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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 Sarah Austin-Ginness. This is the sound of students from the Bronx High School of Science, the Beacon School, Harvest Collegiate High School, and young people from all over the five boroughs of New York waiting to tell stories with the moth.
Since the early days of the Moth, teams of Moth teaching artists have gone into high schools around the country and worked with young people to develop and craft stories from their lives. In 2012, the Moth's education program was formalized because we believe that young people's stories need to be celebrated and shared on a wider scale. So this episode is a celebration of the Moth's education program.
In this hour, you'll hear five students who were all part of a special showcase at the Bell House in Brooklyn, which was packed with hundreds of students, moth workshop leaders, and faculty advisors. Our host was social worker and longtime moth teacher Julian Goldhagen. As you'll hear, Julian wasn't always comfortable on stage, but he found his groove. All right. So today's theme is Hidden Treasure.
All of our stories this evening are somehow going to relate to this idea. And I am definitely someone that is full of hidden treasures, believe it or not. And it brought me back to when I was young, a little, little kid. And I was very, very, very painfully shy, which a lot of people don't believe because I just like talk all the time now. But when I was growing up, that was not the case. I was like voluntarily mute. You know, I just didn't speak.
I didn't ever raise my hand in class. I didn't have a lot of friends. It just kind of wasn't who I was. And I was more or less okay with it because I was also someone as a young person that had a tremendous amount of social anxiety. And so just kind of fading into the background and not taking up a lot of space was how I kept myself feeling safe and comfortable.
So I was cool with it. But the adults in my life were kind of less cool with it. You know, I kind of always heard these things from teachers and my parents being like, Julian, like, we got to get you to open up. We got to get you to break out of your shell. You got to break out of your shell. So I would hear this thing about like breaking out of my shell and it kind of like stuck in my brain. I was like, what does that mean? Why do I have to do that? And how am I going to do that? I really agonized over it.
So about halfway through my third grade year of elementary school, our music teacher left. She got married to this guy who was like giving swamp tours in the Everglades, and so she moved there. Which, by the way, I'm from Florida, so that kind of thing is like normal. We're like, oh yeah, Everglades. So we got a new music teacher, and her name was Miss Popa, and she was kind of way more serious, and she thought we needed a more serious music program. So she created this music club. It was an after-school music club. It was very elite.
Only third graders could do it. And so a letter went home in our backpacks to tell our parents about it. And I brought it home and as soon as my mom saw, she was like, "You're doing this. I think this would be a really good idea. It's going to help you break out of your shell."
And inside, I just felt this thing of, you know, this does not feel like a good idea. I knew that there was going to be a lot of kids there because it was a very popular club for whatever reason. And I'm like, I don't love big crowds. The idea of getting in front of people and just being observed felt like my worst nightmare. So I was like, why would I sign up for that? And also, and most importantly, Miss Popo was really scary.
She was like 11 feet tall. She had like a really thick Eastern European accent, which my grandparents do too. But like Miss Popa's freaked me out for some reason. So I was like, I don't want to go. But I also thought, you know, maybe this is what it is to break out of your shell. Maybe that's that feeling. So I said I would go.
And the next Wednesday, I'm in music club. And my friends, it was like worse than I could have possibly imagined. It was so scary. Miss Popa had a lot of rules. She literally said to us, first moment, she was like, this is my classroom. It's my country. I'm a dictator. I was like, all right, Miss Popa. Like, just starting us off right away. She made us like stand up and do tongue twisters by ourselves, which made me feel really exposed and scared. And so I just kind of was like, let me fall into the background. Let me like learn the animal songs and do my thing and like just not be noticed by Miss Popa.
So that's what I did. And eventually it was the end of the year and we were having a big recital and the week before that recital we had a very special rehearsal in the cafetorium. Which if you don't know what a cafetorium is...
You know, you didn't go to public school, but basically a cafetorium is like a cafeteria, but it has a stage, so it's also an auditorium. So we were in there after school. It was our dress rehearsal. There were like other kids in the audience, like just eating their snack before their after school groups, and I was really freaking out. So I'm just like trying to fade into the background. We have like three lines of kids, and I got myself to the back line, which was kind of hard because I was really short, and they always want to push us up to the front, but I was in the back.
wearing my little khaki shorts, my little white shirt, like we were all wearing, and I was doing great. You know, I was like doing the songs, doing the hand dances, like falling into the background, no problem.
And then all of a sudden, I start to feel this like familiar pressure in the lower half of my body, in my bladder. And I realized that I had to use the bathroom out of nowhere. And I didn't know what to do because I couldn't interrupt the song because Miss Popa made it clear that like you do not interrupt songs when they're happening. So I was like, I can't ask her to go, but I also can't just go because you're not allowed to go to the bathroom without asking to go to the bathroom. So I'm like cost benefit in my brain, what do I do?
And then my body just kind of like decides for me. Yeah, thank you. It decides for me and I feel some warmth in the lower half of my body. And I look down, there's like a little dark spot. And then it becomes like a bigger dark spot. And I, you know, hear somebody scream, that boy peed.
And my brain is just exploding and I don't know what to do. So I just run off the stage and I run out of the cafetorium and actually run out of the school. And somehow the school buses hadn't left for the day. So I run onto the school bus and I get myself home. And I don't go to school the next day and I never go to music club again. And I don't actually like do anything similar to this until I'm like a high school kid. So it really kind of wounded me, this like traumatic exposure moment.
Now I'm an adult and I always use the bathroom before I get on stage. And I'm like, what does this mean? Because on the one hand, I really appreciate the adults in my life who saw this hidden thing in me, this ability to be in front of people and talk that I didn't see in myself. But I also feel a lot of empathy for little shy Julian who was just trying to take care of himself by staying in his shell. And shells are important. I was thinking like turtles have shells.
Clams have shells. You know, if they don't have shells, they literally die. So there are useful things shells do in our lives. And so now I work with high school students and I try to respect that. You know, I try to celebrate the clams in the back row the same way I celebrate the like Julians in the front row. And because I think everyone is just doing the best we can, you know. And literally, whenever someone asks me, Mr., can I use the bathroom? I'm always like, just go. Go for it.
Thank you, thank you very much. I appreciate it. So we're about to bring our first storyteller up, but I asked all of our storytellers, what are three things that you treasure most? This first storyteller said, her grandmother's wedding ring, a doll from her grandmother, and her Australian passport. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, let's give a huge Beyonce-sized round of applause for Isabel Conner! So when I was little, I loved playing with Model Magic.
And if you don't know what Model Magic is, it's a quick-drying air clay. It comes in about four colors, so if you want any other ones, you have to mix them yourself. And I had come up with this really elaborate system. It involved making people, but the people turned to villages, and then the villages needed homes. So I started collecting all of our cardboard boxes and cutting them up and making sure that everybody had a bed.
The beds were made of tissue paper, but the mattresses were Model Magic. And I loved this. It was my world and my space and I could build. But I had just turned five at the time and I had to start going to school. And school was really different than home because home had light and it was colorful, but school had crappy carpeting and bad murals on the wall. And we had to do this thing called a reading circle.
And I didn't really understand it at first, but all of these kids seemed to know because they brought their chapter books. But I brought a picture book, and as we went around in the circle, they would just read it off like it was nothing. And when it got to me, I stumbled over the three words on my page, and I thought, maybe there's something off.
So I got sent to these special learning groups and these special reading groups, and they were on the weekends, and they looked kind of like school but more sterile, and they had white walls and high gray tables, and I would sit there, and I was often in these orange corduroy overalls, and they'd put blocks and letters and numbers in front of me, and eventually words, you know, small ones like cot, mat, top hat,
And they'd say, "Isabel, can you read this?" You know, a word has a shape, and I didn't understand how the sound would correspond to that shape, and when you put them together and they were meant to sound like this complete word, and I'd get this hot feeling in the back of my eyes and a lump in my throat, and I felt like I was about to cry because I was this stupid girl. And then going back to school on Monday, things had really escalated. Social stigma was now attached to this, you know.
It was like, could you count to 100 or read a full chapter book? And I couldn't do either of them. And the point that it really hit me was when my teacher took me aside and said, you know, no one had asked to be my partner on our big field trip. So I would be with her. And I felt like the stupid girl.
So I made this conscious decision from a really young age that I would trick everybody, that I was smart, and I could read, and I could write, and I could do math. And I think for the most part it worked. No one really knew it took me until I was 12 to learn how to read.
I did it in a few different ways. When my mom would read to me, I would memorize the words that were on the page, and I would remember the picture. So when I did public reading, it looked like I knew exactly what I was saying. And in classes, I'd focus on the way I said words and tried to remember them too because I realized I could remember most things, but I really couldn't write them.
And so I was doing this for years, and when I got to high school, I was really determined to keep up this image of this girl I had created in my mind. I was on time for class. Sometimes I was really early, and I had homework assignments in on time, and I would work so hard. But then someone caught me, and it was my ninth grade math teacher. She asked me to stay after school, and she sat down with me, and she said, Isabel, I
I've taught for 13 years in all these different places, but I've never met anybody as far behind in math as you. And again, I got that hot feeling in the back of my eyes and that lump in my throat, and I tried to swallow through it, and I zoned out, and I looked at the window, and I kept thinking about how I was that girl again. I was that stupid girl. But then I went every day after school, and I learned my times tables, and I learned my fractions, and I eventually passed the class.
I kept pushing. And I mean, there were moments when I knew that this was wrong. Because, you know, I was scribbling out answers or questions on tests and putting in animations there instead. And sometimes I would stay up really, really late drawing. And then those drawings turned into paintings, which turned into little worlds again. And then it would be four or five drawings.
And I'd realized I was going to be really tired at school, but it didn't really seem to matter because at least I was really happy in those moments. And senior year came, and it was time to apply to college. It would be proof if I went to some really academically rigorous school that I had, you know, never been the stupid girl. I was just smart. And so I started taking really hard classes, and one was this constitutional law history class.
And we had this one big paper for the end of our term, and we had to do this big reading attached to it. So when I sat down to do this reading, I pulled it out, and I went over the first line, and I didn't understand what it had said. So I went back again, and I took a breath, and I said, I can do this. And I went over the same line again, and I still couldn't read it.
And this thing started happening where that lump in my throat was back and the hot feeling was behind my eyes and I was going over and over these lines and I couldn't read any of it. And I was so frustrated because I'm 18 and I know how to read now. I'm not 12. I'm not that girl. And I'm crying and I'm embarrassed and there's no one there to even see. And as I'm crying, the crying turns to laughing because I hated it.
And I hated constitutional law. I couldn't do it anymore. But the thing I realized was that there were things that I loved. And what I loved was Model Magic. And I mean, it wasn't that anymore. It was something else. It was something I could feel. And I wanted to go back to that girl who was five and that girl who was 12. And now I want to go back to that 18-year-old girl. And I want to tell her, you're not stupid.
You're a really hard worker and you're creative and you'll stop at nothing. And you were never the stupid girl, Isabel. You were always the smart girl. You were just chasing the wrong things. Thank you.
Isabel Connelly has told stories with the moth since she was a junior in high school, and she came back from college, the Rhode Island School of Design, to tell this story at the Education Showcase. Isabel majors in graphic design, and she says her newest project is making crayon letters from a typeface she designed called ReCog for dyslexic people of all ages. To see her recent visual work, visit themoth.org.
Up next, more from this night featuring students from the Moth's Education Program when our show continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX. You're listening to the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin-Ginness, and in this episode, we're live from the Moth's Education Showcase at the Bell House in Brooklyn. ♪
It's not an exaggeration to tell you that this mission to elevate stories of young people has fundamentally changed our whole organization. Here's Hannah Campbell, the senior manager of the Moths Education Program, with more on the mission.
Our mission is to give educators and young people a platform to share their stories and their experiences with each other and then also with the world, where we have educators come in, work on their own stories, and then think about how they can then bring this practice that they've experienced into their own classrooms.
In terms of impact, we hear very often from young people that they have had a chance to grow in their self-confidence. They feel confident being listened to. It's so rare in all lives, but also particularly in the life of a young person, to be listened to uninterrupted for five minutes.
So I think our students get to know their peers and their classmates in ways that they hadn't really imagined before they entered the workshop space. That was the Moths' Hannah Campbell. Let's get back to our live education showcase with the theme Hidden Treasure. Here's the host, Julian Goldhagen. Thank you so, so much. So when I asked this storyteller what are three things that she treasures most, she told me she treasures her journal, she treasures music,
And she treasures a necklace that her grandmother gave her. Ladies and gentlemen, and people who aren't ladies or gentlemen, let's give a huge round of applause for Saya Shamdasani. I've lived in New York for my entire life. And when I was younger, I used to watch a lot of television. And I'd watch these programs with these girls, and I became fascinated by one thing. And it was this girl who's eating these bags of chips. And I later learned that these chips were pirate booty.
About a week later, I went to my friend's house and her mom gave us the same bag of chips for snack. And I was just so enamored by that that I went home to my mom and I told her, Mom, I want these chips for snack every single day when I came home from school.
And she kind of wrinkled her nose and she was like, what about the Indian snacks I make for you every day? And I'm like, no, can you please get me these? And she did it because that's what moms do. And every single day I had a bag of chips waiting for me when I came home from school.
So I, like I said, I grew up in New York City and I was always surrounded by a lot of white people and it obviously influenced how I did things. When my white friends came over, I'd tell my mom and my dad, never speak in Hindi, that was the one rule, and I'd always have these board games stacked up in a pile and I'd have the food that my friends were going to eat lined up and ready to go and everyone had to act
a certain way and smile. But when my Indian friends came over, it was more rough and messy and it wasn't perfect. But I didn't want that. I wanted to be like the girls in school with their chips and I wanted to be like the girl in the TV show. I didn't want rough, edged and messy.
One day, my mom came home, and she told us we were going to India for two weeks. And I'd been to India before, but it'd been a couple years since I'd been, and my first thought when she told me that was, ugh, I do not want to go to India. I do not want to be in the heat. I want to be here, and I want to spend the time with my friends when I don't have school. But I still packed my bags, and I went.
It's a long flight, and it's so chaotic. People are yelling from the back row about some food that their relative has in the front row, and then they have to sweep through the aisles and then pass it to them, and it's all these hugs and greetings. And when you land in the airport, everyone's speaking in Hindi, and there are immigration flyers, and there's baggage claim, and it's just this type of freeness that I never experienced anywhere else.
And my grandmother was waiting outside in the car, and she came and she enveloped my brother and I in a tight hug. And she said goodbye to my brother, my mom, and my dad because I was going to be spending some time in her apartment and living with her. And I remember pulling up to her apartment, and it was this yellow brick wall.
apartment had seven little flats and it was, each flat had a balcony and it was really beautiful and small and as I lived there with her, the neighbors were a big part of her daily life and it felt so different from my life in New York and the only time we spoke to our neighbors was when my brother threw the basketball in their area and then they came over and they handed it back. The only time we ever spoke.
So I live in, I was living in the apartment. I was surrounded by my mom's violet walls when she was growing up. I was showering in her shower and she didn't have a shower head. So I had this bucket and I'd pour it over myself and I was eating food and my days consisted of walking in the markets and watching my mother bargain for an item. She'd spend 20 minutes bargaining, bargaining over probably $1 and it didn't even become of whether or not the
the dollar was worth it or the item was worth it. It was just about who won the fight, who was the better bargainer. And every time we went to a new store, I was just hoping she'd fight a little harder and win that fight.
And we'd ride in rickshaws, and my hand would stick out the car window, and I'd feel the dust in between my fingers. And I remember one time my brother, my grandmother, and I were leaving the apartment complex, and I was sitting in the front. That was so cool because I never got to do that in New York. And a bunch of boys were picking some mangoes at a tree nearby. And they walked over to us, and one of the boys, my grandmother, asked, how much for a bundle of mangoes?
and the boy said some absurd number and my grandmother was like, "What are you gonna do with all that money?" And I think he said something really sketchy, 'cause all of a sudden, my grandma takes her hand and slaps the boy across the face. And that boy is rolling his eyes and I'm like, "Why isn't he freaking out?" And I've seen the boy around our complex before helping my grandma carry up groceries up the stairs 'cause they didn't have an elevator and she'd given him food before when she had leftovers and
She didn't have to look out for him because she was his mother. She was there because she wanted to be there, because there was a sense of community, the sense of togetherness, something I never experienced in America. So he just rolled his eyes and he said, "Auntie, you know, this is what teenagers do." And she laughed it off, like, "We're going to talk about this later."
And we flash forward, and I'm back in New York, and I'm hanging out with my Indian friends a little bit more, and one day we all go to a restaurant with our moms. We're loud, and we're happy, and we're boisterous, and we're sitting down, and we're about to order our food, when all of a sudden this man stands up, and he bangs his fist on the table, and he says, "If you want to act uncivilized and loud like that, go back to your own country."
And I remember the entire restaurant being completely silent. And this fork I had was digging into the palm of my hand and I was sweating and my heart was slowing down. And I watch as my mom stands up and she walks over to that man and she says, Sir, we have as much of a right to be in this country as you. This country is as much our home as it is yours.
And I never felt more proud to be Indian in that moment than I have in my entire life. And I looked around me and I saw my friends and their mothers nodding their heads, cheering her on. And in my head, I was like, yeah, mom, you tell him. And it was this sense of, again, togetherness and community and something I never experienced before. I knew people were there for me and they had my back in a way that I never had before.
So it's not like I went back to school and I was all of a sudden, you know, this Indian girl who like ate Indian food at lunch and listened to Indian music and wore Indian clothes and spoke in Hindi. But I began to realize that I didn't have to pretend to be someone I wasn't. And I began picking up pieces of myself that I'd let fall.
That was Saya Shamdasani, who at the time of the show was a student at Trinity School in New York City. She says she's still very much in touch with her Indian community, both in New York City and in India. Saya's grandmother passed away just after she told this, and Saya's happy that so many will get to meet her grandmother through this story. To see photos of Saya, her grandmother, and the mangoes from this trip to India, go to themoth.org.
Coming up next, our final stories from this high school showcase when the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, PRX.org.
This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin-Ginness. To date, thousands of students and educators have crafted and shared stories with the Moth. In this episode, we're bringing you a live student showcase from early 2020 at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Here's our host, Julian Goldhagen. Thank you.
All right, so very excited to bring this storyteller onto the stage. So when we asked him, you know, what are three things that he treasures most, he told us playing covers on his guitar, keeping his sense of humor no matter what, and ramen. All right? So let's have a huge round of applause for David Leppelstein!
So throughout my middle school career, I had many different crushes. It was about the time when I started to develop real feelings for my peers, but no one was allowed to hear about any of them. And that was because of two reasons. The first reason: rejection. I was scared that I would admit that I liked someone and it would get to them, and then they wouldn't like me back, and that just seemed like a scary position for me to be in. The second reason was acceptance.
I was scared that I was going to admit I like someone, that person finds out about it, and they may like me back. And then where do we go from there? I was like, oh, maybe then we'll have to date, and then, oh, what's this? We're broken up, and then all of my friends don't like hers, and all of her friends don't like mine, and it just seemed like a lot of drama at the time.
But then eighth grade came, and along with eighth grade came my biggest crush of all. It was on this girl named Rachel who sat next to me in geography class, and it just seemed like there was this time in my life where I was only going to school just for that class, and just to sit next to her and race her on the geography video game and see who could name more countries. She was just amazing. Like, we had all these inside jokes with each other, and I just had this feeling that I couldn't hold on to this crush any longer.
And lucky for me, our middle school prom was right around the corner. That's right, I went to a small progressive middle school and we had a prom for the eighth graders. So I was like, that's a great entrance into this romantic scene in my middle school. I'll ask Rachel out to prom. So I went home and I looked up on Google how to ask someone out to prom.
And I come across these things called promposals, which are these sort of like proposals for marriage, but this time for the prom. And a lot of them have this musical element, like, you know, someone sings a song or does a dance. So I'm thinking, hey, you know, I'm kind of musical. I can do that. Next thing I know, I'm waiting for Rachel outside of class, ukulele in hand, and I sing her a song asking her to prom. And...
It's a little bit overkill. People are like, "You could have just got flowers," but she's laughing and she seems to really like it and perhaps think it was cute. And she says, "Yes." And I'm like, "Wow, this is so cool."
So next thing you know, we're at prom. And it's this under the sea theme. There's inflatable lobsters on the floor. Every table has a seaweed centerpiece. And Rachel and I have this wonderful night. Like, we're just talking the whole night. And we never leave each other's side. And we even have our caricature drawn together by the caricature artist, which feels like a really big move for me. And it's just this magical, nautical night. And at the end of it...
We hug, and we say goodnight, and I walk away, and I'm like, well, that wasn't so bad. That wasn't so scary. This is really cool. The next day, a bunch of us middle school prom couples are hanging out at Emma's house. Emma was sort of like the ringleader of my middle school friend group. And we're all hanging out watching the movie Frozen, as you do. And there's one point where Rachel gets up and excuses herself to use the bathroom. And at that moment, all the attention in the room turns to me.
And Emma stands up and she says, "David, have you had your first kiss yet?" And I say, "No." And she says, "Oh, well, Rachel hasn't had her first kiss yet, and she leaves for camp tomorrow for the rest of the summer, and she said that she would like her first kiss to be with you." Wow. I mean, I'm not even thinking about a kiss. This is crazy to me. And then Rachel just comes back in the room and everyone goes back to normal, and I'm just really in my head, like, this is...
I mean, I'm thinking, wait, I do want to have my first kiss with Rachel, but this is so soon and an ultimatum on top of it. But then as we're watching the movie, people are sort of motioning like, David, maybe you should, you know, put your arm around her, make a first move on the way to your kiss later today. And I'm sort of like still and stagnant. But then the song Let It Go comes on and...
You know what I do? I let that arm go. And I put it around Rachel, and she smiles and sort of snuggles up next to me, and it seems like a good move. And I'm like, okay, maybe I can do this kiss. But then the movie ends, and Rachel abruptly is like, okay, I have to go home. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm going to miss my opportunity. But then I'm like, okay, I'll walk you to the train. And I go and follow her to the door, and everyone's just like, yes!
So Rachel and I are walking to the train and this is me agreeing to kiss her, I feel, in my head. And everyone at the hangout agrees as well because my phone is ringing off the... It's going crazy. People are texting me, "Make sure you put your hands on your hips when you kiss her. Make sure you lean down because you're much taller than her. And make sure you pick a side. Pick a side to lean on." So I'm just like, "Okay, bend down. You're taller. Hands on hips. Pick a side. Pick a side."
And just like that, all of the lovely banter that Rachel and I had before is kind of gone. She's just kind of walking, and I'm just in my head and not really saying a word. And we get to the train station. We walk down to the subway platform, and I'm just too nervous. And she's waiting there for me to do something, and I can't. And I just say bye. And she says bye, and she swipes her MetroCard, and the turnstile divides us.
And I'm thinking like, "Oh, why'd you let all those texts get in your head?" Like, this is actually something you want to do. And then I look, and I see the train times, and I see I still have one more minute, and something gets a hold of me. So I take out my MetroCard, and I go for a swipe, because love is worth wasting a MetroCard swipe.
And I go and I meet her on the platform and she just starts laughing hysterically and I ask her, "Why are you laughing?" and she just says, "Oh, I laugh a lot when I get nervous." And that makes me feel so much better because I'm really nervous as well. And I ask her if she wants to have her first kiss with me and she says, "Yes." And so I put my hands on her hips. I lean down because I'm a lot taller than her. I pick a side, I pick the right side.
And as the train is coming, we place a little peck on the side of our lips. And the wind from the train hits us. And it's magical. And I'm really celebrating this moment. But I don't celebrate it with her. After it happens, I run away. Because...
There's no like staring off longingly into our eyes, none of that. No. I just leave the train station and I'm just thinking about all the moments I can have in my life that are so exciting if I just put myself out there. I went from someone who couldn't even admit he had a crush on someone to asking a girl out to prom with my ukulele, having my first kiss, and more important than that, establishing a really special connection with someone I like.
and there were so many thoughts running through my head, but one of them just kept sticking with me. I just kept thinking, "I did it." Thank you. David Leplestat was a member of the Moth's All City, a high school storytelling team that meets at the Moth office on weekends to craft stories. David was also a teaching intern with us, and he says the Moth's education program was a home away from home while he was in high school.
He also told us that he and Rachel are still friends and still see each other at school reunions. He says now that he's no longer in high school, he doesn't have a public school metro card, so he's much more frugal with his subway swipes. To see a photo of this epic under-the-sea prom, go to themoth.org. Our next storyteller is Luna Azcurre. Her three treasures are adventure, culture, and food. Here's Luna live at The Moth.
Thanksgiving at my house is not your typical Thanksgiving. Half of my family is from Spain, so we always add our little Spanish twist to it. We have tortilla de patata and gambas al ajillo instead of, what do you guys have here? Green bean casserole? I don't know. My favorite part of Thanksgiving was actually this apple cake.
And it was typically Thanksgiving was held at my aunt's house, so I just assumed that she was the mastermind behind it. But I actually found out that it was my grandfather, which completely surprised me because he's never in the kitchen. He's either reading a French newspaper or watching the Spanish news channel. So when I found out it was him, I was like, one, this is the perfect opportunity to get the recipe. And two, I can actually have a time and place to connect with him, which I didn't really have before that. So...
Ever since then, I would go early on Thanksgiving morning, and we'd pull out this old recipe book that had all these food stains on it, and I would mix together the wet and the dry ingredients, and he would double-check my measurements.
And then I would sit there mesmerized by the fact that he could peel an apple in one entire rind and we'd combine everything and then go over and consult with my uncle about the placement of the cake in the oven because no one wanted to disrupt the turkey's cooking time even though no one wanted to eat it anyway. And then it almost felt like instantly the house would just smell like cinnamon.
apples and at the end of the night when everyone got that thick slice we just get this big round of applause and everyone would be like oh my god it's so amazing it tastes so good and me and my grandfather would just look at each other from across the room and be like yeah we did that um and it just became a tradition that I enjoyed and always looked forward to but as I got older so did he and
And one Thanksgiving morning, he was sitting at the kitchen table and I assumed that he was waiting to make the apple cake. And I was unpacking the groceries and I was putting the apples on the table and he looks at me and he goes, "Luna, what are you doing?" And I'm shocked. I mean, I knew that he was beginning to forget things, but I didn't think that he would forget this. It was our tradition, it was our time of bonding, it was our time to connect, and he had forgotten.
And I told him, I'm like, we're making the apple cake, you know, the one that we always make. And he goes, apple cake? Can you teach me? And now I'm terrified because he was my teacher. And now I have to be his teacher because I don't want this tradition to die. And so I tell him, I'll teach you. And as I'm telling him that I'm putting the sugar and the eggs in a blender and I'm putting the flour and the cinnamon in another bowl and then we're going to combine them,
I hand him the apple and he still peels it in one rind and I'm like, okay, maybe he remembers a little bit. We put it in the oven and it comes out perfectly, but the entire time it just doesn't feel the same because even though he's there with me, he's not completely capable of being there like he used to be. Fast forward to this year, it's about three years later and
I'm on my way to work and I remember that it's going to be Thanksgiving and so I call my mom and I tell her that I need her to pick up the five freshest Granny Smith apples and then a few hours later she calls me again and she goes, Luna, your grandfather was just admitted to the hospital. He needs to get a small minimal surgery. He's going to be fine but we're going to have Thanksgiving in the hospital this year.
And my first reaction was, oh my God, is he going to be okay? But then my second reaction was, what about the apple cake? And so I knew that everyone was really worried about him. And so I figured that I would just make the apple cake by myself this year so that that way I could just bring a little bit of comfort to the family.
And I get home and I'm looking at the apples and I just completely forget everything. I don't remember if he does slivers for the apples or chunks, if they're big or if they're small. And I'm testing one with one apple and I definitely can't peel it in one rind. And then the entire time as I'm mixing everything together, I'm just doubting myself. I'm like, this is going to taste horrible. It's not going to look the same. And I'm
As I'm putting in the oven, I'm just like, this doesn't have his touch. He's not by my side. This cake will not be the same because what made it so special was him being there, was us being able to make it together. And he couldn't do that this time.
And so as soon as it comes out of the oven, I'm like, we're not bringing it. This is not the cake. We're not bringing it. But of course, my mother insists. And so we pack it in the bag and we're on our way to the hospital. And as we enter, it's cold and it smells like medicine. But as we get to my grandfather's room...
everyone surrounding him and creating some warmth and I tried to discreetly hide the bag behind my back but my grandmother sees and she goes, "What do you have there, Luna?" And I hand her the bag and she pulls out the apple cake and then she tells my grandfather, "Look, Luna made apple cake." And he looks down at the cake and then he looks back up at me and he smiles and I just feel this rush of memories flowing back to him of every time we've made it together
And in that moment, even though he was in the hospital, it felt like we had made it together. We had done it once again. Thank you. Luna Azkurim was born and raised in the Lower East Side in Manhattan. And like a true New Yorker, she loves people watching on the subway.
Luna says she hasn't seen her grandparents for a while. They're all social distancing. But she says their FaceTime calls are the best. Her apple cake recipe remains a closely guarded secret, but you can see a photo of Luna and her grandfather baking in the kitchen at themoth.org. And here's your host, Julian Goldhagen, to introduce our final storyteller. When I asked this storyteller what are three things that she treasures most, she says finding things that she thought she lost,
Having a really good conversation and a great book. Let's have a big warm welcome for our final storyteller, Beth Gabersale! When people ask me where I'm from, I usually just say it's a long story. And it is. I was born in this really small country in eastern Africa called Eritrea. And I loved it there.
The weather was always perfect. It was warm and sunny with a breeze always there to curb the sun rays. I had my select group of friends who I loved and adored and I spent almost every single day with. When I was in third grade, I was nine years old and my mother took me aside from the rest of our family. We were standing in front of the doorway when she told me that her job at the UN was relocating her and we were moving to Sudan.
I was actually incredibly excited. I loved seeing new things. And that's what I saw in Sudan. A new place to see and new friends to make. My parents are separated, so my father had to stay in Eritrea. In the airport, he was just trying to hold on to me, to get the last few pieces of me, but I was so hyper and excited that I barely said goodbye. In Sudan, in the first day of fourth grade, I got on the school bus.
I was nervous and really antsy to see how things would go. I sat next to this girl named Yasmin, and she turned to me and said hi. And I said hi. And we were friends. Sudan turned out pretty great. I learned Arabic, I memorized the national anthem, and I had a new group of friends. From my friends, I was closest to Rayan. Rayan understood me so well, and she could make me laugh so easily.
And we would play this game where she would speak in Arabic really, really fast and I would try to translate it as perfectly as possible. I did miss my old friends, but I had found a new sense of comfort. Towards the end of sixth grade, my mother and I were watching TV. She told me that we will be moving again, this time to Virginia. I didn't want to go to a new place. This time, I didn't want to make new friends.
I spent the last week just crying with my friends. On my last day, we went to the mall. We did what we usually did. We ate, we drank, we looked at clothes and walked around. In the end, we all just crowded into a bench and cried together.
Virginia offered nothing appeasing to my sense of displacement. At that point, all those years of torn friendships had took a toll on me and I couldn't take it anymore. I didn't want to make new friends only to leave them again. So when school started, I didn't talk to anyone. In high school, I moved to New York City. I despised it.
But in many ways, it made me feel better about my choice to be alone. Because this time, I wasn't leaving anyone behind. I wouldn't speak in class and I would eat lunch alone. I didn't want to make friends, only to leave them all over again. In 10th grade, my mom urged me to apply to an internship at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. She noticed how alone I was, how hurt I was, and how desperate I looked.
I was against it. I didn't want to have to talk to people. But after much persuasion, I applied. And shockingly, I got in. After the first meeting in my internship, I didn't even want to consider talking to anybody. But over time, it grew harder to be quiet and isolate myself. In the internship, all 15 of us had to discuss social justice and our own heritage. And its very nature required vulnerability.
In one of our first meetings, we had to bring artifacts from our culture and talk about them. I brought a picture for traditional coffee set because it was too big to bring in there. We all offered something different and we all opened up. And in opening up, we just all automatically connected. Through the internship, I realized how much I was missing out. I made these amazing connections that I had cut myself off from.
And I thought about everyone else I hadn't talked to that I was just protecting myself from losing. The internship ended and those connections and those people did fade, but the way they've changed me always remained within me imprinting my soul. I learned to find permanence in impermanence. Thank you. That was Beth Gebrecelase. Beth has moved again and she's currently a college student at SUNY New Paltz where she's found new friends.
She misses New York City, but she says, "I feel like it's a constant push and pull between wanting permanence and also wanting to move, move, move."
Here, for one last thought, is the Moth's Senior Manager of Education, Hannah Campbell. I would love for us to take this program to other cities. I would love to make it more accessible and to maybe have teacher institutes in different cities as time goes on so that more teachers can get this opportunity. What happens to adults when they stop and listen to
to young people? You know, the world, I mean, the world is always changing. And so it's different now than when many of us were younger, were young people. And so just to hear what young people are dealing with and what their joys and delights are and what their stressors are, I think is so important and really gives us empathy for them and for what they're dealing with and prepares us to be able to support them.
I also think it gives us empathy for ourselves and an opportunity to remember what it's like to be young and to remember, you know, the stories of our crushes or our proms or our dances of the test or the things that felt really high stakes because they were. And a chance to listen to that story also gives you a chance to go internal and remember your own. And I think that's such like a delicious opportunity. That was Hannah Campbell.
For more information about the Moth's education program, student stories, and our free online curriculum, and to find out how you can get involved as a teacher or as a student, visit our website, themoth.org slash education. That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.
Your hosts this hour were Julian Goldhagen and Sarah Austin-Gines. Sarah also directed the stories in the show, along with Michelle Jalowski, Jodi Powell, and Chloe Salmon. The rest of the Moth's directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Emily Couch. The Moth's education program is helmed by Jennifer Birmingham, Delia Bloom, Melissa Brown, Hannah Campbell, and Julio Chavez.
We'd also like to thank George Dawes Green and all of the Moth's teaching artists and partner schools. Be sure to tune in to the Moth podcast for Fridays with the Moth starting May 15th with stories you can share with friends and family of all ages.
The Moth Education Program is made possible by generous support from the Kresge Foundation, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Charitable Trust, the Kate Spade New York Foundation, and Alice Gottesman. Additional support is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the New York State Council on the Arts, Con Edison, and the New York Department of Cultural Affairs.
Moth Stories Are True is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Blue Dot Sessions, Krungbin, Ivan Rezendez, and Percussions. You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Moth Radio Hour is 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.
