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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. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX, and I'm Katherine Burns. We sometimes can go weeks and even months just keeping on, keeping on, without much drama or stress. But then a situation will arise where we need to make big decisions on the spot.
Those moments of pressure and how we respond say a lot about who we are as people. So this week, stories about being in the hot seat. Our first storyteller spoke at a live performance at Benaroya Hall in Seattle where we partner with Seattle Arts and Lectures. Here's Will Mackin live at the Moth. June 1986. I just graduated high school. I was working in a parking lot on the Jersey Shore and by working
I mean, I was playing stickball with my friends, surfing when the waves were good, parking a car every now and then. And I was happy to do that for the rest of my life. Then one night, I went to the movies, and I saw Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise as Maverick, the renegade fighter pilot. And that changed everything. From that moment on, I wanted to fly jets. And not only that, I wanted to be Maverick.
So I joined ROTC, graduated college, went to U.S. Navy Flight School in Pensacola, Florida. And there, I classed up with a group of 30 young men and women, all of whom had seen Top Gun. All of whom wanted to be Maverick. But only the top three of our graduating class would fly jets. Everyone else would fly rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong. The 30 of us emerged from ground school ranked more or less the same.
Flight phase of training was next, and here was where we'd separate the best from the best, the cream from the cream, the puppies from the small dogs. And it was critically important during this phase which instructor was assigned to you, because your instructor graded your flights and your grades determined your class rank. So on the spectrum of instructors, a lieutenant I'll call Happy was by far the coolest. Happy walked the halls of the squadron wearing his sunglasses,
His flight suit was zipped down well below regs. He would return our "Good morning, sirs" with a couple shots from his finger pistols. And whether or not he knew who he was shooting at, it didn't matter. He still felt seen. On the other end of the spectrum was Major Small, a serial smoker with a bloodshot stare who never said a word to anyone about anything and who seemed genuinely angry at the world. And the reason for this was probably because
Not less than a year prior, during the first Gulf War, Major Small had been shot down over Iraq, and he'd been taken prisoner and tortured. He'd gone from being a POW at Abu Ghraib to Pensacola, where he'd quickly earned a reputation not only as a merciless instructor, but one who could peer into your soul, see all your faults, and catalog them on a grade sheet. We all knew the student a few years
Classes ahead of ours who after a bad flight with Major Small was so shaken he quit the Navy and he started selling Amway. And when he invited me to his house to listen to his Ponzi scheme presentation, I went. And I bought a big box of soap because I didn't want the karma wheel to spin against me. So on the day of my first flight, I drove into the squadron praying for a good instructor.
I park outside the hangar, I climb the stairs to the ready room, I check the big white status board where all the day's flights are listed. In the column of student names, I find mine. Next to my name in the instructor block was "Happy" and I was relieved. But my relief soon gave way to nervousness because I'd never flown a plane before. So fast forward to the end of the runway where I'm preparing for my first takeoff, going through my procedures.
Engine gauges are all in the green, flight controls are free and clear, I adjust the rearview mirror, there's Happy in the backseat smiling. "You ready to go, sir?" I ask. Happy looks one way, he looks the other way, and he looks back at me and says, "I don't see my dad anywhere." So you can knock it off with the "sir" shit. Happy's cool transfers wholesale. I take my feet off the brakes, we roll down the runway, we take off into the clear blue sky. I hang a right at Mobile Bay over the woods of southern Alabama.
I find an abandoned runway where I can practice my landings. In a maneuver called a touch and go, I descend to pattern altitude. I lower the flaps, I lower the landing gear, I complete the landing checklist. I turn to line up with the runway and then I control my rate of descent all the way down until the wheels touch the pavement. Then I go to full power, climb back up to pattern altitude and do it again.
After 10 touch-and-go's, fly back to the squadron and meet up with Happy in the debrief room. He's eating a bag of Funyuns, drinking a Mountain Dew. Good job, dude, he said. It gives me good grades. Next six flights go more or less the same. Flying with Happy, I'm doing touch-and-go's, starting to feel confident, starting to feel in control. I'm getting good grades. And meanwhile, I'm climbing the ranks in my class from 16 of 30 to 12.
12 to 9, from 9 to 6. And that's where I was on the night of my last flight. I drove in that night under a full moon, which was a good omen. And because I knew no one could see me, I popped my collar of my flight suit, Maverick style. I played Danger Zone on the tape deck at top volume, parked outside the hangar, climbed the stairs to the ready room. I checked the status board, find my name next to my name's Happy. But something was wrong. Happy's name had been crossed off.
And underneath was written Major Small. I folded down my collar and went to find him. I found Major Small in the briefing room, sitting in a bitter nicotine cloud. He didn't speak a word to me during the brief or the walk out to the plane or start up or taxi. So we're on the end of the runway. I'm going through my procedures for takeoff. Engine gauges are in the green. Flight controls are free and clear. Just a rear view mirror. There's Small in the backseat frowning. You ready to go, sir? I ask. He doesn't answer me.
Instead, he opens a canopy, puts a cigarette in his mouth, and he lights it. Now to say smoking in a Navy aircraft was prohibited is an understatement. The nearest place you could legally smoke was on the other side of the hangar, across the parking lot, across the street, past the softball fields where the dumpsters were. And I suppose I should have asked Major Small to put his cigarette out. But instead, I asked myself, what would Maverick do? Now I knew...
that Maverick was dangerous. He busted the hard deck to shoot down Jester. He did an unauthorized fly-by of the control tower, made everyone spill coffee on their uniforms. He jumped up and down on Oprah's couch. So I took my feet off the brakes, rolled down the runway with Major Smalls, smoking in the backseat.
Somewhere over Mobile Bay, Major Small flicked his first cigarette out into the night, lit a second, I found my favorite runway, descended to pattern altitude, lowered the flaps, lowered the landing gear, completed the landing checklist, turned to line up with the runway like I'd done dozens of times before. But this time, something felt off. I realized far too late that I was descending way too fast. We hit the runway so hard, my helmet popped off my head.
Major Small's lit cigarette flew up from the backseat over my shoulder under the instrument panel, buried itself in the floorboards up by the firewall. And that's where it stayed, burning and glowing, as we literally bounced back up into the sky. As we were climbing away from the ground, I pushed my helmet back on my head. I heard Major Small speak his first words to me. Can you reach it? I unstrapped for my parachute. I bent down as far as I could, but it was no use. No, sir, I said.
In the silence that followed, I imagined the worst-case scenario. The plane would catch fire, we'd have to bail out, parachute into the pitch black wood, snag on a tree, cut myself down, break my leg when I hit the ground. I honestly didn't see another way out. But then I heard Major Small's voice again, calm and patient. "Here's what we're going to do." Major Small talks me through a maneuver called a zero-g bunt. Zero-g meaning zero gravity, meaning weightless.
and bunt because it's a gentle maneuver. Kind of fun even, like going over a hill on a roller coaster. So imagine this: I have the throttle in my left hand, the stick in my right. Major Small says, "Go to full power and pull back hard on the stick." I pull back hard enough, the skin of my face sags down, blood starts to drain out of my head. "Harder," Small says, so I pull harder and my vision shrinks and I feel pins and needles in my brain.
"Good," says Small. Next he has me push forward on the stick and when I do so, I lift up out of my seat weightless, sand from underneath the floorboards rises in the cockpit and sparkles in the starlight and up pops the lit cigarette. And it spins little glowing orange circles right in front of my face. I let go of the throttles and I grab the cigarette and I put it out of my hand and it burns like a son of a bitch.
But I don't scream because I know that Major Small has been through worse. No more touching goes for me that night. We fly back to the squadron. I meet up with Major Small in the debrief room. He's looking at my grade sheet like it couldn't possibly contain his disgust. That was the worst landing I've ever seen, he says to me. Now keep in mind, he dejected from a burning aircraft, parachuted into enemy hands. Somehow my landing was worse than that. So he gives me the worst possible grade for landings.
But then he smiles and says, "But that was a great catch. Gives me a good grade for airmanship, so I even out on that flight. I go into selection ranked 6 of 30. Lucky for me, the Navy needed more than three jet pilots that week. So I got jets, but I no longer wanted to be Maverick." Because Maverick was a Hollywood hero. The dangers that he faced were make-believe, whereas Major Small had survived very real danger.
And now here he was teaching young people like myself to survive it too. And I wanted to be more like him. Thank you. Will Mackin is a veteran of the U.S. Navy. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, GQ, Tin House, and the New York Times Magazine. His debut collection of short stories, Bring Out the Dog, won the 2019 Penn Robert W. Bingham Prize.
I asked Will if he kept in touch with Major Small. He wrote, I lost touch with Major Small after flight school, but a Google search showed him in uniform sitting on the back of a convertible and waving to the crowd. To see a photo of Will in uniform in front of his plane at the time of the story, go to themoth.org. While there, you can call our pitch line and leave us a two-minute version of a story you'd like to tell. Please call us.
I had just finished medical school and an internship in New York City. I was accepted to a residency in Atlanta, Georgia at Emory University. My husband and I were moving to Atlanta and at a family dinner. Before we moved, my uncle said his work colleague had a nephew who worked at Emory and we should look him up when we get there. He wrote his name on a small piece of paper. Being a shy person, I folded up the paper and tucked it away, never meaning to look up a stranger.
In the next 10 years, I got a divorce from my first husband, met a doctor at Emory, fell in love, and remarried. We then moved to Miami and had two children. One day, I decided to go through my jewelry box, which had gotten very messy. There at the bottom of the box was a folded-up piece of paper, which I opened up and read. It said, when you get to Atlanta, look up Dr. Ira Braun. And to my utter surprise, he was the man I married.
Remember, you can tell us about your own story at themoth.org. The number to call is 877-799-MOTH, or you can pitch us your story at themoth.org. Coming up, a magician in Ecuador debuts a new trick in front of a large, high-stakes audience. That's 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 Katherine Burns. In this hour, we're hearing stories about people who find themselves in uncomfortable situations. Siegfried Teber told his story at St. Anne's Church in Brooklyn Heights. Here's Siegfried live at the Moth.
Even after all these years, I still get a little nervous before I step on a stage. I was born and raised in Ecuador. When I turned 18, I enrolled at the University for Mechanical Engineering. My father founded a textile company, so the plan was always that I would earn my degree and help in the family business.
Just a few months after enrolling at university, someone lent me a book, a thick book, "A Thousand and One Easy Card Tricks." I read it eagerly, cover to cover, to find out that out of a thousand and one, a thousand of those tricks were not good.
Most relied on convoluted mathematical principles that involved dealing playing cards in multiple piles, adding numbers, subtracting numbers. So after all that, the result wasn't very exciting, not very magical at all.
However, there was this one trick buried in there somewhere that got my attention, so I started to practice, practice, practice relentlessly for several weeks without ever showing it to anybody. One Sunday afternoon, I gathered my family in the living room, small family, mom, dad, brother, sister, and decided to show them this thing I had been practicing for so long.
I hand my sister a deck of playing cards and I ask her to shuffle. I take a different deck of cards and shuffle it myself. We go through a series of steps at the end of which my sister takes a card out of her deck. I take a card out of my deck. We pause for dramatic effect. I ask her to show her card to everybody. It's the two of clubs.
I show my card to everybody, it's also the two of clubs. A perfect match. Now, it's a decent card trick. However, I was so familiar with the mechanisms, all the steps involved in this card trick, that it wasn't that exciting to me anymore. My family, they freaked out. LAUGHTER
I didn't see that coming. I freaked out at their freaking out, and I was hooked. I fell in love with magic. Now, most people who decide to devote their lives to this start in magic at an early age. Many kids have an uncle who pulls a quarter from behind their ear. That's their first exposure to magic. Other kids receive a magic set for the holidays.
There was an influential figure in the art of magic who, late in life, was still performing. He would introduce himself by saying, "Well, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am 78 years of age. I've been studying magic for the last 72. I wasted the first six years of my life."
And even though I stumbled upon magic when I was 19, relatively late in life, I never felt like I wasted all those years. I was just ecstatic that I found something that resonated so deeply with me.
Now, a few months after that performance, in my parents' living room, I also met the person who would become my first mentor. Ecuador is a tiny country, only 13 million people still to this day. The magic community is practically non-existent.
I had the extreme good fortune of meeting this person who was extremely knowledgeable, very well-read, wise beyond his years, and he was also very generous and very kind, always willing to share his knowledge.
So my first mentor taught me many magic tricks and techniques. He taught me all about the psychology of deception, the real secrets of magic. But most importantly, he taught me to care about magic. He led me to understand that magic is an unconventional art form most people don't experience very often. So it's not unlikely that whenever I step
on a stage as a magician. There might be more than a few individuals out there for whom this will be the first and last time experiencing magic in their whole life. So it feels like a great responsibility. It's on me to impress upon them that magic is an art form with great potential. Thanks to my mentor, that is the way I always approach magic.
Now, fast forward five years into the future. I graduate from university, I get my degree in mechanical engineering, I gather my family in the living room again, I tell them I want to do card tricks for a living. My parents were furious. My mother was furious. My father was deeply disappointed. His heart was broken. Both of them felt that I had betrayed them.
However, they knew, they understood and appreciated how interested I was in magic, so eventually they saw that and essentially they told me, "Well, we're happy if you're happy." I was extremely happy. They, since then, still until this day, they have been extremely supportive.
I get into magic full-time. Also, it's important to mention that through these five years, when I had been going to a university to get my degree in mechanical engineering, I had already started to be hired to perform at private parties and corporate events. So at this point, after five years of that, the idea of becoming a full-time professional magician didn't sound that far-fetched.
One way or another, a few months after I get into magic full time, I am hired for a big gig. A pharmaceutical company was holding a fancy cocktail party for some of their top clients and executives. They wanted entertainment, so they hired me as a magician. It was a big deal because I was
doing magic full time now. It was a very well paid gig and of course I wanted to leave them with a good impression. Hopefully the word would spread. They would even hire me again. And at the time I had been experimenting with this trick, this illusion where I would enter the stage
holding a cup full of coffee. I would cover it with my hand, I would turn the whole thing upside down and remove my hand to reveal that the coffee had vanished.
My mentor planted this idea in my mind early on. The amateur practices until they can't get it right. The professional practices until they can't get it wrong. I was a professional magician now, so I was practicing even more diligently.
The coffee trick relies on a small mechanism hidden in the cup and a sleight of hand maneuver that activates the mechanism, contains the coffee and creates the illusion that it has vanished. I have practiced every single part of that relentlessly. I knew it inside out. I have even performed this illusion for many audiences to great success.
So, they occurred to me: what if, instead of simply covering the cup of coffee with my hand, what if I were to place it over someone's head and I would turn the cup upside down to reveal that the coffee had vanished? It would be the exact same trick that I was so familiar with, but it would be much more dramatic.
So, the night of the big gig arrives. Corporate cocktail, fancy cocktail party for this pharmaceutical company. The MC announces my name, I walk onto the stage, cup of coffee in my hand, and I see this woman in the first row. Big smile on her face, I think, she will be perfect for this. I approach.
I look her in the eye and I ask her, "Do you trust me?" Still, with a big smile on her face, she says she does. So, I hold a cup of coffee over her head, I look at the audience, I pause for dramatic effect, I turn the cup upside down, the coffee doesn't vanish.
Instead, it goes all over her beautiful white dress. I freeze. She freezes. The audience gasps. Not in a good way. I stood there without moving a muscle for four or five seconds that felt like an eternity. Without saying a word, I run out of that room.
Straight to the bathroom, I grabbed as many paper towels as I could from this tiny little paper towel dispenser. When I had a good bunch, I go back to the room. This poor woman, soaking wet, was exactly where I had left her. She hadn't moved a muscle. I hand her the paper towels and try to utter an apology. This person, this angel sent from heaven, still with a big smile on her face,
Looks at me, she tells me she understands, she knows it was an accident. Accidents happen, the show must go on. So I fumble awkwardly through the next 15 minutes of the performance. Eventually I'm finally able to calm down, collect myself, and bring the show to a somewhat successful conclusion. Most people actually seem to enjoy it.
The next day, I send this poor woman a big bouquet of flowers, a handwritten note. She replies with an email. We talk still to this day. She still became my friend. It's been 10 years, a little over 10 years since the coffee incident.
And for the longest time, just thinking about that experience would make me cringe. However, I've learned to, at this point, I've learned to understand and even laugh about it. Even after all this time, and by the way, I'm glad to report that still to this day, I'm still a full-time professional magician. I've never had a real job in my entire life.
Even after all this time, I still get a little nervous before I step on a stage. With time, I've come to understand that that nervousness comes out of care and excitement for what I do.
Ever since that first performance in my parents' living room, for me, magic has always been an excuse for human interaction. It's a reason to reach out to friends, family, or strangers, ask them for a few minutes of their precious time and attention, and attempt to share with them something all of us can share and celebrate together.
That said, sometimes that nervousness and excitement turn into anxiety, fear and doubt creep in, and when that happens, I think to myself, what is the worst, the absolute worst that could ever happen? I think back to that day, and it's quite comforting to think that the worst, the absolute worst that could ever happen
already happy and I survived. Sigfried Tiber is a Los Angeles-based performer and sleight-of-hand magician. In 2015, Sigfried headlined the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which is actually the largest arts festival in the world. I've seen his show. It's called Seesaw and it is a mind-blowing delight. Time Out called it the best magic show in New York City.
He recently was invited to be a part of Pin and Teller Fool Us, a TV show where the duo invites magicians to do tricks, and then Pin and Teller try to figure out how the trick is done. And yes, Siegfried did fool them. You can watch on YouTube.
I asked Siegfried to reach out to the lovely woman on whom he spilled coffee to see what she remembers about that night. She writes, the unexpected situation made the event more memorable for everyone. It certainly made it more memorable for me. We all had a great time then, and we can all laugh about it now. I'm sure glad to be a part of Siegfried's story, and I'm glad that he's part of mine.
Coming up, a woman is pushed to the limit while trying to help her elderly father. That's 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 Katherine Burns. We're hearing stories about people who found themselves in the hot seat. Our final story this hour was recorded at St. Anne's Church in Brooklyn on the same night that Siegfried told his story. For decades, I've loved the work of actress Samantha Mathis and was so excited when she agreed to tell a story. Here's Samantha live at the Moth. When my father announced that he was going to move to Guatemala,
that he was going to buy a brand new SUV and drive from Tucson, Arizona to Guatemala City down the Pan American Highway with no real game plan just to see what he could get up to. I knew this would not end well. What version of bad, I didn't know, but never in my wildest did I think that it would end up with me sort of, kind of kidnapping my father.
My dad and I had a complicated relationship. My parents split up when I was two. I loved my father. I greatly admired his accomplishments. He was my favorite person to talk to about politics. But I never really felt that unconditional love. He was difficult. He loved to provoke you. And he loved his scotch and cigarettes.
So now he was 70 and he was in need of his fourth act. So off he went to Guatemala, the land of eternal spring, he loved to say. And he made a life there. He found an apartment conveniently located above what became his watering hole, Shakespeare's bar. He had his own stool. It was like his cheers. They called him Señor Dondon. And, you know...
It worked for a while. We tried to support him in making this decision to live in Guatemala. That's where he wanted to be the rest of his life. And he never wanted to come back to the United States, never mind that that meant he would miss out on big milestone moments in his kids' lives. Weddings, graduation, my Broadway debut. But there was always some reason he couldn't come back.
And so we went to him. And for 14 years, I tried to go down once a year and it was stressful having him 2,000 miles away aging and things started to go wrong. He was aging and it became
Kind of like whack-a-mole. He would get sick and one of us would have to run down there to be with him while he was in the hospital. But, you know, we loved him and we'd do anything for him even if it was a giant pain in the ass. And then when he was 83, he got really sick for like the third time he went into the hospital. My brother called to find out what was going on and my dad said he was fine.
He was just waiting for them to come get him on the border of Oklahoma and Kansas. Yeah, he didn't know where he was. And when he got home from the hospital, he was left alone for 10 minutes and promptly keeled over and fell on his head. So he was no longer safe there. We couldn't let him stay there anymore. Even his caretakers, Marilee and Mario, didn't feel like they could handle this anymore. So we had to bring him home. So the question was, how?
Well, he couldn't fly commercial anymore. He didn't know who he was now half the time. He was dealing with incontinence issues. Hell, he couldn't go 15 minutes without a cigarette. So it was decided we get a medevac plane. That's a plane for medical emergencies. The question became who would escort him back, and I volunteered for duty.
I went down on a Friday and I had less than 24 hours to figure out how to get him on this plane. But how? How to get him on the plane? He said he never wanted to come back to the United States. And I had to get him on this plane. I mean, he was in danger there at this point. We needed him to come back and find out what was going on with his health. And we'd paid a lot of money for this plane. And it was non-refundable.
So failure was not an option. I called my brother on the way to the airport and I said, "How am I going to get Dad on this plane? What if he says no?" And he said, "Well, you're an actress. You'll think of something." I said, "Yeah, I'm not really an improv girl. I'm used to having a script." And I can't exactly say to him, "Hey, Daddy, we think you're losing your marbles, so you need to come with me right now and get on this plane." And he said, "Well, tell him someone gave you a private plane."
I don't really have friends with private planes. But I thought, "Okay, I can work with this. Come on, Mathis, figure it out." When I got there, I didn't really know who would be waiting for me. I walked into his bedroom and I said, "Hey, Dad, it's Samantha." And he said, "Hey, babe." He was so tiny. He was so fragile. This man who had loomed so large in my life, for better or worse.
I launched into my story, "Hey Daddy, so guess what? I came down because the TV show I'm on, they found out that you haven't met your grandchildren." This was actually true. He hadn't met my brother's children. And so, get this, they have given me a private plane to take you and me back to Pittsburgh tomorrow to meet your grandchildren. Pretty fancy, huh?
I paused and he didn't call bullshit, so I kept going. So tomorrow, you and I are getting on this private plane and they're even sending a private car with a bed in it, ambulance, so that you can be comfortably driven to the airport when we meet that plane, which will meet us tomorrow at noon.
It was like one of those moments in a western. My dad loved westerns. When the two guys, the cowboys, have their hands on their guns and they're both staring each other down waiting to see who will blink first. And I said, "Fancy, huh?" And he said, "Yeah, that sounds neat. I have to go to the bathroom."
And I thought, "Okay, well, he seems to be buying it, and if he's not, he's not fighting it." So that night I didn't get any sleep, and in the morning I was nervous but had the calm of someone going into combat. And his caretakers, Merrilee and Mario, were a wreck. I kept grabbing them in the hallway going, "You've got this! You've got this!"
And dad, he was cranky and slow, but still on board. So we got him dressed and into his wheelchair and downstairs to the lobby of the apartment building, and then the ambulance got lost. And we waited for five minutes and 10 and then 20, and I started texting the company, like, where are you? And they're like, we're lost. And I'm like, I know!
And my dad, I just, he was sitting there and he was being patient, but I started to get so anxious that he was going to flip out. That he was gonna say, "You know what? I don't want to do this. I don't want to go. In fact, I don't believe you. I think you're lying to me. This woman is taking me against my will." So he asked for a cigarette and I gave it to him. And then I remembered I had in my bag a jelly jar of whiskey.
for my father because I didn't know if he could go eight hours without a drink, so I gave my dad a cocktail.
Sweet Jesus, it had been 40 minutes and I'm racking my brain how to keep him calm. And then I think music, my dad loves Frank Sinatra. So I pulled out my cell phone and I hit speaker and out came, come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away. I was like, daddy, this is going to be so cool. We're going to get on that plane and it's going to be a cool private plane. And then we're just going to get to Pittsburgh and you're going to meet your grandchildren and
and I was just tap dancing like mad to keep him from realizing this was an elaborate ruse. Finally, the ambulance came and we said goodbye to his caretaker, Merrilee, which was sort of terrible. She loved my father. We were both weeping, but trying to keep it together in front of my father. And, you know, I don't know if he didn't know. He wasn't a dumb guy.
So we got to the airplane. It was small. It had a gurney in it. And they strapped my father in and hooked him up to a heart monitor. And then my dad asked for a cigarette. And I was like, yeah, no, dad, no. We're on an airplane. You can't have a cigarette. And the nurse said, no, sir, there's an oxygen tank here. That wouldn't be safe. And he said, I understand that, but I want a cigarette. I want a cigarette. I want a cigarette. And I...
I looked up to the front of the cabin and there was a mini bar in the medivac. And so I asked him, "Could you hand me a straw please? And could I borrow your scissors?" And I took the straw and I cut it in half and I took a long drag on it. And I said, "Here you go, Daddy. Here's a cigarette." And he said, "Thanks." And it worked.
It did for a couple of minutes, but then he said, "Nah, it's gone out." And the nurse, I could have kissed him, he pulled out a small flashlight and he lit the end of the cigarette.
And my dad said, "Thanks." And again, it worked for like, I don't know, two or three minutes. There was peace and the plane took off and then he said, "No, it's gone out. It's not working. It's not working. It's not working." And I looked up at that mini bar and I said, "Excuse me, could I have a cup with a glass of ice?" And they said, "Sure." And I said, "Thanks." And I reached into my bag and I pulled out that jelly jar, still half full of whiskey, and I made myself a really stiff drink.
When we landed in Pittsburgh two flights and eight hours later, I walked off the plane straight into my brother's arms and I just, I wept. I couldn't believe we'd gotten him there. And over six days, my dad would go through a litany of tests and they would discover what we had feared, that he had dementia. We found a nursing home for him with a memory care unit. He wasn't quite there yet. And I'll never forget, they told us to put his name in all of his belongings.
So we got Sharpie, indelible ink pens, and my brother and I sat there putting my dad's initials into his t-shirts and his underwear. And it was awful. I felt so guilty putting him in this place, but what choice did I have? None of us were capable of giving him the care he needed.
I was now a shell of a human being. I hadn't been home in like a month, and my dog wasn't doing well, nor was my relationship. And I said, Daddy, I need to go home. I'll be home. I'll be back in like a week or so. And then I told him I loved him very much, and I would see him soon. Four days later, I was sleeping, and I woke up wide awake at four in the morning. And I didn't know why, and I got back to sleep. And at six, my sister called, and she said that Daddy had died at 4 a.m.,
And I thought there was a woman that had been across the hall from my dad in that nursing home, and she wailed the better part of every single day. And I'd seen her grown son coming out of the room one day, and I pulled him aside to ask him what the quality of care was like there, which was, you know, they were understaffed and overworked. And I asked him how long she had been there, and he said 15 years.
I was so sad that my dad had died. We'd only had him back in the States for like five weeks. He did get to meet his grandchildren. But I was also relieved that we wouldn't have to go through 15 years of a long, slow descent into my father losing his mind.
Three months later, we had our father cremated, and three months later, we went to Guatemala. We brought him back. We had a party at Shakespeare's Bar. They pulled his stool out, and everybody came and had a cocktail in his honor. And then my brother and my sister and I went up into the mountains to this beautiful lake that my father loved so much. And we got on a boat, and we spread his ashes. And we said goodbye.
Samantha Mathis has been an actress since the age of 16. She's appeared on stage at Second Stage Theatre in Bess Wall's Make Believe and can be seen on the Showtime TV series Billions.
I have loved getting to know Samantha, and she has a huge heart. As you heard, her father dedicated himself to public service, and she takes after him. She has a rescue dog, whom she found when volunteering with the World Central Kitchen in the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian. She's also spent over 10 years in service to her union, SAG-AFTRA, as a board and committee member. Once I get you up there, the air is rarefied.
I thought I'd take us out by sharing my own story of finding myself in the hot seat. It was the bottom of the ninth in the championship game of the seven and eight year old division of the Alexander City, Alabama Powder Puff League. And as usual, I was warming the bench.
I had not expected it to turn out this way. When I'd signed up, it had honestly been with visions of grandeur. I pictured myself catching fly balls, throwing perfect pitches, hitting the ball out of the field, then sailing around the bases to slide into home just in time to win the game for my team.
But from the very first practice, things went horribly wrong. It became abundantly clear that I had no talent whatsoever for softball. I couldn't throw and I couldn't catch because I'd always close my eyes at the last minute and the ball would just bounce off my mitt and roll away. After a few practices, my goal went from being the star player to just getting through the season without my entire team hating my guts.
So I found myself in our last game of the season at the bottom of the ninth inning. The bases were loaded and we were one run behind. And oh no, I was up to bat. My heart pounded and I began to panic. It was like an afterschool special. The moment I dreamed about when I signed up had become my nightmare.
To make matters worse, I glanced to my left and saw Kelly, our star hitter. No doubt Kelly could hit the ball if only I wasn't blocking her from home plate. The crowd began stomping the stands for the next hitter and my coach was waving at me to come on. But then I suddenly remembered something. That very morning, my tooth had been a little loose. Not a lot loose, mind you, but a little loose. There was only one thing to do.
I reached into my mouth and grabbed my tooth firmly and twisted hard. Blood poured out of my mouth. It hurt a lot, but I didn't care. As the assistant coach dragged me off to the medic, I could see Kelly, cool as a cucumber, making her way to home plate. From the medical tent, my face sandbagged in ice, I heard the crack of the bat as Kelly hit the winning home run, sending all the girls in and winning the championship for our team.
After the game, we went out to celebrate, and Kelly got to wear a crown since she had hit the winning home run. And I sat in the corner, sipping a milkshake, completely relieved, but also secretly pleased, because I knew it was really me who had won that game. That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.
This episode of the Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Catherine Burns, who also hosted and directed the stories. Co-producer, Vicki Merrick. Associate producer, Emily Couch. The rest of the Moth 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 Kaza.
Most stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our pitch came in from Lynn Nadel. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Dan Romer and Ben Zeitlin, Galt McDermott, Frank Sinatra, and Haruomi Hosono.
We receive support 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.