that out yet. And it probably is connected to my rest. I probably can't find I can't find one. Very deeply. Yeah, I can't find one because I can't find the other. And I can go in either direction. I can't find rest because I can't find peace and I can't find peace because I can't find rest.

And so I'm trying to figure that out. You feel like you're getting better at it though? Like you're moving in the right direction? I'm moving in the right direction. I'm moving in the right direction. I got a ways to go, but I'm getting it. Yeah. Yeah.

We're at the last round. It is about beliefs. Here we go. One, two, or three. Let's go with three. How do you think your life should be judged? By my efforts. By my efforts, you know, I think...

Your actions. Yeah. My actions, yes. I guess efforts is different. But my efforts, yeah, because I... My actions... Look, I'm a person who believes that action overweighs your intention, right? Like, the truth of the matter is, is what you were intending and what you did.

Unfortunately, they often are dissonant. and the people who have been affected by your actions don't care about what you intended them to be, right? It's like we have to take account of the actual fallout of the decisions that we make. That being said, if I had to choose how my life was judged, I would say judge it by my effort, by what I was trying to do. Right, and it's the trying.

It says it's an intentional word. Exactly. It's not your accomplishment. It's not what you did. That I was trying. that I was trying and that I was trying relentlessly. And in my particular case, that I was trying to make sure that our babies were loved and felt love,

that I was trying to make sure that my family, all of them and all of our complicated relationships, that they knew that I was trying to change the trajectory and show us that there's more and that I am a product of them, that I am, this is what you made. Are you trying? It's easy to say you are, right?

Are you trying? It's even easy to stumble into success one time. Right? It's a possibility that you could, like, it happens all the time. But do you have the effort? Do you have the stomach to be effortful for the long haul that he lived an effort? Consistent effort. Yeah.

That he lived an effortful life in every part of his life and everything that he chose to pour himself into. That's it. You know, and if I could do that, people could say, like, man, that dude really lived this thing. Like, he really, he gave it everything he had. I'll take it. Oh, but my dear, I hear in that your longing for rest. Exactly. Like when you're trying so hard, when everything is like,

when you view your life as being judged by your effort, then you're going to keep, keep, keep going. I know. You're going to keep efforting, and that is exhausted. This is the problem. I mean, look, my dear friend and everybody's favorite human, LeVar Burton told me one day, told me one day, he said, he said he was

chastising me, scolding me about this very thing and he said, I know, I love you because I know you well enough to see, to see myself in you. And he said, when I was your age, I was in the same place and I didn't learn to rest until I was 50. And he said, that meant for

35 years of my life I was living like somebody was chasing me. That's no way to live. Right now, I know this to be true. But for some of us, it's just a really hard thing to turn. It's almost pathological. It's a really strange thing to turn off.

I mean, I come from a person. Does it feel selfish? To turn it off. Yeah. It feels... And rest. It feels irresponsible. And it shouldn't, right?

I have an unhealthy relationship with rest, right? Because to me, it feels... Look, there's not a moment in my life where I'm not aware of the privilege and of of the gift of a life that I have been afforded. I also know that there are many people who are more talented and who has worked harder than I have and who could turn a phrase sharper than anybody in the world who may never get their opportunity to live the life that I live. And so for me, my job is to justify every day why it's been given to me.

My job is to honor them by doing my very best to make the most of the fact that it happened to me. So rest feels a little bit irresponsible. It feels a little disrespectful to all the people who want to be sitting where I'm sitting. For the people who deserve to have their stories told, but for whatever strange reason won't get their moment, if this is my lot in life, then part of me just wants to kind of shoulder that knowing what their lot in life might be. You know what I mean? And so it's hard for me. At the same time, I'm just a person, a human.

You know, I need rest. Yeah, I hear you. Okay. One, two, or three. Let's go two. Are you preoccupied with the past, the future, or neither? Oof, this is a good one. Right? I like this one. This is a good one.

I actually haven't asked anyone this one. This is a very good question. I love future thought. I love projection. I love, you know what it is, is that, like, I've got heroes. And because I have so many heroes, and because I'm a student. And in this particular context, I'm talking about like work stuff. Like being a writer and being a student of literature and being a person who gets to know so many of your heroes.

And then a person who gets to grow up and come up with all these young writers and all of us are getting older and then all of our lives are sort of changing or have changed. It's really hard for me to not mythologize who we become. I love a good story. My life is about a good story, right? And so I watch all the documentaries and you see, oh, look, there's James Baldwin talking to Maya Angelou at a table. They're smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and they're having a conversation around love and whatever else. It is impossible for me to not be like, I wonder what it might be like one day if I'm sitting at a table with judgment ward and we're having a same conversation, but we're 70 years old. Or I wonder what it would be like someday when

all of my friends and these lovely people that I've known for all. all these years, right? Nicole Hannah Jones, me and Nicole Hannah Jones are hanging out, but now we're 70, right? We hung out or we hang out at this age, but what does it mean to hang out at 70? And now Nicole Hannah Jones is in the history books. And, right?

Like what, like I, so I, the future definitely intrigues me. But it sounds like a healthy way. You're not pre-opat. It's not a preoccupation. It's not anxiety. No, no, no, no, no, no. That doesn't bother it. It's an excitement around,

just seeing where the road takes us and just like, do we get to step into our hero's shoes one day? And then in terms of the present, every day I wake up just completely like, I'm 6.30, I'm jumping out the bed. Like, I'm getting to it. Like, I attack the day. You have things to do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I attack the day every day. I'm talking like I hit the gym, take care of my body. Like, I'm talking like, I'm, and by the time eight, nine, o'clock, I'm like, whew, I'm ready to go to sleep, right? And I lay it down. But I really am a person who, and my father was this way, too. He believed that you have to chase your life down. Don't wait for life to come get you, right? Go get it. All right, chase your life down. And I do feel that

way, that can cause a little bit of anxiety because if I don't do it or if I feel like I had a lazy day, this comes back to that rest conversation. Then I feel like I let one get away. You can't get the day back. It's like, oh, man, you got a limited amount of these. It's a finite amount of these things. Can't let the day get away, man. You've got to make the most of these moments and try to find some joy, try to be productive, try to help somebody, try to have a good belly lap,

move your body and be grateful that you've got a body that moves, right? Give somebody a hug. Oh, my God, everything you just said, I want to put on a poster and put in my kitchen. It's true. For my children and for me. Like these are the things, do these things today. Wake up in the morning because you need to hug a person, you need to have a belly laugh, you need to help a person. Yeah, got to tell somebody you love them.

Have a good cry. Like, these are the things, seriously, right? I'm really like, and I try to get all those things done on a daily basis. That's a good day. Last one, Jason. One, two, or three. Let's end with number one. Is there anything in your life that feels like praying?

What a great question. question. You know, my yes is the answer. My mother is 79, almost 80. She's dealing with some health challenges. And these health challenges over the course of the last year has put me in position to be a caretaker. And part of that caretaking means that my mother, I have to take care of very intimate things as it pertains to my mother. I have to wash her and I have to clean her. I have to, you know, I pull her panties up and do all sorts of things that, to be honest with you, I, you know, I did some of this stuff when I was 18 when she was ill with cancer a long, long time ago. So it isn't that it's jarring. It's that at this age, it feels different.

And at this age, it feels in the midst of its burden. because it is that, if we're being honest. It is burdensome sometimes. Yep. It also feels like prayer. It feels like I'm praying at the only creator that I've ever actually physically known. Right?

My mom. My mother. I'm bowing at the feet. I'm washing the feet of the only God I've ever physically touched. And does it feel like praying? And everything else? This is the hallelujah of all hallelujahs.

And I really, really mean that. It doesn't mean it's not difficult. It's painfully difficult. But I'd be lying to you if I didn't tell you that that difficulty is only a piece of this experience. Right. I went through this with my dad. As my dad was dying, we went through a similar experience.

And I felt the same way. And to be honest with you, as a person who's not very religious, I've known prayer. This has been, these two moments have probably been these two moments and driving through the desert in Arizona, which seems so far away from these things, but it's not. It's the acknowledgement of a bigger thing.

And the acknowledgement that there are bigger things to acknowledge. In Arizona, it's the mountains in the sky. It's the openness and the emptiness of a world unmudied by buildings and architecture. Right? Like, this is God, if I've ever known God. In my mother's bedroom, it's a similar thing. It's me acknowledging a vessel that has given me everything that I've become. And as that vessel continues to sort of to empty, right, it's seeping out.

She's not on E yet and she's fine, but E is coming. The tank is emptying, right? And to be there and to maintain this vessel, to maintain her comfort, to keep, to maintain her dignity by making sure that she's clean and cared for. Come on, I mean, what else could prayer be? Prayer can't just be asking.

Right? Sometimes I mean, it's me saying I'm so grateful for everything you've given me that, that me taking these 45 minutes to bathe you is a very small drop in the bucket of the gratitude that I actually owe you. And I will do everything I can to refill, to pour into this until I can't pour or you don't, oh, you don't have a bucket anymore for me to pour into. What a gift. What a gift, honestly. And I, you know, it hurts to say, and I can feel my tears welling up in my eyes, but seriously, I, I don't. I wish my mom wasn't going through what she was going through, but I'm so grateful to be there so that she don't have to go through it by herself. She can go through it with what she made. You made the thing that is meant to come here and make sure that you're all right in the midst of this process. I'm going to help you slide on the body.

I'm going to help you transition. I'm going to make sure that there's comfort for you. The least I could do after teaching me how to be bold, how to be caring, how to be sensitive, how to cry, how to be a person whole and unfettered by the pressures of this life. Come on, the least I could do. That is prayer. Freedom.

Space. Like, that's prayer. For sure. Oh, that was a good one, Jason. Oh. This is a good game. We end our show the same way every time. With a trip in our memory time machine, you pick one moment from your

past, it is not a moment you want to change anything about. Just a moment you want to linger in a little longer. Which moment do you choose? Oh, I, uh, father, when I finally made it, started to make a couple of dollars, you know, I went and I bought myself up a 9-11, a portion 9-11, cherry red. guard red, as the Porsche people say. And I took it to my father's house. My father had been fighting cancer for a while at this point. But he was home. He had done some surgeries.

It was looking good. And I took it. He was a car man, specifically American muscle. He loved the Mustang. He loved, you know, a corvette. You know, those were his cars. And he did not like anything other than those cars. But I took my German sports car.

to his house. And he came outside. And at first he thought I'd bought a Tesla because I had been teasing him that I was going to buy a Tesla, which he was very much like, are you crazy? We don't, you know, all of that.

And so he comes outside and he sees this car. And his eyes light up, and he's like, let me drive it. And he gets in the car and we pull out onto the main road. He lived in the country. And we drove about,

we pushed it to about 150 miles an hour maybe. And I remember him slowing the car down And I'm looking at him And I'm like, man, mind you, I'm white knuckling And he's like, and he pulled back into his driveway And he's like, I won't lie to you, I was a little afraid, right? And we just bust out of laughing. We had this moment.

And then right after that, he told me that he was going to die. So right after that he said, look, I'm not going to be able to beat this thing. And I probably got six weeks And so I just want to, you know, so we started to have a very different conversation. And it was all very lovely, honestly, but painful, you know. And if I could extend a moment, me and the old man, we would have driven a lot longer. We would have taken a, we would have taken a road trip. We would have, and we had taken a road trip two years before, but we would have done it in the Porsche.

And we would have just, we would have just tore the road apart because it was the last time that I saw my my father alive. He was living for another six weeks, but the last time I saw that thing in his eye that reminded me of who he was and what he had given me, this knucklehead kid who had a pension for toys and, you know, I'm just like him, you know, fast cars and all the things, all the stupid stuff of boyhood. I, you know, I think about that often. This is after telling me that he had a fake Rolex. I always thought he had a real Rolex. And he was like, all of these, like, it was, you know what I mean?

Like, just, you know. Like, he set all these standards for me that I grew into this man who got all the better versions of the things he was pretending to have. And so I just wish he would have lived a little longer for me to give him and show him some of the sweet bits. Jason Reynolds, his new original audiobook soundtrack is out now. Jason, thank you. You got it. Thank you.

If you like that conversation, you should go back and check. out my episode with another young adult author, John Green. John is another guy who just speaks so beautifully about the essence of being human. And he had a powerful defense of why, despite all the ugliness in the world, he still feels hope. You should definitely give it a listen. This episode was produced by Summer Tomod and edited by Dave Blanchard. It was mastered by Patrick Murray. Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sangweni, and our theme. The music is by Rom Teen Aroblewee. You can reach out to us at Wildcard at npr.org,

and we're going to shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.