July 24, 2025 • 42 mins
It’s the last Heavyweight encore before our new season begins on September 18th! This week, we talk to Jonathan's mom about life in the years since her appearance in #15: Dina. During a visit back home, Jonathan’s mother Dina inadvertently admits something that forces him to question his past — and turn the mic on himself.
Credits
This episode was produced by Jonathan Goldstein, Kalila Holt, and Kaitlin Roberts. Editing by Jorge Just, Alex Blumberg, and Wendy Dorr. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Emanuele Berry, Pat Walters, and Jackie Cohen. The show was mixed by Kate Bilinski. Music by Christine Fellows and John K Samson, with additional music by Y La Bamba, Caspar Babypants, Michael Charles Smith, and Blue Dot Sessions. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin Khalila Holt, Welcome to the studio.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Today's Encore presentation is an episode called Dina. Spoiler alert.
You know who Dina is?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Your mom?
Speaker 3 (00:30):
She's my mother.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Even I have a mother, Khila Holt. You know when
you like call me like, what is it? You call
me a motherless cuss sometimes when you get upset. No,
this episode is about my mother. What do you remember
about the production?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I remember it, and I hope I'm not speaking out
of turn, no please, but I remember it being like
an emotional one for you to work on, like there
was a lot you had to delve into.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah, that's true. My wife Emily was like, you know,
you're doing all these episodes about other people and intimate
moments from their lives. You have to have a little
skin in the game. And yeah, it was kind of scary,
but I came out the other end stronger and jollier
and balder than ever.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
And if our listeners come out the other end of
this episode, they'll get to hear an update from Dina
herself on her birthday.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
That's right. Yeah, I talked to my mother to catch
up with her on her various projects. So let's get
ready to listen voraciously. I'm ready, but before we do,
let's hear a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Thanks sponsors, Yello.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Why hello? Now, what kind of greeting is that you've
got your radio voice on? Could you elaborate on what
you mean by that?
Speaker 5 (01:54):
I know in the first second if I'm being recorded,
or I could on your inflections?
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Well, I always talk like this, Jackie. Back to you.
The way you're speaking with me now is never the
way you would normally speak. Okay, wait, hang on a second,
I'm just talking normal. You're not talking normal your radio voice.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Hey, what's going on? It's still not.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
It's still not. It's still not.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Hey.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
No, hey Jackie again Jackie, No, you wouldn't say him
like that.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
How's it going?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Too much energy?
Speaker 5 (02:22):
Hi?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I can tell anyway.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
It can't be a radio voice because I do a podcast.
It's a podcast voice, all right, And welcome to the
show from Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is
Heavyweight Today's episode. Dina. Hello, Hello, Okay, uh so we
(03:01):
just got to Montreal.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
We wee? What's that?
Speaker 6 (03:05):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
How you say yes in French?
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Yeah? But you just say it once you to say,
we wit.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Folks are about to meet us, pick us up at
the airport to take us back to their place, where
we will be staying for the next five days, five days,
five days in my childhood home, in the childhood bed
i've not slept in in decades. My wife Emily and
I are here for passover, to sup upon the bread
(03:33):
of affliction. Growing up, though, it was everything of affliction,
candy corn of affliction, road trips of affliction, bedtime stories
of affliction. I moved out when I was nineteen, but
from age one to eighteen, what I remember most is
(03:54):
the vague feeling of worry permeating the household. Worry that
manifested is yelling, yelling through closed doors, yelling across the
kitchen table, my father yelling into a junk drawer, desperately
trying to find a working pen. My mother yelling into
a clogged toilet, desperately trying to make it go down.
(04:15):
But more often than not, the yelling wasn't over anything
at all. We were just a naturally loud, anxious family,
a race of nervous giants shrunk into the bodies of
little Jews.
Speaker 7 (04:37):
Man.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
When I move out of here, I'd say in my teens,
I'm going to live like sting peace and quiet, meditation,
tea and tantric sex. And now, after years of oolong
roubis and lemon roubis, I'm home again for my first
trip back with Emily and our five month old son Agi.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Day one.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Here they are my parents. Tyota pulls up to the
airport pickup. They pass us and passes us.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Try to catch the eye. They don't see us here.
We're right here.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
My mother jumps out. She runs back towards us, pointing
at Oggie's ears.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
His ears are exposed.
Speaker 5 (05:26):
Hi, Hi, emily ears are exposed.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Both my mother and father where their woolen caps pull
down well past their ears. In younger, stronger days, they
might have stretched those caps right down over their feet,
but they're old now. My mother Dina seventy two, and
my father Buzz eighty three.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I want to drive slowly, not too fast.
Speaker 8 (05:51):
I want to go carefully.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Okay while Buzz is high strung. Dina's intensity is capable
of raising the emotional temperature of any space she occupies
in elevators, walk in pantries, and tiotas. Her powers are
especially cute, like.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
A funny feeling in my throat, like it's like really emotional.
Speaker 7 (06:16):
It's like a dreamed you know, it's like a dream.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yeah, it's like such a weird feeling.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
I think the weird, elusive feeling my mother is trying
to describe is happiness.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
It's just wonderful to see him.
Speaker 7 (06:32):
But I hope he's going to be warm enough. Did
you bring him up something?
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Home?
Speaker 8 (06:43):
Sweet home?
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Walking through the door, I'm a twelve year old again,
home from school and looking forward to zoning out with
petticoat junction. I'm a sixteen year old rushing to the
bathroom to gargle out the smell of cigarettes. I'm a
forty eight year old, a grown ass man with a
grown ass ass. Parenting a newborn leaves a person with
(07:07):
no time for squats. So don't judge Alex.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
So nice in here.
Speaker 6 (07:14):
I don't believe it.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Normally, the house, a modest, semi detached bungalow, has a
certain storage unit, bombshelter, vibe, walls of toilet paper, a
cold room full of canned fruit, cocktail needle points of
biblical scenes, and torreadors all leaned up against the walls
for fear of pounding in a nail and regretting it forever.
(07:37):
But today the place looks positively sparse.
Speaker 5 (07:41):
Johnny, Just don't open a closet or in shore everything.
I'll tumble on your head.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Because when you've heard you guys are coming.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
I threw everything into the into the closets and hid them.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
My mother grabs Aggie and heads upstairs for a diaper change.
Emily and I trail behind.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
I want him to be fresh and clean. Oh you're
so sweet, You're so sweet, my angel. Where the fridge
is the bag?
Speaker 1 (08:07):
The friggin bag contains the friggin's that my mother bought
for our visit. It turns out it's on her lap.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
I kept the bill because I wasn't sure if you
want me to return them or not.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Would you be able to return used diapers?
Speaker 5 (08:22):
Yeah, you know me. I could return anything. I could
return anything.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
You know that, Johnny, I do know that returning stuff
is what my mother lives for. She sees it as
a staring contest, a game of chess, but with yelling.
I remember once going along with her as she returned
a shirt she'd bought for my father two years earlier.
(08:49):
It's missing a sleeve, she told the cashier, holding up
the article of clothing. The cashier turned it around and around.
It's not supposed to have sleeves. The cashier finally said,
it's a poncho. A poncho, my mother repeated, as though
it were a foreign word, which in her I suppose
(09:10):
it sort of is. I don't care what it is.
It's factory defective and my husband can't wear it. Whenever
she'd get this way, I'd adopt the stance meant to
convey filial loyalty, peppered with a touch of what Vietnam
vets call the thousand yards stare. I've stood next to
(09:33):
my mother through countless exchanges, arguments, spectacles and stinks. But
this is the first time I've stood by her side
as she diapers my son.
Speaker 5 (09:43):
Oh look how much peep he has.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Oh, you made a lot of ppa baby.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
See that's how I knew you were sick. When you
were a baby, Johnny, you weren't peeping.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
What was wrong with me?
Speaker 1 (09:57):
As a kid, it was easy to be embarrassed by
my mother. One time, a popular boy named Jordie showed
up at our house. I wasn't home, but my mother
answered the door with her hair on fire. My hair's
on fire, she screamed. The next day in school, Geordie
showed the whole class how she screamed it. He wiggled
(10:18):
his fingers in the air, looking as though he was
about to fall to his knees. That night, I asked
my mother what had happened. It was the barbecue, she said,
your father wasn't home, and I was so in the
mood for barbecued lamb chops. It seems that while examining
the chops for signs of spoilage, she leaned her hair
(10:39):
sprayed boufont too close to the grill. While this explained
the fire atop her head, it did not explain why
she answered the door while nursing a fire atop her head.
Growing up, this kind of stuff happened all the time,
so I was always on high alert for humiliating emergencies.
Being back home again, I feel the old muscle memory
(11:01):
kicked back in. What's that smells?
Speaker 5 (11:03):
Something's burning?
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Did you turn on the heater?
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Did you touch the heat?
Speaker 7 (11:07):
Though?
Speaker 1 (11:08):
It turns out that one of the rag dolls my
mother had been hoarding somehow landed onto one of the
old lamps she'd been hoarding, and had begun to burn,
I could.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
Have had a fire because I was so careless for
a hush shim rush.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
The day plays out as a series of minor disasters averted.
In the morning, my mother loses her cell phone. We
find it in the night table. In the afternoon, a
screw to my father's glasses falls out. We replace it
with a twist tie. At dinner, a waiter charges my
mother for a potato. She claims she didn't order, but
(11:44):
after ten minutes of Camp David's style negotiations, it's dropped
from the bill. Before bed, my father can't find his passport.
Why do you need a passport? I ask, You always
need a passport, he says. We find it in the
night table. In the past, having someone witness all of
(12:04):
this would have made me feel anxious, But now having
Emily here makes me feel like I have an ally.
Turning to her in the midst of some crisis is
like looking directly into the TV camera and winking.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
At the audience. N Doggy.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Day two good. After we put Aggie to sleep, Emily
and I lie in bed. I ask for her thoughts
and reflections on the trip so far.
Speaker 9 (12:41):
No comment.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Oh, come on, come on, no comment. How could she resist?
Look at how my mother acts with Aggie, I say,
trying to get Emily going. I saw her put a
pocket mirror under his nose while he was sleeping, to
see if he was still breathing. After every spoonful she
feeds him, she asks if he's choking.
Speaker 9 (13:02):
You realize, though, that you say all that about Aggie
now too, like just a tiny little cough, and you
are doing it.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Is he breathing?
Speaker 9 (13:11):
Can he sit like that? Can he touch that thing?
Can he eat that? Can he do that? Is he
supposed to be doing that?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? What's he doing? What's
he doing? Is he choking?
Speaker 4 (13:20):
What's wrong?
Speaker 9 (13:22):
You do a lot of that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I concede to Emily that maybe I do just a
little of that kind of thing. But I wasn't even
in the parking lot of the ballpark of Adina Goldstein.
Speaker 9 (13:38):
One day you dropped, You dropped Aggie off, and you
called me right afterward because you were so worried.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
You remember this, I do remember this. It was Aggie's
first week of daycare. He shares a babysitter with two
little sisters. But on that particular morning, when the babysitter
opened the door, she was alone. She told me the
girls were napping in another room.
Speaker 9 (14:05):
You called me and said she was there alone.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
She said, were in bed.
Speaker 9 (14:10):
I don't know. Maybe she killed the whole family and
now she's going to kill OGGI and you weren't joking,
like you knew it was a crazy thought, but you
needed me to tell you she didn't kill her family.
She's not gonna kill Aggie.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
I did not need you to tell me that.
Speaker 9 (14:29):
And you're misremembering you were freaked out.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
You were freaked out.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I thought it was very stoic.
Speaker 9 (14:36):
You called me and said, I think the nanny is
gonna murder our child, and that she murdered the whole family.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
That we do daycare with.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
I don't consider that stoic, all right.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
I mean, I'm just imaginative.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
That's one way to look at it.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Yet another way to look at it is that I'm
also crazy, just like my mom. Well, set my hair
on fire and open the front door. In the days
after Aggie was born, I couldn't stop thinking terrible thoughts things.
(15:13):
I couldn't speak, not even to Emily. With this new
overwhelming love for my son came new overwhelming fears for
his safety, his heartbreaks to come, for his old age,
his loneliness. So I started seeing a therapist. I explained
how worry was the lingua franca of my childhood. I
(15:34):
wasn't allowed a paper route because it was a good
way to get abducted, no barefoot in because of rusty nails.
And I didn't even learn to swim until junior high
because water that's where people go to drown. Worry and
fear were how my mother communicated love. I said to
my therapist with a shrug. But love is love. The
(15:55):
important thing is that we feel it. But my therapist's
response troubled me. She said that love was the transcendence
of fear, that you might even say fear was the
opposite of love. Sitting at my childhood desk with Aggie's
toys scattered at my feet, my therapist's words returned to me.
(16:16):
If I was becoming my mother, would AGGI someday become me?
Someone weighed down by fear and worry? Was our genetic line,
nothing more than an inglorious chain of Russian dolls. Should
my therapist save the notes from our sessions so I
can send Aggie to her at a discounted rate. I
didn't want my son becoming me, and there were only
(16:37):
two people who could help me understand how I became me,
One who charged New York therapy rates that might leave
me bankrupted before I'm cured, and the other my mother
day three. As a child, I fell trapped and embarrassed
by my mother. As an adult, I came to be
(16:59):
amused by her. It's only as a freshly minted father
visiting home for the first time that I'm beginning to
see that I am her. How much you pay for
apples seventy?
Speaker 4 (17:13):
But if I'm desperate, this is what we normally talk about.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Where to get the best price on paper plates, Where
to get the best price on honeydew melon?
Speaker 7 (17:21):
Dina?
Speaker 8 (17:22):
What do you pay for a bottle of water.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Twenty four for a dollar eighty eight? Bottle water cox
twenty four for six nine?
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Will you pay for a loaf of bread? But after dinner,
after Aggie's gone to sleep, my mom and I sit
down at the kitchen table to have a different conversation.
Emily is reading in bed, and my father's watching TV
in the basement.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
It's just us.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Hello, Hello, go ahead and talk here I am Why
do you say here?
Speaker 7 (17:55):
I am? Well?
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Where should I say?
Speaker 4 (17:57):
There?
Speaker 1 (17:57):
I am tonight. I want to talk about the fear,
that thing my family lives inside, like a snowsuit with
a broken zipper that can no more be removed than
our own flos. I want to talk about the nameless
thing that binds all Goldstein's, that ignites us, propels us,
and ultimately paralyzes us. Well, I think about this stuff
(18:20):
now because you know I have I have a I
have a son, and I I think, but I think.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
He's so beautiful, and I saw those blue eyes like
no hors bays eggs.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
My mother's not talking crazy talk, she's talking Yiddish.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
So Bay's eggs.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Yeah, what does that mean?
Speaker 3 (18:41):
The bad oy shouldn't hurt them?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
The bad eye, the evil eye, the belief that merely
saying something positive is enough to invite evil forces to
snuff the good thing out. So even bringing up a
normal son to mom question about good parenting is enough
to attract the eye. On the day of my bar Mitzvah,
my mother carefully sewed a red ribbon into my underwear.
(19:06):
In this way, she reasoned, should the e the lie
turn its gaze upon me. I'd be protected by my underwear.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
Why do you.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Think you do that evil eyed stuff? It's what you say,
it's cuckoo.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
I know it's cuckoo, but I can't help it.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
But then that's a superstition.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I don't know everybody does it.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I've never met anybody who puts red ribbons in their
own I'm saying I personally have never met anyone who
does that. So I can't say everybody puts red ribbons
in their underwear. But what what is it supposed to be?
Warding off? But what is the evil eye?
Speaker 3 (19:48):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
This is how conversations with Dina often go. The derail
hit dead ends. So when I ask her why was
our home the way it was? I expect more of
the same, But instead my mother grows quiet.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
I worry, Yeah, I do too.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
I'm afraid of.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
This, afraid of that.
Speaker 7 (20:20):
Well.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
I was irrational. I wasn't thinking right, and I have
a chance to redo my a little bit.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Not with you, but with Augie.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
She stops talking and stares into her lap for a while.
We just sit there.
Speaker 5 (20:38):
I look upon this as a second chance. I want
to correct my mistakes. Johnny, I want to redeem myself.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
My mother doesn't usually talk this way. If something's causing
her grief, she returns it to the store, sends it
back to the kitchen, and so talk of second chances
and redemption. The words sound weird coming out of her mouth,
and I don't know how to respond. Where's all this
coming from?
Speaker 4 (21:07):
I ask?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Are you thinking of something specific?
Speaker 3 (21:11):
It's too painful. I don't want.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Maybe if you talk about it, you won't talk. I
don't think it could be anything.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
Then I can't.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I can't talk about it. Don't don't press me.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Please, well, I don't want to force you. I don't
want to make you feel bad.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
I am ashamed of myself.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Let's change the subject.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
And with that the conversation ends. I'd gotten to my
mother for answers about my childhood, but instead she's left
me with questions I didn't even know I had. What
had happened that was so bad? She couldn't even talk
about it? What was she so afraid to tell me?
After the break, I find out, Hello, Hello, So mom's
(22:06):
upstairs with Emily.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
Do you have In day.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Four, I sit down with my father to see if
he has any idea what the second chance is that
my mother's talking about. He's hesitant to talk because that
goes against the strategy of staying out of the drama.
In fact, most of my childhood memories of him are
of a man in bed, napping with a large volume
of World War II history splayed open on his chest.
(22:33):
This retiring nature might be the secret to having stayed
married to my mother for more than fifty years. What
is the thing that she is carrying around with her?
Speaker 8 (22:42):
She's a very private person and she feels she doesn't
want to be intruded upon. Don't take it the wrong way.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
So you have no inkling. You don't know what's going on.
Speaker 8 (22:53):
It isn't even discussing with me. I don't know what guilt.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
I don't know what she's talking.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Don't find it odd or intriguing in a way.
Speaker 8 (22:59):
It's a touchy subject for her, and she's very reluctant
to talk about it.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Talk about it. What's the it?
Speaker 8 (23:07):
I don't know. You have to ask her, and she's
going to shut down. She's gonna shut down.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
This means she'll try to change the subject or start
to yell. But today I don't care. I just want
to know what the big secret is. I wonder what
it is, I say to Emily, who knows? She says
while brushing her hair. So many things about your mom
are a mystery to me, like why is the kitchen
faucet always running full blast? And why does she keep
(23:35):
offering me paper towels? I think she says, you should
just let it go, but of course I can't. What
had my mother done that she wanted a second chance at?
Was it for the time she bought me a shirt
for my birthday that she later admitted was actually a dress?
(23:56):
Did you want to redo the time she dropped me
off at a birthday party and hollered out the car window.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
Have fun?
Speaker 1 (24:03):
But if you get diarrhea and someone's on the toilet
just making the bathtub die, arhea is not a time
for pride. Of course, I now see the wisdom, but
as a child, her words were a source of shame.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
I need to know.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
So I invite my mother out for a Sunday stroll
with Aggie and me. Maybe if she can just relax,
it'll come out like diarrhea talk.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
What should I say?
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Let I just take your level, So tell me.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
So, do you find walking with Hogy.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Relaxing, very relaxing, so nice.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
It's a pleasure to walk with my little friend.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
To start things off, I lobber an easy question, cocktail
party stuff. What's your first memory?
Speaker 5 (24:58):
Kindergarten? And we lived on Colonial four h three nine Colonial,
And I remember my father used to play peanockle and
he had a thumb that was the nail like the
thumbnail was very cut off, and all of a sudden
I thought of it and I started screaming and crying
and carrying on. I'm worrying. Oh, I remember how old
(25:24):
are you must have been four or five.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So so an early memory as being at kindergarten and
remembering your father's thumbnail and starting to cry.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
What was it that upset you about it?
Speaker 5 (25:36):
Shorried about it because it wasn't like a regular thumb.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
I was worried crazy.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
I tried to guide her towards happy reminiscences, but all
her memories are awful. Rheumatic fever, scarlet fever, her mother
slapping her in Woolworth's for whining about a balloon she wanted,
waking up in the middle of the night to find
a wall in the kitchen covered in moths.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
Then I remember my mother's pressure cooker in that house
hits the ceiling and pea soup was flattered everywhere.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
All your memories, Let's hear another memory. With the small
talk exhausted, I trepidaciously bring the subject back around to
the do over.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
I don't know, Johnny.
Speaker 5 (26:25):
I don't want to talk about it. I don't want
to remind myself the way I f felt. Doesn't conjure
up good memories. Please, and that's the end of it.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
I don't want to.
Speaker 5 (26:35):
Go into details.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Nonetheless, for the rest of the day, I can't stop
myself from asking for details. Here we go, I ask,
as she puts away the breakfast dishes.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
I I have nothing more to say, Johnny.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Leave me be, wait, I ask, as she cuts coupons
while watching Judge Judy with Emily in broad strokes.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
Alone, Please Emily take them off me.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And while she peels boiled eggs for lunch, Leave me alone.
Later we all sit down for dinner and with it
some wine.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
What's wrong with me? I think I'm off my rock.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
My mother rarely drinks wine.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Oh my god, how did I get like this?
Speaker 7 (27:21):
A mom?
Speaker 1 (27:21):
You just had a glass of wine as she drifts
off into an inebriated slumber. I give it one last try,
can I Is there anything you need to tell me? No,
any secrets to reveal? No, I was getting nowhere. Day five?
(27:48):
All right, you want to change him? What any It's
our last day and I've decided to give it a rest.
I stop asking weird questions and we all just hang out.
We talk about the price of things, We yell from
room to room, We search for lost cell phones, and
grow pleasantly bored word with each other's company. Overall, it's
(28:12):
pretty nice. Well, while putting Aggie down for a nap,
my mother has a question for me.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
Sonny, what was it that you were hoping to get
from me?
Speaker 8 (28:23):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (28:23):
I really just want to be able to have a conversation,
that's all I'm not. I don't want to I don't
want to cause your distress.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
They're not causing distress. It's it's what it was.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
And I don't ever want to talk about old, painful
for stuff.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
But what.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
She lays Aggie down, she stands over the crib. She
starts to say something, but then trails away. What we're saying.
All right, I'm gonna turn it off. Then I was
not a doctor did I had no secret twin, and
(29:11):
my mother had no secret family. There were no murders,
no affairs. It turns out that my mother's big secret,
the thing that was so hard for her to say,
was that she was sorry for a lot of things,
some small, some not so small. Some I remember, some
I don't, calling me names, screaming at me a lot.
(29:34):
How she could have been nicer to my girlfriends, How
she used to pull my hair, hit me. Hitting kids
was like the hula hoop. Back then, I say, a fad.
Everyone did it. It wasn't right, she says. Back then
people didn't know better. I say, I should have known better.
She says, I forgive you. I say, I don't forgive myself.
(29:58):
So I forgive her again, and I mean it, And
then I turned the recorder back on.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
I love you, honey. You made it a little easier
for me. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
I love you too, Mum. When you become a parent,
your whole life changes, but you forget that some things
stay the same. I had been so focused on becoming
a better father that I forgot I was still a son.
(30:37):
And maybe learning to be a better son is how
you become a better dad anyway, I want him to
be safe. On the last morning of our visit, my
mother and I head to the park. As a kid,
the park was someplace I usually went with my grandfather
or father. One of the only times I remember going
with my mother, two colleagues appeared out of nowhere and
(31:00):
began chasing us. I remember we separated and the dogs
chased her while I hid behind a tree. I look
around the playground from my own childhood with her. I
knew most things were out sandbox because someone could have
peed in there. Same for the swings, monkey bars, teeter totters,
and merry go rounds. But then something surprising happens. Picking
(31:24):
Aggie up out of the stroller, my mother.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
Says, I'll take him down the slide.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
He's never he's never gone down the side.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Come with Bobby, Honey, we'll go down the slide together.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
Okay, you're gonna go with him down the slide. Well,
what do you think i'll put himself? I didn't. You're
not afraid to go down the slide. Why would I
be afraid? I don't know. Okay, be careful, Yeah, now
you've got my nervous I wasn't afraid be careful. I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
My mother hands me back Aggie and holding onto the railing,
she carefully climbs the steps to the top of the slide.
When she gets there, I climb up too and hand
Aggie back to her with hesitation. She positions him onto
her lap and I run around to the bottom of
the slide to await their arrival.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
And you stand there and catch us in chase.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Part from me, and then Dina lets go, You're.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Gonna go down.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Whoo whoo. He's having fun.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Huh, so much fun in fact, that my mother decides
to do it again, And so again she climbs up
the steps, all three of them, to the top of
the ladder, and from the grand height of three and
a half feet, my mother and son descend the toddler
slide once more.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
Slidey snidey down the slide.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Oggie loves it, so they do it again a third chance,
a fourth, and even a fifth. Then we move on
to the bouncy caterpillar, the rope bridge, and the swings.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Swam, sleepy doggies going sweeny.
Speaker 5 (33:16):
The itsy bitsy spider quin up the water.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Parenthood is like a redo of your own childhood and
grandparenthood is like a redo of that. That's all life
is learning and relearning the same lessons over and over,
all of us, like those itsy bitsy spiders crawling up
endless water spouts, trying to make just a little more
progress each time we set out. There's comfort in knowing
(33:45):
that no one ever gets it right, no matter how
many chances we get. But hopefully at least a few
things go right, a few purely kind gestures somehow get through.
And for everything else we ask for forgiveness, and if
we're lucky, we'll receive it, and if we're luckier, we'll
(34:06):
forgive ourselves too.
Speaker 7 (34:09):
I love the horrors and faces.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Now that the fern entures returned to its.
Speaker 5 (35:07):
Good will hol.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Now that the last month's rant is scheming with the
damage to take.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
This moment to des if we mention Chi felt around from.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
It's been nearly a decade since I recorded that episode
with my mother. Recently I flew home to Montreal to
see her again, same airport, same toyota, same parents, nearly
leaving me on the current.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Oh I didn't, I've already gone in.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
I've come to visit this weekend because it's my mother's
eightieth birthday. She's planned a big dinner as well as
a visit to the Senior Center, where I'm told there
will be music and dancing.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
You don't want to.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Come with me to the club?
Speaker 4 (36:09):
Do you want me to?
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Only if you feel like I can come for a
little bit, if.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
You're gonna have to say, for like an hour and
a half, two hours?
Speaker 1 (36:18):
So why can't I just drop in and say, Hi, Hey,
how much do you have to pay?
Speaker 5 (36:23):
Well?
Speaker 3 (36:24):
I can pay that, I know, but for five seconds
it doesn't pay.
Speaker 6 (36:29):
One day they had the salsa.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
I got up to dance. Then, Oh you like that?
I loved it, and they all loved.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
Nobody was Dan, just your mom and me because they
know I'm always begging him to come dance, and I
couldn't stop dancing.
Speaker 6 (36:52):
Hi, guys from Minnesota, Hello, because he's no.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Because some people watch on zoom, they don't come, okay
because they don't want to pay the five Do.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
You think that's why you're hitting? Maybe they don't have trouble, No.
Speaker 6 (37:12):
Don't want to.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Maybe they can't afford it. They can't afford it.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
There rich say they too long to stay. Just shut
up and kiss me. Let's clap our hands.
Speaker 6 (37:25):
Whoa yeah, there we go. And how about some feet
in the tap of feet all the time.
Speaker 8 (37:33):
Oh my gosh, you're almost dancing.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
Watch out.
Speaker 9 (37:37):
Whoa nice by.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Wishes to our March celebrants, Dean and Goldstein, March sixth today.
Speaker 7 (37:54):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
Do you have happy birthday?
Speaker 3 (38:11):
Thank you, Johnny, Thank you, sweetheart. You made a.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Special So I wanted to talk with you about the
Dina episode. You were seventy two in that.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
In that woman. I was a young girl at seventy two.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
What is different now that you're eighty? That's different than
when you were in your seventies.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
I changed, I don't know. I'm trying to change even.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
More in what way?
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Well, I'm trying not to get so crazy over things.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
So when you listen to yourself as a young girl
of seventy two, worried about Aggie, that he's going to
get cool, that he's not wearing a hat, how does
that make you feel?
Speaker 7 (38:58):
Well?
Speaker 3 (38:59):
I still worry, like when the children go naked, like
I call it naked, they don't button up their coats.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
What are the things that you can think of that
that have changed?
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Well? I got sick. That changed a lot.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
This is when you had your heart attack.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
I mean, I still get anxious sometimes.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
What do you do to try to cope with the
anxious anxiousness?
Speaker 3 (39:24):
I don't think so much.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
What else changed though when you because I remember, you know,
before you went into the surgery, the heart surgery, you
had sort of made your peace. Yeah, you don't remember
any of that.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
Oh, I wouldn't know. I was that brave. I didn't
realize that. The doctor told me that he told you
I wasn't going to make it. He told me when
they sent me into the basement of the Sante Hospitals
for tests, and the technician and the doctor there told
me was that I wasn't going to make it. And
(40:01):
I remember crying and I was all by myself in
that horrible dark basement, and then I said stop it.
I talked to my and I said stop it already,
It's enough. And I was okay. After that, you know,
I stopped crying and I went up and I did
what I had to do.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Going through something the way that you did with having
the heart attack the heart surgery, did it make you
more philosophical?
Speaker 7 (40:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
I'm still not a terrific person. I'm still not a saint,
even though i'd like to be. I still gossip and
I still say bad things about people, and I still yell,
and I still get mean. So I can't say I'm better.
I want to be better, but I'm not not as
good as I should be. I'm far from an angel.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Do you ever think that maybe you're a little harsh
with yourself?
Speaker 8 (40:57):
No?
Speaker 1 (40:59):
So, how's your idioth birthday today? How's it feelingly?
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Because you're here, that doesn't I don't feel like i'm old.
You feel in my heart some days I feel i'm sixteen.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Thank you for talking to me.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
You're welcome.
Speaker 4 (41:17):
I love you.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
I love you more, Johnny, You're my precious boy.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Thanks to everyone who helped put the episode together. This
is the last of our summer encores, but I fear not.
Denigoldtem's Precious Boy will be back with a new season
of Heavyweight on September eighteenth.
Pushkin Khalila Holt, Welcome to the studio.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Today's Encore presentation is an episode called Dina. Spoiler alert.
You know who Dina is?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Your mom?
Speaker 3 (00:30):
She's my mother.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Even I have a mother, Khila Holt. You know when
you like call me like, what is it? You call
me a motherless cuss sometimes when you get upset. No,
this episode is about my mother. What do you remember
about the production?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I remember it, and I hope I'm not speaking out
of turn, no please, but I remember it being like
an emotional one for you to work on, like there
was a lot you had to delve into.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah, that's true. My wife Emily was like, you know,
you're doing all these episodes about other people and intimate
moments from their lives. You have to have a little
skin in the game. And yeah, it was kind of scary,
but I came out the other end stronger and jollier
and balder than ever.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
And if our listeners come out the other end of
this episode, they'll get to hear an update from Dina
herself on her birthday.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
That's right. Yeah, I talked to my mother to catch
up with her on her various projects. So let's get
ready to listen voraciously. I'm ready, but before we do,
let's hear a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Thanks sponsors, Yello.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Why hello? Now, what kind of greeting is that you've
got your radio voice on? Could you elaborate on what
you mean by that?
Speaker 5 (01:54):
I know in the first second if I'm being recorded,
or I could on your inflections?
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Well, I always talk like this, Jackie. Back to you.
The way you're speaking with me now is never the
way you would normally speak. Okay, wait, hang on a second,
I'm just talking normal. You're not talking normal your radio voice.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Hey, what's going on? It's still not.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
It's still not. It's still not.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Hey.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
No, hey Jackie again Jackie, No, you wouldn't say him
like that.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
How's it going?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Too much energy?
Speaker 5 (02:22):
Hi?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I can tell anyway.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
It can't be a radio voice because I do a podcast.
It's a podcast voice, all right, And welcome to the
show from Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is
Heavyweight Today's episode. Dina. Hello, Hello, Okay, uh so we
(03:01):
just got to Montreal.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
We wee? What's that?
Speaker 6 (03:05):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
How you say yes in French?
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Yeah? But you just say it once you to say,
we wit.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Folks are about to meet us, pick us up at
the airport to take us back to their place, where
we will be staying for the next five days, five days,
five days in my childhood home, in the childhood bed
i've not slept in in decades. My wife Emily and
I are here for passover, to sup upon the bread
(03:33):
of affliction. Growing up, though, it was everything of affliction,
candy corn of affliction, road trips of affliction, bedtime stories
of affliction. I moved out when I was nineteen, but
from age one to eighteen, what I remember most is
(03:54):
the vague feeling of worry permeating the household. Worry that
manifested is yelling, yelling through closed doors, yelling across the
kitchen table, my father yelling into a junk drawer, desperately
trying to find a working pen. My mother yelling into
a clogged toilet, desperately trying to make it go down.
(04:15):
But more often than not, the yelling wasn't over anything
at all. We were just a naturally loud, anxious family,
a race of nervous giants shrunk into the bodies of
little Jews.
Speaker 7 (04:37):
Man.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
When I move out of here, I'd say in my teens,
I'm going to live like sting peace and quiet, meditation,
tea and tantric sex. And now, after years of oolong
roubis and lemon roubis, I'm home again for my first
trip back with Emily and our five month old son Agi.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Day one.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Here they are my parents. Tyota pulls up to the
airport pickup. They pass us and passes us.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Try to catch the eye. They don't see us here.
We're right here.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
My mother jumps out. She runs back towards us, pointing
at Oggie's ears.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
His ears are exposed.
Speaker 5 (05:26):
Hi, Hi, emily ears are exposed.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Both my mother and father where their woolen caps pull
down well past their ears. In younger, stronger days, they
might have stretched those caps right down over their feet,
but they're old now. My mother Dina seventy two, and
my father Buzz eighty three.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I want to drive slowly, not too fast.
Speaker 8 (05:51):
I want to go carefully.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Okay while Buzz is high strung. Dina's intensity is capable
of raising the emotional temperature of any space she occupies
in elevators, walk in pantries, and tiotas. Her powers are
especially cute, like.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
A funny feeling in my throat, like it's like really emotional.
Speaker 7 (06:16):
It's like a dreamed you know, it's like a dream.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yeah, it's like such a weird feeling.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
I think the weird, elusive feeling my mother is trying
to describe is happiness.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
It's just wonderful to see him.
Speaker 7 (06:32):
But I hope he's going to be warm enough. Did
you bring him up something?
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Home?
Speaker 8 (06:43):
Sweet home?
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Walking through the door, I'm a twelve year old again,
home from school and looking forward to zoning out with
petticoat junction. I'm a sixteen year old rushing to the
bathroom to gargle out the smell of cigarettes. I'm a
forty eight year old, a grown ass man with a
grown ass ass. Parenting a newborn leaves a person with
(07:07):
no time for squats. So don't judge Alex.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
So nice in here.
Speaker 6 (07:14):
I don't believe it.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Normally, the house, a modest, semi detached bungalow, has a
certain storage unit, bombshelter, vibe, walls of toilet paper, a
cold room full of canned fruit, cocktail needle points of
biblical scenes, and torreadors all leaned up against the walls
for fear of pounding in a nail and regretting it forever.
(07:37):
But today the place looks positively sparse.
Speaker 5 (07:41):
Johnny, Just don't open a closet or in shore everything.
I'll tumble on your head.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Because when you've heard you guys are coming.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
I threw everything into the into the closets and hid them.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
My mother grabs Aggie and heads upstairs for a diaper change.
Emily and I trail behind.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
I want him to be fresh and clean. Oh you're
so sweet, You're so sweet, my angel. Where the fridge
is the bag?
Speaker 1 (08:07):
The friggin bag contains the friggin's that my mother bought
for our visit. It turns out it's on her lap.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
I kept the bill because I wasn't sure if you
want me to return them or not.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Would you be able to return used diapers?
Speaker 5 (08:22):
Yeah, you know me. I could return anything. I could
return anything.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
You know that, Johnny, I do know that returning stuff
is what my mother lives for. She sees it as
a staring contest, a game of chess, but with yelling.
I remember once going along with her as she returned
a shirt she'd bought for my father two years earlier.
(08:49):
It's missing a sleeve, she told the cashier, holding up
the article of clothing. The cashier turned it around and around.
It's not supposed to have sleeves. The cashier finally said,
it's a poncho. A poncho, my mother repeated, as though
it were a foreign word, which in her I suppose
(09:10):
it sort of is. I don't care what it is.
It's factory defective and my husband can't wear it. Whenever
she'd get this way, I'd adopt the stance meant to
convey filial loyalty, peppered with a touch of what Vietnam
vets call the thousand yards stare. I've stood next to
(09:33):
my mother through countless exchanges, arguments, spectacles and stinks. But
this is the first time I've stood by her side
as she diapers my son.
Speaker 5 (09:43):
Oh look how much peep he has.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Oh, you made a lot of ppa baby.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
See that's how I knew you were sick. When you
were a baby, Johnny, you weren't peeping.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
What was wrong with me?
Speaker 1 (09:57):
As a kid, it was easy to be embarrassed by
my mother. One time, a popular boy named Jordie showed
up at our house. I wasn't home, but my mother
answered the door with her hair on fire. My hair's
on fire, she screamed. The next day in school, Geordie
showed the whole class how she screamed it. He wiggled
(10:18):
his fingers in the air, looking as though he was
about to fall to his knees. That night, I asked
my mother what had happened. It was the barbecue, she said,
your father wasn't home, and I was so in the
mood for barbecued lamb chops. It seems that while examining
the chops for signs of spoilage, she leaned her hair
(10:39):
sprayed boufont too close to the grill. While this explained
the fire atop her head, it did not explain why
she answered the door while nursing a fire atop her head.
Growing up, this kind of stuff happened all the time,
so I was always on high alert for humiliating emergencies.
Being back home again, I feel the old muscle memory
(11:01):
kicked back in. What's that smells?
Speaker 5 (11:03):
Something's burning?
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Did you turn on the heater?
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Did you touch the heat?
Speaker 7 (11:07):
Though?
Speaker 1 (11:08):
It turns out that one of the rag dolls my
mother had been hoarding somehow landed onto one of the
old lamps she'd been hoarding, and had begun to burn,
I could.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
Have had a fire because I was so careless for
a hush shim rush.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
The day plays out as a series of minor disasters averted.
In the morning, my mother loses her cell phone. We
find it in the night table. In the afternoon, a
screw to my father's glasses falls out. We replace it
with a twist tie. At dinner, a waiter charges my
mother for a potato. She claims she didn't order, but
(11:44):
after ten minutes of Camp David's style negotiations, it's dropped
from the bill. Before bed, my father can't find his passport.
Why do you need a passport? I ask, You always
need a passport, he says. We find it in the
night table. In the past, having someone witness all of
(12:04):
this would have made me feel anxious, But now having
Emily here makes me feel like I have an ally.
Turning to her in the midst of some crisis is
like looking directly into the TV camera and winking.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
At the audience. N Doggy.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Day two good. After we put Aggie to sleep, Emily
and I lie in bed. I ask for her thoughts
and reflections on the trip so far.
Speaker 9 (12:41):
No comment.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Oh, come on, come on, no comment. How could she resist?
Look at how my mother acts with Aggie, I say,
trying to get Emily going. I saw her put a
pocket mirror under his nose while he was sleeping, to
see if he was still breathing. After every spoonful she
feeds him, she asks if he's choking.
Speaker 9 (13:02):
You realize, though, that you say all that about Aggie
now too, like just a tiny little cough, and you
are doing it.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Is he breathing?
Speaker 9 (13:11):
Can he sit like that? Can he touch that thing?
Can he eat that? Can he do that? Is he
supposed to be doing that?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? What's he doing? What's
he doing? Is he choking?
Speaker 4 (13:20):
What's wrong?
Speaker 9 (13:22):
You do a lot of that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I concede to Emily that maybe I do just a
little of that kind of thing. But I wasn't even
in the parking lot of the ballpark of Adina Goldstein.
Speaker 9 (13:38):
One day you dropped, You dropped Aggie off, and you
called me right afterward because you were so worried.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
You remember this, I do remember this. It was Aggie's
first week of daycare. He shares a babysitter with two
little sisters. But on that particular morning, when the babysitter
opened the door, she was alone. She told me the
girls were napping in another room.
Speaker 9 (14:05):
You called me and said she was there alone.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
She said, were in bed.
Speaker 9 (14:10):
I don't know. Maybe she killed the whole family and
now she's going to kill OGGI and you weren't joking,
like you knew it was a crazy thought, but you
needed me to tell you she didn't kill her family.
She's not gonna kill Aggie.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
I did not need you to tell me that.
Speaker 9 (14:29):
And you're misremembering you were freaked out.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
You were freaked out.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I thought it was very stoic.
Speaker 9 (14:36):
You called me and said, I think the nanny is
gonna murder our child, and that she murdered the whole family.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
That we do daycare with.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
I don't consider that stoic, all right.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
I mean, I'm just imaginative.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
That's one way to look at it.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Yet another way to look at it is that I'm
also crazy, just like my mom. Well, set my hair
on fire and open the front door. In the days
after Aggie was born, I couldn't stop thinking terrible thoughts things.
(15:13):
I couldn't speak, not even to Emily. With this new
overwhelming love for my son came new overwhelming fears for
his safety, his heartbreaks to come, for his old age,
his loneliness. So I started seeing a therapist. I explained
how worry was the lingua franca of my childhood. I
(15:34):
wasn't allowed a paper route because it was a good
way to get abducted, no barefoot in because of rusty nails.
And I didn't even learn to swim until junior high
because water that's where people go to drown. Worry and
fear were how my mother communicated love. I said to
my therapist with a shrug. But love is love. The
(15:55):
important thing is that we feel it. But my therapist's
response troubled me. She said that love was the transcendence
of fear, that you might even say fear was the
opposite of love. Sitting at my childhood desk with Aggie's
toys scattered at my feet, my therapist's words returned to me.
(16:16):
If I was becoming my mother, would AGGI someday become me?
Someone weighed down by fear and worry? Was our genetic line,
nothing more than an inglorious chain of Russian dolls. Should
my therapist save the notes from our sessions so I
can send Aggie to her at a discounted rate. I
didn't want my son becoming me, and there were only
(16:37):
two people who could help me understand how I became me,
One who charged New York therapy rates that might leave
me bankrupted before I'm cured, and the other my mother
day three. As a child, I fell trapped and embarrassed
by my mother. As an adult, I came to be
(16:59):
amused by her. It's only as a freshly minted father
visiting home for the first time that I'm beginning to
see that I am her. How much you pay for
apples seventy?
Speaker 4 (17:13):
But if I'm desperate, this is what we normally talk about.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Where to get the best price on paper plates, Where
to get the best price on honeydew melon?
Speaker 7 (17:21):
Dina?
Speaker 8 (17:22):
What do you pay for a bottle of water.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Twenty four for a dollar eighty eight? Bottle water cox
twenty four for six nine?
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Will you pay for a loaf of bread? But after dinner,
after Aggie's gone to sleep, my mom and I sit
down at the kitchen table to have a different conversation.
Emily is reading in bed, and my father's watching TV
in the basement.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
It's just us.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Hello, Hello, go ahead and talk here I am Why
do you say here?
Speaker 7 (17:55):
I am? Well?
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Where should I say?
Speaker 4 (17:57):
There?
Speaker 1 (17:57):
I am tonight. I want to talk about the fear,
that thing my family lives inside, like a snowsuit with
a broken zipper that can no more be removed than
our own flos. I want to talk about the nameless
thing that binds all Goldstein's, that ignites us, propels us,
and ultimately paralyzes us. Well, I think about this stuff
(18:20):
now because you know I have I have a I
have a son, and I I think, but I think.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
He's so beautiful, and I saw those blue eyes like
no hors bays eggs.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
My mother's not talking crazy talk, she's talking Yiddish.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
So Bay's eggs.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Yeah, what does that mean?
Speaker 3 (18:41):
The bad oy shouldn't hurt them?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
The bad eye, the evil eye, the belief that merely
saying something positive is enough to invite evil forces to
snuff the good thing out. So even bringing up a
normal son to mom question about good parenting is enough
to attract the eye. On the day of my bar Mitzvah,
my mother carefully sewed a red ribbon into my underwear.
(19:06):
In this way, she reasoned, should the e the lie
turn its gaze upon me. I'd be protected by my underwear.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
Why do you.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Think you do that evil eyed stuff? It's what you say,
it's cuckoo.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
I know it's cuckoo, but I can't help it.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
But then that's a superstition.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I don't know everybody does it.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I've never met anybody who puts red ribbons in their
own I'm saying I personally have never met anyone who
does that. So I can't say everybody puts red ribbons
in their underwear. But what what is it supposed to be?
Warding off? But what is the evil eye?
Speaker 3 (19:48):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
This is how conversations with Dina often go. The derail
hit dead ends. So when I ask her why was
our home the way it was? I expect more of
the same, But instead my mother grows quiet.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
I worry, Yeah, I do too.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
I'm afraid of.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
This, afraid of that.
Speaker 7 (20:20):
Well.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
I was irrational. I wasn't thinking right, and I have
a chance to redo my a little bit.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Not with you, but with Augie.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
She stops talking and stares into her lap for a while.
We just sit there.
Speaker 5 (20:38):
I look upon this as a second chance. I want
to correct my mistakes. Johnny, I want to redeem myself.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
My mother doesn't usually talk this way. If something's causing
her grief, she returns it to the store, sends it
back to the kitchen, and so talk of second chances
and redemption. The words sound weird coming out of her mouth,
and I don't know how to respond. Where's all this
coming from?
Speaker 4 (21:07):
I ask?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Are you thinking of something specific?
Speaker 3 (21:11):
It's too painful. I don't want.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Maybe if you talk about it, you won't talk. I
don't think it could be anything.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
Then I can't.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I can't talk about it. Don't don't press me.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Please, well, I don't want to force you. I don't
want to make you feel bad.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
I am ashamed of myself.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Let's change the subject.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
And with that the conversation ends. I'd gotten to my
mother for answers about my childhood, but instead she's left
me with questions I didn't even know I had. What
had happened that was so bad? She couldn't even talk
about it? What was she so afraid to tell me?
After the break, I find out, Hello, Hello, So mom's
(22:06):
upstairs with Emily.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
Do you have In day.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Four, I sit down with my father to see if
he has any idea what the second chance is that
my mother's talking about. He's hesitant to talk because that
goes against the strategy of staying out of the drama.
In fact, most of my childhood memories of him are
of a man in bed, napping with a large volume
of World War II history splayed open on his chest.
(22:33):
This retiring nature might be the secret to having stayed
married to my mother for more than fifty years. What
is the thing that she is carrying around with her?
Speaker 8 (22:42):
She's a very private person and she feels she doesn't
want to be intruded upon. Don't take it the wrong way.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
So you have no inkling. You don't know what's going on.
Speaker 8 (22:53):
It isn't even discussing with me. I don't know what guilt.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
I don't know what she's talking.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Don't find it odd or intriguing in a way.
Speaker 8 (22:59):
It's a touchy subject for her, and she's very reluctant
to talk about it.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Talk about it. What's the it?
Speaker 8 (23:07):
I don't know. You have to ask her, and she's
going to shut down. She's gonna shut down.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
This means she'll try to change the subject or start
to yell. But today I don't care. I just want
to know what the big secret is. I wonder what
it is, I say to Emily, who knows? She says
while brushing her hair. So many things about your mom
are a mystery to me, like why is the kitchen
faucet always running full blast? And why does she keep
(23:35):
offering me paper towels? I think she says, you should
just let it go, but of course I can't. What
had my mother done that she wanted a second chance at?
Was it for the time she bought me a shirt
for my birthday that she later admitted was actually a dress?
(23:56):
Did you want to redo the time she dropped me
off at a birthday party and hollered out the car window.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
Have fun?
Speaker 1 (24:03):
But if you get diarrhea and someone's on the toilet
just making the bathtub die, arhea is not a time
for pride. Of course, I now see the wisdom, but
as a child, her words were a source of shame.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
I need to know.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
So I invite my mother out for a Sunday stroll
with Aggie and me. Maybe if she can just relax,
it'll come out like diarrhea talk.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
What should I say?
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Let I just take your level, So tell me.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
So, do you find walking with Hogy.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Relaxing, very relaxing, so nice.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
It's a pleasure to walk with my little friend.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
To start things off, I lobber an easy question, cocktail
party stuff. What's your first memory?
Speaker 5 (24:58):
Kindergarten? And we lived on Colonial four h three nine Colonial,
And I remember my father used to play peanockle and
he had a thumb that was the nail like the
thumbnail was very cut off, and all of a sudden
I thought of it and I started screaming and crying
and carrying on. I'm worrying. Oh, I remember how old
(25:24):
are you must have been four or five.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So so an early memory as being at kindergarten and
remembering your father's thumbnail and starting to cry.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
What was it that upset you about it?
Speaker 5 (25:36):
Shorried about it because it wasn't like a regular thumb.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
I was worried crazy.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
I tried to guide her towards happy reminiscences, but all
her memories are awful. Rheumatic fever, scarlet fever, her mother
slapping her in Woolworth's for whining about a balloon she wanted,
waking up in the middle of the night to find
a wall in the kitchen covered in moths.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
Then I remember my mother's pressure cooker in that house
hits the ceiling and pea soup was flattered everywhere.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
All your memories, Let's hear another memory. With the small
talk exhausted, I trepidaciously bring the subject back around to
the do over.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
I don't know, Johnny.
Speaker 5 (26:25):
I don't want to talk about it. I don't want
to remind myself the way I f felt. Doesn't conjure
up good memories. Please, and that's the end of it.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
I don't want to.
Speaker 5 (26:35):
Go into details.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Nonetheless, for the rest of the day, I can't stop
myself from asking for details. Here we go, I ask,
as she puts away the breakfast dishes.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
I I have nothing more to say, Johnny.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Leave me be, wait, I ask, as she cuts coupons
while watching Judge Judy with Emily in broad strokes.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
Alone, Please Emily take them off me.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And while she peels boiled eggs for lunch, Leave me alone.
Later we all sit down for dinner and with it
some wine.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
What's wrong with me? I think I'm off my rock.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
My mother rarely drinks wine.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Oh my god, how did I get like this?
Speaker 7 (27:21):
A mom?
Speaker 1 (27:21):
You just had a glass of wine as she drifts
off into an inebriated slumber. I give it one last try,
can I Is there anything you need to tell me? No,
any secrets to reveal? No, I was getting nowhere. Day five?
(27:48):
All right, you want to change him? What any It's
our last day and I've decided to give it a rest.
I stop asking weird questions and we all just hang out.
We talk about the price of things, We yell from
room to room, We search for lost cell phones, and
grow pleasantly bored word with each other's company. Overall, it's
(28:12):
pretty nice. Well, while putting Aggie down for a nap,
my mother has a question for me.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
Sonny, what was it that you were hoping to get
from me?
Speaker 8 (28:23):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (28:23):
I really just want to be able to have a conversation,
that's all I'm not. I don't want to I don't
want to cause your distress.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
They're not causing distress. It's it's what it was.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
And I don't ever want to talk about old, painful
for stuff.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
But what.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
She lays Aggie down, she stands over the crib. She
starts to say something, but then trails away. What we're saying.
All right, I'm gonna turn it off. Then I was
not a doctor did I had no secret twin, and
(29:11):
my mother had no secret family. There were no murders,
no affairs. It turns out that my mother's big secret,
the thing that was so hard for her to say,
was that she was sorry for a lot of things,
some small, some not so small. Some I remember, some
I don't, calling me names, screaming at me a lot.
(29:34):
How she could have been nicer to my girlfriends, How
she used to pull my hair, hit me. Hitting kids
was like the hula hoop. Back then, I say, a fad.
Everyone did it. It wasn't right, she says. Back then
people didn't know better. I say, I should have known better.
She says, I forgive you. I say, I don't forgive myself.
(29:58):
So I forgive her again, and I mean it, And
then I turned the recorder back on.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
I love you, honey. You made it a little easier
for me. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
I love you too, Mum. When you become a parent,
your whole life changes, but you forget that some things
stay the same. I had been so focused on becoming
a better father that I forgot I was still a son.
(30:37):
And maybe learning to be a better son is how
you become a better dad anyway, I want him to
be safe. On the last morning of our visit, my
mother and I head to the park. As a kid,
the park was someplace I usually went with my grandfather
or father. One of the only times I remember going
with my mother, two colleagues appeared out of nowhere and
(31:00):
began chasing us. I remember we separated and the dogs
chased her while I hid behind a tree. I look
around the playground from my own childhood with her. I
knew most things were out sandbox because someone could have
peed in there. Same for the swings, monkey bars, teeter totters,
and merry go rounds. But then something surprising happens. Picking
(31:24):
Aggie up out of the stroller, my mother.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
Says, I'll take him down the slide.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
He's never he's never gone down the side.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Come with Bobby, Honey, we'll go down the slide together.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
Okay, you're gonna go with him down the slide. Well,
what do you think i'll put himself? I didn't. You're
not afraid to go down the slide. Why would I
be afraid? I don't know. Okay, be careful, Yeah, now
you've got my nervous I wasn't afraid be careful. I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
My mother hands me back Aggie and holding onto the railing,
she carefully climbs the steps to the top of the slide.
When she gets there, I climb up too and hand
Aggie back to her with hesitation. She positions him onto
her lap and I run around to the bottom of
the slide to await their arrival.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
And you stand there and catch us in chase.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Part from me, and then Dina lets go, You're.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Gonna go down.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Whoo whoo. He's having fun.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Huh, so much fun in fact, that my mother decides
to do it again, And so again she climbs up
the steps, all three of them, to the top of
the ladder, and from the grand height of three and
a half feet, my mother and son descend the toddler
slide once more.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
Slidey snidey down the slide.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Oggie loves it, so they do it again a third chance,
a fourth, and even a fifth. Then we move on
to the bouncy caterpillar, the rope bridge, and the swings.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Swam, sleepy doggies going sweeny.
Speaker 5 (33:16):
The itsy bitsy spider quin up the water.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Parenthood is like a redo of your own childhood and
grandparenthood is like a redo of that. That's all life
is learning and relearning the same lessons over and over,
all of us, like those itsy bitsy spiders crawling up
endless water spouts, trying to make just a little more
progress each time we set out. There's comfort in knowing
(33:45):
that no one ever gets it right, no matter how
many chances we get. But hopefully at least a few
things go right, a few purely kind gestures somehow get through.
And for everything else we ask for forgiveness, and if
we're lucky, we'll receive it, and if we're luckier, we'll
(34:06):
forgive ourselves too.
Speaker 7 (34:09):
I love the horrors and faces.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Now that the fern entures returned to its.
Speaker 5 (35:07):
Good will hol.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Now that the last month's rant is scheming with the
damage to take.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
This moment to des if we mention Chi felt around from.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
It's been nearly a decade since I recorded that episode
with my mother. Recently I flew home to Montreal to
see her again, same airport, same toyota, same parents, nearly
leaving me on the current.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Oh I didn't, I've already gone in.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
I've come to visit this weekend because it's my mother's
eightieth birthday. She's planned a big dinner as well as
a visit to the Senior Center, where I'm told there
will be music and dancing.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
You don't want to.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Come with me to the club?
Speaker 4 (36:09):
Do you want me to?
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Only if you feel like I can come for a
little bit, if.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
You're gonna have to say, for like an hour and
a half, two hours?
Speaker 1 (36:18):
So why can't I just drop in and say, Hi, Hey,
how much do you have to pay?
Speaker 5 (36:23):
Well?
Speaker 3 (36:24):
I can pay that, I know, but for five seconds
it doesn't pay.
Speaker 6 (36:29):
One day they had the salsa.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
I got up to dance. Then, Oh you like that?
I loved it, and they all loved.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
Nobody was Dan, just your mom and me because they
know I'm always begging him to come dance, and I
couldn't stop dancing.
Speaker 6 (36:52):
Hi, guys from Minnesota, Hello, because he's no.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Because some people watch on zoom, they don't come, okay
because they don't want to pay the five Do.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
You think that's why you're hitting? Maybe they don't have trouble, No.
Speaker 6 (37:12):
Don't want to.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Maybe they can't afford it. They can't afford it.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
There rich say they too long to stay. Just shut
up and kiss me. Let's clap our hands.
Speaker 6 (37:25):
Whoa yeah, there we go. And how about some feet
in the tap of feet all the time.
Speaker 8 (37:33):
Oh my gosh, you're almost dancing.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
Watch out.
Speaker 9 (37:37):
Whoa nice by.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Wishes to our March celebrants, Dean and Goldstein, March sixth today.
Speaker 7 (37:54):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
Do you have happy birthday?
Speaker 3 (38:11):
Thank you, Johnny, Thank you, sweetheart. You made a.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Special So I wanted to talk with you about the
Dina episode. You were seventy two in that.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
In that woman. I was a young girl at seventy two.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
What is different now that you're eighty? That's different than
when you were in your seventies.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
I changed, I don't know. I'm trying to change even.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
More in what way?
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Well, I'm trying not to get so crazy over things.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
So when you listen to yourself as a young girl
of seventy two, worried about Aggie, that he's going to
get cool, that he's not wearing a hat, how does
that make you feel?
Speaker 7 (38:58):
Well?
Speaker 3 (38:59):
I still worry, like when the children go naked, like
I call it naked, they don't button up their coats.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
What are the things that you can think of that
that have changed?
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Well? I got sick. That changed a lot.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
This is when you had your heart attack.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
I mean, I still get anxious sometimes.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
What do you do to try to cope with the
anxious anxiousness?
Speaker 3 (39:24):
I don't think so much.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
What else changed though when you because I remember, you know,
before you went into the surgery, the heart surgery, you
had sort of made your peace. Yeah, you don't remember
any of that.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
Oh, I wouldn't know. I was that brave. I didn't
realize that. The doctor told me that he told you
I wasn't going to make it. He told me when
they sent me into the basement of the Sante Hospitals
for tests, and the technician and the doctor there told
me was that I wasn't going to make it. And
(40:01):
I remember crying and I was all by myself in
that horrible dark basement, and then I said stop it.
I talked to my and I said stop it already,
It's enough. And I was okay. After that, you know,
I stopped crying and I went up and I did
what I had to do.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Going through something the way that you did with having
the heart attack the heart surgery, did it make you
more philosophical?
Speaker 7 (40:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
I'm still not a terrific person. I'm still not a saint,
even though i'd like to be. I still gossip and
I still say bad things about people, and I still yell,
and I still get mean. So I can't say I'm better.
I want to be better, but I'm not not as
good as I should be. I'm far from an angel.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Do you ever think that maybe you're a little harsh
with yourself?
Speaker 8 (40:57):
No?
Speaker 1 (40:59):
So, how's your idioth birthday today? How's it feelingly?
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Because you're here, that doesn't I don't feel like i'm old.
You feel in my heart some days I feel i'm sixteen.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Thank you for talking to me.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
You're welcome.
Speaker 4 (41:17):
I love you.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
I love you more, Johnny, You're my precious boy.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Thanks to everyone who helped put the episode together. This
is the last of our summer encores, but I fear not.
Denigoldtem's Precious Boy will be back with a new season
of Heavyweight on September eighteenth.
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