The Moth Radio Hour: I Will Be Your Father Figure
53:20 Share

Support comes from Zuckerman Spader. Through nearly five decades of taking on high-stakes legal matters, Zuckerman Spader is recognized nationally as a premier litigation and investigations firm. Their lawyers routinely represent individuals, organizations, and law firms in business disputes, government, and internal investigations, and at trial, when the lawyer you choose matters most. Online at Zuckerman.com.

The Moth is brought to you by Progressive, home of the Name Your Price tool. You say how much you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. It's easy to start a quote. Visit Progressive.com to get started. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law.

This autumn, fall for Moth Stories as we travel across the globe for our mainstages. We're excited to announce our fall lineup of storytelling shows from New York City to Iowa City, London, Nairobi, and so many more. The Moth will be performing in a city near you, featuring a curation of true stories. The Moth mainstage shows feature five tellers who share beautiful, unbelievable, hilarious, and often powerful true stories on a common theme. Each one told reveals something new about our shared connection.

To buy your tickets or find out more about our calendar, visit themoth.org slash mainstage. We hope to see you soon. From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin-Ginesse, and this episode is all about dads and the impact that father figures have. We emulate them, compete with them, want to differentiate ourselves from them. It's complicated. Some of us want to make our fathers proud. And we'll even hear a little bit from my dad. Dad, do you have a favorite child? No.

My first and my last are both special to me. I should note that my father has only two children. We'll save the rest of that interview for later in this hour.

Our first story is about dad jokes. I don't mean jokes about our dads. I mean the groaners, the corny humor that makes dads laugh. A note to the listeners, the joke in this story may be racy for a third grader. So there you go. We like to let you know these things in advance. Adrian McGillis told us at one of our open mic slams in Asheville, North Carolina, where we partner with public radio station WCQS. Here's Adrian live at the mall.

So this is a story about a joke so bad that it was in fact quite dangerous. So my dad loves a good punchline and when I was about 12 and my brother was 8, we were sitting around the kitchen table telling like fourth grade level jokes. And all of a sudden my brother perked up because he had this really great joke he was going to tell.

And he said, well, I need a pad of paper. And so my mom got him a piece of paper out of the kitchen junk drawer and a pencil. And he hunched over it and started drawing. And my dad watched this with interest. And my brother spun the paper around. And my dad peered at it. And if you could imagine an eighth grader drawing two stick figures with their hands sticking straight out like this and their legs akimboed.

And between them, these two stick figures, was a hula hoop sized circle and in that side of that circle was another basketball size proportionally to the people. And he said, "What is it?" And my dad looked at it and he said, "I don't know." And my brother said, "It's two men walking abreast." And so, you know, it's got all of the markers there. It's got boobs and badly drawn figures and a pun.

So my dad starts laughing and my brother is just filled with this like little boy glee. And you know how like when you're with your loved ones and you start laughing, you can like feed off of each other. And my dad got laughing so hard he was crying. And all of a sudden he fell out of his chair onto the kitchen floor and he started to turn purple.

And so my mom, who's a nurse, cleared the area and was about to perform CPR. And I ran over to the phone and had dialed 9 and was making ready to dial 1. And he sat up and he looked at all of us in confusion and he said, why am I on the floor? And so my mom calmed everyone down. And she said to him, she said, well, you need to go to the doctor because that's not okay for like a 40-year-old man to faint.

And so the next day or two days later he went to his family practitioner and he told the doctor what had happened. And the doctor looked at my dad and he said, "Well, what was the joke?" And so my dad asked for a pad of paper and he told the joke and the doctor looked at him with incredulity

And so my dad starts laughing and remembering his laughter from the night before he gets laughing so hard that he got woozy. And so the doctor said, "Well, we need to run some tests because that's not normal."

So they did some blood work and everything came back normal. And he called my father, who's a college professor, and he said, "We think everything's okay." And so my dad, who was in his lab at the time, told his grad students the whole story. And he got to laughing so hard that he got woozy and had to sit down. And so he called the doctor back and said it happened again.

And so the doctor said, "Well, let's run some more tests." And an MRI or a CT scan or something later, they're pretty sure nothing is wrong, but my dad is just laughing so hard he's cutting off his airway. And so the doctor says, "Then just stop telling the joke." And so my family were not allowed to tell that joke anymore.

And if there could be a moral to the story, it's that while laughter is the best medicine, sometimes too much of a good thing can kill you.

That was Adrienne McGillis. She says her dad still tells this story a lot and laughs too hard. I got a little nervous when I told her this story would be on air. I mean, what if her father listens and laughs and injures himself? But Adrienne said, I'm sure he'll listen and I'll make sure he's sitting somewhere safe when he does. To see a photo of Adrienne, her brother, and her dad laughing while whitewater rafting, go to themoth.org where you can also see the original drawing that accompanied this joke.

And speaking of jokes, I asked my brother Cameron, who's the father of two great kids, about his favorite dad jokes. What do you get when you mix an elephant and a rhinoceros? What? Elephino. Okay, tell me another one. What did the Atlantic Ocean say to the Pacific Ocean? Tell me. Nothing. It just waved. Oh, okay.

What do you call a cheese all by itself? Provolone. I don't even think I get that. You're not a dad. I'm not a dad. You're saying if I was a dad I would get it? There's a good chance. There's a good chance. Cameron's right, I'm not a dad. But I know being a good dad is not easy. Especially if you're a single parent.

Our next storyteller explores that idea. CJ Hunt told us at a Moth Story Slam in New Orleans where we partner with public radio station WWNO. Here's CJ live at the Moth. Some of the best memories in my life all come from this period of time that I remember as the Bachelor Day. They went like this: I'm six years old.

And I'm cruising down the highway in the passenger seat and in the driver's seat is my best friend and bachelor buddy, my dad. And we're moving our lives from Boston to New York. And for the whole four-hour drive, we're looking at each other, we have the tape deck turned up, and we're singing...

Oh baby, baby, it's a wild world. Hard to get by just upon a smile. Girl, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. We played that tape, Tea for the Tailor Man, so much that summer that we actually broke the tape. That was a thing that would happen. And then there was our anthem. Against the wind, we were running against the wind.

We were young and strong and still running against the wind. Yeah, Bob Seger fans. That's it. That's my whole story. But that was our anthem. That was the soundtrack to The Bachelor years.

The place that we were moving on Long Island, our house wasn't ready. And because our house wasn't ready, we spent our summer in this little cramped Brooklyn Heights apartment. And in that place, we lived like two 22-year-olds would live. We had no cookware. We had like one pan and two mugs out of which we would drink instant soup as our meals.

We had no furniture except for this inflatable bed that we would share every night. And each night we'd have to blow it up, but we'd have to take turns to make sure no one passed out. We'd be like, your turn, your turn, go, go. And the best part was we ate cereal whenever the hell we wanted. You want Captain Crunch for dinner, son? Done. Like that was our, that was our life.

And like two bros moving into a new apartment would make a point of surveying the town, you know, their block for bars, we would cruise our entire neighborhood to draw a mental map of every toy store and comic book store in a 10-mile radius. Because in there was something more valuable than women. Action figures. Action figures.

So six-year-old me and my father would burst into these places like two robber barons, like, "Everybody freeze! Me and the boy, see? We're looking for the new Green Lantern action figure. Yes, the white one. Yes, the one with the light-up ring. Hand it over, put it in the bag, and we'll be on our way." And then he'd put me on his back, and we'd be gone like that. And that's how I remember that summer. New action figure in hand.

on my way to Captain Crunch dinner, riding on the back of my father. The two of us. Now it was just the two of us because my mother had just died just a couple weeks earlier. Diagnosed with lung cancer in December, she made it just far enough to see me turn six. And then the summer began. And when I look back on that time, I'm struck by the dichotomy between what I remember as these golden, wonderful bachelor days and the actual harrowing truth of what was happening.

There's just two guys, one of whom who had just lost his mother and one of whom who had just lost his wife. It's like finding an old cassette tape that you made and you love this thing and you dust it off years later and you realize that there's a B-side on there that you've never even listened to. Against the wind, we were running against the wind. And I realized that our soundtrack was actually my dad's morning songs or the songs that he used to make sure that he could keep going in the day.

I think about, I must have thought a thousand times about that summer on his back. But just now as I'm getting older, am I starting to think about the story of the person who was doing the carrying at the time. I wonder if he was scared. I wonder how he knew what to do when everything started falling apart. I wonder where in our little apartment he would go to cry so I couldn't see him. And I wonder how he was able to turn what should have been the most devastating period of my life into something I remember as my best days.

just taking pieces of rubble and making a world for me right on the fly. So now that I'm a real bachelor, drinking far more mug soup than I care to admit, I often wonder what kind of man will I become. Then I realize I already know. CJ Hunt is an actor, writer, and a host of the Moth main stage. He's also a producer for BET's show The Rundown with Robin Thede.

Since telling his story, CJ moved to New York, and he's trying to find the old Brooklyn Heights apartment he and his father lived in back then. He's still incredibly close with his dad. He says, in a strange reversal, his father is the one with the action figures these days, posed on his desk like soldiers. For photographic evidence of that, go to themoth.org.

If these stories make you think of your own, remember that you can pitch us by recording your story right on our site or call 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-6684. The best pitches are developed for moth shows all around the world.

Eric Wenger, and I live in Bethesda, Maryland. You, her finger wagging my face, can stay here. With that, my not-quite-12-year-old daughter Kayla wheeled her way into the Sephora store and the local shopping mall with a friend. Kayla loved going to the mall, which had everything she adored all in one place. Best of all, here she found freedom from adult supervision that she so rarely experienced anywhere else. Since the age of seven, Kayla had been unable to walk or care for herself without assistance due to the side effects of cancer radiation treatments.

The mall was different. Here, Kayla could wander off with a friend in his gayball watchful eye. Sometime later, Kayla happily emerged with a shiny black Sephora shopping bag on her arm. We started to walk when Kayla abruptly thrust the bag into my arms and said, here, dad, this is for you.

I peeked inside to find a good-sized crystal bottle filled with an expensive Versace cologne. What is this for, I asked. Your birthday, Kayla replied. I looked again and noticed that the receipt accidentally was left in the bag, showing a cost exceeding $75. This was way too much for her to spend on me. But you already got me a birthday gift, I protested. Yeah, but the surprise was spoiled, Kayla countered. It is true her original surprise was accidentally ruined when a box was

was open before she intercepted the mail. So now she was doubling down on a second birthday gift, all told she had spent more than $100 on my birthday, way too much. I tried again, Kayla, why don't we go back and look for a smaller bottle, maybe something less expensive? This is too much to spend on me. Kayla looked at me in the eye very intently and declared, this is my money. I will spend it how I want.

She closed with a line that I will never forget for however long I live. Sometimes, she said, you should just say thanks. I blinked, I stared at her for a moment, and then I sheepishly said thanks.

We lost Kayla only about two months later when the cancer savagely returned. I keep that bottle on my counter and look at it every morning when I'm getting dressed. I used to put it on every day, but now more than five years later, the bottle is nearly empty. On special occasions like tonight, I throw caution to the wind. I spray the ice blue cologne unhappily, and it feels like a kiss from her sweet little lips. Just like that bottle, life is a gift that we need to celebrate and be thankful for.

Remember, you can pitch us at 877-799-MOTH or online at themoth.org, where you can also share these stories or others from the Moth Archive. After our break, a young woman tells her preacher father a secret that will make her unpopular with the church when the Moth Radio Hour continues. ♪

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin-Ginness. This is an hour about fathers, and our next storyteller comes from our global community program. Blessing Dia was part of a women and girls storytelling workshop we held in Nairobi.

She's a gender advocate who now fights for maternal health and women's rights. And that's a direct result of the events in this story. After the Nairobi workshop, I asked Blessing to join us in California and tell her story on the Moth main stage. So here's Blessing Dia live at the Moth in Los Angeles. Good evening. I'm the first child and daughter of a pastor. I grew up as the only child for eight years and I was very close to my dad.

He used to call me his princess, his Cinderella. I used to get piggyback rides and use his afro to pretend I was a hairdresser. We were that close. But you see, as a pastor, you get to share your time, your emotions, your resources, your space, and your family with the rest of the society. Everyone just wants a part of you. Some people want to pray. Others want to come for counseling.

People just want you to be there for them. And slowly, my father and I, we begin to drift apart. As a pastor's daughter, you are expected to be actively involved in church. And I was actively involved. I used to sing in the choir. I love singing. I used to act dramas, take Bible quizzes. I was everywhere in church doing everything I could do. It seemed as if I was a mini pastor myself. In Nigeria...

Pastors and their families are not expected to do anything wrong. They are held to such high standards as though they were second to God. And then I get pregnant. An unmarried teenage daughter of a pastor. I was brought up in a Yoruba community. The Yorubas are one of the three major tribes in Nigeria. And they have these high values and morals, especially when it comes to sex. They frown against premarital sex.

and they applaud virginity. In fact, when you're getting married in Yoruba communities, they give your husband a white handkerchief to put under you during your first intercourse. He would later show everyone that handkerchief to show that you're a virgin. And here I am, a 17-year-old teenage unmarried daughter of a pastor, breaking the code of the community,

and of the church. I think of my father, mostly. I think of what the church will say. And so, I try to sort things out myself. Abortion is illegal in Nigeria, except of course the pregnancy is harmful to the life of the mother. So most times, abortions are unsafe and done at the backyards. And I went to one of such backyards. The environment was dirty. I wish I could describe. And the equipment...

very hideous. I went the first time, I ran away. Then I think of my father again and I come back. But the environment is still dirty. In fact, I think it's more dirty this time. And the equipments are still hideous. So I get scared and I run away. And I feel, what could go wrong? I'm not going to have this abortion in this dirty place. The worst that can go wrong is to own up to my parents. So I decide to tell my father.

And no opportunity presents itself until one fateful morning. My father and my mother are having a discussion. I keep looking around corners. And my father calls out to me, "Blessed, do you have something to say?" I notice you looking around corners. For lack of better words to use, I blurt, "I'm pregnant." My mother is shocked. You know how women are, we can be very dramatic. She is shocked, she is furious. My father sits there, silent.

Trying to take in what I just said. He asked me what I want to do with it. I explained to him, of course. I've tried to have an abortion, dad. But I couldn't. And he goes, I hope you can live with the consequences of your actions. And I wonder, what consequences? What could be harder than telling you, my father? But you see, those consequences are not far off. Because I'm no longer active in church. I stopped going to church. And people are beginning to talk about

People are beginning to have their own suspicions. And in fact, at that period, many people who come to my house for counseling just come under the guise of counseling. But they really want to confirm if Blessing is pregnant. Many of them go the extra mile and ask my dad, Oh, how is Blessing? Where is she? It's been long we saw her. And then my dad has to call me out to say hello. And they look at me closely and

to confirm if I'm pregnant. I feel ashamed and most times I feel pity for my dad because people are judging him because of me. One Sunday morning, my dad would later admit that he heard someone pass a snide comment about me. So during service, my dad walks up to the podium and I'm in the congregation wondering what is he doing? Because you see, my dad never breaks protocol.

And he wasn't built to speak that day. So I'm wondering, what is he doing? And he walks up to the podium, one like this. But he removes the mic and he goes, I'm not here to preach. I'm here to tell you that blessing is pregnant. And time freezes. Everyone goes silent. People who are walking, who are moving, they freeze at the spot. You could literally hear a pin drop.

And where I'm sitting, I'm like, oh God, I wish an earthquake would just happen and swallow me. And he continues, he says, I know you all have high expectations of her, but I'd like you to let us handle this as a family in our privacy. You see, in that moment, my father was accepting that he was human and that his family, me included, are human too.

Teenage pregnancy comes with a lot of stigma and discrimination. But you see, that act by my father went a long way to reduce whatever stigma and discrimination I was eventually going to face. My father walks off the podium gallantly, as though he's not dropped a bombshell on everyone. I was seven months gone at the time. Two months later, I'd welcomed a beautiful baby girl into my life, who my father named Glory. And he was there.

He was there for me. From the moment my father made that announcement to the church, he was there for me. We became closer. That distance was not there anymore. He became my closest confidant. There's nothing I cannot talk to my father about. Because you see, my father, in that period, he didn't think of his position. He didn't think of what the society taught. He didn't think of everything he had built.

He thought of me. He thought of my future. He knew that I could become something greater. And he held my hand. Every step of the way, he still holds my hand. My father let me realize that no matter what we go through in life, there will always be someone or that group of people that will hold your hand, that will keep nudging you on, and that family will always, always be family. Thank you.

Blessing Dia is a sexual and reproductive health advocate who works for Women Deliver in Africa, and she says her father is proud of her.

Nigerian tradition allows grandparents to name their grandkids, so Blessing's father named her first and second child. She said, "My father and I speak on the phone every day at least twice. He does the bulk of the calling. We talk, catch up, and pray together. But most times when we see each other, I'm competing with my kids for his attention."

My brother Cameron has two kids. Elliot, he's three. And Amelia, she's almost two. And I ask them to weigh in. What's special about your dad? He loves me. What else is special? Trains. Yay! What does he do that's super cool? Flips. He does flips? Yeah, with me. Oh, he flips you? Yeah. Amelia, what do you think about your dad? Why do you love him so much? Because. And does he love you? Yeah.

Is it fun to hang out with him? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. After the break, two short stories, one about choosing who you call dad and one about a simple gesture and forgiveness when the Moth Radio Hour continues. ♪♪♪

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the public radio exchange, PRX.org. You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin-Ginness. In this hour about fathers, I want to name the fact that some men are dads only through DNA.

A father figure or the man we call dad may not, in fact, be blood-related. And while we're on the subject, some single moms are both moms and dads, and some people have two moms, so shout out to the moms listening, too. Our next storyteller is Lauren Thurman, and she told this at an open mic moth slam in Washington, D.C., where we partner with public radio station WAMU. Here's Lauren live at the mall. Thank you.

Whenever I fold towels, I think about skip. I have to fold them the right way, the only way. You fold them crosswise and then again, and then you fold that rectangle into very precise thirds. If you do it out of order, you're wrong. You're just wrong. Sorry. It makes a clean edge. They stack very nicely, and these things are really important to, you know, any potential guests that you might have in the future.

Before I met Skip, I did not fold my towels this way. In fact, I folded them a different way, and I'm very sorry that I did that. And when he showed me his method, I think I actually said, "That's stupid." But that's how I do it now. And that's how I will do it until my dying day. Skip, by the way, is my dad. He has not been my dad for very long.

And I still can't bring myself to call him dad, not really because of the novelty of it, but because I actually went through a couple dads first and the name like wears itself out after a while. So first there was Robert. Robert was the generous but accidental donor of my other ex chromosome. And he was not entirely absent. He would drop in on birthdays and stuff, which was great because I knew that I meant like junk food and toys were coming.

But he was always just a little too wrapped up in himself, too busy nurturing his depression and his genius and his confusion to really, really be a dad for me. And when I was eight, he sent me this long letter explaining to me what depression is and why it made him so hard for me, which, by the way, is way more responsibility than an eight-year-old should have to shoulder.

And I think I could recognize that. And I sort of said, you know, if he wants to be my dad, he can do that. But I'm not going to put any more into this. The man that my father married a couple years after I was born was Walter. He was my real dad, even though he wasn't my biological dad, which I loved explaining to my friends all through school. It made me very interesting. And Walter, I would give him like a solid B. You know, he was a B dad. He was...

You know, he was fun and loving and he made okay pancakes, but he never really laid down the law. He was like the parent you loved but didn't respect very much. So when my parents got divorced in high school, that is when I was in high school, he sort of...

He sort of disintegrated. He couldn't really pull himself together and he fell into this puddle of need and reached out to me to take care for him, which, by the way, way more responsibility than a 15-year-old should shoulder.

And I recognized that, and so I moved away with my mom. And after a couple years, she fell in love with and moved in with Skip. Skip and I clicked right away, but we didn't really bond. We were very similar, but in all of the ways that are probably the less flattering parts of our personality. He's very stubborn. He thinks he's right all the time. He uses ostentatiously large words to try and prove that he's right, you know, just like, ugh. Um...

And he did things like tell me to fold his towels the right way, which I wasn't about, right? I was 16. I was going to do what I wanted. But the thing is, if you fold Skip's towels the wrong way, he will tell you that you're wrong by dumping those towels out onto your bedroom floor so that you have to then wash dry and fold them again. And this could be infuriating, right? And we're trying to get close to each other. My mother is trying to bring us closer together because this is a really important guy to her.

But it doesn't really mesh and I don't think we really bond until one fateful night when we get pizza together and we watch "How to Train Your Dragon". And this would become actually a really important movie to us. He, at the end of the movie, he turned to me and he said, "Lauren, you're the dragon and I am this little Viking trying to get close to you and this is entirely on your terms and I'm just waiting for you."

To let you in, to let me in. And I cried and he cried and there was like lots of crying. I'm sure my mom cried but she had like gone to the other room. She just left us to it. And so that's when we really opened up to each other and when he first made clear to me that I was important to him, that I was so much more than just this like teenager who had invaded his home at such an otherwise peaceful time in his life.

And he ended up telling me, "Lauren, about 16 years ago, my first wife and I, we lost a baby girl. And I've thought about her ever since, who she might be and how we might be together, and I always pictured somebody like you. Somebody who was stubborn and forthright and very smart." That was him that said that, not me. And I just lost it. And I thought,

What a shame it is that the narrative of finding someone important to you is so often limited to romance narratives. It's Tom and Meg, it's Kate and Leo. But that's how Skip and I came together. He didn't raise me, I wasn't born to him. We had sort of been looking for each other for our whole lives. And then we found each other. Two years after that night he adopted me officially.

But I think that night was the night that I really became his daughter. We've been figuring it out ever since. That was Lauren Thurman in Washington, D.C., where she works as a writer and an editor. Skip gave Lauren a shadow box last year that had pictures of the two of them, the first Father's Day card she wrote to him, and a How to Train Your Dragon poster. She says it is perhaps the cheesiest thing he's ever done.

And that's right, we have a photo of it just for you on our website, themoth.org. Here's my father again, Thornton Janess. Do you like being a dad? There are times. Yes, I like being a dad. Well, you take fatherhood very seriously, I think. That comes with the responsibility of having children. It's not just getting them through childhood, it's taking responsibility for them for the rest of their lives.

Life changes as each decade goes on. Your responsibility and how you would evaluate what you've done in the form of being a father changes over the generations. I mean, I'm looking back and seeing my children

become parents and inspirational leaders in their own right and I'm very proud of that. I'm especially proud of being in their midst when they're with friends. And what about being a grandfather? It's fun. You babysit for them? Yes, I do. Five afternoons a week.

And they're running around upstairs right now? Yes, they are. But that's Cameron and Kristen's responsibility, not mine. That's why we're down in the basement. Here's my brother Cameron. What are some of the things you learned from dad about how to be a dad?

Um, I mean the the memories I have of of my dad are are being down on the ground playing with us goofing around And and letting us kind of explore and and be ourselves but being a part of that I think that's really important to let their imagination go and and kind of follow along with it and being a part of their life and trying to see what they see for the first time and trying to be able to explain it I think uh

That makes their growing up a little bit easier when they know that they can ask good questions and be able to find an answer. That's kind of what dad said he loved most about being a dad. It's a pretty fun thing to do. Here's my father again. What do you think makes you a good dad? And a good grandpa? I think I'm approachable. I'm not...

So stern, but I think I'd like to put myself on the same level as my children. So literally, you can see yourself squatting down and talking to the child. I'm not that short. As you're relating to them, but it's getting to the level where you can relate to them on their own terms and in their own language. Let me ask you, why am I a good dad to you?

Yeah, I think you've always talked to me like we're friends. But you talk to me like we're friends, but you have much more experience in the world. Thank you. I agree. You know, you don't read a book on how to be a dad. You learn by scratching and clawing and making tough decisions, decisions you would sometimes regret and trying to learn a better way.

Relationships with our fathers can be a bit complicated, which brings us to our last storyteller. Harwood Taylor told us at one of our Grand Slams in Texas, where we partner with Houston Public Media. Here's Harwood, live at the mall. I always remember loving my father's hands. In the mid-60s and the early 70s, I was probably about this high.

and I would put my chin right where his typewriter was. And he had one of those old stacked key typewriters. Remember the tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick? That sound was ever-present, and it was like white noise in our childhood. And he was also a draftsman. He did these beautiful drawings with charcoal, and he would use his fingers. They would turn black, pushing the material around to shade or contour a figure drawing. And I saw his fingers in wet clay,

There was just a grace about his fingers and his hands that I just always remember being fascinated by. He was also bipolar, and if you don't know what that is, it's just basically a chemical imbalance that'll make you, you know, maybe very excitable and high sometimes and also very low sometimes. It can be very scary, frankly, for a young family. And it was. It was for me.

and my sisters. And just to give you a fuller picture, I mean that sort of feeling of uneasiness. I loved my dad and he was creative and he was brilliant and could be very entertaining, but just emotionally didn't feel safe. For the last probably 15 plus years of his life, my sisters didn't speak to him. I, on the other hand, decided after lots of therapy and men's work, and men's work is when you try to get closer to your dad and try to heal wounds usually,

And it enabled me to commit to have breakfast with him every Sunday. And I remember one Sunday, one of my sisters said, how can you do that? And I said, it's service work. And she laughed. And I said, I'm not kidding. I mean, it really was that hard to have breakfast with him. It was just that I didn't feel safe. So anyway, that was when he was 70. Well, when he was 82, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

I didn't know anything about it. It scared me and I called, you know, got online, looked up everything I could learn about it. And I found the Houston Alzheimer's Association, great organization by the way. And they had these classes and they would put the patients, my dad included, in one classroom and they'd put me and the other caregivers in the other classroom.

And afterward, we'd come and have lunch and talk about things and, you know, it was the kind of stuff you never want to have to talk about, period, on earth. And yet, we got closer. And my heart certainly opened a little bit, knowing that one day he might look at me and, you know, not know who I was. So, I'm going to pick him up one Sunday for our obligatory Sunday breakfast. And it's not obligatory anymore.

I want to be with my dad now because I know that, you know, time might be short. And we're driving along and I look down and his 82-year-old hand, beautiful 82-year-old hand is sitting there on the middle console. And I just had this nice thought, I want to hold my father's hand. And I'm driving and I came to a red light and I looked down and I couldn't do it. And I was so scared. And all these things were going through my head like,

you know, you did all this therapy and you've done these men's groups and, you know, what is this? I can't hold my father's hand, my 82-year-old father's hand. What's wrong with me? And then I thought, you know, how many times did my dad hold my hand, little Harwood's hand, you know, as a boy, as a child? You know, maybe my little hand in his hand, maybe every day, you know, thousands of times. You know, what's wrong with me? Well, luckily, our parents

Saved by the green light, you know, I started driving again, turning this over in my head, and I come to the next red light. I look down and I see his hand again and I just say, "I want to hold my father's hand. I can't do it." You know, I thought, "Is he going to use that sharp wit and say something mean to me? Is he going to pull his hand away? Would he hit me? Because he had hit me." So I remembered I was here in Houston and I turned onto Heights Boulevard and there was a stop sign.

and there wasn't anybody behind us. There happened to be a woman sitting on a bench. I don't know why we caught eyes. And when I took my hand off the steering wheel, you know, it was just a few inches to touch my father's hand, but it might as well have been my foot leaving a thousand-foot bungee jump. It was the scariest thing I did in my life. And when I touched his hand, immediately his other hand came over and covered my hand. And it was...

It was like he'd been waiting for me to do that. And it felt strangely familiar, like we had been doing it forever. For the last two years of my father's life, whenever we went anywhere in a car, we held hands.

That was Harwood Taylor. Harwood is vice president of a fine art gallery in Houston, and he loves telling stories. To see a photo of Harwood and his father on the way to a Houston Rockets basketball game when Harwood was 13, go to themoth.org. We've had all kinds of dads in this hour, and something I realized in talking to my dad and my brother is they love being fathers. They take their responsibility very seriously.

Here's my dad and my brother one more time. If you could give new dads a piece of advice, what would it be? Be sensitive to everyone's needs around you. Be willing to give a helping hand. Just your first and think later. Be proud of the moment because it will pass very quickly.

- Cammie, what's some advice that you'd give to new dads? - Help out any way that you can and just try and do as much for your family as possible, whether that's taking a feeding at night or throwing out really stinky diapers and garbage or whatever it is to kind of get your hands dirty and be a part of it 'cause it happens way too fast.

So thank you to my brother and my dad and to the other dads and granddads out there and the stepdads, the father figures and the wannabe dads. And thank you for listening. And that's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.

Your host this hour was Sarah Austin Janess. Sarah also directed the stories in the show along with Jennifer Hickson. The rest of the Moth's directorial staff includes Katherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Timothy Lu Lee and Lola Okusami. The Moth would like to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their support of the Moth Community Program.

Most stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Stellwagen Symphonette, Cormac, Bob Seger, Regina Carter, Bill Frizzell, and Duke Levine. You can find links to all the music we use at our website,

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the public radio exchange, PRX.org. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching, your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.