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Hey there. We here at The Moth have an exciting opportunity for high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors who love to tell stories. Join The Moth Story Lab this fall. Whether for an aspiring writer, a budding filmmaker, or simply someone who loves to spin a good yarn, this workshop is a chance to refine the craft of storytelling. From brainstorming to that final mic drop moment, we've got students covered.
Plus, they'll make new friends, build skills that shine in school and beyond, and have a blast along the way. These workshops are free and held in person in New York City or virtually anywhere in the U.S. Space is limited. Apply now through September 22nd at themoth.org slash students. That's themoth.org slash students.
From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin-Ginness. In this episode, lost and found stories. Heirlooms lost, old ways of life gone, and what is found in their stead. Our curatorial producer, Suzanne Rust, found out about our first storyteller, Ross Jessup, through an article in a local Missoula, Montana newspaper, and she reached out.
Ross later told us, "I thought it was a scam, and so did my lieutenant. I told my wife about it and she said, 'The moth? It's not a scam. Call them. I listen all the time.'"
So we begin this episode lost in the woods of Lolo National Forest in Missoula, Montana, with Ross Jessup, a cop, 10 years into the police force. He came to New York to tell his story outside in Greenwood Cemetery, so you may hear the occasional airplane. We partner with the Greenwood Historic Fund. And just a note, this story involves a crime, and there is some intensity. Here's Ross Jessup, live at the Moth.
It's July 7th, scorching hot, 95 degrees. I'm in a Dodge Durango driving on a dusty road. I'm a cop. I responded to a call where there was a man acting disorderly who was last seen running through a forest. This man had possibly crashed a blue car and he was caring for a baby. I'm at the end of the road. I'm depressed. I'm struggling. My marriage is falling apart.
And in front of me there's nothing but large bushes and pine trees that had overgrown the road that I was on. Another dead end. I turned my patrol car around to continue the search. The area that I'm searching is Lolo National Forest. It's 2.1 million square miles. That's a little bit larger than Delaware, folks. I continue searching for hours. At approximately 10:30, my patrol radio
break silence since my partner. He says to me, "Ross, we know who the suspect is. He's a man, felon, wanted out of Oregon. He's a known drug user and he's violent. He has guns and he's made threats towards law enforcement." I'm 20 miles away, so I go. I meet other officers, knowing that we have about a half a mile walk into the campsite that where he's staying at. I put on my night vision. I take out my long rifle, strap it over my chest.
My heart's pounding. I'm nervous. I'm focused and I'm full of adrenaline. I'm ready for combat. Silently walking in to the pitch black forest. It's about 40 degrees now. And I see his tent, but it's empty. My partner finds a stash of guns that had been set out to ambush the cops when we got there. There's no people in the campsite. I open up the tent and I look around and I see diapers and dirty clothes and dirty dishes and baby toys.
My heart sinks and I'm crushed. It wasn't until that time we were just speculating, but now I knew that we're looking for a five month old baby boy named Greg. Nobody knows where he's at. As I'm scrambling my brain to try to figure out what I'm gonna do next, my portable radio breaks squelch and it's my dispatch center and it's a broken transmission. The suspect has been arrested. So I run back to my patrol car
And I drive as fast as I can to where he's at. I see a man that is dirty. His hair is a mess. He doesn't have any pants on. He's screaming wildly at everybody and just making no sense. He's more concerned about his telephone than anything else. All that pent up adrenaline that I just had kind of went to the wayside and I just became pissed. I tried interrogating him to no avail. I wanted to just...
Strangle the truth out of this guy, but I didn't I yelled at him Begging and pleading him to tell us where we could find her and he says to me instead I buried him alive. I crashed off of a cliff. You won't find him. I don't know where he's at Enraged i'm asking him for more information and he tells me about He tells me about a bush that he had drove over and started to ramble on and on and on
And the bush in my head just kept echoing and echoing. I knew where I had to go. I got the help from the Forest Service with their four-wheeler, and I went up with a Forest Service officer back up to the same road that I'd already been up earlier that night. And when we get to the bush, we drive around it, and we continue driving for less than a quarter mile before what was left of that road completely disappears. Now we're just on a mountain slope, about 30-degree slopes.
No trails, overgrown with bushes and trees. I'm devastated because there was supposed to be a car up here, but there wasn't. I want to scream, and I'm walking downslope, and I see an overturned boulder the size of a basketball. And I look where that boulder was, and there was tread marks in the dirt. I continue to look and soon find a dome light, very dim dome light of a car that had been crashed into a grove of pine trees. I rush to the car, and I find...
debris scattered all around it. A chainsaw that had been stuck in the middle of the tree because our suspect had tried to cut himself out of being stuck. And I frantically get into the car, but there's no baby. I start to look around the crash site and I start following a trail of debris, playing cards, some diapers here and there. And slowly and slowly we walk down down slope of the crash
and about 100 yards here and 100 yards there, I'm still picking up traces of human. Until I come to the bottom of the ravine where it's just completely muddy, all signs stop. My partner had to go back to the crash site to meet the search and rescue people that were on their way up. And here I was alone in the forest and somewhere in Montana, not knowing what differences I make, not knowing why. But I do know one thing.
I'm looking for the body of a baby and it breaks my heart. I'm a father of three. I have three beautiful little girls. I kneel down and I just pray to God, "God, please help me find this baby tonight. Help me find this baby so that nobody else has to. So that nobody else has to deal with the things that I'm about to see." I continue my search. A short time later, I find the suspect's pants.
in an easterly downslope direction from a crash. And then I find a car seat and the car seat's empty. My portable radio had died. I didn't have any way to communicate with my dispatch center. I'm now in charge of all of the volunteers who are looking for this baby and everything's pointing. Keep searching downslope. That makes the most sense. I tell my partner, "Can I borrow your radio? I'm gonna take a walk straight up this mountain." He says, "No, but I'll go with you."
So together we start walking straight up this mountain. 30 degree slopes. We're hot, we're sweaty, we're tired, and we're upset. I'm upset. Maybe more upset than I've ever been in my life. And I'm exhausted. And I'm breathing hard. About 20 minutes straight uphill, I'm panting, trying to catch my breath. And in between pants, there's a moment of silence in a black forest.
and in that moment i hear this small precious little baby whimper at first i couldn't believe it and i heard it again and if i was to describe this sound it would be the sound of a baby that has cried and cried and cried and cried and cried until he couldn't cry anymore i've never heard anything like it and i hope i never have to hear anything again like it i rushed towards the sound
and it's pitch black and my headlights on and my flashlights are on and I can barely see anything. I'm about to step over this pile of debris and there's Grim buried underneath sticks and twigs face down. He's wearing a onesie. He's soiled and he's wet. I remove all the sticks and I wrap Grim up in a down coat and I kiss his forehead and I cry and I hold Grim and I walk him down the mountain.
And the whole time he's coughing up sticks and twigs out of his mouth. I get to the ambulance and turn over to their care. In less than a minute and a half, he drinks two bottles of Infamil. He was that dehydrated. However, Grayson's a strong kid and he's alive today and healthy. I go back to my patrol car. I think I'd forgot to mention this at the beginning of the story, but July 7th is my anniversary. And when I left that house that night,
I left my wife angry because I chose not to take the time off, even though I could have. So when I got home at 7.30 in the morning, way into overtime, I walk into my kitchen where my beautiful wife was drinking coffee, and she asked me, how was your night? I smiled at her. I said I made a difference last night. That was Ross Jessup.
Ross is still a cop in Missoula, Montana, and a canine handler for Missoula County. And he's recently received the Department of Justice Attorney General's Award and the Charles Budd Meeks Award for Deputy Sheriff of the Year.
Ross and the baby were both lost and found. And I asked Ross if all these years later, he's still questioning everything, or if this memory pulls him through the tough days. He said, "'Some days are hard, and I still have PTSD. This particular experience has changed me. Sometimes it haunts me, revealing the evil we face from time to time, and other times it shows me that we can all make a difference by acting together.'"
To see a photo of Ross with his family and his medals, visit our website, themoth.org. After our break, a woman comes out of hiding and a Beatles fan falls in love. 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 all about what you may find after loss. Our next story is from Christine Gentry. She told us at a Moth Grand Slam in Boston where we partner with WBUR and PRX. Here's Christine live at the Moth. So it's one of those first days where you catch yourself getting way too excited because things are going way too well.
Supposed to be just drinks that turned into dinner, more drinks. And then we were back at his place in Inwood in New York City, and we're just talking, talking, talking. And as it often does on first dates, the conversation snaked around to our previous experiences on the app that we had met on. And he starts laughing and says, oh man, the last girl that I met on there, she seemed great. But then when we went back to her house, and get this, she was bald.
like something about her immune system, she had a wig and she took it off in front of me. Like how crazy is that? I was so weirded out. And what this man did not know is that he was sitting across from someone who had the exact same condition. The odds of which I cannot even begin to imagine. My immune system attacked every hair follicle on my body when I was three years old. And then again when I was eight. And then again when I was 14.
And I'd been wearing wigs since high school, but it was something very few people knew because I kept it locked, quarantined, you know, behind this thick door inside of me. And at that moment, it felt like I was floating above us, looking down at this conversation. And I thought about telling him. I thought about the bravery of the woman before me, and I thought about how fucking stupid he was going to feel if I did it.
But I'm embarrassed to tell you, I chickened out. I said, you know what, it's late, I have to work tomorrow, grab my stuff and left. And I just sobbed that whole subway ride home. Because not six months before, I had finally escaped this horribly abusive relationship and I had gone into therapy to figure out, how did I get into this relationship? How is it that I stayed for so long? And we'd figured out that it was because I had let that man in that space, right?
And I had let him see me at my most exposed, my most vulnerable, and what I thought was my most ugly. And he had loved me anyway. And he had turned that love against me. He would do things like snatch my hair off during fights because he knew that it would just break me. And I left that relationship with these two very deep fears, right? The first was that if anyone ever got into that space again, they would hurt me. And the second was that no one would ever love me for who I really am anyway.
And that night on the train, I was like, this is proof. What just happened to me is proof that I'm right. And I resolved to make this my deepest, darkest secret. And when he emailed me the next day and asked to see me again, I said no. And I went on to date several people. I would date people for months, and they would never know. Because I got really good at redirecting hands. And I got really good at sneaking out of beds to fix my eyebrows and my eyelashes while they were asleep.
and I would ruin $3,000 wigs by sleeping in them night after night after night because I felt so ugly without them. And if anyone ever found out, I would just bounce before they got a chance to leave me. And then last month, you guys, last month, Ayanna Pressley, the Congresswoman whose district we're in right now, she did something so incredible. She posted a video where she revealed that she'd been wearing wigs because of the same condition.
And it was so brave, and it was so beautiful. And the next night, I sat across from this man I had been dating less than a month. And the street lamp was coming through the blinds, and the room glowed this beautiful bluish-purple. And I took everything off, and I asked him to see me, like all of me, the real me. And I knew that it was for me, and that it was something I needed to do no matter how he responded. And he kissed my head, and he told me I was beautiful.
And this time, I believed it. Thank you. That was Christine Gentry. Christine taught English, creative writing, and storytelling in the public schools of Boston and New York City for 13 years. And she's now a professor at New York University, preparing secondary public school teachers. Christine and Henry, the man at the end of her story, decided to split when she moved back to New York from California a few years ago.
She says, "We knew better than to try a long-distance relationship, so we made the heartbreaking but right decision to break up when I left." But we stayed in touch, and he's happy that this story is airing. Sometimes you have to clear out or lose your old way of life in order to find the next chapter. We met Gregory Pereira, our next storyteller, in a moth workshop with the College and Community Fellowship here in New York.
He told this story with us in a Moth showcase that explored the justice system. Here's Gregory Pereira live at the Moth. My mother was a big Beatles fan. She loved the Beatles. And I ended up loving the Beatles because my mother loved the Beatles. And she would buy all these different beautiful records. And we would have posters on the wall, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, All You Need Is Love. And I felt that kind of sensation of happiness there.
And I remember my mother and I just dancing and dancing to these Beatles songs, and I felt filled with love. And for me, that was a great sense of family. Within a few years, shortly thereafter, it seemed like my community in the South Bronx was hit with a tidal wave of heroin. And in that devastation, people were caught up, and my mother was one of the ones caught up in this typhoon, tidal wave of heroin.
and she lost her ability to parent. My father there had moved to the West Coast. And in my search for family, because I was kind of left to my own devices, 10 years old, 11 years old, kind of pain attracts pain. I gravitated to that street life. And at that time, they were indoctrinating young kids into the gangs. And I remember my father talking about being in a gang when he was younger.
My mother started dating somebody who was in the Hells Angels. So that life was kind of there for me to embrace. And I remember wearing cut-off sleeves, jeans, MC boots, chains, patches, colors, and people would die for these colors. I found a brotherhood. I looked for older men to kind of mentor me, to be my brothers. And I found guys like Apache,
Wild child, crazy Mike, crazy Phil. These guys became my protectors and my brothers and they showed me the ropes. I remember us just hanging out, wearing bandanas, putting them on, standing in the park. You had to look like a warrior. You had to look like the Terminator. No feeling until we got drunk. That lasted for quite a number of years. Well, my mother and my grandfather
They didn't want me in this lifestyle any longer and they sent me to live in the West Coast with my father. In California, I went to East Los Angeles. It was like the frying pans of the fire. Because gangs were generational over there. There was great-grandfathers, grandfathers, fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, cousins. And I had to be accepted and I had to do what they did. They used to wear these shiny shoes called Imperials.
Iron your khakis, iron your t-shirt, or put your t-shirt over your arm and another bandana. And you always kept it low and you kept your eyes sharp. You were both predator and prey. And you looked fierce. You had to. Otherwise you were a victim. My father says, no, back to New York you go. So back to New York I went. My mother and my stepfather, both intoxicated, forgot which airport I was going to land at.
And I had to find my way back into the city and back into pain, because pain attracts pain. The gang life one more time. Back with the cut-off sleeves, the long t-shirt, and the headband. And I did that for some time. I felt a brotherhood, but then I felt a betrayal like I've never known before. They left me for dead. You know, there was a Beatles song when I was growing up that reminded me of family. It was a line inside that Beatles song, that magic feeling.
And I had that with my mother, and I had that with the gang life, the culture. I had that for a little while. But that magic feeling was no longer there and nowhere to go. Alcohol and drugs became my new friends, and that lasted for quite some time. But what happened was I ended up finally, I guess through the big guy upstairs, changed my life. I hit bottom, and he turned some stuff around for me, and I ended up
I ended up even going back to school. I ended up with two different degrees. And with that, I taught gang awareness and prevention, substance abuse prevention, HIV prevention. And I was transformed, but didn't have that sense of family. I had some stuff, but not family. But in my office one day, there was this girl who came in.
And she was smiling, she was beaming, she lit up a room. When she came, that smile was there. When she was leaving, my head bobbed left and right with her. She used to come into my office to borrow a stapler and tape and folders. And I would see her walk out and I could look at her desk and she had a stapler, tape and folders. So from our talking, we got to walking. She was very athletic.
and she used to love to walk, so I used to walk her home, or close to home. So we started walking for about two, three weeks we were walking, and she would always tell me after about two miles, "Okay, I'm going to leave you here." And I was like, "Maybe she's doing me the favor. She has a lot more to go." But after two more times like this, I got very curious, like, why isn't she allowing me to walk her home?
Well, the following day, we must have had this psychic connection. It was the heart of February. It was freezing out. And it was sun glaring on the snow that was still on the floor. And I was breathing smoke out of my nose. And I had these sunglasses on. And she stops and she says, listen, I got to tell you something. I got to show you something. And she whips out these two pictures. And these two pictures, and I'm cold. I'm trembling. I'm trembling.
And I'm counting heads, two, four, seven, seven heads. And she says, these are my children. I said, man, she couldn't put them on one picture? And she said, are you okay with that? Now, I had a son of my own, and I wasn't a good parent. I don't know how to do this. I'm still finding my way. Anyway, we left, and I figured out why she didn't allow me to walk her home.
she was really trying to protect her children from whom they meet. Well, we talked the next day at work and I was contemplating and I asked my friend Ronald, "What do you think?" And he says, "Well, she's very pretty." And, "Do you think you can handle it? Check yourself." And I said, "Okay." And I get this phone call from her and I'm home ironing clothes. You know, I got used to ironing my stuff. And I'm thinking about, "I can't do this."
It was nice knowing her. But when we talked, in the background, there was such laughter. Laughter I've never heard before. I remember dancing with my mother, and that was the last time we ever danced in 1967. We never danced again. And that magic feeling was dead. I heard all that beautiful laughter in the background. I said, wow, maybe there's something there for me too. And she says, are we still going out on a date? And I was very...
I was very thrilled because of the laughter in the background. Anyway, she says, on the date, we go on a date, and she says, I'm going to set up a time for you to meet my children. Okay, well, we'll work that out. So the kids had another way of meeting me because at my job, one of my coworkers came, ghost-faced and scared, and said, listen, there's some thugs outside waiting for you.
And I said, "Who?" And I confront stuff. So I went outside and there was these two young men across the street in the park. One with his hat cocked to the side. He was about 18 years old. The other one had a headband down low with a pit bull stare. And the older one called me over. And when he called me over, so I said, "What's up?" And he says, "What's your intention for our mother?" I said, "Your mother? Who's your mother?"
I didn't recognize him from the picture. And they said that they wanted to check me out. After a small conversation, the older one, he was a seasoned veteran for being 17. He was a seasoned veteran, and I knew that life. And he called the younger one over, and the younger one did that bop towards him, eyeballing me. And the older one told the younger one something. And the younger one, as they were walking away...
The young one glared back at me and he smiled. He winked his eye like everything's all right. And that magic feeling started to emerge because they became my angels with dirty faces. That's how I felt growing up. And that was my modern family. So we've been together now 19 years.
Gregory Pereira is now an entrepreneur and community educator. He says this once lonely man found a new start and now has 18 grandchildren. He says he wants his life's journey to help listeners understand that hope is possible for all. To see photos of Greg and his large modern family, go to themoth.org. I don't want to leave her now. You know I believe.
After our break, a man gives his favorite book away and then tries desperately to find it again. And a lifelong New Yorker has to pick up and move when the Moth Radio Hour continues. But I don't need a lover, something in the starlight. Don't want to leave her now.
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, all stories of the lost and found.
I've always wanted to start a website where people can post single lost gloves they've found. Like a national lost and found, but just to reunite gloves. A glove give back. I just have to get around to it. Joseph Gallo told this next story at Housing Works Bookstore in New York, where WNYC is a media partner of them all. Here's Joseph.
When I was in college, I had a friend, his name was AJ, and the first time that we ever hung out, we went to see the movie Field of Dreams. And at the conclusion of the movie, we ended up on the roof deck of this parking garage in a mall in South Jersey, and the two of us are crying our eyes out. We barely knew each other, and we were doing circles around my car, refusing to look at each other. We're going, are you okay? I'm okay. Can you drive? Yeah, I can drive. And that's how the two of us became friends. We bonded over baseball.
And after we graduated from college, we moved to Hoboken and we became neighbors. And I had a TV and AJ didn't have a TV. And he used to like to come over to my house and watch games. He liked the Yankees, I liked the Mets. But the one thing, the one thing that we both loved together was the Yankee announcer, Phil Rizzuto.
Now, Phil Rizzuto had a Hall of Fame career as a shortstop, and when he retired, he became the voice of the Yankees, or the Yankee broadcaster, for 40 years. And he was known for his catchphrases. Holy cow, did you see that? Unbelievable!
Unbelievable. And he became immortalized in the Meat Loaf song, Paradise by the Dashboard Lights. He calls the game that takes place in the backseat of the car. And the thing, though, that A.G. and I loved the most about Phil Rizzuto was his stream of consciousness storytelling.
Stories used to spring from him out of seemingly nowhere. You never knew where they were going to go. You never knew where they were going to end. In fact, they were so epic that Rizzuto himself, in his own scorecard over a particular inning, would write the initials WW, which stood for "Wasn't Watching."
Anyway, one day, AJ invites me over to his house and he presents me with a gift. It's a book. And the book is called "Oh Holy Cow." And what these two writers have done, they've taken Rizzuto's broadcast and they transcribed them and they culled and edited them down to the stories that we both loved. And he said he got the book because he saw it, he thought of me, he wanted me to have it. And he knew I collected books and loved books and I'd appreciate it. And then he sat me down.
And he said, I have something to tell you. I've been to the doctors, and I have been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. And a month later, AJ dies. So now fast forward 25 years, and my mother, who is a widow who lives alone in the house that I grew up in, she suffers a massive stroke. And she survives, but she ends up in a nursing home. And I am taxed with the job of breaking down my childhood home.
Now, anyone who's ever had to do this, it's a sad, emotionally exhausting, horrible experience. And one of the jobs that I have to do is I have to do something with boxes and boxes of books that I have accumulated over 25 years. I live in an apartment. I have no room for books. And I stored them in my mother's basement. And now I have to do something with them.
And so one day I'm driving out to my mother's nursing home and I pass this used bookstore. And I think, I'm going to donate them there. And so I drive back to my mother's house. I pack up the car and I take the books to the store. And the woman who owns the store looks exactly like Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. And she is completely, 100% delighted. And she's going through the boxes. She's opening them all up. And I look down and I see the copy of Oh Holy Cow.
And I am so emotionally exhausted that I do nothing. And I let the book go. And the book, I watch the boxes go to the back of the store and they disappear. And a ritual begins. I go to visit my mother in the nursing home. I pass the bookstore and I think, AJ's book's in there. I go to the nursing home, I pass the bookstore, I think, AJ's book's in there. And I realize that the book is starting to take on this amazing power, certainly
far more than it ever had when it was in a box in my mother's basement and I thought of it only once in a great while. And I realize that the power stems from the fact that my mother is still alive. And as long as my mother's alive, the book is alive. And if the book is alive, then in some abstract way, AJ is alive. And I want them to be alive. I want them alive.
And so one day I'm driving to the bookstore, excuse me, to the nursing home. I see the bookstore and I can't take it anymore. I pull into the bookstore. Angela Merkel recognizes me right away. And I say, listen, you know, I gave you a book and I need it back. And she says, well, if we still have it. And so we searched the bookstore and we can't find it. And so she brings me into the basement. And the basement looks like a mini version of the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's just...
aisles and aisles and aisles of books stacked from floor to ceiling. And Angela Merkel is checking the shelves for the book, and I tell her everything that I've just told you here tonight. And finally, she finds the book, and she takes it off the shelf, and she looks down at the cover, oh holy cow, and she smiles. And she opens it up, and she reads the inscription inside aloud. To Joseph, instant stories from the field of dreams.
I thought you would enjoy this. Love, AJ." And she closes the book and she hands it to me and she says, "You should tell that story." And so I just did. Thank you for listening. Joseph Gallo has written and performed several solo plays, including "My Italy Story" and "Long Gone Daddy," which was nominated by Broadway World as Best New Play.
Our final story in this hour is also from our Boston Story Slam series. Here's Aaron Wolfe, live at the Moth. So my wife Naomi calls and she says, Aaron, I got the job. Can you believe it? I got the job. My dream job. I got it. They offered it to me right in the middle of the interview. I got it. And we just have to move to Boston. Isn't that amazing? And on the inside, I'm like, no. But on the outside, I'm like, no.
Because this isn't a job offer, this is an existential crisis. I have been a New Yorker for 38 years. Like even when I lived in New Jersey, I totally told people I was a New Yorker. My parents are New Yorkers, my grandparents are New Yorkers, my great-grandparents, Max and Minnie Goldfinger, they were New Yorkers, and my kids are going to be New Yorkers too. Also, we had a great apartment, and you just don't give up a great apartment in New York at all.
And then Naomi says, "We have to let them know tomorrow afternoon. I love you. Bye." And she hangs up. In the next 24 hours, we go through the first four stages of grief in like every conversation. Just like, "I'm not going. I'm not going. I'm absolutely not going. How could you make me move? Maybe we should like try long distance. What am I gonna do in Boston?" Like over and over again. And then finally at like 7:30 the next morning, I reach acceptance. I call her up at work and I say,
"Look, we've been treading water for so long in this city. My job's not going anywhere. I'm not happy at work. You've worked so hard at your PhD. This finally could be the moment where we become adults. Let's do this." And it's not just acceptance. It's relief. It feels good. It feels good to say it. And then two days before we're leaving, I'm sitting packing up our kitchen, I'm holding the silverware, and I'm sobbing because it's my grandpa Bernie's silverware.
And I look around the kitchen and everything in my apartment is my Grandpa Bernie's. The art on the walls from his house in Bayside, the furniture, his record collection, my dishes, my love of food, my love of music, my first cup of coffee, my first hot dog, my anger, my affection, my New York sensibility, it's his. And now I have to leave it. And I don't know how to say goodbye to it or to him. And then I see this clock on the wall in my living room
It's his clock from his store in the Lower East Side. It says, "Forsyth Monuments, established 1911." And now I know what I want to do for my last day in New York. The next day, Naomi and I pack our two-year-old son in the stroller, and we head out for a really long walk. And it's August in New York. Everyone in their right mind is inside and air conditioning, but we're walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, through Chinatown, up East Broadway, then Delancey, Orchard, and then we stop at Stanton Street.
in front of Silver Monuments, the last Jewish monument store on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. My cousin Murray's shop. And when my grandpa Bernie retired, he sold the business to Murray, so there in the window of Silver Monuments is this little sign. It says, "Forsyth Monuments, established 1911." It's the last shred of my grandpa Bernie on the Lower East Side.
And I don't want to go in, but I have to go in. Because Naomi's like, you have to go in. We walked all the way here, you're going in. This is ridiculous. And I'm like, you know, I also have to go in. I have to. And Murray's not there, but his assistant is there. And I can't remember his name, but he knows me.
Because the last time he saw me, he was selling me and my mom a gravestone from my grandpa Bernie. And he kind of squinches up his face and he's like, "Yeah, yeah, Beth David Cemetery, right? Yeah, yeah, buried near the Arbiter Ring. Yeah, yeah, how is your mother anyway?" And I look at this guy, he could be 50 or like 250. Like, he's never touched an iPad, you know?
And he looks like he's from, he's of this place, like he's stepped out of the fabric of this store, which is dusty and claustrophobic and there's yellowing paper everywhere. And I reach out, I touch, I like sort of stabilize myself on a gravestone and the granite is cold and smooth and it feels exactly like it felt when I was eight years old in my grandpa Bernie's shop.
And I think, "I can't. I can't do it. I can't leave this place. Who am I going to be if I leave this place? This is my New York. This guy is my New York." And then he says, "Yeah, it's funny you should come in today of all days. It's really funny, because Murray just sold the building. We're moving to Long Island tomorrow. It's funny. Of all days, you're coming in today." And I sort of like rock back on my heels in stunned silence.
And all I could see is him and the gravestones and a clock that looks just like the one that's in a box in my house waiting to come up to Boston. And I look at him and I just say, "Well, I guess this is goodbye." And he says, "Yeah, I guess." And I leave. That clock, my grandpa Bernie's clock, it never worked. One night after like hours of Googling, I found these like rare clock fuses and I replaced the fuses in the clock and I plugged it in and the fluorescent light turned on and then it ran backwards.
like a frickin' time machine. But also like a time machine. My New York, my grandpa Bernie's New York, it's gone. It doesn't exist anymore. But I still see it here, of all places. I see it in the Lebanese market in Watertown. I see it in me when I'm walking across Cambridge Common and I'm amazed by the history. I see it in my son's love of Chinese food and smoked fish. And in my daughter's laugh and her scream.
But most of all, I see it in the stories we tell each other around the dinner table at home, my home, underneath the clock that says Forsyth Monuments established 1911. Thanks. That was Aaron Wolfe. Aaron is a screenwriter and the chief creative director at a storytelling agency called Faculty New York.
To see a photo of Cousin Murray's Monument Store and Grandpa Bernie's clock, which is now proudly displayed in Aaron's Boston home, go to themoth.org. If you've lost something, take a breath. It may come back, or the loss may just make space for a new chapter, and you can tell a story about it. That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.
This episode of the Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, Catherine Burns, and Sarah Austin-Janess, who also hosted and directed the stories in the hour, along with Janelle Pfeiffer. Co-producer is Vicki Merrick, associate producer, Emily Couch. Additional Grand Slam coaching by Chloe Salmon.
The rest of the Moth leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hicks and 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 Stellwagen Symphonette, The Beatles, Julian Lodge, and Anat Cohen.
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.