November 2, 2017 • 40 mins
When Christina was in 11th grade, her foster mother made her quit playing basketball. After that, she felt like her life never got back on course. And so, she’s always wanted to ask her foster mother: why’d you make me quit?
Credits
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein.
This episode was also produced by Kalila Holt. The senior producer is Kaitlin Roberts.
Editing by Jorge Just, Alex Blumberg, and Wendy Dorr.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Stevie Lane, and Jackie Cohen.
The show was mixed by Kate Bilinski.
Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, and Edwin, with additional music by Blue Dot Sessions and Hew Time. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, Hey, do you have a copy of TV Guide?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
No?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
No, why I can't find my copy? And I was
wondering what was on TV? Don't don't you remember?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Don't you remember? Don't you don't?
Speaker 4 (00:27):
Wait?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Wait, don't you remember calling people up on the phone.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
I do remember that, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Just just to see what was on. I remember calling
on my aunt Tilly because I was too I was
too lazy to get up off the couch to look
for the TV Guide, so I just called her up.
Who woman could hardly walk and she had to search
around for a TV guide to go. I'm GIMILTT Media.
(00:54):
I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight today's episode, Christina.
This is the best of all possible worlds. My father
(01:15):
was fond of saying. The words were spoken contentedly, often
while reclining in a barca lounger belt buckle undone after
a large meal of baked beans and lamb chops. But
what did my father know of other worlds? He'd held
down the same job and was married to the same
woman for decades plus. He hardly left the house. But
(01:37):
what he did know was that this world had one
thing over all of those other worlds. It existed for
my father. That was enough to make it best. I,
on the other hand, am not one over so easily.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Existence is a nice quality, a fine quality, but going
so far as to call a world that contains both
soul patches and puddles the best possible anything seems a
little extreme, and so imagining other worlds the same, only
better is just too irresistible. In spite of the pain
(02:17):
such thinking inevitably invites. Why don't we start from the beginning. Okay,
this is Christina, and like me, she knows this world
can use a few tweaks. Overall, she says her life
hasn't been a bad one, It's just not the one
she was meant to live. She's worked as a waitress,
a receptionist, as a home care worker, the kinds of
(02:40):
jobs you do, but not necessarily the kind you dream about. Lately,
she's been helping run her husband's company.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
It's a disc golfing backpack company.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Say sorry, say that again. It's a what disc golf
backpack is? What is disc golf?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
It's like ball golf, but instead of balls and clubs,
you have frisbees.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Oh, when you say ball golf, you're talking about golf.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Golf like a regular golf.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, okay, I've never heard it referred to distinguished as
ball golf, but I.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Well, only disc golfers call it ball golf.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
So, but how do you how do you get a
frisbee in a golf hole?
Speaker 4 (03:16):
No, it's actually not a hole, it's a basket.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Oh my goodness. Before she started pining after better worlds,
Christina was focused on just one, the world of small
town western Canada.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
I lived with my mom. She was a single mom.
My dad left when I was around one, and my
mom was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Christina was just a kid, so a lot of it's
now fuzzy, but she remembers bits of things, her mom
going off her meds and beginning to hear voices, her
mom waking her in the middle of the night and
saying they had to leave right away. She remembers running
with her mom down dark streets.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
She started becoming violent and she would just you know,
hit me with the phone handle, or this one time
she came after me with a high heeled shoe. There's
no food in the house. She wouldn't do laundry, like
the dirty clothes would pile up in the living room, like,
I remember this massive mound of dirty clothes, and I
(04:16):
remember this kid made fun of me for having dirty pants,
and so I started stealing clothes just so I could
have clean clothes to go to school.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
When you were a kid trying to survive on your own,
the unthinkable can start to seem normal. To escape her house,
Christina took a job caring for two boys not much
younger than herself. She became a twelve year old live
in nanny.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
So I ended up moving in with this family and
looking after the boys. They paid me a little bit,
and I quit school to be a nanny.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
When she stopped showing up at school, social services removed
Christina from the nannying house, but instead of bringing her
back to her mom, they took her to a fi
her home. She was sent to live with an older
couple and their grandson. They lived on the fancier side
of town in a house decorated with candleholders and decorative pistols.
(05:14):
The foster mother was a woman named Isabelle. Her grandson, David,
was the golden boy who could do no wrong. From
day one, Christina struggled for Isabelle's approval.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
My foster mother and I kind of butted heads a
little bit or a lot.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Although Isabelle was only an inch taller, Christina was scared
of her. Her foster mother communicated through rules and punishments.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
She was very strict. I was five minutes late for curfew.
I would be grounded for a month. It felt like
I was always grounded and afraid all the time, and
kind of walking on eggshells, and yeah, just feeling always
really intimidated and scared. I was always scared.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
And when she got scared, Christina would go silent. As
a result, she never once stood up to Isabelle. It
was while living in Isabelle's world that another better world
presented itself to Christina, a world with rules that were
(06:24):
easy to understand, a world where someone was always keeping
score and keeping things fair. This was the eighty four
x fifty foot world of a basketball court.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
I can't explain how much I was obsessed with basketball.
I would practice at like six in the morning at
the school. I would practice on weekends. I'd watch the
NBA games with Clyde the Glide and Charles Barkley, and
then my name was in the paper a few times.
I think I have some paper clippings of like high scoring.
(06:55):
I loved, loved, loved basketball.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
On the basketball court and it was never scared. It
was a place where, for the first time in her life,
she felt in control and confident. Her foster brother, David,
a popular jock, spent hours helping her get better. She
joined a team and quickly became a high scorer. Eventually
she was made team captain.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
They would always put me inside, like I would always
have to guard the post.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
When Christina talks about basketball, she lights up, and I
want to encourage her to keep talking by asking questions.
But my only real knowledge of basketball comes from watching
the Harlem Globetrotters. I was in my thirties before I
learned it was illegal to bring stilts onto the court,
so my questions are limited.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
We tall no only five to six. But I guess
I kind of had this unrealistic view of myself where
I thought I was taller than I was because off court,
I was like kind of meek, and I'd just follow
the crowd and I wouldn't create any waves. I didn't
(07:59):
really have an opinion, but on the court, I was
a force to be reckoned with. It was like the
only time where I felt powerful.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
It was around this time that a plan began to
take shape. If she kept practicing and kept winning, she'd
get a basketball scholarship. Christina knew that was her only
hope of getting into college.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
I wanted to get out of that circle of welfare
and illness and living from paycheck to paycheck and just
feeling just being poor.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
It sucked, which brings us to the moment that thirty
years later, Christina still can't stop thinking about. She'd just
come home from school when Isabelle called her into the kitchen,
sat her down at the table, and presented her with
an ultimatum.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
She said, you have to get your grades up. You
have to work harder at school, and so in order
for me to be able to play basketball following year,
which would have been eleventh grade, I had to have
an average of a bee in every class. But I
was really bad at math and chemistry, and I didn't
(09:13):
make it. I wasn't allowed to play basketball.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
What she remembers most about that time was watching a
lot of TV and overeating and the chores. After forcing
Christina to quit the basketball team, Isabelle handed her chores
that felt like ironic punishments from the Judy Bloom version
of Dante's Inferno. She had to bake cookies for the family,
but because of her weight gain, she wasn't allowed to
(09:39):
eat any, and when she dusted the house, Isabelle instructed
her to pick up David's basketball trophies, dust each one,
and dust the shelf underneath. All the while, Christina felt
her loss acutely of basketball and the better world had promised.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
She took something from me that I that I've not
been able to get back.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
What is that thing?
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Yeah, and I don't even know. I don't. I don't.
When I say that out loud, it sounds ridiculous, but
it feels like that passion for something it dashed this
huge dream that I had.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
For my life. Christina still wonders why why did Isabelle
take away basketball, the only thing that really mattered to her,
that would have given her a better life, But all
these years she's been too afraid to ask.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
She's going to be ninety five in July. The thought
of talking to her about it petrifies me a little bit,
like there's still a part of me that is scared
of her, which is ridiculous. And what do you want,
I think, yeah, I think I want to know, like
(11:00):
why she made my life so difficult, if it was
just to break me down, if she had some kind
of thing against.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Me, And what do you want to hear her say?
Speaker 4 (11:16):
I guess I want to just hear her say that
she just genuinely wanted me to have better grades. But
I know that that's just such bs. For whatever reason,
I've let go of a lot of things that have happened,
but for whatever reason, this one thing, the basketball thing,
not letting me play basketball. I'm having such a hard
(11:38):
time letting go of that and forgiving her. I want
to let it go.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
So you want to go talk to her?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
You, and you want me to come? Yes, I get
really mealy mouthed when I'm in the same room as
like strong willed, scary older women. I'll tell you that
right now, I'm not going to be much help.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
So we're doing it.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
It sounds like we're doing it all right. We're gonna
go talk to that scary lady after the break. How
much mincing can a Meilie mouth mince? When a Melie
mouth meets a menacing miss who writes this stuff? I
guess I do once I gave Christina my word that
(12:28):
i'd help, I approached CEO and Gimblet founder Alex Bloomberg
to ask if he could fly me to the British
Columbian interior to confront a ninety five year old woman
about something she may or may not have said some
thirty years ago, to which Alex asked, why are you
always standing just outside the door whenever I get out
of the bathroom? And I said it was a coincidence,
(12:48):
although I might have pronounced it Quinki dink to be playful.
And he asked how long this trip would take me
out of the office, and I said a week, and
he said to take longer if I needed it. So
I was off to Canada.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Tail de nos ai, are you to?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
I meet Christina and her husband Levi at the Colonna
Airport in British Columbia. They'd just flown in from Portland,
and the look of trust on their faces is daunting.
When meeting new people, especially people I'm about to help.
I'm more comfortable with looks of skepticism or anticipatory disappointment.
Trust was disconcerting, Yes I have. It was an hour
(13:47):
and a half drive to Isabelle's. So we made our
way to the airport rental desk to get a car
Goldstein G.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
O L D.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
And I just asked what that is there?
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Oh, it's just a we're doing a radio story.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
So I've just do you mind turning that off and
put away?
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah? If I couldn't even stand up to the car
rental clerk, what hope did I have of helping Christina
stand up to Isabelle.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
It's hot in here, I want to.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Say, it's been well over two years since Christina's seen Isabelle.
She's feeling anxious, so I try to keep the mood positive.
I bet the thrift stores are really good around here.
I point out foreign license plates, and because we're in
a foreign country, there are many pretty Have you guys
(14:43):
been watching this show called Little Big Lies or big
little Lies or little big Lies? Well set, I think so.
Isabelle lives on the ground floor of a squat apartment
(15:05):
block mostly inhabited by seniors. We wait. When no one answers,
we ring the bell. The door opens. I heard you
the first time, Isabelle says. Christina smiles in spite of herself.
(15:30):
She can't help but get a kick out of Isabelle.
Isabelle peers up at us from behind her walker, Christina's husband,
Levi makes introductions, isabel Hi, how are you doing?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (15:43):
That?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Oh? Is me reacting to Isabelle's handshake, a surprisingly powerful
thing that yanks me through the doorframe. Although a diminutive
woman with white, puffy hair and wirerim glasses, Isabelle's just
established herself as the alpha. Nice to meet you, Nice.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
To meet you.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Okay, you seem to be doing great.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
I'm doing not bad for my age, I guess.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Isabelle's apartment is tidy and dim, decorated with candles that
haven't been lit in years. We slowly follow her down
a narrow hallway to her living room, where she seats
herself in a faded blue mechanized armchair. On the drive over,
Christina mentioned that Isabelle is legally blind, but I misremember
this as Isabelle being legally deaf, so I compliment her
(16:35):
on how well she's following along. Well, I'm not talking
very loud, and you you've been able to hear everything.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
So I did say there's nothing wrong with my ears right.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
And you did.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Not.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
To recover from this faux pas, I offer Isabelle a
chance to feel my face run her hands through my beard,
which is something I think I saw done in the mirror.
If ever, you want to feel my stubble, or I.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Don't go running around feeling beards.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I decide that now's as good a time as any
to offer around the airport treats I bought during my layover.
I brought some refreshments. Since I don't want to put
Isabelle out by asking for a party tray, I scooted
my travel socks and underwear to the side of my
backpack and proffer them straight from the bag, some chocolate
(17:26):
covered nuts and such.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Not right now, thank you?
Speaker 1 (17:29):
No, okay, I'll leave them in the bag. If I've
learned anything from my work in the business of forcing
people to ask terrifying questions, it was that it's always
best to just get it over with. Ask the question
why did you ruin my life? Get the answer, and
(17:51):
head back to the hotel bar to eat the juiciest,
fattiest tea bone steak that Gimlet Media's fourteen dollars per
dim allows. But staging is everything I need to be
off hand subtle. Do you Christina, do you have anything
that you you want to ask about, or Christina looks
(18:25):
down at her hands and tightens her lips. Of course
I understand her hesitation. Isabelle is even more intimidating in
person than Christina made her out, and nothing about being
here can possibly feel much like coming home. The walls
and shelves are loaded with photos of Isabelle's children, grandchildren,
and great grandchildren, but there isn't a single photo anywhere
(18:47):
of her only foster child, Christina. To break the silence,
I ask Isabelle why she originally took Christina into her
home in the first place.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
And one of my children left a child for me
to raise my grandson. Yeah, so I thought life was
just my husband and I. We were both older. It
would be kind of very dull for him. So I
thought that having someone else around the house would make
make it a little more homey for him. But I
(19:20):
hadn't chosen Christina. Christina was brought to me and it
was just she was just there. This wild looking thing
seemed a little bit of training to live in a home,
so obviously she hadn't been brought up with anything. I
just thought any child living under my roof had to
be taught.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Something meaning like what kind of things like you mean
normal like rules and.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Well rules, yeah, the rules. I don't think that our
rules were terribly.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Strict, really, I mean I felt like they were strict.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Well maybe you thought so, that most kids do, but
there were the the same rule as my kid's head.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Christina hesitates. You can see it's hard for her to
talk back to Isabelle even now.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
But then she says, but David didn't have rules, No,
he didn't need any.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
He is the most perfect person I've ever.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Raised, Christina. Another person she happened to have raised, is
seated a couple feet away from her. Christina stares ahead blankly,
not saying anything. So I press Isabelle, Well, you must
have done something wrong. I mean it's only.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Very little. You'd be surprised how perfect he was.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Was that hard though, being like side by side with
someone who.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Is just so No, I think it was good for.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Her, Christina, Is that is that how you feel?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
It was hard?
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (20:52):
It was really hard.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Something else that's been hard is finding the courage to
ask the question that brought her here. Christina gives it
a shot, but after some throat clearing again, she goes silent,
go ahead and ask.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
I think the one thing that I have kind of
always wondered is do you remember I think it was
in tenth grade and I had been playing basketball and
you told me that I had to get my grades
(21:36):
up where I couldn't play basketball anymore.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 3 (21:41):
No?
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Okay, so I didn't get my grades up and I
had to quit the team.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
I don't remember that, Agittall, I don't know. I still.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Was. It was devastating for me.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Why did you get your grade out there?
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:10):
I asked Christina if she could explain to Isabelle why
losing basketball hurt so much.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
Not without crying.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
I felt like.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
It was like the one thing that I.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Was really good at.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Are you surprised to hear Christina talk about how much
she loved basketball?
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Like?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Was that something that you knew back then?
Speaker 3 (22:37):
I didn't know what.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
No, did Christina? Did you ever express it?
Speaker 3 (22:42):
I don't think she did. I don't think so. No,
I don't think you did.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
I think the reason why, like it still affects me now,
it is because I didn't fight.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
For it, and how could she have. She never felt
like she had the right to stop her feet to
slam the bedroom door in so many words, to act
like someone's kid. I thought that maybe if I could
get Isabelle to put herself in Christina's shoes, it might
help her understand. Was there anything that you can think
(23:19):
of that's comparable from your own life, Isabelle, Like something
that you really felt very passionate about, like the thing
that you really that was your great love.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Not really. I always wanted to go to school more
than I did. I really wanted a good education, which
of the country you weren't able to get.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Her father was a rancher, Isabelle says, and her mom
died when she was little, so her dad raised the
kids by himself, and Isabelle, being the eldest, had a
lot of responsibility.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
I used to miss school every year when I go
to be a certain age and had to herd cattle.
So I'd missed about two months or a month of
school every year when I was old enough to do this.
But I was first in my class from the day
I started till the day I finished. I was never
anything but first in my class.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Was that typical that a lot of kids in the
class have to miss?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
No, just me and well we were brought up by
our dad. Men bring up children differently than women.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah, and what ways? How do you mean?
Speaker 3 (24:34):
I mean my dad didn't teach me to ride horseback.
He just threw me on a horse and told me
to go. You know a woman wouldn't do that, And
don't think not likely. My father was quite fond of me.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Actually, yeah, how far did you go in school?
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Just? Grade nine? I took grade nine by correspondence, so.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
You didn't You never ended up getting there the high
school degree.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
No. Yeah, school was an important thing to me because
I felt that's how you'd make your living.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yeah, but I.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Remember when I was through school, my stepmother looking in
the paper and she found a dishwashing job for me.
She thought that I always capable of was washing dishes
in some restaurant. I felt very insulted. It always surprised
me when kids didn't want to get all the education
they possibly could.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Isabelle motions towards Christina.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
There's only so far you can go on basketball. I
always felt your education was more important. But as a kid,
sometimes you know, you don't see that. I knew. I
tried to teach her to be self sufficient because I
knew that she'd only have herself to depend upon.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Isabelle wanted to give Christina something she never got herself,
a good education. But by depriving Christina basketball, Isabelle took
away just that. At the time, though she didn't know it.
What Isabelle did know was that when Christina showed up
at her door thirty years ago, she was already in
her sixties. Isabelle was old, and if she were to die,
(26:24):
Christina would be left all alone. She'd only become a
foster child because no one in her extended family had
stepped up to take her in. She had no one else.
What did you know about Christina's childhood before she met you?
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Not much of anything that I can remember. Like her
mother was ment lel. I guess she knows that. And
I lost my mother when I was five, and my
father eventually had a nervous breakdown, so I knew what
it was like to live with them.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Challenged Bertha, Oh, what was it like?
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Terrible? It was horrible. You didn't know if someone was
going to kill you today or tomorrow, or what the
heck was going to happen.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
That's not an exaggeration. You're really were.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
It's not an exaggeration. I remember taking my little brother
and sister outside and trying to hide them. He was
left with five little children. Yeah, and he was terrified
that they were going to take the kids away from him.
And I used to sit by his bed and hold
his hand, and one day he said to me, Isabelle,
(27:37):
why do you keep holding my hand? And in my
own way, I was trying to let him know that
we all loved him.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Isabelle eventually placed her father in a mental hospital.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
I admitted him.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Oh, and you were how old.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
At that time? I was appo fourteen.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Wow, that's a big burden.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Yeah, it was. And I thought, here, I'm fourteen, What
the hell am I doing here?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
All the while, as Isabelle talks, Christina, seated in an
armchair beside her, listens quietly, her hands gripping the armrest.
Without looking at Isabelle, she makes her presence known.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
I have many memories of visiting my mom in the
mental hospital when I was young, like seven, eight nine,
kind of age ten.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
It's weird.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
It's a really weird experience to go knowing that the
other people are mentally unstable and.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
You can't predict what they're going to do.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Yeah, and my mom was, you know, kind of a
zombie because of all the medication, and obviously it was
like sad and upset that she had to be there
and wasn't with me.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
It was an awful place.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
It makes you grow up way too fast.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, that's right. I mean I was never a kid
until I got married and had my own kids, and
then I had a lot of fund raising my own children. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
I think that's why I was a nanny, because I
could be around kids and have a childhood with all
these other children.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Yeah, that's what I what I did. I grew up
with my own children. That's what was my childhood. Yeah,
you know, I'd play with my children just like I
was one of them.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Yeah, yeah, I did the same thing.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
One day, one of the neighbors looked at me, one
of the little girls, and she's just how old are you?
Speaker 1 (29:53):
These were stories that neither Christina nor Isabelle had ever
told each other. Watching them connect like this, it feels
like a good time to bring the subject back to basketball.
How much over the past thirty years, Christina's fretted over
Isabel's decision. Knowing this now, I ask Isabelle, would you
have done things differently.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Oh, I wished I had a known more about it
at the time, But I mean, I still have no
regrets about it.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
It's as though Isabelle just doesn't understand what the word
regret means. So I offer a working definition. If we
were to set off in a time machine where we
could return to that time, and Christina were to.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Say, I know what you're saying, but frankly, I don't
know what i'd do. You know, I really don't. It
would depend on what kind of a mood I'm in.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
If you were in the mood that you're in right now,
I really have no idea.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
I could give you a lot of BS and tell
you how good it would have been, but it wouldn't
be in the truth.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
I think like a lot of people would just give
Christina the BS.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Yeah, I don't do that. I usually tell it truth.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Like most I can lie upwards of ten thousand times
a day. It helps ease the friction of getting through life.
People ask how I am, and I say fine, does
this jumpsuit make my ass look fat? And I say no?
And so on, lying all the day long until bedtime,
at which point I'm not sure the lying stops. I
(31:27):
can probably lie in my dreams. In other words, I
hold lying to be the greatest gift God gave to man.
But even with all of our lies and best intentions,
we still can't escape hurting one another. I don't think
Isabelle is a cruel woman, but I do think she
knows that hurting people and being hurt is the price
(31:47):
one pays for being human.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
There is nothing out of the ordinary in our lives,
but just you know, even ordinary lives are could upsetting.
Sometimes it's a decision that was made when she was younger.
It wasn't the right one, but how many wrong decisions
are made as we go along. Regretting something is a
waste of time. You move on find something else to
(32:13):
be passionate about.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
In spite of their similar childhoods, Isabelle and Christina see
the world so differently. Christina is a dreamer, and for her,
the best possible world is the one that's always just
out of reach. But for Isabelle, it's not about pursuing
the best possible world at all. It's about making the
best of this world, the one you're stuck in, and
(32:45):
evidently with the people you're stuck with.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
I wouldn't look after her. If you know, if I
didn't care about it, it would have been different, I think,
you know. But I was interested in what she did
and how she progressed, and wanted her to do well
at school, do well and everything. And I was very
proud of her when she did. She was with us
a long time. Couldn't get rid of her. Just kidding.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Isabelle pauses, and then she says, appraisingly, she.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
Deserves a good life. I do have one good and
I think it's better because she had some stability in it,
which I feel she got to my house.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
I'll get on that side. We say our goodbyes and
head to the car. Outside Isabelle's, the parking lot has
grown dark. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
As we get into the rental car, Christina lets out a.
Speaker 6 (33:56):
Sigh, Well, so did how did you feel then about that?
Speaker 4 (34:17):
It was just really intense and there's a lot of
things that she said that were like that were very
hurtful to me. It's like she affected me tonight, but
not in the way that she used to. I didn't
get I didn't get the fuzzy teddy bear cuddly.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Thing.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
And that's okay that I didn't get that, but what
I got was her, and and it wasn't everything I needed.
But I feel like that's how she shows love. And
it's not with hugs, and it's not with I love yous,
and it's not with praise necessarily either. It's in a
(35:05):
way that I understand now, Whereas before I just felt
like she just didn't even like me, But now I
can see that she loves me in her way and
in the best way that.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
She knows how.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
In the end, it seems like this is why Christina
came here, not to find out why Isabelle made her
stop playing basketball, but to find out whether Isabelle loved her,
And in her tough, straight shooting, slightly scary way, it's
pretty clear she does. Do you know why I want
(35:44):
to go to scott Haa Park. No, it's a surprise.
Speaker 5 (35:48):
Oh oh, it's.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Not a big surprise. The next morning, before heading home,
I take Christina and her husband Levi out to a
nearby park. Oh have pits, I know. I have a
paper bag I've been carrying with me since Brooklyn. It's
a good thing you're wearing running shoes. When the anticipation
(36:10):
reaches at Zenith, I revealed to Christina and Levi what's
in the bag out of basketball, which I think they'd
sort of guessed since we were now standing by a
basketball court and I was dribbling a spherical paper bag.
I turned to LEVI, have you ever seen Christina play
(36:33):
basketball before?
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Maybe? Not? Yeah, I don't think we've ever played.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Christina says she hasn't played in over ten years. She
doesn't even watch basketball on TV anymore. I hold out
the ball and Christina looks at it. Then she looks
at Levi, and then she takes it from my hands.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Check check, Oh rusty.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
But when she gets going, it seems to come back
to her.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
Oh, behind the back, behind the back again.
Speaker 6 (37:11):
It goes.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Trash talking, calling her own shots, driving hard to the basket.
There was a different sign to Christina that was coming
out on the court. It happened suddenly and easily.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
You're going to get that. I think it's too nothing
at this point. I don't think i've scored it, have I.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
The best basketball players are said to have an almost
supernatural ability to see a little head, to anticipate what
will happen next. But Christina and Levi aren't that good,
and so they play like a couple of kids for
whom the future doesn't matter or the past, and in
that space between, it seems like a pretty good life.
Speaker 4 (37:51):
Okay, I love you.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Now that the Fernentures return into its goodwill.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Home, Now that the last month's rent is scheming with.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
The damaged possible, take this moment to dissolve. If we
meant it, if we.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Tried, we remember felt around for far too.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
Take from Things That Accidentally Zero.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein along
with Khalila Holt. The senior producer is Caitlin Roberts. Editing
by Jorge just, Alex Bloomberg and Wendy Door. Special thanks
to Emily Condent, Misha Gluberman, Stevie Lane, and Jackie Cohen.
The show was mixed by Kate Bolinski, music by Christine Fellows,
John K. Sampson, and Edwin. Additional music credits for this
(39:24):
episode can be found on our website Gimbletmedia dot com
slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by The Weaker Bands
courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by
Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email
us at Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com. We'll have a
new hot puppy of an episode next week.
Speaker 5 (39:45):
Way, so, Jonathan, you have a wife.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
I hear you say yes. Ye can't keep looking new over, can't.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
I think I think I probably looked best from your perspective.
I think it's a good look for me. It's kind
of blurry,
Hello, Hey, do you have a copy of TV Guide?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
No?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
No, why I can't find my copy? And I was
wondering what was on TV? Don't don't you remember?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Don't you remember? Don't you don't?
Speaker 4 (00:27):
Wait?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Wait, don't you remember calling people up on the phone.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
I do remember that, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Just just to see what was on. I remember calling
on my aunt Tilly because I was too I was
too lazy to get up off the couch to look
for the TV Guide, so I just called her up.
Who woman could hardly walk and she had to search
around for a TV guide to go. I'm GIMILTT Media.
(00:54):
I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight today's episode, Christina.
This is the best of all possible worlds. My father
(01:15):
was fond of saying. The words were spoken contentedly, often
while reclining in a barca lounger belt buckle undone after
a large meal of baked beans and lamb chops. But
what did my father know of other worlds? He'd held
down the same job and was married to the same
woman for decades plus. He hardly left the house. But
(01:37):
what he did know was that this world had one
thing over all of those other worlds. It existed for
my father. That was enough to make it best. I,
on the other hand, am not one over so easily.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Existence is a nice quality, a fine quality, but going
so far as to call a world that contains both
soul patches and puddles the best possible anything seems a
little extreme, and so imagining other worlds the same, only
better is just too irresistible. In spite of the pain
(02:17):
such thinking inevitably invites. Why don't we start from the beginning. Okay,
this is Christina, and like me, she knows this world
can use a few tweaks. Overall, she says her life
hasn't been a bad one, It's just not the one
she was meant to live. She's worked as a waitress,
a receptionist, as a home care worker, the kinds of
(02:40):
jobs you do, but not necessarily the kind you dream about. Lately,
she's been helping run her husband's company.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
It's a disc golfing backpack company.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Say sorry, say that again. It's a what disc golf
backpack is? What is disc golf?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
It's like ball golf, but instead of balls and clubs,
you have frisbees.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Oh, when you say ball golf, you're talking about golf.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Golf like a regular golf.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, okay, I've never heard it referred to distinguished as
ball golf, but I.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Well, only disc golfers call it ball golf.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
So, but how do you how do you get a
frisbee in a golf hole?
Speaker 4 (03:16):
No, it's actually not a hole, it's a basket.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Oh my goodness. Before she started pining after better worlds,
Christina was focused on just one, the world of small
town western Canada.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
I lived with my mom. She was a single mom.
My dad left when I was around one, and my
mom was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Christina was just a kid, so a lot of it's
now fuzzy, but she remembers bits of things, her mom
going off her meds and beginning to hear voices, her
mom waking her in the middle of the night and
saying they had to leave right away. She remembers running
with her mom down dark streets.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
She started becoming violent and she would just you know,
hit me with the phone handle, or this one time
she came after me with a high heeled shoe. There's
no food in the house. She wouldn't do laundry, like
the dirty clothes would pile up in the living room, like,
I remember this massive mound of dirty clothes, and I
(04:16):
remember this kid made fun of me for having dirty pants,
and so I started stealing clothes just so I could
have clean clothes to go to school.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
When you were a kid trying to survive on your own,
the unthinkable can start to seem normal. To escape her house,
Christina took a job caring for two boys not much
younger than herself. She became a twelve year old live
in nanny.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
So I ended up moving in with this family and
looking after the boys. They paid me a little bit,
and I quit school to be a nanny.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
When she stopped showing up at school, social services removed
Christina from the nannying house, but instead of bringing her
back to her mom, they took her to a fi
her home. She was sent to live with an older
couple and their grandson. They lived on the fancier side
of town in a house decorated with candleholders and decorative pistols.
(05:14):
The foster mother was a woman named Isabelle. Her grandson, David,
was the golden boy who could do no wrong. From
day one, Christina struggled for Isabelle's approval.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
My foster mother and I kind of butted heads a
little bit or a lot.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Although Isabelle was only an inch taller, Christina was scared
of her. Her foster mother communicated through rules and punishments.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
She was very strict. I was five minutes late for curfew.
I would be grounded for a month. It felt like
I was always grounded and afraid all the time, and
kind of walking on eggshells, and yeah, just feeling always
really intimidated and scared. I was always scared.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
And when she got scared, Christina would go silent. As
a result, she never once stood up to Isabelle. It
was while living in Isabelle's world that another better world
presented itself to Christina, a world with rules that were
(06:24):
easy to understand, a world where someone was always keeping
score and keeping things fair. This was the eighty four
x fifty foot world of a basketball court.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
I can't explain how much I was obsessed with basketball.
I would practice at like six in the morning at
the school. I would practice on weekends. I'd watch the
NBA games with Clyde the Glide and Charles Barkley, and
then my name was in the paper a few times.
I think I have some paper clippings of like high scoring.
(06:55):
I loved, loved, loved basketball.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
On the basketball court and it was never scared. It
was a place where, for the first time in her life,
she felt in control and confident. Her foster brother, David,
a popular jock, spent hours helping her get better. She
joined a team and quickly became a high scorer. Eventually
she was made team captain.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
They would always put me inside, like I would always
have to guard the post.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
When Christina talks about basketball, she lights up, and I
want to encourage her to keep talking by asking questions.
But my only real knowledge of basketball comes from watching
the Harlem Globetrotters. I was in my thirties before I
learned it was illegal to bring stilts onto the court,
so my questions are limited.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
We tall no only five to six. But I guess
I kind of had this unrealistic view of myself where
I thought I was taller than I was because off court,
I was like kind of meek, and I'd just follow
the crowd and I wouldn't create any waves. I didn't
(07:59):
really have an opinion, but on the court, I was
a force to be reckoned with. It was like the
only time where I felt powerful.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
It was around this time that a plan began to
take shape. If she kept practicing and kept winning, she'd
get a basketball scholarship. Christina knew that was her only
hope of getting into college.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
I wanted to get out of that circle of welfare
and illness and living from paycheck to paycheck and just
feeling just being poor.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
It sucked, which brings us to the moment that thirty
years later, Christina still can't stop thinking about. She'd just
come home from school when Isabelle called her into the kitchen,
sat her down at the table, and presented her with
an ultimatum.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
She said, you have to get your grades up. You
have to work harder at school, and so in order
for me to be able to play basketball following year,
which would have been eleventh grade, I had to have
an average of a bee in every class. But I
was really bad at math and chemistry, and I didn't
(09:13):
make it. I wasn't allowed to play basketball.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
What she remembers most about that time was watching a
lot of TV and overeating and the chores. After forcing
Christina to quit the basketball team, Isabelle handed her chores
that felt like ironic punishments from the Judy Bloom version
of Dante's Inferno. She had to bake cookies for the family,
but because of her weight gain, she wasn't allowed to
(09:39):
eat any, and when she dusted the house, Isabelle instructed
her to pick up David's basketball trophies, dust each one,
and dust the shelf underneath. All the while, Christina felt
her loss acutely of basketball and the better world had promised.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
She took something from me that I that I've not
been able to get back.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
What is that thing?
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Yeah, and I don't even know. I don't. I don't.
When I say that out loud, it sounds ridiculous, but
it feels like that passion for something it dashed this
huge dream that I had.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
For my life. Christina still wonders why why did Isabelle
take away basketball, the only thing that really mattered to her,
that would have given her a better life, But all
these years she's been too afraid to ask.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
She's going to be ninety five in July. The thought
of talking to her about it petrifies me a little bit,
like there's still a part of me that is scared
of her, which is ridiculous. And what do you want,
I think, yeah, I think I want to know, like
(11:00):
why she made my life so difficult, if it was
just to break me down, if she had some kind
of thing against.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Me, And what do you want to hear her say?
Speaker 4 (11:16):
I guess I want to just hear her say that
she just genuinely wanted me to have better grades. But
I know that that's just such bs. For whatever reason,
I've let go of a lot of things that have happened,
but for whatever reason, this one thing, the basketball thing,
not letting me play basketball. I'm having such a hard
(11:38):
time letting go of that and forgiving her. I want
to let it go.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
So you want to go talk to her?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
You, and you want me to come? Yes, I get
really mealy mouthed when I'm in the same room as
like strong willed, scary older women. I'll tell you that
right now, I'm not going to be much help.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
So we're doing it.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
It sounds like we're doing it all right. We're gonna
go talk to that scary lady after the break. How
much mincing can a Meilie mouth mince? When a Melie
mouth meets a menacing miss who writes this stuff? I
guess I do once I gave Christina my word that
(12:28):
i'd help, I approached CEO and Gimblet founder Alex Bloomberg
to ask if he could fly me to the British
Columbian interior to confront a ninety five year old woman
about something she may or may not have said some
thirty years ago, to which Alex asked, why are you
always standing just outside the door whenever I get out
of the bathroom? And I said it was a coincidence,
(12:48):
although I might have pronounced it Quinki dink to be playful.
And he asked how long this trip would take me
out of the office, and I said a week, and
he said to take longer if I needed it. So
I was off to Canada.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Tail de nos ai, are you to?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
I meet Christina and her husband Levi at the Colonna
Airport in British Columbia. They'd just flown in from Portland,
and the look of trust on their faces is daunting.
When meeting new people, especially people I'm about to help.
I'm more comfortable with looks of skepticism or anticipatory disappointment.
Trust was disconcerting, Yes I have. It was an hour
(13:47):
and a half drive to Isabelle's. So we made our
way to the airport rental desk to get a car
Goldstein G.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
O L D.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
And I just asked what that is there?
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Oh, it's just a we're doing a radio story.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
So I've just do you mind turning that off and
put away?
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah? If I couldn't even stand up to the car
rental clerk, what hope did I have of helping Christina
stand up to Isabelle.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
It's hot in here, I want to.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Say, it's been well over two years since Christina's seen Isabelle.
She's feeling anxious, so I try to keep the mood positive.
I bet the thrift stores are really good around here.
I point out foreign license plates, and because we're in
a foreign country, there are many pretty Have you guys
(14:43):
been watching this show called Little Big Lies or big
little Lies or little big Lies? Well set, I think so.
Isabelle lives on the ground floor of a squat apartment
(15:05):
block mostly inhabited by seniors. We wait. When no one answers,
we ring the bell. The door opens. I heard you
the first time, Isabelle says. Christina smiles in spite of herself.
(15:30):
She can't help but get a kick out of Isabelle.
Isabelle peers up at us from behind her walker, Christina's husband,
Levi makes introductions, isabel Hi, how are you doing?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (15:43):
That?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Oh? Is me reacting to Isabelle's handshake, a surprisingly powerful
thing that yanks me through the doorframe. Although a diminutive
woman with white, puffy hair and wirerim glasses, Isabelle's just
established herself as the alpha. Nice to meet you, Nice.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
To meet you.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Okay, you seem to be doing great.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
I'm doing not bad for my age, I guess.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Isabelle's apartment is tidy and dim, decorated with candles that
haven't been lit in years. We slowly follow her down
a narrow hallway to her living room, where she seats
herself in a faded blue mechanized armchair. On the drive over,
Christina mentioned that Isabelle is legally blind, but I misremember
this as Isabelle being legally deaf, so I compliment her
(16:35):
on how well she's following along. Well, I'm not talking
very loud, and you you've been able to hear everything.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
So I did say there's nothing wrong with my ears right.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
And you did.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Not.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
To recover from this faux pas, I offer Isabelle a
chance to feel my face run her hands through my beard,
which is something I think I saw done in the mirror.
If ever, you want to feel my stubble, or I.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Don't go running around feeling beards.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I decide that now's as good a time as any
to offer around the airport treats I bought during my layover.
I brought some refreshments. Since I don't want to put
Isabelle out by asking for a party tray, I scooted
my travel socks and underwear to the side of my
backpack and proffer them straight from the bag, some chocolate
(17:26):
covered nuts and such.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Not right now, thank you?
Speaker 1 (17:29):
No, okay, I'll leave them in the bag. If I've
learned anything from my work in the business of forcing
people to ask terrifying questions, it was that it's always
best to just get it over with. Ask the question
why did you ruin my life? Get the answer, and
(17:51):
head back to the hotel bar to eat the juiciest,
fattiest tea bone steak that Gimlet Media's fourteen dollars per
dim allows. But staging is everything I need to be
off hand subtle. Do you Christina, do you have anything
that you you want to ask about, or Christina looks
(18:25):
down at her hands and tightens her lips. Of course
I understand her hesitation. Isabelle is even more intimidating in
person than Christina made her out, and nothing about being
here can possibly feel much like coming home. The walls
and shelves are loaded with photos of Isabelle's children, grandchildren,
and great grandchildren, but there isn't a single photo anywhere
(18:47):
of her only foster child, Christina. To break the silence,
I ask Isabelle why she originally took Christina into her
home in the first place.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
And one of my children left a child for me
to raise my grandson. Yeah, so I thought life was
just my husband and I. We were both older. It
would be kind of very dull for him. So I
thought that having someone else around the house would make
make it a little more homey for him. But I
(19:20):
hadn't chosen Christina. Christina was brought to me and it
was just she was just there. This wild looking thing
seemed a little bit of training to live in a home,
so obviously she hadn't been brought up with anything. I
just thought any child living under my roof had to
be taught.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Something meaning like what kind of things like you mean
normal like rules and.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Well rules, yeah, the rules. I don't think that our
rules were terribly.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Strict, really, I mean I felt like they were strict.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Well maybe you thought so, that most kids do, but
there were the the same rule as my kid's head.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Christina hesitates. You can see it's hard for her to
talk back to Isabelle even now.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
But then she says, but David didn't have rules, No,
he didn't need any.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
He is the most perfect person I've ever.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Raised, Christina. Another person she happened to have raised, is
seated a couple feet away from her. Christina stares ahead blankly,
not saying anything. So I press Isabelle, Well, you must
have done something wrong. I mean it's only.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Very little. You'd be surprised how perfect he was.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Was that hard though, being like side by side with
someone who.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Is just so No, I think it was good for.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Her, Christina, Is that is that how you feel?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
It was hard?
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (20:52):
It was really hard.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Something else that's been hard is finding the courage to
ask the question that brought her here. Christina gives it
a shot, but after some throat clearing again, she goes silent,
go ahead and ask.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
I think the one thing that I have kind of
always wondered is do you remember I think it was
in tenth grade and I had been playing basketball and
you told me that I had to get my grades
(21:36):
up where I couldn't play basketball anymore.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 3 (21:41):
No?
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Okay, so I didn't get my grades up and I
had to quit the team.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
I don't remember that, Agittall, I don't know. I still.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Was. It was devastating for me.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Why did you get your grade out there?
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:10):
I asked Christina if she could explain to Isabelle why
losing basketball hurt so much.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
Not without crying.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
I felt like.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
It was like the one thing that I.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Was really good at.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Are you surprised to hear Christina talk about how much
she loved basketball?
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Like?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Was that something that you knew back then?
Speaker 3 (22:37):
I didn't know what.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
No, did Christina? Did you ever express it?
Speaker 3 (22:42):
I don't think she did. I don't think so. No,
I don't think you did.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
I think the reason why, like it still affects me now,
it is because I didn't fight.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
For it, and how could she have. She never felt
like she had the right to stop her feet to
slam the bedroom door in so many words, to act
like someone's kid. I thought that maybe if I could
get Isabelle to put herself in Christina's shoes, it might
help her understand. Was there anything that you can think
(23:19):
of that's comparable from your own life, Isabelle, Like something
that you really felt very passionate about, like the thing
that you really that was your great love.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Not really. I always wanted to go to school more
than I did. I really wanted a good education, which
of the country you weren't able to get.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Her father was a rancher, Isabelle says, and her mom
died when she was little, so her dad raised the
kids by himself, and Isabelle, being the eldest, had a
lot of responsibility.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
I used to miss school every year when I go
to be a certain age and had to herd cattle.
So I'd missed about two months or a month of
school every year when I was old enough to do this.
But I was first in my class from the day
I started till the day I finished. I was never
anything but first in my class.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Was that typical that a lot of kids in the
class have to miss?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
No, just me and well we were brought up by
our dad. Men bring up children differently than women.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah, and what ways? How do you mean?
Speaker 3 (24:34):
I mean my dad didn't teach me to ride horseback.
He just threw me on a horse and told me
to go. You know a woman wouldn't do that, And
don't think not likely. My father was quite fond of me.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Actually, yeah, how far did you go in school?
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Just? Grade nine? I took grade nine by correspondence, so.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
You didn't You never ended up getting there the high
school degree.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
No. Yeah, school was an important thing to me because
I felt that's how you'd make your living.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yeah, but I.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Remember when I was through school, my stepmother looking in
the paper and she found a dishwashing job for me.
She thought that I always capable of was washing dishes
in some restaurant. I felt very insulted. It always surprised
me when kids didn't want to get all the education
they possibly could.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Isabelle motions towards Christina.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
There's only so far you can go on basketball. I
always felt your education was more important. But as a kid,
sometimes you know, you don't see that. I knew. I
tried to teach her to be self sufficient because I
knew that she'd only have herself to depend upon.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Isabelle wanted to give Christina something she never got herself,
a good education. But by depriving Christina basketball, Isabelle took
away just that. At the time, though she didn't know it.
What Isabelle did know was that when Christina showed up
at her door thirty years ago, she was already in
her sixties. Isabelle was old, and if she were to die,
(26:24):
Christina would be left all alone. She'd only become a
foster child because no one in her extended family had
stepped up to take her in. She had no one else.
What did you know about Christina's childhood before she met you?
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Not much of anything that I can remember. Like her
mother was ment lel. I guess she knows that. And
I lost my mother when I was five, and my
father eventually had a nervous breakdown, so I knew what
it was like to live with them.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Challenged Bertha, Oh, what was it like?
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Terrible? It was horrible. You didn't know if someone was
going to kill you today or tomorrow, or what the
heck was going to happen.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
That's not an exaggeration. You're really were.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
It's not an exaggeration. I remember taking my little brother
and sister outside and trying to hide them. He was
left with five little children. Yeah, and he was terrified
that they were going to take the kids away from him.
And I used to sit by his bed and hold
his hand, and one day he said to me, Isabelle,
(27:37):
why do you keep holding my hand? And in my
own way, I was trying to let him know that
we all loved him.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Isabelle eventually placed her father in a mental hospital.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
I admitted him.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Oh, and you were how old.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
At that time? I was appo fourteen.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Wow, that's a big burden.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Yeah, it was. And I thought, here, I'm fourteen, What
the hell am I doing here?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
All the while, as Isabelle talks, Christina, seated in an
armchair beside her, listens quietly, her hands gripping the armrest.
Without looking at Isabelle, she makes her presence known.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
I have many memories of visiting my mom in the
mental hospital when I was young, like seven, eight nine,
kind of age ten.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
It's weird.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
It's a really weird experience to go knowing that the
other people are mentally unstable and.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
You can't predict what they're going to do.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Yeah, and my mom was, you know, kind of a
zombie because of all the medication, and obviously it was
like sad and upset that she had to be there
and wasn't with me.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
It was an awful place.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
It makes you grow up way too fast.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, that's right. I mean I was never a kid
until I got married and had my own kids, and
then I had a lot of fund raising my own children. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
I think that's why I was a nanny, because I
could be around kids and have a childhood with all
these other children.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Yeah, that's what I what I did. I grew up
with my own children. That's what was my childhood. Yeah,
you know, I'd play with my children just like I
was one of them.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Yeah, yeah, I did the same thing.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
One day, one of the neighbors looked at me, one
of the little girls, and she's just how old are you?
Speaker 1 (29:53):
These were stories that neither Christina nor Isabelle had ever
told each other. Watching them connect like this, it feels
like a good time to bring the subject back to basketball.
How much over the past thirty years, Christina's fretted over
Isabel's decision. Knowing this now, I ask Isabelle, would you
have done things differently.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Oh, I wished I had a known more about it
at the time, But I mean, I still have no
regrets about it.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
It's as though Isabelle just doesn't understand what the word
regret means. So I offer a working definition. If we
were to set off in a time machine where we
could return to that time, and Christina were to.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Say, I know what you're saying, but frankly, I don't
know what i'd do. You know, I really don't. It
would depend on what kind of a mood I'm in.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
If you were in the mood that you're in right now,
I really have no idea.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
I could give you a lot of BS and tell
you how good it would have been, but it wouldn't
be in the truth.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
I think like a lot of people would just give
Christina the BS.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Yeah, I don't do that. I usually tell it truth.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Like most I can lie upwards of ten thousand times
a day. It helps ease the friction of getting through life.
People ask how I am, and I say fine, does
this jumpsuit make my ass look fat? And I say no?
And so on, lying all the day long until bedtime,
at which point I'm not sure the lying stops. I
(31:27):
can probably lie in my dreams. In other words, I
hold lying to be the greatest gift God gave to man.
But even with all of our lies and best intentions,
we still can't escape hurting one another. I don't think
Isabelle is a cruel woman, but I do think she
knows that hurting people and being hurt is the price
(31:47):
one pays for being human.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
There is nothing out of the ordinary in our lives,
but just you know, even ordinary lives are could upsetting.
Sometimes it's a decision that was made when she was younger.
It wasn't the right one, but how many wrong decisions
are made as we go along. Regretting something is a
waste of time. You move on find something else to
(32:13):
be passionate about.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
In spite of their similar childhoods, Isabelle and Christina see
the world so differently. Christina is a dreamer, and for her,
the best possible world is the one that's always just
out of reach. But for Isabelle, it's not about pursuing
the best possible world at all. It's about making the
best of this world, the one you're stuck in, and
(32:45):
evidently with the people you're stuck with.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
I wouldn't look after her. If you know, if I
didn't care about it, it would have been different, I think,
you know. But I was interested in what she did
and how she progressed, and wanted her to do well
at school, do well and everything. And I was very
proud of her when she did. She was with us
a long time. Couldn't get rid of her. Just kidding.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Isabelle pauses, and then she says, appraisingly, she.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
Deserves a good life. I do have one good and
I think it's better because she had some stability in it,
which I feel she got to my house.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
I'll get on that side. We say our goodbyes and
head to the car. Outside Isabelle's, the parking lot has
grown dark. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
As we get into the rental car, Christina lets out a.
Speaker 6 (33:56):
Sigh, Well, so did how did you feel then about that?
Speaker 4 (34:17):
It was just really intense and there's a lot of
things that she said that were like that were very
hurtful to me. It's like she affected me tonight, but
not in the way that she used to. I didn't
get I didn't get the fuzzy teddy bear cuddly.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Thing.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
And that's okay that I didn't get that, but what
I got was her, and and it wasn't everything I needed.
But I feel like that's how she shows love. And
it's not with hugs, and it's not with I love yous,
and it's not with praise necessarily either. It's in a
(35:05):
way that I understand now, Whereas before I just felt
like she just didn't even like me, But now I
can see that she loves me in her way and
in the best way that.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
She knows how.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
In the end, it seems like this is why Christina
came here, not to find out why Isabelle made her
stop playing basketball, but to find out whether Isabelle loved her,
And in her tough, straight shooting, slightly scary way, it's
pretty clear she does. Do you know why I want
(35:44):
to go to scott Haa Park. No, it's a surprise.
Speaker 5 (35:48):
Oh oh, it's.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Not a big surprise. The next morning, before heading home,
I take Christina and her husband Levi out to a
nearby park. Oh have pits, I know. I have a
paper bag I've been carrying with me since Brooklyn. It's
a good thing you're wearing running shoes. When the anticipation
(36:10):
reaches at Zenith, I revealed to Christina and Levi what's
in the bag out of basketball, which I think they'd
sort of guessed since we were now standing by a
basketball court and I was dribbling a spherical paper bag.
I turned to LEVI, have you ever seen Christina play
(36:33):
basketball before?
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Maybe? Not? Yeah, I don't think we've ever played.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Christina says she hasn't played in over ten years. She
doesn't even watch basketball on TV anymore. I hold out
the ball and Christina looks at it. Then she looks
at Levi, and then she takes it from my hands.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Check check, Oh rusty.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
But when she gets going, it seems to come back
to her.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
Oh, behind the back, behind the back again.
Speaker 6 (37:11):
It goes.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Trash talking, calling her own shots, driving hard to the basket.
There was a different sign to Christina that was coming
out on the court. It happened suddenly and easily.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
You're going to get that. I think it's too nothing
at this point. I don't think i've scored it, have I.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
The best basketball players are said to have an almost
supernatural ability to see a little head, to anticipate what
will happen next. But Christina and Levi aren't that good,
and so they play like a couple of kids for
whom the future doesn't matter or the past, and in
that space between, it seems like a pretty good life.
Speaker 4 (37:51):
Okay, I love you.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Now that the Fernentures return into its goodwill.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Home, Now that the last month's rent is scheming with.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
The damaged possible, take this moment to dissolve. If we
meant it, if we.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Tried, we remember felt around for far too.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
Take from Things That Accidentally Zero.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein along
with Khalila Holt. The senior producer is Caitlin Roberts. Editing
by Jorge just, Alex Bloomberg and Wendy Door. Special thanks
to Emily Condent, Misha Gluberman, Stevie Lane, and Jackie Cohen.
The show was mixed by Kate Bolinski, music by Christine Fellows,
John K. Sampson, and Edwin. Additional music credits for this
(39:24):
episode can be found on our website Gimbletmedia dot com
slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by The Weaker Bands
courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by
Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email
us at Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com. We'll have a
new hot puppy of an episode next week.
Speaker 5 (39:45):
Way, so, Jonathan, you have a wife.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
I hear you say yes. Ye can't keep looking new over, can't.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
I think I think I probably looked best from your perspective.
I think it's a good look for me. It's kind
of blurry,
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