The Moth Radio Hour: Location, Location, Location
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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 main stage 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 Chloe Salmon. On the map of my life, there's a pushpin marking the garden of my childhood home in Wichita, Kansas. It had lush butterfly bushes, explosions of tulips and marigolds, shocks of sweet-smelling mint, and green of all shades.

I used to crouch on a stepping stone that was tucked in the space between two butterfly bushes and feel held and hidden. I'd study the mossy soil and watch ants go about their business, and if I was very still, I could watch the butterflies float from flower to flower above me. I had to leave my special spot behind when we moved to a new neighborhood right before I started my freshman year of high school.

I was sad, but hoped that the family that bought our house would love the garden as much as I had. Instead, we heard through the grapevine months later that the new owners had torn the garden up and paved over it with cement. I was outraged. How could they? It's been years since the garden disappeared, but I've found that its pushpin has stayed put in my map. Places change over time, but the memories we make in them stick around.

even if they live under a layer or two of cement. In this hour, stories of the places that make up the maps of our lives. Our first story takes place in a special spot on the south side of Chicago, but was told in New York at Aaron Davis Hall in Harlem. Here's Jacoby Cochran, live at The Moth. I'm standing on the sideline of the largest roller skating rink floor in Illinois, and it belongs to Rich City Skate.

my family's skating rink. Yeah, I'm 15 years old when my stepfather and his parents decide to realize a lifelong dream that I had never actually heard of to own and operate a skating rink. And so somehow they bought it, our entire family renovated and renamed it, and now it was our inaugural national party. Make some noise if you ever been roller skating. Okay, so y'all know, y'all know.

Now, if you've never been roller skating in your life, a national party is kind of like the Grammys of roller skating. Yeah, I'm talking about some of the greatest roller skaters in America all in one place showing off their moves, their music, their style. And the place is packed. When all of a sudden the DJ starts the roll call, which means every city or state comes on the floor one by one to represent. So you got people in there from Texas doing the slow walk.

Folks from Detroit in there doing the ballroom. You got partners in there doing Kentucky throws and New York trains. They had come from California to Florida and the music was thumping. The synchronized lights were blaring. The fog machines were humming. When all of a sudden the sound of the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, fills the building. Now when you hear those horns from the intro or the payback,

You know it's time for Chicago to get on the floor. Suddenly my mother skates by me and she throws me a wink. You see my mom is one of the greatest roller skaters in Chicago which means she one of the greatest roller skaters of all time. Everybody knows Sweet T. And when she skates it's like time stands still. I'm lucky that she passed down some of her gifts and a little bit of her first love for skating to me and my siblings.

So yeah, I grew up my entire childhood from field trips to weekends to juke jams all in the skate rinks on the south side of Chicago from Markham to Glenwood to the famous rink on 87th Street and now Rich City Skate and I loved it. I mean when my family bought this rink it immediately became like a family affair.

My stepfather immediately became the general manager. My grandparents were CEOs. My mom, the CFO. Aunts, uncles, cousins filled a myriad of roles throughout the building. From the snack bar, where we had to cook the food and serve annoying birthday parties, to the stuff shop where we sold light-up trinkets and candy, all the way to the skate rental, where we had to collect, repair, and pass out skates. And me? I learned how to do everything.

You name it, I learned it and I loved it all the way down to cleaning them nasty ass bathrooms. But I threw myself into the rink. Every free moment I had, I was at the rink. When I described myself, it was Kobe from the south side of Chicago, I work at my family's rink. And somehow that was cool when it came out of my mouth. But I realized quick, it just wasn't my family or my love, but the community's as well. You see, black owned skating rinks are far and few in between.

And these places have been a safe haven for blacks dating all the way back to the Great Migration. So from the very beginning, our community supported us. They showered us with love as we threw bigger parties, as we threw political rallies, we were on the radio and skated at bub-billiken parades. Every day I had never seen so much joy in one place. It felt like a family reunion.

We were flying high a few years later when I went off to college, but you know, don't worry, I only moved like two hours away. So every weekend or holiday I could visit, but college was an opportunity for me to define myself. For me to stop just being Kobe who worked at the roller skating rink. So I joined a speech team, joined Alpha Phi Alpha, I got a job on campus.

But of course, every waking moment I could, I would go back to the skating rink and I would just like to fall into things like I never left. Skating with my homies till 4 a.m. in the morning. And let me be clear, I'm a badass motherfucker on them skates. But that distance I had put between myself and the rink gave me a new vantage point. I started noticing things on my visits. Like I started realizing that my mom and my stepdad were fighting more, but they were putting on smiles for the people.

I started noticing that the growing pressure of running a family business was starting to heighten the tensions and the egos as people positioned themselves for more control. I started to realize that my younger siblings who were now in high school had put a lot of space between themselves and the rink, which was a complete 180 from how things were when I was in high school. But through all of this, I just figured,

This is part of the business. This is what comes with turning a hobby into a hustle. This is the small business tax you pay. Things didn't really crystallize for me until about midway through my junior year when I get a call from my mom who is deeply angry but completely calm. Yeah, sweet tea wasn't really one for small talk. She said, "Kobe, I called to tell you that I'm finished. That me and your father are splitting and I'm leaving the rink."

I was shocked, but I just wanted to hold on to that fantasy, that family affair. So I begged her, you know, what can I do? What can the family do? How can we turn back the hands of time? And she said, we can't. Kobe, this was never my dream. And now I don't even feel the love. And I knew she wasn't just talking about for the rink or her marriage, but her first love.

for skating, which had become my first love. And after that phone call, the visits started becoming a little less frequent. Family members started to feel like they had to choose sides. And so when I would go back, the place started feeling like a ghost of itself. When I graduated, I went from living two hours to 12 hours away because like I said, I just wanted to hold on to that fantasy, so I ran.

But you know, I told myself that even though I was throwing myself into something new, that I would go back and visit, that I would help out at some point, but you know, a month became six months, which became two years. And then the summer of 2016 rolls around, and I look myself in the mirror and I say, "I can't for the life of me miss another Rich City Skate National Party." It's our 10-year anniversary. And so I grabbed my skates and I headed there, and I knew that things at the rink had changed.

But when I walked through the doors, many of those synchronized lights and humming fog machines were out of order. A lot of those thumping speakers had blown and I'm standing on the sidelines of the largest roller skating rink floor in Illinois and it now has humps and dips and a clear spot that's been roped off because that's where the ceiling leaks.

And yet somehow this place is packed from side to side. People had rolled in there from California to New York to Florida and at that moment the DJ starts the roll call and my heart swells as you got people out there from Texas doing the slow walk, folks from Detroit doing the ballroom, you got partners doing Kentucky throws and New York trains and when the sound of James Brown fills the room I sprint on the floor.

But I'm a little rusty, it's been some time, but with each passing song as those humming horns go on and on, the magic returns to my body. The moves start flowing through me like I never left and I think to myself, this is what it was all about. The people. And the people are here. As the sweat pours from my face and the music fades, my father skates by me and he throws me a wink.

He grabs the microphone and he thanks everybody for being there, for making this one of the best national parties that the rink has ever seen. He thanks them for their love and their support. And then he tells us that this is going to be the last Rich City Skate national party because Rich City Skate is closing its doors. And I'm hearing this for the first time and it feels like a punch to the gut.

I'm looking around as people are sobbing and hugging. You can hear as people are begging, what can we do? What can the community do? How can we turn back the hands of time? And he says, we can't. He says, this was always my dream, but now it's time to wake up. I'd never seen so much sadness in one place. It felt like a funeral and I don't really know what to do. So I just sort of do what comes natural and I start cleaning up.

From the nasty-ass bathrooms, to the snack bar, to vacuuming the stuff shop, to collecting skates, when I come across this wall that is filled with pictures. Ten years of my family's history strung out in Polaroids.

And there are birthday parties and graduations and rallies and parades. And I see this picture in the middle of my family during our inaugural national party and our freshly pressed polos with smiles as wide as naivety will allow. You see, for years I started to resent this place, wondering if it had took so much from us and if it was worth it. But as I stared at these pictures, I realized that for so many people, this place was home.

So before I left, I went to my stepfather and I asked him for one last favor. And he walks into the DJ booth and the intro to the payback starts playing in the background. And I hop on the floor, sweat intermingled with tears running down my face. And I take one last skate around the largest roller skating rink floor in Illinois and realize, building or not, I'ma always be here.

A rich city skater. Thank you. That was Jacoby Cochran, a writer, educator, and storyteller.

He's the host of City Cash Chicago, a daily news podcast covering happenings about town. Working on the podcast takes up a big chunk of his days, but he fills his off hours by going to live shows and taking photos of his life in the city. Jacoby says he still skates from time to time, mostly at another beloved Chicago spot, the rink on 87th Street. To see some photos of Rich City Skate in its heyday, head over to themoth.org.

Coming up next, a young woman finds her place on the golf course, and a pasta dish becomes a talisman against bad days. When the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.

You're listening to the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Chloe Salmon. In this episode, we're hearing stories of places. Our next one comes to us from Holly Thompson, who told it at a story slam in Portland, Oregon, where we partner with the public radio organization OPB. Here's Holly. So the one thing in life to come easy for me was a golf swing. I was 10 years old when I got my first set of golf clubs.

And a year later, at 11, I had made the big leagues. I was in my grandpa's and his foursomes group every Saturday morning at 7 a.m. And for those of you that don't know golf, that is like prime time. That is when all the serious golfers and good golfers are out there. So for me to be this little 11-year-old girl joining these guys at 7 a.m.,

It was a big deal and I felt like top shit. And my grandpa and I had this awesome routine of every morning getting up and going to Julie's diner and having chocolate chip pancakes and me riding shotgun in the golf cart with the smell of his cigar smoke in the air. And after every round, we'd go into the clubhouse and

and he, with his booming loud voice, would command an entire room and brag about how his granddaughter had outscored all the other guys that day. I started to join local tournaments and win, and that catapulted me to playing at the national level and winning. Newspaper sources were referring to me as this blonde bomber golf phenom.

And girls that I would compete against would actually want me to sign their scorecard after we played because they thought I would be this LPGA star. Those Saturday mornings with my grandpa dwindled away. I stopped playing with him because I became all focused. I had to live up to the hype. I had to become what everyone else thought I would become.

And so I ended up going on a full-ride scholarship to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And I played for a couple months, but the fun was gone. And that swing that used to be so easy, it wasn't easy anymore. And I ended up quitting after only a couple months. And I didn't touch a club or even look at one for years. And it wasn't until my grandpa was diagnosed with cancer that I...

thought again about that. It came really suddenly and he was only given six months to live if he was lucky and hadn't played for years. And he was so depressed he wouldn't leave his house, he wouldn't talk to anyone. And I ended up one morning just doing the only thing I could think of. And I ended up dusting off those old clubs and I drove over to his house and I woke him up and I said, "Grandpa, we have a golf course to go to."

And he turned towards me and he hadn't spoken to anyone in weeks. And he said, "But you don't play anymore." And I said, "I play today, Grandpa, and will you be my date?" And he got up out of his bed for the first time in weeks. And he was moving slow that day, but cancer was progressing really quickly. But I drove him to Julie's Diner and we had those chocolate chip pancakes we had shared so many times before.

And we got to the golf course at 7 a.m. sharp because old guys love to be punctual. And his friends were waiting there, and I took my golf club out of my bag, and it felt so foreign in my hands and so big and heavy. And I went up, and I took my first swing. It was on a par 3, 150-yard hole that we had golfed so many times before. And I took a swing, and I completely missed.

And I remember turning towards my grandpa and his buddies, and you could have heard a pin drop. They had never seen me do that. And I just was like, guys, that was a practice swing. It was just a practice swing. And I just refocused, and I tried to get myself back to just like, I'm with grandpa. There's nothing else. It's just be 11 years old again with this club in your hand and just swing. Just have fun. And so I swung again.

And I hit the ball and as soon as I hit it, I knew. When you're a golfer and you hit that ball just right, you know. And I sat there and I watched the trajectory of that ball and I watched it land at the front of the green. And it kept rolling and rolling, just following the undulation of the green. And it rolled 45 feet. I measured. And I saw it go towards this red pin and it disappeared. It dropped.

And this is that moment every golfer dreams of. And as for as much as my grandpa and I had golfed, we had never had a hole-in-one or witnessed one. And I went in, like, crazy mode. I was, like, doing dances I would not wish anyone else to see ever again. And I just remember, like, once I calmed down, I look over at my grandpa, and for the first time in my life, I saw him crying. And I started crying, obviously. And, um...

It just, in that moment, it made me realize there was no amount of fame, no tournament I could have won on any level that would have made me feel more like a champion looking at my grandpa at that moment. He died three weeks after that round. And I'm just look back at that round every day. And I'm so grateful I had that experience with him. And then he reminded me

That all that matters is those moments with loved ones. The rest of the stuff is fluff. And to this day, I golf again. I just do it for fun. And the swing's easy again. And I swear, sometimes when I'm in a golf cart, I walk a lot. But when I'm in a golf cart, I can smell the scent of his cigar. And I can't help but smile. That was Holly Thompson.

She now lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is a biological dentist who specializes in placing non-metal zirconia implants. That hole-in-one on the green with her grandpa was Holly's first and only, so far. She still golfs regularly, at home and all over the world. To see a photo of Holly and her element on the golf course, head over to themoth.org.

Up next is Leah Hadock. She told this story at a Grand Slam in Boston, where we partner with PRX and WBUR. Here's Leah. The year I turned 40, I wondered if my husband might surprise me with a party or a trip away. And I did not expect a divorce because I didn't ski.

And just like that, I found myself a 40-year-old divorcee with sole custody of two 15-year-old incontinent miniature dachshunds. And nowhere was that in my life plan. And so I had to come up with a new plan, and I moved from Maine to Boston. And as luck would have it, around the corner from my apartment was a restaurant that, in my opinion, sold the best pasta in the whole of Boston.

And I would go in there and they had this strozzapreti dish and it was hand-rolled Twister pasta with tender braised rabbit and rosemary and peach chalene olives. And I would have eaten that every single night except for it was like nearly $30 for a bowl and carbs. So I set myself a rule that I could only go in there on my very, very, very worst days.

because we all know it's better to eat your feelings than feel them. And so at first, I was eating quite a lot of pasta. LAUGHTER

The day the final decree came in the mail, I was like, that deserves some strozzapreti. And a couple of weeks later, when I found the online wedding pictures of his remarriage to a much younger, heavily pregnant new wife, I was like, yeah, that definitely deserves pasta. And I would go into the restaurant. I would have maybe put a sweater on top of my pajama top and...

And I would just go in there, order my pasta, order my wine, not really want to talk to anyone. And normally I'm quite sociable, but not on the very worst days. But there was this one guy who worked at the restaurant called Ethan, and he would kind of try and talk to me, but then I would open up my book, and he would leave me alone. But at the end of dinner, he would

always bring over with the check like a little scoop of gelato which would have been really nice except I don't have a sweet tooth so I'd just angrily mush it around in the bowl and um

And then eventually I was having less bad days and I didn't want to be alone forever so I knew that meant it was time to start dating and that was completely new for me because the last time I had gone on a date was never and everything is just so new in terms of technology so I downloaded the apps and I figured out the correct direction for the swiping and

And I was just, I was so clueless. This one guy messaged me and said, are you an LTR kind of girl? And I was like, LTR, which I now know means long-term relationship. But I somehow found live to rage on Urban Dictionary. And I wrote back and I said, well, I like a glass of wine or two with dinner, but I probably wouldn't say I'm a rager. And...

And I took advantage of all the technology because there's so many filters, and I was filtering for everything. And I thought I knew exactly what I wanted, and I chose all these criteria that basically described my ex-husband. I think I thought, well, I'll find another him, but maybe this one will love me.

And so I started going on the dates and I went on so many first dates that never led to a second date, but they were never quite bad enough to go and eat the pasta. And that continued to give me hope. Plus I'm a wedding photographer and in the last year I photographed numerous weddings from Hinge and JDate and Facebook and all sorts of different apps. So I just kept persevering. One night my date pounded five beers

ordered three shrimp dishes despite my shellfish aversion, let me pay the check, and then got really weirdly, weirdly creepy about giving me a ride home. And I blurted out some excuse and literally ran out of the restaurant and walked home kind of disheartened and really hungry and decided that was a pretty bad date, so I think that just deserves some pasta, silver lining. And

And so I walked into the restaurant and I deliberately didn't sit in Ethan's section. I was like, I'm not dealing with that ice cream thing. And I've got my pasta and I'm eating it and he comes over anyway and tops up my wine, which I really didn't need any more of. And he also gives me this giant plate of broccolini. And I'm like, because I've had a few glasses of wine, I'm like, do you think I don't eat enough vegetables? And...

And he, like, looks at me, and I say, do you feel sorry for me because I'm always alone? And he looks at me, like, really, really looks at me and says, how could I feel sorry for you when you've got all that going on? And I turned beet red, wanted to put my head in my bowl of pasta, but like the grown adult I am, I sent a group text to my happily married girlfriends because they're a great source of dating advice, and they...

They told me to leave my number. And I was like, I don't leave my number for people in restaurants. And Alex pointed out that I had gone on so many dates with so many guys who met all of my criteria, and they'd all been awful, and maybe I should just leave my number for the guy who brought me ice cream. And I did leave my number with a note that said, should you choose not to call, we must pretend this never happened, because I need...

Because I need to be able to come in here and eat strozzapreti on my really bad days. And he texted at the end of his shift and he said, I would never come between a woman and her pastor. That would be a cruel and egregious act and I am not that man. And a year later, we're in an LTR. And technology may have changed the way we date, but not the way we love. Thank you.

Leah Haydock lives in Boston, where she splits her time between her photography business and pharmacology consulting. While she and Ethan did split up eventually, Leah says she's still grateful for his kindness and all of the pasta. After the break, a woman's grief takes her to an island that holds her heart 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 Chloe Salmon. Our final story comes to us from Marguerite Maria Rivas. She told it at a main stage at the Wilbur Theater in Boston, where we partnered with public radio station WGBH. A gentle note that this story contains themes of intense loss. Here's Marguerite live at the Moth.

In the 1980s, the early 1980s, I was a typical Staten Island working girl going back and forth to my job on Wall Street every day on the Staten Island ferry. And then I got pregnant. I loved that baby from the moment I knew she was there. I went out and bought a Walkman so we could listen to music on the commute with two sets of headphones, one for me, one for my belly.

Carly Simon's anticipation played constantly. And then as my belly grew and the headphones stretched, they finally snapped, and I fixed them with some tape from the office. The doctor called, just about my seventh month this was, and asked me to come in for a sonogram, and then he said he wanted to see me afterwards. When I went in to see him, he looked at me and he said, "I have some news." He said the baby has a fatal birth defect.

and that her condition is not compatible with life. I said, "My baby's gonna die?" It was inconceivable. I was seven months pregnant. She was growing, she was moving, she loved music, I loved music, I loved her, and she was gonna die? And he said, "Yes, that she would die shortly after she was born."

Two months later, I had my daughter, Maria. I gave her my middle name because I knew that when she left, she'd take a big part of me with her, like maybe the whole middle part of me with her. And she was so beautiful. She was bathed and baptized and brought to me with a little pink cap on her head so I couldn't see her birth defects so much. And the nurse who helped deliver her brought her to me and said, "Kiss her goodbye, girl."

and I kissed that cheek, it was like cool water, and her mouth was like a rose, and I recognized the curve of her nose, and when I spoke, she looked at me. I went home to grieve, and then I wanted to see the baby's grave. Before I had left the hospital, during visiting hours, after visiting hours, my family had left, a woman came in the room with a clipboard, and she said she was from the city.

and she wanted to know what I wanted to do for the burial. She said the city usually takes care of things in cases like this. And I remembered that my brother's baby, who'd been born prematurely just before Maria had died, he had a city cemetery burial, and I had this vision. Because you see, I was 23 hours post-labor, pumped up on painkillers and full of sorrow,

So I had this little vision of Maria and Christopher together, side by side, in some pretty place with a picket fence and grass. So I signed the papers. And then when I got home and asked to see the grave, that's when I found out I could never see the grave. I had signed the papers for my child to go to New York City's Potter's Field on Hart Island. Hart Island is a little island off the Bronx.

and I could never visit. You see, Heart Island was administered by the Department of Corrections, where prisoners dug long trenches and buried bodies in mass graves, and for that reason, no one could visit. It was against the law, ever. It was like Maria had died all over again.

I had nowhere to mourn. I had no patch of land to say, "This is where my child is. She was born, she lived and she died, and here she is." I had nowhere to go. It was especially hard on her birthdays and on holidays. Eventually, I was blessed with two beautiful daughters, and when they would take their place around the Thanksgiving table at my mom's house,

I would look at them and I would always see three. Maria was always there, a presence. 37 years after Maria was born and died, my niece Jamie, who lives here in Boston, called me up and said, "Aunt, did you know there was a lawsuit? Families can visit Heart Island now. You can go visit Heart Island."

And I was first like floating out of my body and I was like, "No, no, no, no, no, no. Uh-uh. No thank you." You see, in those 37 intervening years, my grief had been compounded by my guilt at having signed away my child to a place I could never visit. And that was exacerbated by these horrible headlines I used to see.

City of the lost souls, island of the forgotten. She was never forgotten, not for one minute. And I used to see these images of trenches and dirt and mud and gravel, and I remembered that last beautiful kiss, and I said, I can't go see my baby here. But then I remembered that dream I had about Maria and Christopher being together. And when that doctor had told me that day...

that she was going to die, I felt as though I had swallowed a rock and it had dropped me right to the bottom of the harbor, as cold as ice. And I carried that rock, big as my fist and where my heart should have been. I carried that rock for 37 years and I knew I had to do something to move that rock. And Jamie said, "It's okay, I'll come down and get you. I'll take care of you."

And I believed her, and I knew this had to go. This rock had to go. So I went to the city's website, and I filled out the forms for us to visit. Soon we were on the dock. Heart Island is in the Bronx. It's off the Bronx. In order to get there, you have to cross water.

I was at the dock with Jamie, my niece, and Miranda, my daughter, and as we stood there on the dock, I could see other parents who were going to see their children. Some of them had just found out their children were buried there. The officer in charge came out, the corrections officer in charge came out and said, "We'll be going to Hard Island soon. Let me tell you how we'll get there. Once we're underway, I'll give you the procedure." He said,

We're going to get there by an old Staten Island ferry that's been repurposed only for Heart Island. It's the oldest one. And I realized in that moment that my daughter's first journeys and her last was aboard a Staten Island ferry. So out of place here in the Bronx. Soon this little ferry came. It looked like a little barge. We got on it and we started to cross.

And the fog was so dense, you couldn't even see Heart Island. You had no idea where you were going. It was like you were crossing the river Styx. That's all I kept thinking. And as we got toward the island, the officer in charge said, "Okay, here's the procedure. Do you see that white bus? We're going to get in that bus and it will take you to your loved one's grave site, where a corrections officer will be stationed to supervise your visit."

You can't take pictures and you can't leave until the bus comes around to get you again. So we shuffled onto the bus, got underway, a woman got out with red flowers and put them down in front of a statue, an old weathered statue that must have been there for decades, of an angel child. And the bus wound around again and a family got out and they had this beautiful bouquet and I had seen them on the dock and the father was so composed.

And, you know, when you got there, the officer in charge would show you where the grave was because none of them are marked. He has to have the grid to let you know. And when he brought him out, that father fell to his knees. And I thought, oh, my gosh, what's going to happen to me? We went round and round and round, dropping people off. And finally the bus came to a stop, and I got out, and...

The officer in charge said, "I'm going to show you where your daughter's grave is and where your nephew's grave is." And when I looked around me, there were no trenches, there was no mud. The beautiful Long Island Sound was right there. And gravel did not cover their graves, grass did. And when he showed me where my daughter was and where my nephew was,

They were adjacent to each other. The dream 37 years before, that addled brain dream I had, was true. Those cousins were on the most beautiful part of the island. We knelt at Maria's grave, Miranda and Jamie, and I cried. And then Jamie said, Do you remember when we went to an Eagles concert as a family? Do you remember that time? She took something out of her coat.

She said, "Maria would have been the right age to go." It was a yellow ticket stub. She said, "I'm giving her my ticket." And she put the ticket down on my daughter's grave. Then she said, "Maria would have gone to Vermont with us every summer, and we would have been swimming in Sunset Lake and playing on the dock." She took out a bottle of water. She unscrewed the cap. She doused the grave, and she said, "This is Maria's Sunset Lake." And finally, she said,

Maria would have been at every Thanksgiving at Grandma's house, and we would have played with her in the backyard till it got dark, and we would have had dinner with her. And she took out a little bag of dirt, all desiccated and dry, and she sprinkled it on Maria's grave, and she said, this is Maria's Grandma's house. And I knew in that minute, I knew that Maria had not only not been forgotten, she had been missed.

She had been missed by her companion cousin. I wasn't the only one who saw. I knelt down on the grave. The supervising officer called us over first and said, "Would you like a keepsake?" And he had an old Polaroid camera, and he said, "I can take a picture for you if you like." So we stood, the three of us together holding each other, the beautiful Long Island Sound at our back.

the mounds of grass in front of us. He took the picture. As he did, I could see that the bus was returning for us. And I started to... I didn't want to leave her again. I knelt down on the grave one last time with that rock still heavy in there. And I started caressing the grass.

That's the last thing I remember before I started weeping like I had not wept in 37 years. 37 years of grief and guilt came pouring out of me. I was keening at her grave. I heard some noise behind me and I got up and the officer in charge was there. He was such a wonderful, sweet man.

And he looked at me and he said, "Will you make me a promise? Will you do me a favor? Will you come back next spring?" You see, it was December and it was actually the last visit anyone could make for that year. He said, "Will you come back in the spring? It's beautiful here in the spring." And he motioned with his hand. He said, "It's full of flowers, full of wildflowers. Come back. You'll feel better."

But I already was feeling better. That rock I had carried was gone. And in its place was a widening channel for me to navigate. A channel left for me to navigate by Maria out of this darkness and finally into the light. Thank you.

That was Marguerite Maria Rivas. She still lives on Staten Island and is an English professor, a writer, and a proud grandmother to Violet Ray. She also performs improvisational poetry with musicians from time to time. She's at work on a book about journeys, a mixed-genre volume combining poetry and narrative. ♪

One sunny day, I took the Staten Island Ferry over to see Marguerite and talk with her more about Maria and that day on Heart Island. I was curious to know if she had left anything for Maria in addition to Jamie's gifts. As a matter of fact, when I did go visit Heart Island, I went to one of my favorite places in the woods and I gathered things because I could never bring my baby home.

And I said, if I can't bring her home to Staten Island, I'm going to bring Staten Island to her. So I gathered leaves and rocks and sweet gum seed pods and twigs.

and every sort of kind of natural object in that beautiful wooded blade that I used to go in. And I wrapped it in brown paper and tied it with a purple ribbon, and that's what I actually brought to Heart Island instead of a bouquet. In addition to the show in Boston, Marguerite has told her story live on a few of our other stages. Each time, a new theater full of people have heard about Maria and her mother's love.

I asked Marguerite how it feels to know that so many new people know her daughter's name. There are many Marias that have never been talked about. And when I left the show in Boston and one woman was visibly upset, I said, oh, she's got a Maria. Knowing that her life had meaning and that people hear that. I have no gravestone, no headstone. But the headstone is the memory that people will take away.

So I might not have one headstone, but I might have 800 now and maybe another 600. Because of the pandemic, Marguerite hasn't been able to return to Heart Island since that first visit in 2019. But she plans to this winter and has a visit scheduled two days before Maria's 40th birthday. That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. I hope you'll join us again next time.

This episode of the Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, Catherine Burns and Chloe Salmon, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show. Co-producer is Vicki Merrick, associate producer, Emily Couch.

Additional Grand Slam coaching by Larry Rosen. The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin-Ginness, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Cloutier, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Glodowski, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Caza. Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.

Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from the Schmidt-Vertary duo, James Brown, Marisa Anderson, Gaucho, and Eric Friedlander. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.