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This autumn, fall for Moth Stories as we travel across the globe for our mainstages. We're excited to announce our fall lineup of storytelling shows. From New York City to Iowa City, London, Nairobi, and so many more, The Moth will be performing in a city near you, featuring a curation of true stories. The Moth mainstage shows feature five tellers who share beautiful, unbelievable, hilarious, and often powerful true stories on a common theme. Each one told reveals something new about our shared connection.
To buy your tickets or find out more about our calendar, visit themoth.org slash mainstage. We hope to see you soon. From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Jodi Powell. In this hour, we'll be listening to stories of moments of TLC, moments of receiving or giving care that ultimately translates to love. Self-care has become a bit of a buzzword recently, but there's something to it.
A moment to set aside time to see to yourself. To press pause on your watch, even when no one else around wants to. Our first story comes from Frida Wiesel. Frida told this at her Play It Again slam, a night where we celebrate stories we've heard, loved and wanted you to hear too. This was told in New York City, where WNYC is a media partner of The Moth. Here's Frida.
So I grew up in the Satmar Hasidic community, which is a segment of Orthodox Judaism that is very concerned with preserving traditions from before the Holocaust. And one of the customs that my grandparents brought to the United States when they came here after World War II as refugees was the tradition that married women shaved their heads and kept it shaved for life. Another tradition was that our marriages were arranged.
So when I was 18, my parents picked out a match for me, a 18-year-old, side-locked, dark-haired boy from Yeshiva whom I met a total of three times before we got married. And the morning after the wedding, I was to be transformed into the look of the married woman.
The first shave is performed by the mother, so the morning after my mother came to my apartment, my young husband left for morning prayers, and she came to change my entire look. She pulled over a brand new kitchen chair to the brand new vanity mirror. Everything in my apartment was spanking new. There was potpourri everywhere, monogrammed towels. It was the beyond of bed, bath, and beyond.
So my mother took out this new shaver and she gathered my hair in her hands. Now the thing about the first shave is that it coincides with the morning after you first, you know, had gotten married. And this makes it the perfect opportunity for Jewish mothers to, you know, sniff around a little and make sure everything had gone okay. And my mother, I love her dearly, but
We didn't have that kind of relationship. I didn't want her anywhere near my newly grown up business. So when she took out that new shaver and she turned it on and went with this loud brrrr. I was so grateful because whatever chit chat she was trying to have, I didn't hear a thing. And when she was done...
I was overcome with emotion, not because of the shaving per se, but because this was such an enormous rite of passage where it had gone from being part of this huge family and always needing to be respectful and well-behaved to now I would be
a grown-up woman, my mother would look at me differently, everyone would look at me differently, I'd have so much more autonomy, I had this brand new husband, and I had all of these feels as my mother fussed with me. And she put on my head covering, which was a series of layers, first a wig and then a turban liner, and it had a foam padding, and then there was a scarf that was folded in a triangle with some padding,
tied around my head in a way so to best flatter my face. And when she was done, she stood me up and she said, "Oh, my Friday, you look beautiful." And she kissed me, she said, "Masel tov." And in that moment, I felt beautiful. Not in a supermodel kind of way, in a I'm-all-grown-up kind of way.
And I continued to shave my head. It was a completely natural part of my life with a sweet husband, a cute apartment, all the trappings, head shaving was just a part of it. Couple years in, we had a computer at home, download stensibly for work, which if you knew how to, could connect to the internet if you plugged it into the phone line. Who remembers? Once upon a time.
So one day I'm online and I find this website called blogger.com where various people are writing web blogs under pseudonyms, people from my community. And what do I do? Of course, I make my own web blog. So I write a blog under the pseudonym Spitzelstrimken where I write various short blog posts about
Super secret, reflecting on my life as a Hasidic woman, all of it very light, very innocent. And one day I write a blog post about shaving my head. It was supposed to be bittersweet, cute, funny, nothing too important. And the reaction from my small horde of anonymous readers, to my surprise, was quite serious. They said, Spitzelstrimkind, why do you shave your head?
And you know what? Until that moment, the question hadn't even occurred to me. It was only when people said there was no basis in Jewish law for this custom that I started to formulate, oh, I started to ask questions and I started to try to understand the answer. And this was the catalyst for a whole series of me looking at the world in a new way of asking, why do we do this? Do I like the answer? Do I want to do it? And
All of these changes were extremely difficult for my husband to get used to. He had been my best friend, but I was transforming into someone very different. I said to him, "I do not want to shave my head." Now, the thing about deciding not to shave your head is, "Okay, I made the decision. Five minutes later, I'm still bald. A week later, maybe I have a five o'clock shadow."
It took a full year for my hair to grow to my ears. But when it did, I was going to do something special. It had been a really hard year. My marriage fell apart. My husband and I split. I was so lonely. It was probably the most difficult time in my life. But I was going to get a makeover.
So I looked up online, I found on Yelp a hair salon in Manhattan. The salon, five star, highly rated, the place you go to to get your hair treated when you've never gotten it treated in your life before. I had been to Manhattan by myself maybe at best a handful of times. I had to go all the way from Orange County to my big appointment where I was going to get a sexy bob that when I moved my head, it was going to go, hello, hello.
I was very excited. The woman who was assigned to my hair, she was very concerned about the highlights and lowlights of the supermodel who sat in the chair next to me. I am not exaggerating. This woman with chisel features and a neck of a giraffe sat there paging through an enormous portfolio while everyone in the salon oohed and aahed.
It was supposed to be such a big moment and I found myself feeling so, so small and so lost in that chair with that ridiculous bib, my hair flat, everything I was asked, I said, "Thank you, thank you, okay." I didn't know how to express myself. And when I was done, I looked in the mirror and what was supposed to be this gorgeous bob was a matronly petticoat on my head.
So I paid and I left and it was already dark outside by then. And as I am walking, the storefronts were reflective. And I'm walking, I see this woman in the mirror and she's walking and she has this whole hair on her head that's kind of moving. And I noticed, oh, that's me. And at that moment, I felt all right. I felt beautiful. Not in a supermodel kind of way. In a...
I'm proud of myself. I'm all grown up kind of way. Thank you.
That was Frida Wiesel. Frida grew up in the Satmar Hasidic community and all her grandparents are Holocaust survivors who came to the United States after the war. She left the community at age 25 but continues to engage with it as a tour guide of the Hasidic Williamsburg as well as a host of a lively YouTube channel where she shares short films on Hasidic culture.
I asked Frida about her hair journey now and if she has a hair salon she now frequents. This is what she sent me. I wore my hair long for many years after I left the Hesedik community because I was so happy with my hair I wanted more and more of it. Recently, I asked a stylist to cut it into a bob and I've been wearing it short-ish.
My stylist is a wonderful woman with whom I have a great time chatting about anything and everything, especially pets. A very different experience. To see some pictures of Frida and her journey with her hair, please visit themoth.org. In a moment, a trip to the basketball court and more 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 Jodi Powell.
In this hour, we're hearing stories of tender, loving care. Our next story hits all three. Leela Ting told this at the Moths Education Grand Slam at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, a branch of the New York Public Library. Here's Leela. So, the other night, my mom comes home and her eyes are low and she has this soft smile. And the first thing I'm thinking is, when did my mom start smoking weed?
What else would a woman going on 50 be doing at 11pm on a Friday night? So I'm gonna ease into this. Hey mom, where were you? Oh, you know, I was at a sound bath. As if I'm supposed to know what a sound bath is. Mom, what is a sound bath? Oh, a sound bath is when you bathe in sound. Okay. Leela, I'm going to another one next month. You wanna come? Sure.
The month leading up to it, not really thinking about it, dealing with other stuff. You know, nothing harder than being a 15-year-old girl. The week leading up to it, dealing with a lot of anxiety. And if you deal with anxiety, you know it quickly becomes physical. Your chest tightens, your throat has a ball, you could cry at any second. And she calls me. It's a Friday. I had the worst week. I just want to go home and sleep. She goes, after school, take the train to Bushwick. It's time for the sound bath.
So I have these, no offense to preface this, I have this preconceived notion that the sound bath is just a bunch of millennials, you know, like talking about Hillary Clinton, mustaches tattooed on their fingers. They identify as young creatives. And so after school, I take the train to Bushwick. And of course, my mom thought it would be a good idea to bring my 10-year-old sister with raging ADHD to this sound bath.
And we enter the studio. It's bathed in soft, deep orange light and there are harpsichords and Tibetan bells and gongs engraved with Japanese characters. And it's beautiful. And we lay down and I'm like, okay, I can roll with this. Okay. And we start. The harpsichord rings through the room and my sister says, I farted? Perfect. This is perfect. Perfect.
My mom's laughing, yeah, thank you for that. But slowly I'm overcome by the beauty of the sound that surrounds me. There's nothing quite like it. Has anyone in here been to a sound bath? Yeah? Okay. Like, two people. I recommend after this you all go to one.
it's strong. It's vibrational. It's things I've never heard before. And it takes over my mind and slowly my chest opens and I feel less anxiety than I have in three and a half, four years. Um, no, that's an exaggeration, but you know, those Apple TV nature slideshows. Yeah. That's happening in my head. And I'm like, now I get why my mom looked high. Um,
Yeah, exactly. Eventually, my sister and I fall asleep for the last 30 minutes, and we wake up, and we look at each other. Between the ADHD and the anxiety, we've never been this calm before. And my mom's, like, pretty happy. She's like, finally, they're quiet. They're not crying. They're not, like, on the floor screaming. So we get home. My mom and I decide to eat all of the pantry. You know, it's like spiritual munchies, something like phantom food.
And as you can tell by my Buddha necklace, since then I've really grown into my Buddhism and my spirituality. And my anxiety is definitely not healed. Right now I'm like really freaking out, but it helps. And my dad walks in and he goes, where were you? It's 11 p.m. on a Friday night. And we say, we were at a sound bath. Thank you. That was Leela Tain.
Leela is a 16-year-old Jewish and Buddhist artist. Leela said, looking back, she's no longer surprised at the calm that Sound Bath brought her. She now understands how important stillness and community are to her health. I've been asking the tellers in this episode how they've been showing themselves TLC.
Leila said she shows herself self-care by playing music from the 60s and taking an extremely hot shower. And she imagines that the water is washing away her worries and tensions. Leila came to us via the Moth Story Lab, which is open to 10th to 12th graders from around the country. You can learn more at themoth.org.edu. Our next story is told by Mariana, who told this at the Play It Again Slam.
Here's Mariana live at the Moth. So when I would hear the words, "Oye, come on, let's go," I always got excited because I knew it was going to be an adventure. And so I was sitting, usually during this time, in my mom's room, and she slept a lot back then because
She was separated from my mom, my dad, and sorry, my dad. And I would sit with her and even though she was sleeping, she liked the TV on. And so when I hear my brother and I knew it was going to be a venture, I jumped up and I ran out and I would go find him. And my grandmother would hear me from my room and would be like, oh, yeah, yeah.
"Voy a mi numero para mi." And so I would run and I would go and I would get the money from her so that we can go downstairs to Doña's house where you can get a little cafecito and give her your money so that you can play the numbers. And sometimes my grandmother won, sometimes she didn't, but she just liked playing the numbers. And so then my brother took me to the community center in Park and
sent me down on a bench and said, "Just wait here." And I'm like, "Wait for what?" And he said, "Don't worry, you'll know." And so he goes out to the basketball court and he starts playing and they're going for a bit and then all of a sudden I hear my brother say like, "Come on, come on, just one more. Double or nothing."
You can choose anyone, anyone in the park to be, to play with me, anyone. Just double or nothing. And the guy looks at me like, well, show me the money. And so my brother takes out some money and he throws it in the hat. And the guy turns to him and says, okay, I can choose anyone in this park. And so something to know is that I was only 11 years old at the time. And my brother is like 10 years older than me.
And so he's looking around the park and he sees me on the bench. And he's like, her. And he comes over to me and he's like, you want to play some basketball? And I kind of look over to my brother and he turns his back, kind of ignoring me. And I'm like,
I think I know what this is about. And so the guy says, no, no, no, come on. It'll be fast. It'll be fun. Don't worry about it. And so finally I nod and I get up and I follow him. I don't say much. But what this guy doesn't know is that back at my apartment complex is a broken down basketball court that I would go and play every day with people my age, people my brother's age. And I was really good at
And I had this one spot at the free throw line that I could just sit at and I would never miss. I could easily hit eight out of ten. And so I get on the court and I kind of like run around a little bit, but then I just stand in my spot. And as I'm standing there, you know, they're kind of all ignoring me because they think they got this game and my brother gets me the ball and I get the first one in.
And it bounces a little bit, drops in, and even the guys are like, "Hey, good job, good job!" And we're like, "Okay," and we keep playing, and my brother gets me the ball again, and this time it's a nice sink off the backboard. Boom, in, and now they're kind of like, "What's going on?"
And so they get to playing a little bit more. Guy kind of guards me for a little bit, but, you know, I'm the little girl on the court, so they just start ignoring me again. And finally it comes to the last point, and my brother goes up for a layup, and he realizes he's going to get blocked and throws me a no-look pass. And I just sink it in, swoosh. And...
And the guy that came up to me is like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. What is this? Oye, mija, coño, what are you guys doing?" And he's like, and my brother's like, "What do you mean, what are we doing?" And he's like, "Mira, hijo de..." And my brother shoves in like, "You better not." And they're going at it back and forth. And I take my moment and I'm like, "Huh, there's an opportunity here." And so I grabbed the hat and I run.
And my brother is right behind me and he's going, "Go, go, go, go, go, let's go, let's go, let's go." And we jump the fence and he goes and we know each other so well that he goes one way and I go the other and we disappear. And they don't know what happened by now.
And so I get back to my apartment and my brother is there and I hand him the hat and he's like, you all right? And I nod, I'm okay, yeah. And he counts the money and he gives me a 20. He's like, shh, don't tell mom. And so we get into the house and of course the first thing my mom notices when I walk in is like,
the ripped pants from the fence. And she's like, "We can't afford new pants. What did you do?" And her and my brother go at it. My brother's like, "Go, go, go, go." And so I go back and I go in and change. And they're going back and forth. And when I come back out, I catch some of their conversation. And my brother's saying, "Ma, Ma, don't worry. She's really good. Don't worry." But this money, it's for the light bill.
And they realize that I'm standing there. My brother's like, oh, it's my turn. And he goes back. And so I take the 20 that I have in my pocket and I walk up to my mom and says, mom, this is for the light bill. And my mom's like, no, no, no, no, you keep it. And I nod and my mom, as she usually did, gets up and is like, you know what? I'm tired. I'm going to go lie down.
And when she goes to lie down, I get like this idea in my head and I run downstairs to where I know there's a flower woman on the corner and I buy a small bouquet of flowers for my mom and I bring them back up and I go into her room where she's lying down sleeping and I say, Mom, Mom, look, I got you some flowers. And she turns and says, but we needed milk and bread.
And so I stand there and I'm like, okay, we need milk and bread. And so I go back out and I put the flowers in a vase and I put them on the dining room table and I make it all look nice. And I go to the bodega that I know where I'm allowed to go and get milk and bread. And I come back. And as soon as I walk in, my mom's now at the dining room table and she's like, where'd you go? And I was like, to get milk and bread. And, um,
I start putting it away and my mom says, "Nana, come here." And she takes my hand and squeezes it and says, "Thank you for the flowers. They're really beautiful." And that's when I noticed that my mom's crying. And then that's also when I noticed that there's this song that she played on repeat a lot since my dad wasn't around. And it was called "You Don't Bring Me Flowers Anymore."
And in that moment, I realized that my mom wished my dad had given her the flowers. So I sat there for a minute. And for me, I would keep bringing her flowers, hoping that one day I was enough to get her to stop crying so that she could smile and not sleep so much anymore. Thank you.
That was Mariana. Mariana is a Chinese Puerto Rican American veteran who believes storytelling through any medium adds to life. I asked Mariana if there were any updates, and she said, "I recently asked my brother if he remembered us hustling in the park. He laughed. He did."
Mariana said she's not really still playing basketball, but recently at an event, she did pick up two basketballs to see if her dribbling skills were still there. They are.
You can visit themoth.org to see photos of Mariana and family. A photo of Mariana's father gifting Mariana's mother flowers. They are back together and they have celebrated their 53rd anniversary. ♪
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 Jodi Powell. We're listening to stories of figuring out that life is short, so you should spend it with who you love. Our next story is told by James Peterson at the Chicago Grand Slam, where we partner with public radio station WBEZ. The theme of the evening was tipping points. Here's James live at the Moth.
I'm on the phone to my daughter, a serious scientist, and I said, "Have you noticed that the older you get, the more you seem to worry?" And she says, "Dad, the older I get, the older you get." And that's the source of my worry.
So we launched something called the phone call. Once a week, she leaves her workplace, drives across town to pick up her kids at daycare, and she will check in. To prepare for the phone call, I start something called the logbook of diminishing capacity. I keep a record of anything stupid or alarming that I've done since the last phone call.
It has to be new because I've done stupid and alarming things all my life. It has to be new and it has to be age-related. So we are talking about memory and sometimes it seems like I spend half my life looking for something that was there just a minute ago. And if I forget to unsilence my cell phone after a movie, I come home and put it down. It's gone.
And my daughter knows enough to call on the landline, because those phones are large and loud and exactly where they've been for 35 years. We discussed the accepted wisdom about aging and memory that it doesn't matter if you forget where you left something.
It's only serious when someone forgets the purpose of the thing, like say, shoes. When we started the phone call, I was uncomfortable because when I was a parent, I never burdened my kids with my problems. When I turned 70,
I did one of those bucket list trips. I rode a motorcycle in the Himalayas. And on the second day, I crashed, I got thrown down an embankment. I rode for two more days because I had to. And we got to a town in Kashmir, 15,000 feet, and I could go no further. The town had a hospital and it had Wi-Fi. So I texted my daughter and said,
Slight mishap. I'm in the hospital. Not to worry. I was in the hospital with five broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and a chest cavity full of blood. My daughter figured that out, and for 48 hours she worked the phones, the internet, contacting groups on three different continents, arranging an emergency medical event halfway around the world.
all while taking care of her eight-month-old infant son. When I heard that, I realized that my solo adventures had never been solo. They affected every single person who loved me, every single person I loved. I owe her.
The logbook of diminishing capacities has had some interesting moments since then. There was the time I fell off a ladder and tore a rotator cuff. And then there was the debate about snow shovels. It was like, how do you tell if it's heart attack snow? And my daughter says, is it white? So now I have a snowblower. I turned 75 on March 2nd, and I went out to Utah.
Surprises the shit out of me too. I went out to Utah to ski with my son, my daughter, and my grandchildren. Three generations on the same mountain. It was a gift.
At my yearly physical, I told the doctor, well, it took me about two days to get used to the altitude, and I had to stop and catch my breath on some runs. And there was a day where I was dizzy and literally toppled over. But we were trying to ski in a whiteout at 10,000 feet, and you don't know what's up, what's down, what's sideways. The doctor hears shortness of breath, dizzy, fall.
and he orders a test I've never had, something that measures calcium deposits in and around the arteries of your heart. A score above 300 indicates you might have plaque-clogging arteries, and anything above that indicates a likelihood of stroke, heart attack, or sudden death. My score was 4,622.
The cardiologist wanted me to come in for an angiogram. I said, okay. Two weeks ago, I wake up in the recovery room and no stitches and I don't know what a stent feels like. And the doctor comes in and says, good news, you can go home.
And he puts, what? And he puts on a video of my heart, my beating heart. And it's mesmerizing. And yes, there are two arteries 100% blocked with calcium platelet. But those same arteries have created a new network of brand new blood vessels to take up the slack. My heart has done its own bypass
And I say a prayer to this stubborn, precious muscle. It has survived years of bad habits and yet still chose to give me more time. And I know exactly how to use that time. I pick up the phone and I call my daughter. That was James Peterson.
At 75, James and his girlfriend, Lori, visit his kids a few times a week. He reads to his grandkids, Naya and Warren, gets lost in spur-of-the-moment games, hide-and-seek with his granddaughter, and sometimes plays soccer with Warren. They often garden together or rather get their hands dirty, and they give each other hugs that last forever.
To see photos of James on some of his adventures and with his family, head over to themoth.org. Our final story comes from Alyssa Hirsch, who told this in Alaska where we partnered with the Anchorage Concert Association. Here's Alyssa live at The Moth. My boyfriend started telling me bedtime stories because my insomnia had gotten so bad that I wouldn't even try to fall asleep without having something to listen to.
He told one story in particular that I really loved, the story of a sloth. A little girl sloth who did not have insomnia. Every night her friends took her on a magic carpet ride all across the world, but every night she was too sleepy to enjoy the sights. They took her to Egypt and she slept through the pyramids. They took her to Peru and she slept through Machu Picchu.
Every night, he would look at me and he would say, "Where to?" And I would give him a list of destinations: Morocco, Antigua, Antarctica. And he would describe the sites and I would sleep right through it. If there was an end to that story, I never heard it once. We'd been dating for a while and things were going really well. I knew almost from the first date that he was the one. Very handsome, very well-dressed.
Salt and pepper hair. He showed up at my house so often with flowers that I almost got sick of it. We had this really fun and flirtatious dynamic together even a couple years in. And so one morning we were in bed, just kind of wasting the day, and I looked at him and I said, "Wait here." And I came back with a court mason jar and a stack of index cards. And I handed him those index cards and I said, "Write a date idea on every one of those cards. We're gonna make a date jar."
The thought was that if we were ever too stuck in a routine or we wanted an adventure but we didn't know what, we would pull an idea out of that jar and we would do whatever it said. We decided that literally anything counted as a date idea. And we also agreed that we wouldn't tell each other what we were writing down. We filled the whole jar.
We did a lot of hiking together, and when I hiked with him, I liked to ask him questions. Questions about how he was doing, about how we were doing. And one day I asked him if there was anything that was missing for him with us, if there was anything that he needed and he wasn't getting, and he said, "No. No." He said, "Well, actually, there is one thing. I wish that we watched more television together."
Now, I am accommodating, and that is a pretty easy request to accommodate. And so a couple weeks later, we were watching TV before bed, and the episode ended, and that Netflix screen came up, the one that says, "Are you still watching?" And I looked at him and I said, "Are we still watching?" And he said, "Nothing." I said, "Do you want to watch another episode?" He said, "Nothing." I said, "What is going on?" And he said, "I think I need to move to Chicago."
Now that almost made sense. He had a lot of friends in Chicago. He traveled there really regularly to visit them. But he knew I didn't want to move to Chicago. My friends, my family, my career, my whole life was in the Pacific Northwest. I also got the impression that he wasn't inviting me to come with. But I said, "If you think you need to move to Chicago, then we need to get you there on a trial. We could send you there for four months, spend the summer, see what you think, and then we'll figure it out."
He fell asleep first that night. He fell asleep without telling me a story, and he fell asleep with a smile on his face, this smile of relief. And he slept with that smile the whole night, which I know because I did not sleep. I tossed and I turned looking at him and then looking at my nightstand and sitting on my nightstand, that day jar full of adventures that we hadn't gone on. But the next morning we got up,
And I got to work helping him make plans. I took photographs of his house and wrote the posting to sublet it on Craigslist. I coached him on talking to his boss about working remotely. I started planning him a going away party. I wanted him to know that he had my unconditional support, no matter what that meant for us. But I wanted that support to be the reason that he came back home to me. We decided that we wouldn't talk to each other during the summer.
Because I knew that I couldn't go with him. I knew that I couldn't give up the life that I had built for myself to follow him there. And I wanted him to know what it would be like if he actually left me. So we decided that we would have one phone call a month while he was gone. It took about six weeks to get the plans together. And in early May, I took him to the airport and dropped him off. And I said, "Have a good summer."
But during the time that I was planning his good summer, I was also planning a good summer of my own. See, I had that jar of date ideas. And I knew that if he didn't come home to me, I didn't want to get stuck with it. I wanted to stay busy. I wanted to spend that time with my friends. I wanted to have stuff to do. And I knew that even though we weren't going to be in communication with each other, that he was still going to creep on my social media profiles.
I wanted him to see what I was doing and I wanted him to feel like he was missing out. And so the day he left, I sent an email to 40 of my closest friends and I said, "I'm gonna need your help." There are 31 dates in the jar and I have 16 weeks to do every single one. My best friend Jen took the first date. We went swimming in the Columbia River. It was May so it was cold and the Columbia is not a swimmable river.
I wrote that date idea and technically the card said get your head wet in the Columbia and technically we did. Date two my friend Hoyt and I took a card game to the bar where Hoyt was dating the bartender. We tapped two strangers on the shoulder and we asked them to play with us. I remember being so nervous about it. I remember telling them that I was on a scavenger hunt. They said yes.
We played the game, we sat around telling stories, just shooting the shit. It was a really nice night. Date four: Ellie. A game of horse at the basketball courts in our neighborhood that ended in so much laughter I almost died from not being able to breathe. Every single one of these dates I thought about him, especially the dates that he had written. But I was busy and I was having fun.
Date seven, Katie and I made strawberry ice cream from scratch. Eleven, Teresa took me to Jamba Juice. Twelve, Jillian and I climbed trees in the park. At that point, we'd had one phone call, he and I, and things were going really well. He'd found a place to live. He'd found a desk in a co-working space. He bought a bicycle and he was using it to get to know the city. He didn't ask me about the dates that I was going on, but I know that he knew.
15, Shannon, the top of Rocky Butte at sunset with a picture-perfect view of Portland's three volcanoes. We were wearing sparkly capes that I had borrowed from my three and five-year-old neighbors. Again, my date idea. 16, David invited a bunch of his friends over, cooked dinner. They sat in absolute stillness, listening to me tell all of the stories of the dates I'd been on so far. And then we played Pictionary. That was the date. And then they took me out for ice cream on tandem bicycles.
By that point, we were halfway through the summer. It was July and it was time for our second phone call. I remember the day exactly. I remember being so nervous but so excited to get to hear his voice. And that evening he called me. I was sitting on my front porch. He called me and he said, "Hi." I said, "Hi." He said, "I've made a decision. I'm breaking up with you." I remember feeling like my stomach had fallen out of my body or like my body had fallen into a black hole. I remember thinking, "No." I remember saying, "No."
I don't know how we got off that phone call. I remember getting into bed and just crying. It was a Wednesday. I had plane tickets for Friday to go to San Francisco to visit a couple friends and do a couple more dates, and I almost canceled. I thought, what the hell am I doing? Why am I doing this to myself?
But I kept those plans, and I'm so glad I did. That weekend, my friends passed me from one to the next like I was a baton in a relay race. My old friend Rob picked me up from the airport. Date 17. We spent a defined period of time together in silence. It's a weird date idea, right?
But it was really good. We walked the entire length of the Golden Gate Park from the de Young Museum to the ocean without speaking to each other. When we got to the ocean, we took off our shoes and we put our feet in the sand and we sat down and I put my head on his shoulder and I watched the tide go out. Rob handed me to Jesse, date 18. Jesse and I put together a pinhole camera and then we went around the city taking panoramic pictures on 35mm film.
The first half of the dates had felt like I had something to prove to myself or something to prove to him. And the second half of the dates felt like my friends had something to prove to me. You can imagine that I was not sleeping through the night. I felt like death. I wanted to cancel everything, but they wouldn't let me. 20, Laurel and I went to Astoria to see the shipwreck on the coast. 25, Kevin and I pretended to be newlyweds and went house hunting. We argued about where we were going to put the nursery.
30, Liz and I played putt-putt golf at the art museum. By then it was September. At that point he had moved home and I had exactly one date left in that jar. It was a date that I'd been saving for him. It was a date that I couldn't do with anybody else. 31, write down my bedtime story. So I sent him an email and I said, "Will you do this date with me?" He said, "Yes." He picked me up at my house.
We drove out the Columbia River Gorge to the Dog Mountain Trailhead. We hiked to the top and we sat on the summit. He pulled out a notebook and he looked at me and he said, "Where to?" We started writing down that story. I looked at him and I said, "You know, I actually don't know how this ends." He said, "I've been telling you the ending this whole time." In the end, Sloth wakes up as if the whole thing was just a dream.
I looked at him and I said, "I don't like that ending. That's not my ending. In my ending, there's always room for one more adventure. In my ending, there's always room for a sequel. In my ending, her friends keep showing up." We hiked back to the car. He drove me home. He dropped me off at my house, and that was it. It was over. You don't always get the ending that you wanted. But I did get a couple of things. I got rid of that date jar.
And I had the summer I set out to have. 31 dates in 16 weeks. It was a summer full of adventure. A summer full of friends who just kept showing up. Thank you. Alyssa Hirsch has a degree in sculpture and works as a software engineer. She runs a mentorship program that has helped 150 women and gender diverse adults make the career transition into tech.
In her free time, Alyssa tries to ride her bike as far as she possibly can. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with a small flock of chickens and a pit bull named Blue. Alyssa said it took her a very long time to get over her heartache, but she stopped trying to speed up her grief. She said she's happier now than she's ever been.
Since the events in this story, Alyssa said a lot has changed. She wrote, "I fell in love. I made a personal website, datealyssaherch.com, and advertised it around town. A very tall, very handsome man found it and asked me out for dinner. We've been dating and riding bikes together for almost a year, and we're planning on moving in together."
That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from the Moth. This episode of the Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Jody Powell, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show along with Julie and Goldhagen. Co-producer is Vicki Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch, additional education program instruction by Shana Creaney.
The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Janess, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Marina Cloutier, Leanne Gulley, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Casa. The Moth Education Program is made possible by generous support from unlikely collaborators.
Additional program support is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Alice Gottesman, the Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation, and Con Edison. Special thanks to the Moths Education Team. And when you get a chance, check out our new podcast, Grown, G-R-O-W-N.
Moth Stories are True is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Renee Aubrey, Blake Mills, The Westerlies, Michael Hedges, and Tommy Emanuel and Mike Dawes.
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.
