October 9, 2025 • 52 mins
On this episode, we’re giving the feed over to a podcast we know you’ll love—The Moth. The Moth is all about true stories told live. It showcases real people, from astronauts to actors, from teachers to truck drivers, getting up on stage and talking about their own lives in their own words. The stories run the gamut: funny, heartbreaking, enlightening, or sometimes all three at the same time. But whatever the story is about, you’ll make a connection with the person telling it. This episode, “Mama Bear,” is all about mothers—mothers as protectors, rescuers, and, sometimes, meddlers. Hosted by Jenifer Hixson, there are stories about wedding planning, a broccoli party, and traveling to every baseball stadium in the country. Find The Moth wherever you get your podcasts.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hi, everybody, if you're a fan of Heavyweight, you're a
fan of stories, right, are you asking? Heavyweight producer?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I would presume anyone listening like stories. Yeah, unless there's
some real weirdos out there.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Why would they be listening to the show if they
didn't like stories, is what I'm wondering. Yeah. Anyway, if
you want to hear more true stories filled with humor
and heart, the kind of stories you know that we
aspire to tell, we think you'll love The Moth. The
Moth is a podcast that Oh man, it's one of
the early podcasts that just drew me into podcasting in general.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
You me too, Yeah, yeah, no, it was one of
the original ones that I listened to all the time
and I was like, wow, this medium is amazing.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
They're like stories that you would read in a book,
you know, they're like really beautifully and beautifully tooled.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
But they're live.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
It showcases real people from astronauts to actors, teachers to
truck drivers, scientists to singers, and they get up on
stage and they talk about their own lives in their
own words.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
And my mom's been on it.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Is that true?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
When were you planning to tell.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Me that I guess now.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Well, the episode we're sharing now is called Mama Bear,
and it's all about very appropriately, it's about.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Mothers, speaking of mothers.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
The episode is hosted by Jennifer Hickson. And these are
stories about wedding planning, something called a broccoli party, which
is very funny, and another story in which someone travels
to every baseball stadium in the country.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
I hope you like it.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, we hope you'll enjoy it. And if you do,
you can find the Moth wherever you get your podcasts.
New episodes release on Tuesdays and Fridays. And here's the show.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Jennifer Hickson.
In this hour, we'll be hearing stories by and about mothers.
The matriarch, your most insightful critic, or your greatest defender,
often both at once. Consider the archetype mama bear, fiercely protective,
running on instincts, able to fend off your worst enemies
(02:42):
and soften your darkest hours. Sometimes the Mama Bears in
our lives are our grandma's or our sisters, our neighbors.
There was a crossing guard in the town I grew
up in I pity the impatient driver who'd honk or
in chop while us kids were crossing. Nah Ah, not
on her watch. We met our first storyteller, Donald Harrison,
in Philadelphia. Here he is at Saint Ann's Church in
(03:05):
New York City.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
The year I turned thirty, I decided it was about
damn time I got a job playing the piano and
singing in a gay bar. Sometimes you just reached that
phase of your life, you know. But it wasn't any
gay bar. It was a Philadelphia institution called Tavern on Kamak.
I had always loved Tavern. It is a medium sized
(03:33):
gay piano bar. Back then, every wall and surface was
covered in mirrors. There's a baby grand piano off in
the corner, and piano players every night accompanying themselves. There's
also a guest microphone next to them, and customers can
come up and do a solo with the piano player.
Speaker 6 (03:48):
It's great.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
This seemed like the dream side gig for me. I mean,
a chance to perform every week, people clapping at me
on a regular basis. Free drinks, yes please. So I auditioned,
and to my amazement, I got the job. When I
first started working at tavern. I inherited a small crew
of regulars. My shift was happy hour on a Friday,
(04:12):
which meant that my crew of regulars was mostly older gentlemen,
men who had been going to that same bar, though
the name in layout had changed.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Over the years for decades.
Speaker 5 (04:22):
They were twenty, thirty, forty, sometimes fifty years older than me.
They could remember when the piano was over here, when
the piano was over there, and they could recite the
long lineage of piano players who had preceded me, just
as you might the kings and queens of France. My
regulars terrified me. I wasn't what you'd call a seasoned
(04:44):
or very professional singer when I first started working there.
In fact, on my third Friday on the job, one
of these inherited regulars pity tipped me a single dollar
and then stormed out of the bar after he told
me that my performance of on the Street where You
Live was perfunctory. My background in English meant I understood
(05:06):
this word, and I understood it that I had sung
without feeling. My background in being anxious meant I was
rather destroyed by this bit of feedback. However, this man
went on to say that my perfunctory performance also proved
I had no respect for the American songbook. That's right.
(05:28):
I wasn't just bad at a single song, but I
was lousy at the entire canon. I was attempting to
perform cool. I thought, thanks for the note, I'll just
keep going. But what I wanted was to do that
job well, and that meant making men like him happy.
Because not only was this the generation of gay men
(05:49):
who had preceded me, who had spent decades of their
lives fighting for our rights and our visibility, living their
lives in such a way so as to make comfortable
the life I have today, but this was also the
generation of men who had kept alive this grand piano
bar tradition, singing the same song, making the same requests,
(06:11):
belting out over the rainbow for the fifty thousandth time,
holding on to this brand of music and live performance,
no matter where the piano was or who the piano
player was. Inside those mirrored walls was their space and
their tradition, and I wanted to be a part of it.
One of these regulars was named Mike. Do you know
(06:33):
that line from the Christmas song? Do you hear what
I hear? That goes with a voice as big as
let's see. Well, Mike has that sort of quintessential Pacific
ocean kind of voice. It's wide, it's deep, and it's
capable of totally drowning out everyone around him. But Mike
(06:53):
isn't just loud. He is also guilty of what I
like to call the I could have danced all night
power move. The last line of I could have danced
all night from My Fair Lady is as maybe you know,
hopefully you know, I could have danced, dance, danced all night.
The person performing the song gets to decide how long
(07:15):
that little beat is at the end, I could have danced, dance, danced,
hold for drama all night me I could have danced
all night. Power move occurs when someone who's not performing
the song decides that from their spot out in the audience,
they will decide when to come in on that final note.
The person who comes in ahead of the piano player
does not do it by accident. No, he does it
(07:38):
to assert his dominance. This is a type of musical
theater conquest, and it's during these moments in so many
songs that Mike takes over. But Mike's music is joyful music,
and I love him for it. Yes he overrolls my timing,
Yes he sings too loudly, but there's no question that
(07:59):
he means well, that it's inside of tavern that he's
living his best life. So one night, a few months
into my tenure there, it's seven thirty on five Friday,
and I've got one person sitting at the piano with me,
the one fan I have earned in all the weeks
of playing so far. My mom. My mom was there
(08:21):
the first night I ever played there, which was not incidentally,
also her first night in a gay bar. She had
been back a few times since, and she would tell
anyone who would listen that she was there to hear
her baby sing. So there she is, perched alone at
the piano when in walks Mike. These two had not
yet arrived there on the same night, but I had
(08:44):
envisioned their meeting, and I had envisioned it in much
the way an astronomer might the meeting of celestial objects.
I watched as Mike crossed the room, got a drink
at the bar, and then sat down across the piano
from my mom. It was just the three of us
at this point. What could I do, but begin to
(09:06):
play the lullaby of Broadway in my timid and perfunctory way.
So I start, come on along and listen to, and
then Mike joins in the la la bye Apperata. I
glance over the sheet music at my mom's eyes, and
(09:29):
my mom's eyes say what the fuck? I continue the
hip horey in BALI who and Mike continues.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Oh, lalla bye apperatay.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
I look at my mom my mom's I say what
This cannot be happening?
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Wow?
Speaker 5 (09:50):
Are we all accepting this?
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Where is the manager?
Speaker 5 (09:52):
But Mike's still like Milkman's honors away, and I can
see outrage really starting to build up in my mom.
And she begins by giving Micah a less than savory look,
a look I myself have received many times throughout my life.
This does nothing. So then she starts gesturing toward that
guest microphone, and the message for Mike is clear, go
(10:14):
up there, do your own solo, then sit down and
shut up.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I shake my head at her.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
Please, Mom, No, this is the way of the world here,
and so it has been since time immemorial, and so
it ever shall be.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
We must endure this.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
But she persists and before long, Mike finally clocks her
disdain and he says something like, do you have a problem, lady,
And my mom says, I'm just trying to listen to
my son, and then they start to argue over the piano.
I decide my only power in the situation is my
ability to overwhelm them with my show tune, so I
(10:55):
play louder, they argue louder. Still, the lyrics are an
absurd mismatch to what's unfolding in front of me. It's
all the daffodils who entertained it, Angelo's and Maxi's through this.
I hear Mike say something like, do you know how
long I've been coming here? Honey? And I think, ship
we have already reached a honey point in this gay
(11:16):
bar argument, and my myself am starting to sweat, and
I'm starting to get very angry, because, you know what,
It's hard enough to come in here week after week
and play these songs for these men and get called
and ad inadequate in all manner of vocabulary, words that
are fancy af But now now I have to do
(11:39):
it with my mom coming in and cause trouble for me.
So I get angry at her because, of course, Mike
sings too loudly. We all know that, but he is
a regular. This is the one place he should be
able to go to escape the judgment and scorn of
middle aged, suburban straight ladies from New Jersey. On the
(12:00):
other hand, Mike does sing way too loudly, and my
mom is in the gay bar for like the fifth
time in her life. She wants to hear me sing,
and I'm proud of her, and she's proud of me,
and she should be able to do it. But still
they're going out it over the piano, and my lullabyeh
broadly is getting really insane. I'm all, you rock.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Up by your baby round tile.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
Everything gots hazy, and I'm not wanting the song to
end because then what's gonna happen. What's this ridiculous fight
gonna sound like when the piano is quiet, the stupid
new bad piano player and his mom coming in and
yelling at everybody. But then, you know, then I'm worried, like,
is Mike gonna say something truly hurtful to my mom?
(12:43):
Or is my mom, who is a personal trainer, going
to beat up Mike. I watch as my mom stands
up and begins to move toward him. I wouldn't say
that she looks like a lioness stalking over for the kill,
but you know I would not say it. I feel
powerless to stop whatever is about to happen, and I
(13:06):
reached the end of the song. What else can I
do but finish? Two other people clap. My chest is
heaving in that way it does after the big final
notes of chow tunes all up there by myself, Like,
my mom gets close to Mike, and Mike looks up
at her, and then they hug.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
They hug.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
Now my own eyes say, what the fuck? What incredible
transformation has occurred? While I was so savagely pounding out
the last few lines a La Lallaby of Broadway, in
a moment, I would learn that Mike's question, do you
know how long I've been coming here?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Honey?
Speaker 5 (13:46):
Had led them to discuss their respective ages. A very
mature place to take this conversation, I might add, But
this conversation about their ages led them to discover that
they had been born within hours of one another. My
Mom and Mike were not two comets doomed from mutual annihilation.
In the midnight sky. They were birthday buddies, and it
(14:13):
was on this common ground that we could all begin
to try to get along. It's been almost twelve years
since my mom and Mike met that night at Tavern
on comec and I've played there almost every Friday we've
been open since a lot of regulars have come and
gone over the years. Some are no longer with us,
(14:33):
but my mom and Mike are still two of my
most faithful. Many times over these years, people have come
up to my mom and they've told her how awesome
it is that she's there, a mom watching her son
play piano in a gay bar. My mom talks to them,
and she hangs out with him, and they tell her
their own moms wouldn't come to a place like this.
(14:56):
My mom threatens to text them and ask them why
this is a territory she's found for herself. Around that piano.
Mike is still exactly the He still sings way too loudly.
My mom still gives them the stink eye. But a
couple years back they went out to dinner together to
celebrate their birthdays. It turns out that there continue to
(15:21):
be timeless standoffs across that piano, whether my mom's involved
or not, but in the end, keeping that grand piano
bar tradition alive is about coming together this glorious mishmash
of ages and generations to make that loud and joyful
music together. And for that, I'll be home on Friday.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
That was Donald Harrison. In addition to being a pianist,
he's a writer who also works in learning and development.
To see a picture of Donald and his mother, visit
themf dot org, where you can also download the story
or pitch a story of your own. Several years ago,
Donald's mom started doing her own number at the mic
go to song when You're Good to Mama. How fitting.
(16:22):
Our next story is from mother of two lu Anne Simms,
who told this at a story slam in Philadelphia. The
theme was celebrations. Here's Lunne.
Speaker 7 (16:39):
We were sitting around the dinner table trying to come
up with a theme for my son's fourth birthday party.
He mentioned Star Wars, but I dismissed it. Star Wars
parties are a dime a dozen. We need something more original.
My dad put a bite of asparagus in his mouth
and said, why don't you have an asparagus party? That's ridiculous,
(17:02):
We're not having an asparagus themed birthday party. Eddie doesn't
even like asparagus.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
Yeah, my son said, I don't like asparagus.
Speaker 7 (17:11):
I like broccoli, and so it was settled. The next day,
I photoshopped my son's face onto a crown of broccoli
and send invitations to all of our family and friends
please come to a broccoli party.
Speaker 6 (17:30):
I decorated all in green.
Speaker 7 (17:32):
Of course, there was a broccoli shaped cake and a
photo cutout thing where you could put your face in
get your picture taken as a stalk of broccoli, and
there was even a broccoli shaped pinata.
Speaker 6 (17:46):
The kids were all.
Speaker 7 (17:47):
Anxious to hit the pinata, but before I let them,
I gathered them around to tell them the legend of
Captain Broccoli. Captain Broccli was just a regular guy who
wanted to be a superhero, but when he went to
apply for the job, he found out that all of
the good, important superhero jobs were already filled. So the
(18:08):
only thing left for him to do is to become
the superhero for times that aren't that important. So if
you're trapped under a dresser, you want to call for
Superman or maybe Jesus to come and help you out.
But if you get the wrong flavor popsicle, you want
to call Captain broccoli. And the way that you call
(18:29):
Captain Broccoli is like this tiba tuba taba taba tuba,
which is a nonsense phrase from my childhood. Finally, it
was time to hit the pinata. They don't sell broccoli
shaped pinadas, so I had to make it. And apparently
this was a pinada of steel, because the kids went
(18:51):
through the.
Speaker 6 (18:52):
Line three or four times.
Speaker 7 (18:54):
Each and nobody could even make a dent in the pinata,
and everyone was getting really frustrated. So we decided to
let the birthday boy, my son, just hit it until
it opened. So he hit it eight or nine times,
and finally there was a little crack at the top,
and the kids started to get really excited.
Speaker 8 (19:11):
Hit it again.
Speaker 7 (19:12):
We yelled and they started chanting his name, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie,
and he hit it again and the crack got bigger,
and the kids got in their ready positions with their
loot bags open. Hit it again, and he hit it again,
and finally the pinata cracked open, and the kids were
foaming at the mask and you should have seen their
little faces when nothing came out of that pinata, but
(19:33):
raw broccoli.
Speaker 6 (19:40):
I thought. I thought that it would just.
Speaker 7 (19:43):
Be funny, but it turned out to be a fascinating
psychological experiment. Some of the kids hit the ground immediately
and started grabbing as much broccoli as they possibly could. Now,
these kids might be from vegetarian families, but I think
(20:06):
there's a population of children that no matter what it was,
it could be dog poop flying out of that. If
it comes shooting out of a pinata, they're going to
fight other children for it. Most of the kids stood there, dumbfounded,
not knowing what to do, and my husband's in the
background saying, it's Brooklyn, it's good for you. I saw
(20:30):
one little girl reluctantly bend down and fill her bag,
only to dump it out again when she thought no
one was looking. But I started to feel bad when
I noticed that some of the kids were actually crying,
and I heard one little girl say I thought it
was going to be candy, and I thought, no, kidding,
(20:52):
that's the joke.
Speaker 6 (20:55):
So I reminded them who do you call when you
need help?
Speaker 7 (21:02):
And they just glared at me and said, we're not
playing this game.
Speaker 6 (21:04):
You've done enough damage. He said, trust me, who do
you call?
Speaker 7 (21:09):
And one angry little boy said Captain Broccoli, and how
do you call him? Nobody remembered. I reminded them, Tiba
tuba tava tava taba again, Tiba tuba tapa tava taba again,
Tiba tuba tava taba taba. And on the third round,
Captain Broccoli. The actual Captain Broccoli, in the form of
(21:32):
my slightly inebriated brother, wearing green tights, a magnificent cape,
a black zorro mask, and a tremendous two foot high
crown of broccoli, came running out the back door, leaping
off the deck and spreading candy to all of the
crying children.
Speaker 6 (22:00):
The following year.
Speaker 7 (22:02):
We had a Star Wars party and.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
The oscar goes to Bleu Anne Simms for most creative
execution of a four year old birthday party. Leu Anne
Simms lives in Pennsylvania, where she's an occasional co host
of the morning show at w c h E Radio.
Lewann's brother, Jim DBA Captain Broccoli, was so popular that
he went on to make appearances at other children's events.
(22:31):
He ultimately retired when no one wanted to store, the
costume with the giant broccoli florette hat. To see pictures
of Captain Broccoli with Eddie at the party, the pinata,
and an actual shot of a shocked little girl as
she beheld that Broccoli. Visit the Moth Dot Org in
(22:54):
a moment a story about a son's passion for baseball.
I mean, he's really passionate. When the Moth Radio Hour continues.
Speaker 8 (23:06):
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by a public media
in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hickson. Next up,
Monise Jane hopes that his obsession with sports can lift
him out of a depression. From a show in Traverse City,
where we partner with City Opera House and interlock in
public radio. Here's Muniche.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
My parents are from India, so in our house that
meant we had a high bar set for academic achievement
and a specific type a professional success doctor, lawyer, engineer.
By the time my sister was twelve, she knew she
was going to be a doctor, just like my dad.
When I was nine, I called the family meeting to
let everyone know I was never going to be a doctor,
(23:56):
or a lawyer or an engineer. I was going to
be a gymnast. My parents they tolerated it, but told
me that one day I was going to have to
grow out of it. But I went to the gym
six days a week, five hours a night, and by
the time I was at teenager, I was training for
the Olympics. And then multiple injuries ended my career. My folks,
they said, all right, you got that out of your system.
(24:16):
Now it's time to focus on your education. I needed
them to be impressed with me the way they were
my sister. I just I couldn't wrap my head around
doing it their way. So I came up with the
bigger idea. When I was nineteen, I got a job
with ESPN. I was producing live segments for Sports Center,
ESPN News, hanging out with my sports titols. My folks,
(24:37):
they kept reminding me, don't let this get in away
your schoolwork. All right, fine. If that wasn't good enough,
I came up with a bigger idea. I left the
network and moved to Detroit, Michigan, a city that I love,
and I started a sports magazine. I sold ads, I
found distributors. I built a staff with grown ass people
who had kids, older than me, and we were killing it.
(24:58):
We were up to fifty thousand subscribers. People were recognizing
me on the street. Help Muhammad Ali said he liked
my magazine, but every time I see my parents, they
just asked me, when are you going back to college
get that degree. This time, there was no bigger idea.
I had to make this work. I doubled down, worked
(25:19):
twice as hard, which also meant that I pretty much
stopped sleeping entirely and started drinking and drugging the night's
away to manage my stress levels. And when I was
twenty four, my doctor told me that I was six
months away from a heart attack. I either had to
get rid of the magazine or die. So I gave up,
and something broke inside of me and I couldn't face
(25:43):
my parents. I took the money I'd saved from ESPN
in the magazine, and I ran away. I moved to
New York into a tiny one hundred and sixty square
foot studio apartment where the windows didn't even open, and
it was there that my self imposed exile began, slowly
losing contact with every human I'd ever met. The delivery
guy would just leave the food outside my apartment because
(26:03):
I couldn't even make eye contact with him. I was
a failure. My parents would call and I never knew
what to say. My dad would lecture me that I
wasn't even a part of the family anymore. My mom
would yell at me that I needed to get my
life together, and every conversation just ended in tears. So
I stopped answering their calls. Then they started sending me
(26:23):
money to keep me alive, and I took it, and
that made me hate myself so much more, and so
I just stopped leaving my apartment entirely. The TV would
be on twenty four hours a day. I wasn't watching
at all. I just needed flashing images and noise to
block out the constant stream of shame, regret, self loathing
(26:44):
that was clanging around the inside of my skull. And
that became my life every day, all day, living in
near isolation for five years. One day, a baseball game
just happened to beyond now. I hadn't watched a sporting
event of any kind since the death of my magazine.
(27:04):
It was always just too hard, But on this day
I was so broken, I just stayed emotionlessly at the
screen in front of me, and within a couple of innings,
something strangers happening. I felt myself sitting up in my bed,
engaging with something outside of my own head. I was smiling,
I mean actually smiling, for the first time in five years.
(27:26):
By the time the game ended, I'd already ordered the
MLBtv package and just started mainlining baseball. I was watching
every game, reading every article, going back over the last
five years to see everything that I'd missed. In the
middle of it all, I remember that dream I had
when I was six. One day, I'm going to see
a baseball game at all thirty MLB stadiums. It's one
(27:46):
of those silly things that a lot of baseball fans
want to do, but if you actually get a chance
to do it, and the ones who do it do
it over the course of a lifetime like a normal
human person. But in this moment, nobody even knew that
I existed. I could disappear off the planet and no
one would notice. So I said, screw it. I'm going
to do it, and I'm going to do it in
(28:07):
one season. I'm going to drive seventeen thousand miles in
ninety five days and go to a baseball game at
all thirty ballparks. I started obsessively pouring over maps and schedules,
planning out my route. Every time i'd go down to
the bodega to buy another pack of cigarettes. Instead, I
would take that money out of the ATM, go back
up to my apartment, shove it underneath my mattress. By
(28:27):
the time the next baseball season came around, i'd save
six thousand dollars and quit smoking. I was ready to go.
I called my parents to let them know what I
was doing, and they really didn't know what to say.
They were just happy that I was alive. And I
hit the road every forty eight hours. I was in
a new city, but I didn't want to just sit
(28:49):
in the ballpark alone. I needed a way to reintegrate
myself into society. The problem was I had completely forgotten
how to even have a conversation with somebody else. So
I invented a podcast. I couldn't have cared less if
anybody actually listened to this thing. I just needed an
excuse to go talk to strangers, and it was working.
People were talking to me about the stats of their
(29:11):
favorite ballplayers, the histories of their ballparks, one kid at
City Field at a Mets game, spent twenty minutes meticulously
breaking down why it was that the Yankees sucked and
that I bounced from ballpark to ballpark. I noticed that
my conversations they were evolving. I talked to a father
and son in Baltimore, where after our official interview, the
(29:32):
father pulled me aside to quietly confide to me that
he didn't really have a relationship with his eldest son,
but his youngest. His youngest loved baseball, so he knew
that at least they'd be able to talk about that.
I talked to a mother and daughter in San Francisco
who had been going to games together for twenty years,
three generations of women. In Texas, the grandmother proudly shoving
(29:52):
Little Laney, her nine year old granddaughter, in front of
my microphone, saying, little Landy, tell the nice man, what
do you do all your score reports on? And Little
Landy excitedly screams out the Texas Rangers, and I realized
we weren't really even talking about baseball anymore. We were
talking about family connection. By the time I got to La,
(30:16):
I'd already driven eight thousand miles on my own. I
was halfway downe with my tour. But this this was
my hell week because the Angels and the Dodgers rarely
play at home at the same time. I had to
catch a game in Anaheim. Drive seventeen hours up to Seattle,
turn back around, drive seventeen hours back to la then
thirty hours to Minnesota. It's four thousand miles and ten days.
(30:36):
But I was a man possessed. Nothing was going to
stop me. After my Angel's game, I hopped in the
car and headed up north. But about halfway into the drive,
my vision starts to get blurry and my body starts
to uncontrollably shake. I pull over just in time to
open the door and projectile vomit all over the side
of the highway. I didn't know what to do, so
(30:56):
I called my dad. He just sided into the phone
and said, you had food poisoning. What am I supposed
to do from here? Gatorad and pepto bismo. My mom
gets on the phone and starts scream at me, this
is ridiculous. You need to take better carry yourself, and
I hung up. I wasn't in the mood. Front of
the lecture. I made it to Seattle in time for
(31:18):
my game by double fisting gatorad and Pepto bismol. I
was staying with some family friends, so I knew they'd
be able to take care of me. The next day,
I hear a knock at the door. Nobody's home, so
I walk upstairs and through the glass door I see
the silhouette of a four foot, ten ninety pounds little woman.
I opened the door and just say, what are you
(31:40):
doing here, mother? And she says, I'm here to help
you drive. Now. She must have seen the panic on
my face because she follow that up with and I've
been listening to your podcast. I know you don't take
bathroom of food breaks when you're on the road, so
I'm not gonna take any breaks either. We're gonna stay
in your schedule. I didn't know she was listening to
(32:00):
the podcast. And then she said one more thing. I'm
driving the whole way, so you've got two options. You
sit next to me and you can sleep, or we
can talk. Now. I honestly can't remember the last time
my mom and I had been in the same room
together all without it devolving into tears. So I said, okay, Mama,
I got in the car and I immediately went to sleep.
(32:25):
I just left the entire way to LA and when
we got there, she said, I'm not going to go
to the baseball game with you. I said, why not?
She said, because you've got work to do, and if
people see you there with your mother, they're not going
to want to talk to you. I said, you're being ridiculous.
Of course you're gonna come, and I got her a ticket.
We're at Downer Stadium and I start interviewing the gentleman
sitting next to me, as I'd done it every ballpark before.
My mom. She moves to the seat behind us to
(32:46):
give us some space to chat, and after the interview
is over, I can hear of her talking to her
new seat Mat, and her new seat MAT's asking, Wow,
you must be a huge baseball fan to do this
type of road trip. My mom just answers, no, I
really don't like baseball. I like watching my son watch baseball.
(33:09):
I pretended like I didn't hear that. After the game
was over, walking back to the car and she stops me.
She wants to show me a picture she'd taken during
the game, and I looked down on her phone and
it actually gets a picture of me and the guy
that i'd been interviewing, and she just said, look, you're smiling.
I said, when are you going home, mama? And she
(33:31):
said no, no, no, no, I'm gonna drive with you
to Minnesota too. This time, there was no panic on
my face. I said, Okay, we're gonna split the drive
and let's talk. As we made our way out east,
I started talking to my mom the way that I've
been talking to these strangers at the ballpark these last
couple of months, asking her stories about her life. You know,
(33:53):
this woman she survived three wars between India and Pakistan.
I didn't know that. She told me the story of
how her and my dad's arranged marriage came to be.
I knew they were arranged. I just never knew how
or why it happened. I don't know why never bothered
to ask her that. Right before we got to Minnesota,
(34:13):
we made a quick pitstop in South Dakota at Mount Rushmore,
and they were walking up to the monument. My mom
peeled off to call my dad, and I was eavesdropping,
and I could hear her say, as immigrants to this country,
we'd always wanted to see Mount Rushmore. We just never
found a reason to make the trip. This is all
so exciting. I can't wait for you to be able
to see our son. He's just so happy. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
That was Muniche Jane. His mom flew home after getting
him safely to the next stadium, and he eventually finished
the tour, fulfilling his dream of seeing all thirty stadiums
in one single season. Since their mother's son road trip,
Moniche talks to his mom or someone in his family
almost every single day each summer. Since Moniche travels to
(35:11):
ballparks across the country, taking pictures, talking to fans, and
eating ice cream out of a mini helmet. He's currently
at work on a memoir on how baseball saved his life.
To see some pictures of Muniche with his mom, visit
the moth dot org, where you can also download the story.
(35:36):
In a moment, the bride and her mother are at
a crossroads when the Moth Radio Hour continues.
Speaker 8 (35:49):
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media
in Woods Whole, Massachusetts.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hixon. We're
highlighting stories about protective mothers. Sometimes they save the day,
and sometimes they mean well, but it gets complicated. Our
next story is told by Sochill Gonzales. You may recognize
her name as the author of critically acclaimed novels Olga Dyes,
Dreaming and Anita Demante Laughs Last. But before she was
(36:21):
a published writer, she spent some years as an acclaimed
wedding planner.
Speaker 9 (36:25):
Here's so Chill, So years ago, I was a wedding planner.
Wedding planning obviously requires you to be detail oriented and
have excellent time management skills, but you also need to
really learn how to deal with some batshit situations. So
this particular batshit happened in two thousand and nine, and
(36:49):
I remember because it was the end of the recession
and I was broke and I was just finishing up
my divorce and starting to date again. And so one
day my office phone rings and nothing good starts at
the whisper, but the woman on the other end says,
my daughter's getting married in a few weeks, and you've
got to save this wedding. And she refuses to give
(37:11):
us any more details, insisting that we must come uptown
to her apartment because only then what we understand the
scale of her conundrum.
Speaker 6 (37:19):
And well, this sounded crazy.
Speaker 9 (37:21):
I realized that I was broke, and so I agree
to go. And as she was hanging up the phone.
Speaker 6 (37:27):
She says, by the way, I'm very, very rich.
Speaker 9 (37:33):
And she was, because when we got there, she lived
in one of those grand old apartment buildings on Park Avenue,
the kind of the doorman with the uniform and the cap,
and he opens the brass door, and they're in this
giant lobby and there's only two elevators, because each elevator
goes up and opens into its own apartment. And so
we get up to the apartment and the maid and
(37:54):
the maid outfit greets us and takes us down a
long corridor into the library that's really just a room
for books, and there waiting for us alone is the
mother of the bride. And we're going to call her Mia,
just for sake of convenience, and Mia says, this is dire.
She's embarrassed of all of it, and not the library
(38:15):
or the maid per se, but her daughter was embarrassed
of being rich.
Speaker 6 (38:19):
And she had been living as a closeted rich.
Speaker 9 (38:22):
Person her entire adult life. None of her friends knew
that she was rich. Her future in laws didn't really
have any idea. And so now you know this has
been driving me a crazy, right, She's refusing my finery,
she's living in squalor, she's refusing me as clothes, she's
walking around an old navy and it's just been a nightmare.
(38:43):
And Mia, it's the cross that poor MIAs had to
bear for the last two decades. Only now everything is
coming to a head with this engagement because last year
MIA's other daughter got engaged, and Mia threw her a
giant wedding at the Pierre and blastered the ballroom and orchids.
And so now this daughter realizes, well, I can't let
my mother have anything to do with this. Otherwise the
(39:04):
jig is up. Everyone's gonna know that I'm rich. And
by the way, this impoverishment posturing isn't completely.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
New nor new to me.
Speaker 9 (39:13):
As long as I've known rich people, I've known people
like this. In fact, probably amongst us. Now, someone just
ask you to venmo them five dollars for Starbucks and
next week they'll secretly be skiing with their rich parents
and Aspen. But in any case, Maya's daughter decides she's
going to take matters into her own hands and plan
this wedding herself, armed of course, with MIA's checkbook, and
(39:34):
so she goes along. And now the wedding's a few
weeks away, and Mia finally goes to the tasting, and
Mea finally sees the venue, and Mia finally realizes this
is a piece of shit, and she turns to her
daughter and she's like, you can pretend to be poor
all you want, but I can't have my friends and
family coming to this, And so they get into a
giant fight, and they agree that the only way to
(39:55):
resolve this is by hiring a wedding planner, and the
only wedding planner that the two of them could agree
upon was my company. Now I want to say that
I was surprised by this, except that at the time
a lot of my co he editors were really doing opulence,
as in plastering the ballroom of the pier with the orchids,
and we were known for doing what I like to
(40:16):
think of as understated luxury, which in two thousand and
nine meant we knew how to make a barn seem
like a five star restaurant, So that this landed in
our lap didn't completely surprise me, and at the time
you know, we would take turns with the batshit and
the turn was mine, and so now it's me.
Speaker 6 (40:30):
And the reason why the meeting was so urgent was because.
Speaker 9 (40:32):
Mia had to get to us before her daughter did.
Her daughter was planning on calling us on the morrow
and hiring us for this affair. And Mia was like,
I needed you to get here so I could explain
to you how things were going to work.
Speaker 6 (40:42):
And they were going to work like this. You say
yes to everything she says.
Speaker 9 (40:48):
If she asked what it costs, you say, it's already
included in the contract, and then secretly, you and I
are going to plan the wedding that I want.
Speaker 6 (40:58):
Now I would have felt badly about.
Speaker 9 (41:00):
This, except that the next day when I met the daughter,
she actually did have terrible tastes or at the very
at the very least mildly insulting ideas of what she
thought poor people would do at their weddings.
Speaker 6 (41:12):
I mean, she would have had.
Speaker 9 (41:15):
Everybody sitting at picnic tables and drinking out of jam
jars if she had her chance. And so, you know,
I felt like I could do a service here because
Mia was kind of a riot and as I said,
I was kind of broke. Plus, Mia took an immediate
interest in my love life, which I really appreciated at
the time because my friends, after having just survived my divorce,
were over it.
Speaker 6 (41:35):
And I had just met this guy.
Speaker 9 (41:37):
You know, I'd been married to my ex husband for
ten years and so I'd never online dated. And I
went on the internet and I met this guy. And
he was charming, and he was handsome, and he had
a great job, and above all, he had this thing
that I used to really look for and a guy
at that time, he had a sadness about him.
Speaker 6 (41:53):
And I don't know why I needed that, I just did.
And it was so set I made. It was so sad.
Speaker 9 (42:03):
He he married his college sweetheart. They'd always intended on
having a big family. Year after year after year goes by.
There's infertility problems. Instead of bringing them together, it pulls
them apart. And he's so open and he's so vulnerable,
and he's so sad, and I just was all in.
Speaker 6 (42:22):
You know, We're texting, we're calling, we're.
Speaker 9 (42:25):
Running all over Manhattan, trapsing around it all hours of
the night, arguing the existence of God.
Speaker 6 (42:29):
All in and Mia couldn't get enough.
Speaker 9 (42:32):
I mean, she was making up reasons to have meetings
to get me to come up town, and we'd share
three bottles of wine. I tell her all about it,
and there we were, and everything was great until everything
was terrible because MIA's daughter decides that she wants to
reduce the carbon footprint of the wedding, and she wants
to do this by having edible escort cards that we
(42:53):
don't waste anything. The escort card, for those of you
who don't know, is the little piece of paper that's
at the cocktail hour that tells you what table to
sit at when the dinner starts. And MIA's daughter decides
that we're gonna save the environment by having bacon wrap
dates with a toothpick them in a teeny little tag
that has your name and the table number.
Speaker 6 (43:12):
And then you're just gonna eat it.
Speaker 9 (43:13):
And so I did what I was supposed to do,
and I said, oh, yes, oh that is a great idea.
And then immediately when she left, I emailed Mia. I said,
what are we gonna do? It's gonna look like a
table full of floating churns.
Speaker 6 (43:25):
And Mia replies.
Speaker 9 (43:27):
Oh Jesus Christ, I wish you or my daughter. Now
they say that there's no accidents. But that night, Mia
forgot to log out of her Gmail, and her daughter
went on the computer and saw the correspondence and insisted,
as one would imagine, that I'd be fired immediately, except
(43:48):
that Mia couldn't quit me, and I don't know that
I could quit Mia, And so instead we devised this
elaborate ruse, more elaborate than the original ruse.
Speaker 6 (44:00):
And we were going to have one of my employees.
Speaker 9 (44:02):
And I'm not proud of this, but we had one
of my employees pretend that she worked for the cater
and we sent an email introducing them and saying that
I was hands off.
Speaker 6 (44:11):
It's all in this woman's hands.
Speaker 9 (44:12):
And they go off and she tells her all this woe,
all of our hopes and dreams, and nothing that the
bride and this woman has to say holds any water,
because the only thing that matters is what happens between
me and Mea. And so they're off planning this modest,
eco friendly wedding, and Mea and I are planning this lavish,
I mean, environmentally unsound affair, and we are making custom
(44:33):
made furniture. We've got flowers imported from Holland wrapping around
the windows, of this lawt we're re flooring the floors,
we're covering I mean, we're landscaping a deck. It was
going to take three days to just set this party
up before it even happened. And in the meantime, I'm
still dating this guy. Only it's starting to get weird.
This divorce is starting to feel very, very complicated. It
(44:53):
involved real estate and a soft real estate market, and
only in New York to somebody say to you, well,
you know it's so difficult because of the soft real
estate market, and you say.
Speaker 6 (45:01):
Of course, But I was starting to feel.
Speaker 9 (45:05):
Like I was unwittingly sleeping with a married man and
it didn't feel good. You know, why don't you get
let things settle, see how long this takes. Let things settle,
or let the market perk up, either one, and then
call me and let's see where we are.
Speaker 6 (45:19):
You never know.
Speaker 9 (45:20):
And I really was trying to be very zen about
the whole thing, because I was really into him. But
it was hard because he was also kind of rich
and I was also kind of broke. And he never
said that he was rich, but he said things, you know,
he talked about how he'd gone to this prep school
he had a big wedding of his own at the plaza.
I could put you and two together, and so could Mia,
and she was really cheering this on.
Speaker 6 (45:42):
She'd grown up poor, so she was like, marry rich.
It's so fun. It's so fun.
Speaker 9 (45:52):
So a couple days after this breakup of sorts, Mia
calls me as usual, frantic, urgent, panicked Napkins.
Speaker 6 (46:02):
We've got to talk about napkins.
Speaker 9 (46:04):
You've got to get uptown to this linen store and
we need to talk to these napkins. And we are
there being persnickety napkins for like forever, until we then
go and have our usual lunch where we split a
salad and two bottles of wine, and she's asking about
the guy, and I tell her, you know, about what
happened and how I had to make the break, and
I was like, you know, I'm holding out hope. You
never know, love finds a way. And all of a sudden,
(46:26):
I just remember something that I couldn't believe I'd never
brought up before, and I said, you know what, Mia,
it's so funny. I was like, you know, he actually
went to the same prep school as your fake poor daughter.
Speaker 6 (46:35):
I was like, I wonder if you know him?
Speaker 8 (46:38):
Know him?
Speaker 9 (46:39):
Does Mia know him? The elevators. Mia lives on seventeen South.
His parents lived in seventeen North. She had just seen
him the weekend prior in the Hamptons with his wife
and their six year old son. Mia remembered the son's
age because she had been at the kids briss There
is no divorce, there is no apartment on the market.
(47:04):
There is nothing but this guy being a terrible, terrible person.
Speaker 6 (47:08):
Which at this point, I'm also.
Speaker 9 (47:10):
Not that sure that me and I aren't because we
are still going behind her daughter's back to plan this wedding.
We are not only having this adulterous mother daughter affair,
but we're running a can on this poor girl, who's
worst sin is that she's got terrible taste in escort cards.
I just was starting to feel terrible, but you know,
(47:32):
I was in too deep. So the day of the
wedding comes and I'm there setting up, and I'm folding
the beautiful napkins and I'm fixing the forks, and everything
is perfect. I mean, the flowers are fully in bloom.
The one hundred dollars bottles of wine are all chilled.
I've got five staff members they're secretly disguised as waiters
and very very nice sking waiters because me I didn't
(47:54):
like the original uniformance, so we upgrade it. Obviously, Now
clearly I couldn't be there because the bride never wanted
to see my face again. So I take myself to
a restaurant a few blocks away, and I'm calling in
orders to my staff, and I'm texting with frantic Mia,
who's like, she's gonna find out we've been up to.
She's gonna find out what we've been up to, and
I am assuring her, Mia, we're almost at the finish line.
(48:14):
It's gonna be a beautiful day, just a few more
hours to get through.
Speaker 6 (48:17):
She's never gonna find out.
Speaker 9 (48:18):
Now, I didn't realize that the reason why Mea was
so confident that her bride was gonna find that her
daughter was gonna find out is because Mia was gonna
get drunk and tell her. And so halfway through the reception,
she pulls her daughter aside and confesses the entire scheme,
and this poor girl on her wedding day realizes that
her life these last few weeks has been a lie.
(48:41):
She's surrounded by traders everywhere. She turns, and she of
course sees red and who.
Speaker 6 (48:46):
Can blame her? Take it from me.
Speaker 9 (48:48):
Finding out that you've been deceived does not feel good.
And she says to Mia, I refuse. You can never
see her again, you can never talk to her again.
If I find out that you're having any more contact
with the wedding planner, I'm cutting all all contact with you.
And so Mia acquiesces, and she agrees to family therapy
and individual therapy and she's never gonna see me again.
And she sends me a dramatic text message. It says
(49:10):
she knows everything. This is goodbye except Mia being Mia.
Of course it wasn't really goodbye. I still hear from
her every now and then, maybe a call, sometimes a text,
But you know, in looking back, I sometimes can't help.
But wonder was this gorgeous, lavish wedding really worth the
(49:31):
culminating in a fight between mother and daughter where they
have been better off with picnic tables and jam jars and.
Speaker 6 (49:37):
Escort cards that look like turds.
Speaker 9 (49:40):
Then again, relationships can be mended, but wedding photos are forever,
Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (49:57):
That was so chill. Gonzales. Sochill eventually left the world
of ord'eures and seating plans to become a writer, cultural critic, producer, screenwriter,
and best selling author. To all the mothers out there
who fiercely defend and protect, support, and okay, sometimes overstep,
here's hoping your efforts are received as love.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
I asked my.
Speaker 4 (50:20):
Daughter about her earliest memory. She said she was about
three and had an ice cream cone and I asked
her for a bite. And get this, the bite I
took was too big. I'm sorry, Annabelle, but in my defense,
I'm sure I only took that big bite to prevent
the cone from toppling over. I'm forever looking out.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
For you, kid.
Speaker 4 (50:40):
That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour.
We hope you'll join us next time.
Speaker 8 (50:56):
Here's episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by
me Jay Allison and Jennifer Hixon, who also hosted and
directed the stories in the show, along with Larry Rosen.
Co producer is Vicky Merrick Associate producer Emily Couch. The
rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Jenness,
Meg Bowles, Kate Keller's Marina Cluche, Lee n Gully, Suzanne Rust,
(51:20):
Brandon Grant, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Casa. Most Stories
Are True is remembered and affirm by the storytellers. Our
theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this
hour from Stan Whittmeier, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Duke Levine, and
Larry Goldings and John Snyder. We receive funding from the
(51:41):
National Endowment for the Arts. The Mouth Radio Hour is
produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special
thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah
Rhese Dennis. For more about our podcast. For information on
pitching us your own story, which we always hope you'll do,
(52:01):
and everything else, go to our website, The Moth dot org.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
We hope you enjoyed this episode of the To access
a whole bunch of episodes just like it, along with
two new episodes a week, subscribe to The Moth wherever
you get your podcasts.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hi, everybody, if you're a fan of Heavyweight, you're a
fan of stories, right, are you asking? Heavyweight producer?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I would presume anyone listening like stories. Yeah, unless there's
some real weirdos out there.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Why would they be listening to the show if they
didn't like stories, is what I'm wondering. Yeah. Anyway, if
you want to hear more true stories filled with humor
and heart, the kind of stories you know that we
aspire to tell, we think you'll love The Moth. The
Moth is a podcast that Oh man, it's one of
the early podcasts that just drew me into podcasting in general.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
You me too, Yeah, yeah, no, it was one of
the original ones that I listened to all the time
and I was like, wow, this medium is amazing.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
They're like stories that you would read in a book,
you know, they're like really beautifully and beautifully tooled.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
But they're live.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
It showcases real people from astronauts to actors, teachers to
truck drivers, scientists to singers, and they get up on
stage and they talk about their own lives in their
own words.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
And my mom's been on it.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Is that true?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
When were you planning to tell.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Me that I guess now.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Well, the episode we're sharing now is called Mama Bear,
and it's all about very appropriately, it's about.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Mothers, speaking of mothers.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
The episode is hosted by Jennifer Hickson. And these are
stories about wedding planning, something called a broccoli party, which
is very funny, and another story in which someone travels
to every baseball stadium in the country.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
I hope you like it.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, we hope you'll enjoy it. And if you do,
you can find the Moth wherever you get your podcasts.
New episodes release on Tuesdays and Fridays. And here's the show.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Jennifer Hickson.
In this hour, we'll be hearing stories by and about mothers.
The matriarch, your most insightful critic, or your greatest defender,
often both at once. Consider the archetype mama bear, fiercely protective,
running on instincts, able to fend off your worst enemies
(02:42):
and soften your darkest hours. Sometimes the Mama Bears in
our lives are our grandma's or our sisters, our neighbors.
There was a crossing guard in the town I grew
up in I pity the impatient driver who'd honk or
in chop while us kids were crossing. Nah Ah, not
on her watch. We met our first storyteller, Donald Harrison,
in Philadelphia. Here he is at Saint Ann's Church in
(03:05):
New York City.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
The year I turned thirty, I decided it was about
damn time I got a job playing the piano and
singing in a gay bar. Sometimes you just reached that
phase of your life, you know. But it wasn't any
gay bar. It was a Philadelphia institution called Tavern on Kamak.
I had always loved Tavern. It is a medium sized
(03:33):
gay piano bar. Back then, every wall and surface was
covered in mirrors. There's a baby grand piano off in
the corner, and piano players every night accompanying themselves. There's
also a guest microphone next to them, and customers can
come up and do a solo with the piano player.
Speaker 6 (03:48):
It's great.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
This seemed like the dream side gig for me. I mean,
a chance to perform every week, people clapping at me
on a regular basis. Free drinks, yes please. So I auditioned,
and to my amazement, I got the job. When I
first started working at tavern. I inherited a small crew
of regulars. My shift was happy hour on a Friday,
(04:12):
which meant that my crew of regulars was mostly older gentlemen,
men who had been going to that same bar, though
the name in layout had changed.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Over the years for decades.
Speaker 5 (04:22):
They were twenty, thirty, forty, sometimes fifty years older than me.
They could remember when the piano was over here, when
the piano was over there, and they could recite the
long lineage of piano players who had preceded me, just
as you might the kings and queens of France. My
regulars terrified me. I wasn't what you'd call a seasoned
(04:44):
or very professional singer when I first started working there.
In fact, on my third Friday on the job, one
of these inherited regulars pity tipped me a single dollar
and then stormed out of the bar after he told
me that my performance of on the Street where You
Live was perfunctory. My background in English meant I understood
(05:06):
this word, and I understood it that I had sung
without feeling. My background in being anxious meant I was
rather destroyed by this bit of feedback. However, this man
went on to say that my perfunctory performance also proved
I had no respect for the American songbook. That's right.
(05:28):
I wasn't just bad at a single song, but I
was lousy at the entire canon. I was attempting to
perform cool. I thought, thanks for the note, I'll just
keep going. But what I wanted was to do that
job well, and that meant making men like him happy.
Because not only was this the generation of gay men
(05:49):
who had preceded me, who had spent decades of their
lives fighting for our rights and our visibility, living their
lives in such a way so as to make comfortable
the life I have today, but this was also the
generation of men who had kept alive this grand piano
bar tradition, singing the same song, making the same requests,
(06:11):
belting out over the rainbow for the fifty thousandth time,
holding on to this brand of music and live performance,
no matter where the piano was or who the piano
player was. Inside those mirrored walls was their space and
their tradition, and I wanted to be a part of it.
One of these regulars was named Mike. Do you know
(06:33):
that line from the Christmas song? Do you hear what
I hear? That goes with a voice as big as
let's see. Well, Mike has that sort of quintessential Pacific
ocean kind of voice. It's wide, it's deep, and it's
capable of totally drowning out everyone around him. But Mike
(06:53):
isn't just loud. He is also guilty of what I
like to call the I could have danced all night
power move. The last line of I could have danced
all night from My Fair Lady is as maybe you know,
hopefully you know, I could have danced, dance, danced all night.
The person performing the song gets to decide how long
(07:15):
that little beat is at the end, I could have danced, dance, danced,
hold for drama all night me I could have danced
all night. Power move occurs when someone who's not performing
the song decides that from their spot out in the audience,
they will decide when to come in on that final note.
The person who comes in ahead of the piano player
does not do it by accident. No, he does it
(07:38):
to assert his dominance. This is a type of musical
theater conquest, and it's during these moments in so many
songs that Mike takes over. But Mike's music is joyful music,
and I love him for it. Yes he overrolls my timing,
Yes he sings too loudly, but there's no question that
(07:59):
he means well, that it's inside of tavern that he's
living his best life. So one night, a few months
into my tenure there, it's seven thirty on five Friday,
and I've got one person sitting at the piano with me,
the one fan I have earned in all the weeks
of playing so far. My mom. My mom was there
(08:21):
the first night I ever played there, which was not incidentally,
also her first night in a gay bar. She had
been back a few times since, and she would tell
anyone who would listen that she was there to hear
her baby sing. So there she is, perched alone at
the piano when in walks Mike. These two had not
yet arrived there on the same night, but I had
(08:44):
envisioned their meeting, and I had envisioned it in much
the way an astronomer might the meeting of celestial objects.
I watched as Mike crossed the room, got a drink
at the bar, and then sat down across the piano
from my mom. It was just the three of us
at this point. What could I do, but begin to
(09:06):
play the lullaby of Broadway in my timid and perfunctory way.
So I start, come on along and listen to, and
then Mike joins in the la la bye Apperata. I
glance over the sheet music at my mom's eyes, and
(09:29):
my mom's eyes say what the fuck? I continue the
hip horey in BALI who and Mike continues.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Oh, lalla bye apperatay.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
I look at my mom my mom's I say what
This cannot be happening?
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Wow?
Speaker 5 (09:50):
Are we all accepting this?
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Where is the manager?
Speaker 5 (09:52):
But Mike's still like Milkman's honors away, and I can
see outrage really starting to build up in my mom.
And she begins by giving Micah a less than savory look,
a look I myself have received many times throughout my life.
This does nothing. So then she starts gesturing toward that
guest microphone, and the message for Mike is clear, go
(10:14):
up there, do your own solo, then sit down and
shut up.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I shake my head at her.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
Please, Mom, No, this is the way of the world here,
and so it has been since time immemorial, and so
it ever shall be.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
We must endure this.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
But she persists and before long, Mike finally clocks her
disdain and he says something like, do you have a problem, lady,
And my mom says, I'm just trying to listen to
my son, and then they start to argue over the piano.
I decide my only power in the situation is my
ability to overwhelm them with my show tune, so I
(10:55):
play louder, they argue louder. Still, the lyrics are an
absurd mismatch to what's unfolding in front of me. It's
all the daffodils who entertained it, Angelo's and Maxi's through this.
I hear Mike say something like, do you know how
long I've been coming here? Honey? And I think, ship
we have already reached a honey point in this gay
(11:16):
bar argument, and my myself am starting to sweat, and
I'm starting to get very angry, because, you know what,
It's hard enough to come in here week after week
and play these songs for these men and get called
and ad inadequate in all manner of vocabulary, words that
are fancy af But now now I have to do
(11:39):
it with my mom coming in and cause trouble for me.
So I get angry at her because, of course, Mike
sings too loudly. We all know that, but he is
a regular. This is the one place he should be
able to go to escape the judgment and scorn of
middle aged, suburban straight ladies from New Jersey. On the
(12:00):
other hand, Mike does sing way too loudly, and my
mom is in the gay bar for like the fifth
time in her life. She wants to hear me sing,
and I'm proud of her, and she's proud of me,
and she should be able to do it. But still
they're going out it over the piano, and my lullabyeh
broadly is getting really insane. I'm all, you rock.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Up by your baby round tile.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
Everything gots hazy, and I'm not wanting the song to
end because then what's gonna happen. What's this ridiculous fight
gonna sound like when the piano is quiet, the stupid
new bad piano player and his mom coming in and
yelling at everybody. But then, you know, then I'm worried, like,
is Mike gonna say something truly hurtful to my mom?
(12:43):
Or is my mom, who is a personal trainer, going
to beat up Mike. I watch as my mom stands
up and begins to move toward him. I wouldn't say
that she looks like a lioness stalking over for the kill,
but you know I would not say it. I feel
powerless to stop whatever is about to happen, and I
(13:06):
reached the end of the song. What else can I
do but finish? Two other people clap. My chest is
heaving in that way it does after the big final
notes of chow tunes all up there by myself, Like,
my mom gets close to Mike, and Mike looks up
at her, and then they hug.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
They hug.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
Now my own eyes say, what the fuck? What incredible
transformation has occurred? While I was so savagely pounding out
the last few lines a La Lallaby of Broadway, in
a moment, I would learn that Mike's question, do you
know how long I've been coming here?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Honey?
Speaker 5 (13:46):
Had led them to discuss their respective ages. A very
mature place to take this conversation, I might add, But
this conversation about their ages led them to discover that
they had been born within hours of one another. My
Mom and Mike were not two comets doomed from mutual annihilation.
In the midnight sky. They were birthday buddies, and it
(14:13):
was on this common ground that we could all begin
to try to get along. It's been almost twelve years
since my mom and Mike met that night at Tavern
on comec and I've played there almost every Friday we've
been open since a lot of regulars have come and
gone over the years. Some are no longer with us,
(14:33):
but my mom and Mike are still two of my
most faithful. Many times over these years, people have come
up to my mom and they've told her how awesome
it is that she's there, a mom watching her son
play piano in a gay bar. My mom talks to them,
and she hangs out with him, and they tell her
their own moms wouldn't come to a place like this.
(14:56):
My mom threatens to text them and ask them why
this is a territory she's found for herself. Around that piano.
Mike is still exactly the He still sings way too loudly.
My mom still gives them the stink eye. But a
couple years back they went out to dinner together to
celebrate their birthdays. It turns out that there continue to
(15:21):
be timeless standoffs across that piano, whether my mom's involved
or not, but in the end, keeping that grand piano
bar tradition alive is about coming together this glorious mishmash
of ages and generations to make that loud and joyful
music together. And for that, I'll be home on Friday.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
That was Donald Harrison. In addition to being a pianist,
he's a writer who also works in learning and development.
To see a picture of Donald and his mother, visit
themf dot org, where you can also download the story
or pitch a story of your own. Several years ago,
Donald's mom started doing her own number at the mic
go to song when You're Good to Mama. How fitting.
(16:22):
Our next story is from mother of two lu Anne Simms,
who told this at a story slam in Philadelphia. The
theme was celebrations. Here's Lunne.
Speaker 7 (16:39):
We were sitting around the dinner table trying to come
up with a theme for my son's fourth birthday party.
He mentioned Star Wars, but I dismissed it. Star Wars
parties are a dime a dozen. We need something more original.
My dad put a bite of asparagus in his mouth
and said, why don't you have an asparagus party? That's ridiculous,
(17:02):
We're not having an asparagus themed birthday party. Eddie doesn't
even like asparagus.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
Yeah, my son said, I don't like asparagus.
Speaker 7 (17:11):
I like broccoli, and so it was settled. The next day,
I photoshopped my son's face onto a crown of broccoli
and send invitations to all of our family and friends
please come to a broccoli party.
Speaker 6 (17:30):
I decorated all in green.
Speaker 7 (17:32):
Of course, there was a broccoli shaped cake and a
photo cutout thing where you could put your face in
get your picture taken as a stalk of broccoli, and
there was even a broccoli shaped pinata.
Speaker 6 (17:46):
The kids were all.
Speaker 7 (17:47):
Anxious to hit the pinata, but before I let them,
I gathered them around to tell them the legend of
Captain Broccoli. Captain Broccli was just a regular guy who
wanted to be a superhero, but when he went to
apply for the job, he found out that all of
the good, important superhero jobs were already filled. So the
(18:08):
only thing left for him to do is to become
the superhero for times that aren't that important. So if
you're trapped under a dresser, you want to call for
Superman or maybe Jesus to come and help you out.
But if you get the wrong flavor popsicle, you want
to call Captain broccoli. And the way that you call
(18:29):
Captain Broccoli is like this tiba tuba taba taba tuba,
which is a nonsense phrase from my childhood. Finally, it
was time to hit the pinata. They don't sell broccoli
shaped pinadas, so I had to make it. And apparently
this was a pinada of steel, because the kids went
(18:51):
through the.
Speaker 6 (18:52):
Line three or four times.
Speaker 7 (18:54):
Each and nobody could even make a dent in the pinata,
and everyone was getting really frustrated. So we decided to
let the birthday boy, my son, just hit it until
it opened. So he hit it eight or nine times,
and finally there was a little crack at the top,
and the kids started to get really excited.
Speaker 8 (19:11):
Hit it again.
Speaker 7 (19:12):
We yelled and they started chanting his name, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie,
and he hit it again and the crack got bigger,
and the kids got in their ready positions with their
loot bags open. Hit it again, and he hit it again,
and finally the pinata cracked open, and the kids were
foaming at the mask and you should have seen their
little faces when nothing came out of that pinata, but
(19:33):
raw broccoli.
Speaker 6 (19:40):
I thought. I thought that it would just.
Speaker 7 (19:43):
Be funny, but it turned out to be a fascinating
psychological experiment. Some of the kids hit the ground immediately
and started grabbing as much broccoli as they possibly could. Now,
these kids might be from vegetarian families, but I think
(20:06):
there's a population of children that no matter what it was,
it could be dog poop flying out of that. If
it comes shooting out of a pinata, they're going to
fight other children for it. Most of the kids stood there, dumbfounded,
not knowing what to do, and my husband's in the
background saying, it's Brooklyn, it's good for you. I saw
(20:30):
one little girl reluctantly bend down and fill her bag,
only to dump it out again when she thought no
one was looking. But I started to feel bad when
I noticed that some of the kids were actually crying,
and I heard one little girl say I thought it
was going to be candy, and I thought, no, kidding,
(20:52):
that's the joke.
Speaker 6 (20:55):
So I reminded them who do you call when you
need help?
Speaker 7 (21:02):
And they just glared at me and said, we're not
playing this game.
Speaker 6 (21:04):
You've done enough damage. He said, trust me, who do
you call?
Speaker 7 (21:09):
And one angry little boy said Captain Broccoli, and how
do you call him? Nobody remembered. I reminded them, Tiba
tuba tava tava taba again, Tiba tuba tapa tava taba again,
Tiba tuba tava taba taba. And on the third round,
Captain Broccoli. The actual Captain Broccoli, in the form of
(21:32):
my slightly inebriated brother, wearing green tights, a magnificent cape,
a black zorro mask, and a tremendous two foot high
crown of broccoli, came running out the back door, leaping
off the deck and spreading candy to all of the
crying children.
Speaker 6 (22:00):
The following year.
Speaker 7 (22:02):
We had a Star Wars party and.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
The oscar goes to Bleu Anne Simms for most creative
execution of a four year old birthday party. Leu Anne
Simms lives in Pennsylvania, where she's an occasional co host
of the morning show at w c h E Radio.
Lewann's brother, Jim DBA Captain Broccoli, was so popular that
he went on to make appearances at other children's events.
(22:31):
He ultimately retired when no one wanted to store, the
costume with the giant broccoli florette hat. To see pictures
of Captain Broccoli with Eddie at the party, the pinata,
and an actual shot of a shocked little girl as
she beheld that Broccoli. Visit the Moth Dot Org in
(22:54):
a moment a story about a son's passion for baseball.
I mean, he's really passionate. When the Moth Radio Hour continues.
Speaker 8 (23:06):
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by a public media
in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hickson. Next up,
Monise Jane hopes that his obsession with sports can lift
him out of a depression. From a show in Traverse City,
where we partner with City Opera House and interlock in
public radio. Here's Muniche.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
My parents are from India, so in our house that
meant we had a high bar set for academic achievement
and a specific type a professional success doctor, lawyer, engineer.
By the time my sister was twelve, she knew she
was going to be a doctor, just like my dad.
When I was nine, I called the family meeting to
let everyone know I was never going to be a doctor,
(23:56):
or a lawyer or an engineer. I was going to
be a gymnast. My parents they tolerated it, but told
me that one day I was going to have to
grow out of it. But I went to the gym
six days a week, five hours a night, and by
the time I was at teenager, I was training for
the Olympics. And then multiple injuries ended my career. My folks,
they said, all right, you got that out of your system.
(24:16):
Now it's time to focus on your education. I needed
them to be impressed with me the way they were
my sister. I just I couldn't wrap my head around
doing it their way. So I came up with the
bigger idea. When I was nineteen, I got a job
with ESPN. I was producing live segments for Sports Center,
ESPN News, hanging out with my sports titols. My folks,
(24:37):
they kept reminding me, don't let this get in away
your schoolwork. All right, fine. If that wasn't good enough,
I came up with a bigger idea. I left the
network and moved to Detroit, Michigan, a city that I love,
and I started a sports magazine. I sold ads, I
found distributors. I built a staff with grown ass people
who had kids, older than me, and we were killing it.
(24:58):
We were up to fifty thousand subscribers. People were recognizing
me on the street. Help Muhammad Ali said he liked
my magazine, but every time I see my parents, they
just asked me, when are you going back to college
get that degree. This time, there was no bigger idea.
I had to make this work. I doubled down, worked
(25:19):
twice as hard, which also meant that I pretty much
stopped sleeping entirely and started drinking and drugging the night's
away to manage my stress levels. And when I was
twenty four, my doctor told me that I was six
months away from a heart attack. I either had to
get rid of the magazine or die. So I gave up,
and something broke inside of me and I couldn't face
(25:43):
my parents. I took the money I'd saved from ESPN
in the magazine, and I ran away. I moved to
New York into a tiny one hundred and sixty square
foot studio apartment where the windows didn't even open, and
it was there that my self imposed exile began, slowly
losing contact with every human I'd ever met. The delivery
guy would just leave the food outside my apartment because
(26:03):
I couldn't even make eye contact with him. I was
a failure. My parents would call and I never knew
what to say. My dad would lecture me that I
wasn't even a part of the family anymore. My mom
would yell at me that I needed to get my
life together, and every conversation just ended in tears. So
I stopped answering their calls. Then they started sending me
(26:23):
money to keep me alive, and I took it, and
that made me hate myself so much more, and so
I just stopped leaving my apartment entirely. The TV would
be on twenty four hours a day. I wasn't watching
at all. I just needed flashing images and noise to
block out the constant stream of shame, regret, self loathing
(26:44):
that was clanging around the inside of my skull. And
that became my life every day, all day, living in
near isolation for five years. One day, a baseball game
just happened to beyond now. I hadn't watched a sporting
event of any kind since the death of my magazine.
(27:04):
It was always just too hard, But on this day
I was so broken, I just stayed emotionlessly at the
screen in front of me, and within a couple of innings,
something strangers happening. I felt myself sitting up in my bed,
engaging with something outside of my own head. I was smiling,
I mean actually smiling, for the first time in five years.
(27:26):
By the time the game ended, I'd already ordered the
MLBtv package and just started mainlining baseball. I was watching
every game, reading every article, going back over the last
five years to see everything that I'd missed. In the
middle of it all, I remember that dream I had
when I was six. One day, I'm going to see
a baseball game at all thirty MLB stadiums. It's one
(27:46):
of those silly things that a lot of baseball fans
want to do, but if you actually get a chance
to do it, and the ones who do it do
it over the course of a lifetime like a normal
human person. But in this moment, nobody even knew that
I existed. I could disappear off the planet and no
one would notice. So I said, screw it. I'm going
to do it, and I'm going to do it in
(28:07):
one season. I'm going to drive seventeen thousand miles in
ninety five days and go to a baseball game at
all thirty ballparks. I started obsessively pouring over maps and schedules,
planning out my route. Every time i'd go down to
the bodega to buy another pack of cigarettes. Instead, I
would take that money out of the ATM, go back
up to my apartment, shove it underneath my mattress. By
(28:27):
the time the next baseball season came around, i'd save
six thousand dollars and quit smoking. I was ready to go.
I called my parents to let them know what I
was doing, and they really didn't know what to say.
They were just happy that I was alive. And I
hit the road every forty eight hours. I was in
a new city, but I didn't want to just sit
(28:49):
in the ballpark alone. I needed a way to reintegrate
myself into society. The problem was I had completely forgotten
how to even have a conversation with somebody else. So
I invented a podcast. I couldn't have cared less if
anybody actually listened to this thing. I just needed an
excuse to go talk to strangers, and it was working.
People were talking to me about the stats of their
(29:11):
favorite ballplayers, the histories of their ballparks, one kid at
City Field at a Mets game, spent twenty minutes meticulously
breaking down why it was that the Yankees sucked and
that I bounced from ballpark to ballpark. I noticed that
my conversations they were evolving. I talked to a father
and son in Baltimore, where after our official interview, the
(29:32):
father pulled me aside to quietly confide to me that
he didn't really have a relationship with his eldest son,
but his youngest. His youngest loved baseball, so he knew
that at least they'd be able to talk about that.
I talked to a mother and daughter in San Francisco
who had been going to games together for twenty years,
three generations of women. In Texas, the grandmother proudly shoving
(29:52):
Little Laney, her nine year old granddaughter, in front of
my microphone, saying, little Landy, tell the nice man, what
do you do all your score reports on? And Little
Landy excitedly screams out the Texas Rangers, and I realized
we weren't really even talking about baseball anymore. We were
talking about family connection. By the time I got to La,
(30:16):
I'd already driven eight thousand miles on my own. I
was halfway downe with my tour. But this this was
my hell week because the Angels and the Dodgers rarely
play at home at the same time. I had to
catch a game in Anaheim. Drive seventeen hours up to Seattle,
turn back around, drive seventeen hours back to la then
thirty hours to Minnesota. It's four thousand miles and ten days.
(30:36):
But I was a man possessed. Nothing was going to
stop me. After my Angel's game, I hopped in the
car and headed up north. But about halfway into the drive,
my vision starts to get blurry and my body starts
to uncontrollably shake. I pull over just in time to
open the door and projectile vomit all over the side
of the highway. I didn't know what to do, so
(30:56):
I called my dad. He just sided into the phone
and said, you had food poisoning. What am I supposed
to do from here? Gatorad and pepto bismo. My mom
gets on the phone and starts scream at me, this
is ridiculous. You need to take better carry yourself, and
I hung up. I wasn't in the mood. Front of
the lecture. I made it to Seattle in time for
(31:18):
my game by double fisting gatorad and Pepto bismol. I
was staying with some family friends, so I knew they'd
be able to take care of me. The next day,
I hear a knock at the door. Nobody's home, so
I walk upstairs and through the glass door I see
the silhouette of a four foot, ten ninety pounds little woman.
I opened the door and just say, what are you
(31:40):
doing here, mother? And she says, I'm here to help
you drive. Now. She must have seen the panic on
my face because she follow that up with and I've
been listening to your podcast. I know you don't take
bathroom of food breaks when you're on the road, so
I'm not gonna take any breaks either. We're gonna stay
in your schedule. I didn't know she was listening to
(32:00):
the podcast. And then she said one more thing. I'm
driving the whole way, so you've got two options. You
sit next to me and you can sleep, or we
can talk. Now. I honestly can't remember the last time
my mom and I had been in the same room
together all without it devolving into tears. So I said, okay, Mama,
I got in the car and I immediately went to sleep.
(32:25):
I just left the entire way to LA and when
we got there, she said, I'm not going to go
to the baseball game with you. I said, why not?
She said, because you've got work to do, and if
people see you there with your mother, they're not going
to want to talk to you. I said, you're being ridiculous.
Of course you're gonna come, and I got her a ticket.
We're at Downer Stadium and I start interviewing the gentleman
sitting next to me, as I'd done it every ballpark before.
My mom. She moves to the seat behind us to
(32:46):
give us some space to chat, and after the interview
is over, I can hear of her talking to her
new seat Mat, and her new seat MAT's asking, Wow,
you must be a huge baseball fan to do this
type of road trip. My mom just answers, no, I
really don't like baseball. I like watching my son watch baseball.
(33:09):
I pretended like I didn't hear that. After the game
was over, walking back to the car and she stops me.
She wants to show me a picture she'd taken during
the game, and I looked down on her phone and
it actually gets a picture of me and the guy
that i'd been interviewing, and she just said, look, you're smiling.
I said, when are you going home, mama? And she
(33:31):
said no, no, no, no, I'm gonna drive with you
to Minnesota too. This time, there was no panic on
my face. I said, Okay, we're gonna split the drive
and let's talk. As we made our way out east,
I started talking to my mom the way that I've
been talking to these strangers at the ballpark these last
couple of months, asking her stories about her life. You know,
(33:53):
this woman she survived three wars between India and Pakistan.
I didn't know that. She told me the story of
how her and my dad's arranged marriage came to be.
I knew they were arranged. I just never knew how
or why it happened. I don't know why never bothered
to ask her that. Right before we got to Minnesota,
(34:13):
we made a quick pitstop in South Dakota at Mount Rushmore,
and they were walking up to the monument. My mom
peeled off to call my dad, and I was eavesdropping,
and I could hear her say, as immigrants to this country,
we'd always wanted to see Mount Rushmore. We just never
found a reason to make the trip. This is all
so exciting. I can't wait for you to be able
to see our son. He's just so happy. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
That was Muniche Jane. His mom flew home after getting
him safely to the next stadium, and he eventually finished
the tour, fulfilling his dream of seeing all thirty stadiums
in one single season. Since their mother's son road trip,
Moniche talks to his mom or someone in his family
almost every single day each summer. Since Moniche travels to
(35:11):
ballparks across the country, taking pictures, talking to fans, and
eating ice cream out of a mini helmet. He's currently
at work on a memoir on how baseball saved his life.
To see some pictures of Muniche with his mom, visit
the moth dot org, where you can also download the story.
(35:36):
In a moment, the bride and her mother are at
a crossroads when the Moth Radio Hour continues.
Speaker 8 (35:49):
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media
in Woods Whole, Massachusetts.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hixon. We're
highlighting stories about protective mothers. Sometimes they save the day,
and sometimes they mean well, but it gets complicated. Our
next story is told by Sochill Gonzales. You may recognize
her name as the author of critically acclaimed novels Olga Dyes,
Dreaming and Anita Demante Laughs Last. But before she was
(36:21):
a published writer, she spent some years as an acclaimed
wedding planner.
Speaker 9 (36:25):
Here's so Chill, So years ago, I was a wedding planner.
Wedding planning obviously requires you to be detail oriented and
have excellent time management skills, but you also need to
really learn how to deal with some batshit situations. So
this particular batshit happened in two thousand and nine, and
(36:49):
I remember because it was the end of the recession
and I was broke and I was just finishing up
my divorce and starting to date again. And so one
day my office phone rings and nothing good starts at
the whisper, but the woman on the other end says,
my daughter's getting married in a few weeks, and you've
got to save this wedding. And she refuses to give
(37:11):
us any more details, insisting that we must come uptown
to her apartment because only then what we understand the
scale of her conundrum.
Speaker 6 (37:19):
And well, this sounded crazy.
Speaker 9 (37:21):
I realized that I was broke, and so I agree
to go. And as she was hanging up the phone.
Speaker 6 (37:27):
She says, by the way, I'm very, very rich.
Speaker 9 (37:33):
And she was, because when we got there, she lived
in one of those grand old apartment buildings on Park Avenue,
the kind of the doorman with the uniform and the cap,
and he opens the brass door, and they're in this
giant lobby and there's only two elevators, because each elevator
goes up and opens into its own apartment. And so
we get up to the apartment and the maid and
(37:54):
the maid outfit greets us and takes us down a
long corridor into the library that's really just a room
for books, and there waiting for us alone is the
mother of the bride. And we're going to call her Mia,
just for sake of convenience, and Mia says, this is dire.
She's embarrassed of all of it, and not the library
(38:15):
or the maid per se, but her daughter was embarrassed
of being rich.
Speaker 6 (38:19):
And she had been living as a closeted rich.
Speaker 9 (38:22):
Person her entire adult life. None of her friends knew
that she was rich. Her future in laws didn't really
have any idea. And so now you know this has
been driving me a crazy, right, She's refusing my finery,
she's living in squalor, she's refusing me as clothes, she's
walking around an old navy and it's just been a nightmare.
(38:43):
And Mia, it's the cross that poor MIAs had to
bear for the last two decades. Only now everything is
coming to a head with this engagement because last year
MIA's other daughter got engaged, and Mia threw her a
giant wedding at the Pierre and blastered the ballroom and orchids.
And so now this daughter realizes, well, I can't let
my mother have anything to do with this. Otherwise the
(39:04):
jig is up. Everyone's gonna know that I'm rich. And
by the way, this impoverishment posturing isn't completely.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
New nor new to me.
Speaker 9 (39:13):
As long as I've known rich people, I've known people
like this. In fact, probably amongst us. Now, someone just
ask you to venmo them five dollars for Starbucks and
next week they'll secretly be skiing with their rich parents
and Aspen. But in any case, Maya's daughter decides she's
going to take matters into her own hands and plan
this wedding herself, armed of course, with MIA's checkbook, and
(39:34):
so she goes along. And now the wedding's a few
weeks away, and Mia finally goes to the tasting, and
Mea finally sees the venue, and Mia finally realizes this
is a piece of shit, and she turns to her
daughter and she's like, you can pretend to be poor
all you want, but I can't have my friends and
family coming to this, And so they get into a
giant fight, and they agree that the only way to
(39:55):
resolve this is by hiring a wedding planner, and the
only wedding planner that the two of them could agree
upon was my company. Now I want to say that
I was surprised by this, except that at the time
a lot of my co he editors were really doing opulence,
as in plastering the ballroom of the pier with the orchids,
and we were known for doing what I like to
(40:16):
think of as understated luxury, which in two thousand and
nine meant we knew how to make a barn seem
like a five star restaurant, So that this landed in
our lap didn't completely surprise me, and at the time
you know, we would take turns with the batshit and
the turn was mine, and so now it's me.
Speaker 6 (40:30):
And the reason why the meeting was so urgent was because.
Speaker 9 (40:32):
Mia had to get to us before her daughter did.
Her daughter was planning on calling us on the morrow
and hiring us for this affair. And Mia was like,
I needed you to get here so I could explain
to you how things were going to work.
Speaker 6 (40:42):
And they were going to work like this. You say
yes to everything she says.
Speaker 9 (40:48):
If she asked what it costs, you say, it's already
included in the contract, and then secretly, you and I
are going to plan the wedding that I want.
Speaker 6 (40:58):
Now I would have felt badly about.
Speaker 9 (41:00):
This, except that the next day when I met the daughter,
she actually did have terrible tastes or at the very
at the very least mildly insulting ideas of what she
thought poor people would do at their weddings.
Speaker 6 (41:12):
I mean, she would have had.
Speaker 9 (41:15):
Everybody sitting at picnic tables and drinking out of jam
jars if she had her chance. And so, you know,
I felt like I could do a service here because
Mia was kind of a riot and as I said,
I was kind of broke. Plus, Mia took an immediate
interest in my love life, which I really appreciated at
the time because my friends, after having just survived my divorce,
were over it.
Speaker 6 (41:35):
And I had just met this guy.
Speaker 9 (41:37):
You know, I'd been married to my ex husband for
ten years and so I'd never online dated. And I
went on the internet and I met this guy. And
he was charming, and he was handsome, and he had
a great job, and above all, he had this thing
that I used to really look for and a guy
at that time, he had a sadness about him.
Speaker 6 (41:53):
And I don't know why I needed that, I just did.
And it was so set I made. It was so sad.
Speaker 9 (42:03):
He he married his college sweetheart. They'd always intended on
having a big family. Year after year after year goes by.
There's infertility problems. Instead of bringing them together, it pulls
them apart. And he's so open and he's so vulnerable,
and he's so sad, and I just was all in.
Speaker 6 (42:22):
You know, We're texting, we're calling, we're.
Speaker 9 (42:25):
Running all over Manhattan, trapsing around it all hours of
the night, arguing the existence of God.
Speaker 6 (42:29):
All in and Mia couldn't get enough.
Speaker 9 (42:32):
I mean, she was making up reasons to have meetings
to get me to come up town, and we'd share
three bottles of wine. I tell her all about it,
and there we were, and everything was great until everything
was terrible because MIA's daughter decides that she wants to
reduce the carbon footprint of the wedding, and she wants
to do this by having edible escort cards that we
(42:53):
don't waste anything. The escort card, for those of you
who don't know, is the little piece of paper that's
at the cocktail hour that tells you what table to
sit at when the dinner starts. And MIA's daughter decides
that we're gonna save the environment by having bacon wrap
dates with a toothpick them in a teeny little tag
that has your name and the table number.
Speaker 6 (43:12):
And then you're just gonna eat it.
Speaker 9 (43:13):
And so I did what I was supposed to do,
and I said, oh, yes, oh that is a great idea.
And then immediately when she left, I emailed Mia. I said,
what are we gonna do? It's gonna look like a
table full of floating churns.
Speaker 6 (43:25):
And Mia replies.
Speaker 9 (43:27):
Oh Jesus Christ, I wish you or my daughter. Now
they say that there's no accidents. But that night, Mia
forgot to log out of her Gmail, and her daughter
went on the computer and saw the correspondence and insisted,
as one would imagine, that I'd be fired immediately, except
(43:48):
that Mia couldn't quit me, and I don't know that
I could quit Mia, And so instead we devised this
elaborate ruse, more elaborate than the original ruse.
Speaker 6 (44:00):
And we were going to have one of my employees.
Speaker 9 (44:02):
And I'm not proud of this, but we had one
of my employees pretend that she worked for the cater
and we sent an email introducing them and saying that
I was hands off.
Speaker 6 (44:11):
It's all in this woman's hands.
Speaker 9 (44:12):
And they go off and she tells her all this woe,
all of our hopes and dreams, and nothing that the
bride and this woman has to say holds any water,
because the only thing that matters is what happens between
me and Mea. And so they're off planning this modest,
eco friendly wedding, and Mea and I are planning this lavish,
I mean, environmentally unsound affair, and we are making custom
(44:33):
made furniture. We've got flowers imported from Holland wrapping around
the windows, of this lawt we're re flooring the floors,
we're covering I mean, we're landscaping a deck. It was
going to take three days to just set this party
up before it even happened. And in the meantime, I'm
still dating this guy. Only it's starting to get weird.
This divorce is starting to feel very, very complicated. It
(44:53):
involved real estate and a soft real estate market, and
only in New York to somebody say to you, well,
you know it's so difficult because of the soft real
estate market, and you say.
Speaker 6 (45:01):
Of course, But I was starting to feel.
Speaker 9 (45:05):
Like I was unwittingly sleeping with a married man and
it didn't feel good. You know, why don't you get
let things settle, see how long this takes. Let things settle,
or let the market perk up, either one, and then
call me and let's see where we are.
Speaker 6 (45:19):
You never know.
Speaker 9 (45:20):
And I really was trying to be very zen about
the whole thing, because I was really into him. But
it was hard because he was also kind of rich
and I was also kind of broke. And he never
said that he was rich, but he said things, you know,
he talked about how he'd gone to this prep school
he had a big wedding of his own at the plaza.
I could put you and two together, and so could Mia,
and she was really cheering this on.
Speaker 6 (45:42):
She'd grown up poor, so she was like, marry rich.
It's so fun. It's so fun.
Speaker 9 (45:52):
So a couple days after this breakup of sorts, Mia
calls me as usual, frantic, urgent, panicked Napkins.
Speaker 6 (46:02):
We've got to talk about napkins.
Speaker 9 (46:04):
You've got to get uptown to this linen store and
we need to talk to these napkins. And we are
there being persnickety napkins for like forever, until we then
go and have our usual lunch where we split a
salad and two bottles of wine, and she's asking about
the guy, and I tell her, you know, about what
happened and how I had to make the break, and
I was like, you know, I'm holding out hope. You
never know, love finds a way. And all of a sudden,
(46:26):
I just remember something that I couldn't believe I'd never
brought up before, and I said, you know what, Mia,
it's so funny. I was like, you know, he actually
went to the same prep school as your fake poor daughter.
Speaker 6 (46:35):
I was like, I wonder if you know him?
Speaker 8 (46:38):
Know him?
Speaker 9 (46:39):
Does Mia know him? The elevators. Mia lives on seventeen South.
His parents lived in seventeen North. She had just seen
him the weekend prior in the Hamptons with his wife
and their six year old son. Mia remembered the son's
age because she had been at the kids briss There
is no divorce, there is no apartment on the market.
(47:04):
There is nothing but this guy being a terrible, terrible person.
Speaker 6 (47:08):
Which at this point, I'm also.
Speaker 9 (47:10):
Not that sure that me and I aren't because we
are still going behind her daughter's back to plan this wedding.
We are not only having this adulterous mother daughter affair,
but we're running a can on this poor girl, who's
worst sin is that she's got terrible taste in escort cards.
I just was starting to feel terrible, but you know,
(47:32):
I was in too deep. So the day of the
wedding comes and I'm there setting up, and I'm folding
the beautiful napkins and I'm fixing the forks, and everything
is perfect. I mean, the flowers are fully in bloom.
The one hundred dollars bottles of wine are all chilled.
I've got five staff members they're secretly disguised as waiters
and very very nice sking waiters because me I didn't
(47:54):
like the original uniformance, so we upgrade it. Obviously, Now
clearly I couldn't be there because the bride never wanted
to see my face again. So I take myself to
a restaurant a few blocks away, and I'm calling in
orders to my staff, and I'm texting with frantic Mia,
who's like, she's gonna find out we've been up to.
She's gonna find out what we've been up to, and
I am assuring her, Mia, we're almost at the finish line.
(48:14):
It's gonna be a beautiful day, just a few more
hours to get through.
Speaker 6 (48:17):
She's never gonna find out.
Speaker 9 (48:18):
Now, I didn't realize that the reason why Mea was
so confident that her bride was gonna find that her
daughter was gonna find out is because Mia was gonna
get drunk and tell her. And so halfway through the reception,
she pulls her daughter aside and confesses the entire scheme,
and this poor girl on her wedding day realizes that
her life these last few weeks has been a lie.
(48:41):
She's surrounded by traders everywhere. She turns, and she of
course sees red and who.
Speaker 6 (48:46):
Can blame her? Take it from me.
Speaker 9 (48:48):
Finding out that you've been deceived does not feel good.
And she says to Mia, I refuse. You can never
see her again, you can never talk to her again.
If I find out that you're having any more contact
with the wedding planner, I'm cutting all all contact with you.
And so Mia acquiesces, and she agrees to family therapy
and individual therapy and she's never gonna see me again.
And she sends me a dramatic text message. It says
(49:10):
she knows everything. This is goodbye except Mia being Mia.
Of course it wasn't really goodbye. I still hear from
her every now and then, maybe a call, sometimes a text,
But you know, in looking back, I sometimes can't help.
But wonder was this gorgeous, lavish wedding really worth the
(49:31):
culminating in a fight between mother and daughter where they
have been better off with picnic tables and jam jars and.
Speaker 6 (49:37):
Escort cards that look like turds.
Speaker 9 (49:40):
Then again, relationships can be mended, but wedding photos are forever,
Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (49:57):
That was so chill. Gonzales. Sochill eventually left the world
of ord'eures and seating plans to become a writer, cultural critic, producer, screenwriter,
and best selling author. To all the mothers out there
who fiercely defend and protect, support, and okay, sometimes overstep,
here's hoping your efforts are received as love.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
I asked my.
Speaker 4 (50:20):
Daughter about her earliest memory. She said she was about
three and had an ice cream cone and I asked
her for a bite. And get this, the bite I
took was too big. I'm sorry, Annabelle, but in my defense,
I'm sure I only took that big bite to prevent
the cone from toppling over. I'm forever looking out.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
For you, kid.
Speaker 4 (50:40):
That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour.
We hope you'll join us next time.
Speaker 8 (50:56):
Here's episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by
me Jay Allison and Jennifer Hixon, who also hosted and
directed the stories in the show, along with Larry Rosen.
Co producer is Vicky Merrick Associate producer Emily Couch. The
rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Jenness,
Meg Bowles, Kate Keller's Marina Cluche, Lee n Gully, Suzanne Rust,
(51:20):
Brandon Grant, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Casa. Most Stories
Are True is remembered and affirm by the storytellers. Our
theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this
hour from Stan Whittmeier, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Duke Levine, and
Larry Goldings and John Snyder. We receive funding from the
(51:41):
National Endowment for the Arts. The Mouth Radio Hour is
produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special
thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah
Rhese Dennis. For more about our podcast. For information on
pitching us your own story, which we always hope you'll do,
(52:01):
and everything else, go to our website, The Moth dot org.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
We hope you enjoyed this episode of the To access
a whole bunch of episodes just like it, along with
two new episodes a week, subscribe to The Moth wherever
you get your podcasts.
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