The Moth Radio Hour: The Ties That Bind
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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.

This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Katherine Burns, and today we're going to hear stories about the ties that bind. It's a topic that seems to come up a lot at the Moth, dealing with our families, a subject that generates story after story. First up, the writer Sharif El-Mekki. He told this story in a community workshop we did with the William Penn Foundation and Funders Network. Here, live from Philadelphia, Sharif El-Mekki. Good evening. From early on...

I knew my parents and teachers had the expectation that I was going to be a revolutionary. My earliest dreams were about protest and civil unrest and boycotts. They should have been nightmares when I was a kid, but they were just dreams of a child who knew he was supposed to be a revolutionary. I mean, my parents met and got married in the Black Panther Party.

I was enrolled in a school that was founded by activists and revolutionaries. It was called Netamu Sasa. It was in Queen Lane. We didn't have a gym at that school. We had martial arts. And Baba Changa, my martial arts teacher, would always say, if you're going to speak the truth, you've got to be able to defend the truth. By the age of 10, I had met some of the most amazing revolutionaries who were not locked up and still alive. Angela Davis,

Sonia Sanchez, members of the Wilmington 10, MOVE members. In the playground, it was really a parking lot, in the back, as kids we would chant, "We are soldiers in the army. We're going to fight, although we gotta die." I remember being 10 in my kitchen. My mother showing me a picture, and as I looked at the picture,

She said, "This is your dad is in this picture, and I'm looking at it. And the first thing that stands out to me is afros and seven guys and handcuffs." And I felt such pride. I had a lot of emotions. I was proud that I was the son of this handcuffed revolutionary who I knew stood for something and stood for social justice, he and his friends. I also had rage. I had rage that someone had did this to my father and his friends.

And also in the picture, what really got me upset was a police officer with a shotgun. And you could tell he was yelling something. And I just imagined that he was yelling something foul and racist to my father. I was angry. So I grew up and I continued to be really upset. Furious, actually, about all the social justice issues that I would see. But I was also really confused because I didn't know how to become a revolutionary. So meanwhile, I graduated high school.

I got a full academic scholarship to a state college. One day, in October after I graduated from college, me and some friends were playing pick-up football in a field, actually, Bartram High School's field in southwest Philadelphia. We were playing, and quite often I would channel my rage through football because that's what men do. And at some point, I tackled someone really hard, and I celebrated it.

And all of a sudden, I felt something, this blow in the back of my head. And when I looked up, everyone from the field was running. And so I turned around to find out what were they running from. And I had a gun in my face. He didn't like being tackled like that. And so he got a gun from his friends who happened to be in the stands waiting for something to jump off. I grabbed the gun and we're wrestling with it. And he just starts pulling the trigger. I was shot three times. It severed an artery.

So I was in the hospital for a month and 20 plus surgeries to try to save my leg. Periodically, I would talk to my father who was in jail and my mother would come visit me, but I couldn't find any answers as to what to do next. And I would think about the person who shot me because at a revolutionary training, I figured I would get shot by the police or something one day. But the guy who shot me did not look like the police officer in that picture. The guy who shot me looked like me. Eventually after getting out,

of the hospital. A group called Concerned Black Men had a contract with the school district and they were looking for black men to become teachers. And although previously I had never thought of being a teacher, I thought about the young man who had shot me and I said, "I'm going to do this." So I became a teacher. And I thought about all the times when I was younger and just said, "There's something wrong with the planet I'm in."

Like, God had it all wrong. I wasn't supposed to be born in 1971. I was supposed to be born in 1951. So I could have been part of the struggle of my parents and all these heroes. But on the first day of school, I realized that there were no mistakes. My revolution was to be a black man by a blackboard in southwest Philadelphia, in the same part of town where that young man had shot me. I am a revolutionary.

That was Sharif El-Mekki. Sharif has spent more than a quarter century as an educator. For the past 10 years, he's been the proud principal of the Shoemaker Campus branch of Mastery Charter School in West Philadelphia. He's married with six children. The events in the story took place nearly three decades ago. And I asked Sharif what he thinks about it all now.

He wrote, "I guess the only thing that I'd add to the story is it has never escaped me that Derek, the young man who shot me, could have had a different story. He could have become a teacher. I believe there are plenty of young men who, if supported, might choose to leave classrooms and schools." To that end, Sharif has worked to launch something called The Fellowship: Black Male Educators for Social Justice. To see the picture of Sharif's father that he mentioned in the story, go to themoth.org.

Next, we have a story from Nashawn Lasley, whose nickname is Binay. She told it at her Open Mic Story Slam competition in Louisville, Kentucky, where he partnered with Louisville Public Media. Here's Nashawn Lasley live at the Moth. Open up your arms. Relax your stance. Spread your legs. Keep going. Oh my God, Daddy, if you don't shut up, I'm going to come across this fence and show you how relaxed I am.

Mind you, I'm in the middle of a 400-yard dash, which I don't know how anybody dashes 400 yards in high school. And mind you, this is also a race I did not want to run, but because I was kind of fast but not super fast, I got to run the 400-yard dash.

So I didn't want to go. The person who was supposed to be there just didn't show up, which I was kind of wishing I had done at that moment. But I was there. And from the moment I stomped to my place in line, to the starting little thingies, runners, my dad was there yelling, open up your hands. You know, open your stride. Go, Vinay, go.

And I'm just, I wasn't here for it, like, the first couple of laps. But there's something you need to know about my dad. He has always been my cheerleader. Like, he was just, he was a coach. So everything he told us came out, like, and go, you can do it, do your best. And he always repeated everything. Like, I can tell you everything he always told us. Keep your eyes wide open, you know,

Expect the best from people, but be prepared for the worst. Like he told us the same thing over and over, but it was all to make us better people and to encourage us. And I remember one time when I came home from college, my dad was sitting in the living room watching a documentary on Beyonce.

So this was pre-Queen Bee status, but I was still digging her. So I sat down to watch with him. And we were just enjoying it, just sitting down like fathers and daughters do, I guess, watch Beyonce. And at one point, Beyonce tells when her birthday is. And I'm born in 1981. Beyonce was born September 4th. Everybody knows that, 1981. And so at that moment, my dad just looks over at me like,

He looks back at Beyonce. He looks at me again. He looks back at Beyonce. And he's like, "She's the same age as you." I'm like, "Yeah, we just both heard 1981." He looks at me, "You know how many millions she's made?" So I looked at my dad and I said, "You realize her dad is her manager, right?" But, you know, being my dad, he kind of laughed it off. He's like, "No, I'm just trying to get you to understand she's the same age as you."

You know, she was a little girl, and then she grew up, and, you know, she followed her dreams. You know, now you can do anything that you want to do, anything you put your mind to. But back to that race, I am running begrudgingly, but it seems like in every, if you know how you run track, it's a circle, right? But there are, like, corners. If you're running, that's the way it helped me break it up, to think of it as corners.

you know, little corners and I would count the corners and that's how I know how soon I would be done. And at every dag um corner, there is my daddy. He's like 50 years old, I promise you, at every corner. And I'm running as fast as I can. I'm like, "How were you just here? And now you're here telling me go, Vinay, go." So, and I really wanted to yell, "Shut up, daddy. Like, just let me run." But I just like, "Okay, the best way to shut him up is to run."

I was way behind to start because I did not want to run, but he's still there and he's just yelling, "Go, go." So I just start going. And I mean, I'm just cooking and booking like, I can't wait to get to the end of this thing so I can tell him to leave me alone. Don't ever do that when I run again. And then suddenly I look up and I realize, oh crap, like I'm close. Like I could win this thing. Like here's the girl that's supposed to win. Here's everybody else. I don't even know how this happened.

And then, but I'm like, there's no way I'm beating her. Like, I wasn't close to her though, right? Like she's up there, but it was just me and her, right? And so then I heard my dad, come on, Vinay, you can take her, you can take her. And I'm like, no, I can't, daddy. Like she's up there.

But I just, I was like, okay, whatever, forget it. I'm going to do it. And so I just start booking and I'm like, okay. Daddy said I could do it. I can do it. It's always been true my whole life. I could do it. And sure enough, like we're toe to toe and homegirl looks over at me like, hold up, like, where'd you come from? Like, this is my race. Like she was taking all the things my daddy were saying and like, my name's Vinay, right? Right.

And so I'm just going and I'm like, I can do this. And I promise you, it was like something you see on TV. Like it was her. Then it was me. Then it was her. Then it was me. And then I hear my daddy, go Vinay, go. And so I went. And it just so happened like there was the line. One. I was, I was.

I was so pumped and I'm really super duper sad to tell you that my dad passed in 2008 and you know when I think about on all those times that he repeated things to me it got on my nerves and I'd be like daddy shut up you tell me that every day you always telling me that but I feel like somewhere in him he must have known or God knew that I was gonna need those things

because I lost him when I was 27 and he's not there to repeat those things to me anymore. But I don't have to worry because every time I get to a corner and I think I'm not gonna make it, I can hear the most beautiful voice in the world saying, "Go, Vinay, go."

That was Nashawn Fanae Lasley. She's a wife and mom. She wrote us, I'm a teacher by trade, but somewhere inside is a writer and speaker trying to be all God wants me to be. Nashawn wanted us to share that when she set off for the Story Slam, she wasn't sure she was even going to tell a story. But on the way there, she heard the Bill Withers song, Lovely Day, on her car radio. It's a song she used to sing with her father. She said, he'd bust out his old moves and make me dance with him. I'd pretend to hate it.

But in the car, she just kept replaying the song until she arrived at Headliner's in Louisville. Sitting in the crowd, the memory of the story just came to her like it wanted to be told. Coming up, Barbie dolls and needless worrying when the Moth Radio Hour continues. Just one look at you and I know it's gonna be a lovely day.

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 Katherine Burns. In this show, we're hearing about families. And our next story is about the longstanding tradition of kids trying to get their parents to buy them a coveted toy. In this case, a Barbie doll.

We met our storyteller at a Story Slam competition in Melbourne, Australia, where we partner with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Here's Caitlin McNaughton, live in Melbourne. Mum and Dad banned Barbies, and my sister and I wanted a Barbie more than anything in the world. Mum, a feminist, thought that they created unrealistic beauty standards for young women. Dad, a maths teacher...

wasn't a fan of the Barbie slogan, "Maths class is tough, let's go shopping." So instead they tried to distract us with other forms of entertainment. Mum tried reading me the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We didn't get past the Council of Elrond. Dad would throw a ball at us, sometimes we'd throw it back. We had a lot of maths-based computer games in our house.

Number Munches was my favorite, which was basically Pac-Man, except instead of eating delicious fruit, you ate prime numbers. So despite all of their best efforts, they couldn't quouch our overwhelming need to have a Barbie, because in the 90s, if you didn't have a Barbie, you were nobody.

There were all kinds of Barbies. There was gymnast Barbie, workout Barbie, cool shopping Barbie, princess Barbie, babysitting Barbie. I would have taken any Barbie. I just wanted a Barbie.

But I mean, I get it now, obviously. I mean, I was a scrappy little brown haired, freckle faced, big boned, short legged, flat footed kid. I was never going to be a Barbie. And I guess my parents didn't want me to feel like I had to be.

But that didn't mean anything to me then. I mean, I was sure that feminism was great, but also gymnast Barbie could move her limbs in literally any way. So to me, my parents were just these villains that were doing everything in their power to stop me and my sister from being happy, essentially.

But my childhood wasn't as tragic as I'm making out. Perhaps in their biggest attempt at distracting us, my parents took us to Disneyland in 1995. And looking back, I would like to query my mum's thoughts on the feminism of the Disney franchise. But anyway, we went to Disneyland. LAUGHTER

We went to Disneyland and it was amazing. It's a small world ride and the teacups, probably a log flume, but the best part of it was the Disneyland gift shop. And my parents said that my sister and I could each pick one thing.

So after hours of deliberating, making pros and cons lists and narrowing down our options, we both arrived at the checkout with our choices. And she had in a big clear box a Mary Poppins doll and I had a Belle from Beauty and the Beast doll. We got our dolls, we got in the car, we unboxed them and we gave each other a big triumphant grin.

we had just orchestrated the Trojan horse of child dolls because when you took off Belle's plain blue dress and white apron and Mary Poppins' red and white 'it's a jolly holiday' dress underneath was the unmistakable one inch waist, five inch thigh gap and the feet permanently set as a high heel

of our very first Barbie dolls. That was Caitlin McNaughton. Caitlin is an arts administrator from Wellington, New Zealand. Even though Caitlin doesn't currently own any Barbies and considers herself a pretty good feminist, she still occasionally clashes with her parents over her love of the TV show The Bachelor. Our next storyteller is Rebecca Barry.

She told this story in an evening we produced in Ithaca, New York, where she lives with her family. Here's Rebecca, live at the mall. So, I'm a worrier. I worry about my kids, I worry about my husband, I worry about the planet. I've been doing it for a long time. I'm really good at it. But the person I've probably worried about most in my life is my mom. And it's kind of ironic because my mom is really one of the strongest people I know.

She's been a psych nurse for most of her life, and in her 70s she decided to go to prison to teach non-violence. And her volunteer work is driving people to and from jail who don't have cars to see their loved ones. And it's not just what she does that makes my mom so amazing, it's the way that she is. She's kind of like Buddha. She has this really calm and compassionate way about her that really quiets people down and makes them feel really safe and calm.

Except me. Because I'm her daughter.

and I worry about her. And I've been worried about her health. My worry about her was always about her health because my mom was overweight for most of my life and she had high blood pressure and she worked in the psych ward where there's a lot of secondhand smoke. And I worked in New York writing and editing for magazines so I was reading all these studies about how obesity and secondhand smoke and high blood pressure are really dangerous.

And so I'd worry. And my mom thought that was funny because she doesn't worry at all, which I think is easier when you have somebody to do all the worrying for you. So she's driving all over the place. She's going to Africa on safari. She goes to China. She does all this stuff. And I'm kind of following her around saying, Mom, you know, do you need to be so busy? Mom, could you slow down? Mom, have you gotten checked for diabetes? And she's like, Oh, Becky, I'm fine. You worry too much. And...

We're both kind of right. Like, there were times when she ended up in the hospital because she was doing too much and she had a surgery that nearly killed her. But for the most part, she's okay. But we were locked in this dance. And then she got diagnosed with kidney failure. And kidney failure is manageable. You can live with it for a while. But it's a chronic disease and it will kill you.

And the thing that can happen is when your kidneys really stop functioning is you can stop eliminating fluid and you can fill up with fluid and drown from within. And so one day I get a call from my dad saying mom's in the hospital and she was having some shortness of breath and they think they found fluid in her lungs.

And I leave the house and I go to the hospital and I get there to my mom's room right around the time that my dad is coming back from the cafeteria and he's got a little sandwich in a plastic bag and I've got my purse and we sort of meet at my mom's room.

And the doctor had just been there, so we come in. And I think at that point, my dad and I were both sort of hoping that it was maybe her medication or something. And so we go in and we say, my dad says, well, what did the doctor say? What is it? And my mom goes, it's the progression of the disease. And my dad goes, what does that mean? And my mom just looks at him. And he looked at her. And they looked at each other for a long time.

And it was such an intimate look. I almost felt like I shouldn't be there. You know, it was two people who had been married for 50 years looking at each other. And I'm thinking, what it means is this is the beginning of the end. And then around Thanksgiving, I call my dad to see how she's doing. And he says, not well. And this time I say the words I've never dared say. And I say, Dad, is she dying? And he says, yes. The doctors say she won't make it to Christmas. And I thought...

Like, the thing I've been worried about my whole life is finally happening, and it's awful. And I said, "Dad, what are we going to do without her?" And he said, "I don't know, Becky, I don't know." So I got off the phone,

And I was up all night. You know, I'm making like 25 million deals with God. Like, I will never say a bad word about anybody again. You know, please, please, please let my mom stay past Christmas, please. Or just five weeks. I don't care. Just make her live longer. I'm not ready. And the next morning, I'm trying to get my kids ready for school. And

My younger son won't get ready. He won't get dressed. And my younger son has a way of sort of gauging the stress level in the house and then reacting to it by sitting down and refusing to put his pants on. And so...

He's standing there, and I can kind of roll with this. He's been doing this for a long time, and I can kind of roll with it. But this morning, I'd been up all night. I just got this news that my mom's dying, and I can't handle it. And so I just lose it. This kid is sitting there. He won't get dressed, and I lose it. I say, Dawson, get your pants on. What's wrong with you? How can you be a nine-year-old who doesn't know how to dress himself? Get ready for school. You're going to be late. I can't do this today. I just can't.

And Dawson's standing against the radiator in our hallway, and he's not looking at me. And he says, is Grandma Ma okay? And I looked at him, and I just said, just go to school. And Dawson put on his backpack, and he walked out the door. And I watched him walk away, and he had this sort of resigned nine-year-old walk, like adults are so stupid. And I watched him go, and I thought, I didn't handle that.

very well at all. What did I just do? You know, that's my kid. It's not his fault. And he left his lunch at our house. So I thought, okay, I'll take the lunch to school. And I take it to school and I go into the front desk and the secretary's there and I say, can I see Dawson? I have his lunch. And she's like, oh sure, I'll take it. And I said, no, I need to speak to him. Can you please bring him? Can you send him in? She says, sure. So Dawson comes out and I give him his lunch and I

lean down next to him and I say, listen Dawson, I'm so sorry I yelled at you. Are you worried about grandmama? And he goes, yeah. And I said, oh me too, you know. And I put my arms around him and we're both crying and we're hugging each other and the woman at the front desk says, do you two need a room?

So we go to the room, this break room, and there's a microwave and all these different kind of Bigelow teas, you know. And I sit down and I say to Dawson, you know, it's true, your grandma isn't doing well. She is 80, and it's sad, but, you know, there's a lot of love in our family, and we're going to be okay, you know. I thought that was kind of mature. And Dawson looks at me and goes, yeah, but...

I don't want to hear anything more, any more details about being sick or dying. Because then you spend all this time being sad before you need to be sad. And being sad before you need to be sad is the worst. And I look at him, and I'm like, leave it to the kid who won't put his pants on to tell a 47-year-old woman what she needs to hear, you know? He's like nine. And so it didn't actually stop me from worrying. I think I'm kind of wired that way. But it did really help me shift that mindset

sentence, "I need to spend as much, to enjoy my mother as much as I can because she doesn't have much time left," to, "I want to enjoy my mother because I love her." And so, once a week I drive her to dialysis and that doesn't sound like much fun and in some ways it's not, but the great thing about it is that I get to have all these hours to talk with her.

And it's just made it so clear to me and reminded me that the thing that I think is so amazing about my mother, aside from all the other things, is that she is the kind of person that you cannot, you cannot sit down next to her without telling her everything that's in your heart. You see people at a party and mom will sit down and they'll say, hi, I'm about to get a divorce. You know, it's like, you can't do it. Mom just says, yeah, okay. And, uh,

The other day I went over there, it was a snowstorm, and I spent the night at Mom's house, which is the house I grew up in. And my son, my husband took the kids home, and so I'm there with my mom and my dad, and we're in the stove room, which my dad put together in the 70s, and my mom's in her blue chair that she likes to sit in, and I'm on the couch, my dad's in a rocker, and Mom and I start talking, Dad goes to sleep, and...

We started talking, I was telling her about how, you know, I just, I see all these other mothers who are so good with their kids, you know, they're so patient and soft, and she said, "You're a great mother, it's just you have, your talents are different. You're special."

And that got us to talking about marriage and raising boys and then that got us into fixing up old houses and then we got on our favorite topic which is psychological disorders and who has them, which we can talk about for hours. And then it was two in the morning.

And I go, "Mom, I gotta go to bed. I have to drive you to dialysis tomorrow." So I go to bed and the next day we're driving and I say to Mom, "I can't believe how late we stayed up last night." And Mom goes, "I know. I felt like a schoolgirl. I felt like I was in college." And I said, "I know. That's how I felt too." And it made me think, you know, all that time I was worrying about her, what I meant was, "Don't die."

"I don't want you to die, because if you die, who will be the person that I will just be able to sit down next to and say whatever in my heart? Don't do that. Don't go. Stay as long as you can." And I didn't say that. I said, "Why don't you try water aerobics?" Which is not the same thing. But I can say it now. "When you go, I will miss you so much. But you're here.

And I see your brightness and it's so beautiful. It lights up the room. Thank you. That was Rebecca Berry. Rebecca is an artist, creative coach, and the author of two books, Recipes for a Beautiful Life and Later at the Bar. She's currently working on an illustrated novel and stories for children based on a letter subscription service she created called Veronica the Cat.

As of this recording, we're thrilled to report that her mother is still alive and in good spirits. Rebecca tells us that she still drives her mom to dialysis once a week, and it's completely transformed their relationship. She writes, "We've gotten to know each other much better as women. The other day I was dropping her off at the house I grew up in, and I realized that mom and I are friends. It felt like a small/big magnificent gift."

A man raised by a mother who doesn't believe in cuddling babies must figure out what kind of father he wants to be. That's next on the Moth Radio Hour. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by the public radio exchange PRX.org. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Katherine Burns. In this hour, we're hearing stories about how our families can influence the way we see the world.

Our final story was told on stage at the beautiful, majestic theater during the San Antonio Book Festival. Here's Warren Holman. My mother believed that it was wrong to hold a baby. She said holding babies makes them soft, it makes them weak, and it makes them dependent. She said cribs were much better. They fostered independence and self-reliance. To her, life was hard.

and parents did their children no favors by coddling them. The job of the parent was to toughen up the child. If we went out in public and she saw a young couple kissing and cuddling with their children, she would just get so irritated and agitated. If she saw them holding a baby for more than two or three minutes, she'd say, "They need to get a crib for that baby." She didn't believe in kissing either. I never saw her kiss my dad.

If she kissed me, it was just a peck on the cheek, which isn't bad if you've been pecked by a chicken, that's what it felt like. But it didn't exactly feel like a kiss. What I later learned was a kiss. She thought kissing was bad for your health because it spread germs. As for my father and his side of the family, there's a very telling story about my dad's return home from World War II that pretty much says it all.

He's been away for three years. He's anxious to get home. The war ends. He has to take this long boat ride across the Pacific Ocean. Then he has to take this long train ride across the United States. And on top of that, he has to walk 40 miles through a snowstorm. He was supposed to take the bus, but the buses weren't running because the roads were closed because of the snowstorm.

He wants to get home. He picks up that big duffel bag and just starts walking. And two days later, after dark, he arrives at the home place. The family's not realizing he's about to show up. They're eating dinner. The door flies open, and there stands my dad, Carl Holloman. And here is how his mother, with her rich North Carolina accent, welcomed her son home from the war.

"Why, there's Carl. We got plenty of food in the kitchen. Put your stuff down and go in there and get yourself a plate and come join us." And that was it. There were no hugs. There were no kisses. No nothing. Now, don't get the wrong impression. My parents, my grandparents had many fine qualities, but they were not the warm and cuddly type. And I think the way that affected me is that

As I went through adolescence especially, I had a lot of trouble with hugs and kisses. A lot of embarrassing moments, a lot of awkward moments. And I found myself longing for this something I couldn't even name at the time. I later learned it was warmth and tenderness. My friends, it seemed to come easily to them, not so easily to me. And I got lucky and met this wonderful woman. We got married. A few years later,

We're in the delivery room and she's about to give birth to our first child. It's June 1987. The midwife turns to me. She says, "Get ready. As soon as I catch this baby, I'm handing her to you because..." And then of all the things she could have said to me, "Because it's your job to hold your baby." So my head is doing this.

Part of me honestly wants to give it a try. I'd seen my wife's family do it, and I thought it was one of those life experiences everybody should have. But honestly, those tapes were still playing in my head of my mother and I guess my grandmother. I muddled through. Well, that's about the best I could say. And would you believe that of all the names we could have chosen for that little girl, we chose Annie. I'm sure it was influenced to some extent by the musical, but the real reason...

was that's my mother's name. So, the nice thing about having your baby birthed by a midwife is that you get this special private suite for the next 24 hours in the maternity suite of the hospital. And it had some nice name like the family bonding room or something like that. And that was the perfect place for me. I got 24 hours of practice learning to hold that baby.

defying my mother every single minute. But what my wife and I realized was that once that 24 hours was over, we would have to leave that wonderful cocoon and we would have to leave that drama, that drama of wonderful new beginnings, and become a part of a second drama. And it's a drama I haven't even told you about yet. I mentioned 1987. I mentioned...

well, that we'd be going home to our apartment in our neighborhood. That drama was, of course, the AIDS epidemic. We lived in Montrose, the so-called gay neighborhood of Houston. And at that time, it seemed that every young man we knew was wasting away and dying. And it just seemed so wrong. I'm talking about young men who were in their 20s and 30s. There was a Walgreens pharmacy on Montrose Boulevard. It's still there.

Over the next few years, it would sell more AZT than any other drugstore in the entire United States. So we were in the middle of what would be recognized over the next few years as one of the worst epidemics in American history. Of course, many of our friends and neighbors were dying of this disease, but the one we knew and loved best, we'll call him Charles. Charles shared an entryway with us in our apartment.

enclave and we spent many great times together. When he got sick, he moved into a home hospice arrangement that was a few blocks away, but we continued visiting and at first even going out to dinner together. He was so supportive when he found out that my wife was pregnant. Honestly, I think more supportive than I was.

He was so emotionally connected to the whole thing in a way that I didn't even comprehend at the time. But looking back, he was a mentor for me through that process. And he was so excited about the baby and getting a chance to meet the baby. Well, there was a rule that after the baby's born, there's a period in which the baby needs to develop its immune system. So we were going through that, and we were nearing the end of that

when one day the phone rang and this was our friend Martha who was the friend who was coordinating Charles's home hospice care and she said I got some bad news she said he's taken a turn for the worse I said we'll be there tonight she said I need to warn you something's happened with his mind he won't even recognize who you are so

She said, that's particularly bad because he was so looking forward to meeting your new baby. And the other thing she said she needed to warn me of was that she said, she kind of whispered in the phone, his mother, she's here. And I knew what that meant. So we went that night and we took our baby. And it was as it always had been. Charles was in the center of his living room.

lying on his back on a hospital bed. His shirt was off, and in the corner of the room, as far from her son as she could possibly be, was his mother. She was sitting on a folding chair, and the chair wasn't even facing her son. It was turned sideways. And if she ever looked toward our way, it was just to stare at the floor. And I tell you, that seemed so wrong to me.

Martha had told us that she was afraid to touch him because of the disease and because of her prejudice against his him being gay. So, and as for Charles, it's true he did not recognize us, but the thing was we barely recognized him. As I said, he was lying there with his shirt off and you could see every bone. He was as skinny as a person can be and still be alive. He had these awful sores in his mouth.

and breathing, every breath was a struggle. It would take about three efforts to raise his chest and then it would collapse down and you just knew it would be the last and you kind of hoped it would be the last so he wouldn't have to suffer anymore. And as for his mind, it was clear that the Charles we knew was no longer there. He just sort of babbled. It didn't make any sense. So in a short period of time, we realized that

He wasn't there, so we stood around him and talked over him to each other. And after a while, though, he started doing this one thing that made some sense. I was standing there holding our baby, doing a good job, and, you know, like this. And he would look at her out of the corner of his eye. And in time, he started looking more. And I could swear it was almost as if he was trying to flirt with her.

And one by one we started recognizing that. Our conversation ended because that was so much more interesting than whatever we were talking about. And then we got curious, what does his mother think of all this? She was sitting over there staring at the floor. She didn't even... Her son is sort of making this connection with our child.

But she is making no connection at all, and that just seemed so wrong. Even I, by that point, I mean, the only thing I wanted to do was to hold and touch our child, and she was afraid or unwilling to do that. So my wife and I were frankly kind of offended by his mother. I mean, we felt sorry for her, but we were also offended.

So we had the same idea at the same time. It just was one of those things. We took our baby. We thought, "We've got to do something about this." So we laid our baby face down, her chest on Charles' chest. Her face fit right in the cavity of his long neck. He was six foot five inches tall before he got sick. He was the best-looking, friendliest, and humblest person you could ever meet, and the funniest. Everybody loved him.

And of course now that's why we didn't recognize him. So we placed our baby there and we stood, and her little arms sort of dangled over his bony chest. And we stood closely by because we really didn't know what would happen. And what happened at first was actually scary. He started doing this and then we realized he's having this spasm because he doesn't, he's trying to remember how to use his arms. He hadn't used them for a while.

But in time, the spasm, he got control of it. And those scarecrow arms started doing this. And then he got good control. And they formed this arch over our baby. And then his arms just relaxed. And they relaxed around our baby. And as his arms relaxed, his breathing relaxed, the painful expression on his face went away.

And we actually recognized that old Charles again. And he looked so contented. And I've often said, if that's all that had happened that night, it would still be one of the most amazing or memorable experiences of my life. But one more thing happened. This time, Charles spoke and his words made sense. He said, Annie!

And then he smiled and then he said, "Came to see me, Annie." Sorry. So we went home that night, went to bed. Middle of the night I woke up, I had this huge jolt of energy. I couldn't get back to sleep. I went outside, sat on the back steps with our dogs. Sun came up, phone rang, and it was our friend Martha again, the same one from yesterday. And she said, "I wanted to call you earlier, but I thought I should wait till the sun came up." She said,

I wanted to let you know that at four o'clock he died. Charles died. Now, I've had 30 years to think about this and I still don't understand how a young man who has severe advanced dementia awakens out of that and has a moment of perfect clarity just hours before he dies. But I know what I believe. I'll always believe.

that it has something to do, sorry mom, with the healing power of human touch. Thank you. That was Warren Holman. Warren grew up in eastern North Carolina, pretending not to listen to the stories his father, uncles, and other, quote, old people told as they hunted quail. He says it recently dawned on him that he's now one of those old people, retelling those stories in a few of his own.

That's it for our show. We hope you'll join us next time for the Moth Radio Hour.

Your host this hour was the Moss Artistic Director, Catherine Burns, who also directed the stories, along with Maggie Cino and Larry Rosen. The rest of the Moss directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Janess, Jennifer Hickson, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Timothy Lou Lee. Moss 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, Bill Withers, and Yvonne Resendiz.

The Moth is produced for radio 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 PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.