Transcript

#15 Dina · Heavyweight

0:04
Speaker 1: Yello. Why hello? Now, what kind of greeting is that
0:09
Speaker 1: You've got your radio voice on? Could you elaborate on
0:12
Speaker 1: what you mean by that?
0:12
Speaker 2: I know in the first second, if I'm being recorded
0:15
Speaker 2: or on your inflections.
0:17
Speaker 1: Well, I always talk like this, Jackie. Back to you.
0:21
Speaker 1: The way you're speaking with me now is never the
0:23
Speaker 1: way you would normally speak. Okay, wait, hang on a second.
0:26
Speaker 1: I'm I'm just talking normal, but you're not talking normal.
0:29
Speaker 1: It's your radio voice. Hey, what's going on? It's still
0:32
Speaker 1: not It's still not. It's still not. Hey. No, hey
0:36
Speaker 1: Jackie again, Jackie, No, you wouldn't say him like that.
0:39
Speaker 1: How's it going? Too much energy?
0:40
Speaker 3: Hi?
0:41
Speaker 1: I can tell anyway. It can't be a radio voice
0:44
Speaker 1: because I do a podcast. It's a podcast voice, all right,
0:49
Speaker 1: And welcome to the show from Gimlet Media. I'm Jonathan
0:57
Speaker 1: Goldstein and this is Heavy Wait today's episode, Dina. Hello, Hello, Okay,
1:19
Speaker 1: so we just got to Montreal. We we What's that?
1:23
Speaker 4: Isn't that how you say yes in French?
1:25
Speaker 1: Yeah? But you just say it once you to say
1:27
Speaker 1: we we My folks are about to meet us, pick
1:32
Speaker 1: us up at the airport to take us back to
1:34
Speaker 1: their place. Where we will be staying for the next
1:37
Speaker 1: five days, five days, five days, in my childhood home,
1:44
Speaker 1: in the childhood bed i've not slept in in decades.
1:47
Speaker 1: My wife, Emily, and I are here for passover, to
1:50
Speaker 1: sup upon the bread of affliction. Growing up, though, it
1:54
Speaker 1: was everything of affliction, candy, corn of affliction, road trips
1:59
Speaker 1: of affliction, bedtime stories of affliction. I moved out when
2:08
Speaker 1: I was nineteen, but from age one to eighteen, what
2:12
Speaker 1: I remember most is the vague feeling of worry permeating
2:15
Speaker 1: the household. Worry that manifested is yelling, yelling through closed doors,
2:21
Speaker 1: yelling across the kitchen table, my father yelling into a
2:25
Speaker 1: junk drawer desperately trying to find a working pen, my
2:28
Speaker 1: mother yelling into a clogged toilet, desperately trying to make
2:32
Speaker 1: it go down. But more often than not, the yelling
2:36
Speaker 1: wasn't over anything at all. We were just a naturally loud,
2:40
Speaker 1: anxious family, a race of nervous giants shrunk into the
2:44
Speaker 1: bodies of little Jews.
2:55
Speaker 4: Man.
2:56
Speaker 1: When I move out of here, I'd say in my teens,
2:59
Speaker 1: I'm going to live like sting, peace and quiet, meditation,
3:04
Speaker 1: tea and tantric sex, and now after years of oolong
3:09
Speaker 1: roubis and lemon roubis, I'm home again for my first
3:13
Speaker 1: trip back with Emily and our five month old son Aggie.
3:21
Speaker 1: Day one. Here they are my parents. Tyota pulls up
3:26
Speaker 1: to the airport, pickups and passes us. Try to catch
3:31
Speaker 1: They don't see us here. We're right here. My mother
3:37
Speaker 1: jumps out. She runs back towards us, pointing at Aggie's ears.
3:43
Speaker 1: His ears are exposed.
3:45
Speaker 2: Hi, Hi, emily ears are exposed.
3:48
Speaker 1: Both my mother and father where their woolen caps pull
3:53
Speaker 1: down well past their ears. In younger, stronger days, they
3:58
Speaker 1: might have stretched those camps right down over their feet,
4:01
Speaker 1: but they're old now. My mother Dina seventy two, and
4:04
Speaker 1: my father Buzz eighty three.
4:07
Speaker 3: I want to drive slowly, not too fast. I want
4:09
Speaker 3: to go carefully.
4:10
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, fine, Well, Buzz is high strung. Dina's intensity
4:17
Speaker 1: is capable of raising the emotional temperature of any space
4:20
Speaker 1: she occupies in elevators, walk in pantries, and tiotas. Her
4:26
Speaker 1: powers are especially acute.
4:29
Speaker 2: Like a funny feeling in my throat, Like it's like
4:32
Speaker 2: really emotional.
4:35
Speaker 4: It's like a dreamed, you know, It's like a dream Yeah,
4:40
Speaker 4: it's like such a weird feeling.
4:42
Speaker 1: I think the weird, elusive feeling my mother is trying
4:45
Speaker 1: to describe is happiness.
4:48
Speaker 2: It's just wonderful to see him, But I hope he's
4:51
Speaker 2: going to be warm enough.
4:52
Speaker 5: Did you bring him up a little something?
5:01
Speaker 3: Home? Sweet home?
5:05
Speaker 1: Walking through the door, I'm a twelve year old again,
5:08
Speaker 1: home from school and looking forward to zoning out with
5:11
Speaker 1: petticoat junction. I'm a sixteen year old rushing to the
5:15
Speaker 1: bathroom to gargle out the smell of cigarettes. I'm a
5:19
Speaker 1: forty eight year old, a grown ass man with a
5:21
Speaker 1: grown ass ass. Parenting a newborn leaves a person with
5:25
Speaker 1: no time for squats. So don't judge Alex so nice
5:31
Speaker 1: in here plate. I can't believe it. So normally the house,
5:36
Speaker 1: a modest, semi detached bungalow, has a certain storage unit,
5:40
Speaker 1: bombshelter vibe, walls of toilet paper, a cold room full
5:45
Speaker 1: of canned fruit, cocktail needle points of biblical scenes, and torreadors,
5:50
Speaker 1: all leaned up against the walls for fear of pounding
5:53
Speaker 1: in a nail and regretting it forever. But today the
5:57
Speaker 1: place looks positively sparse, So I just don't open.
6:01
Speaker 2: A closet or the chore everything I'll tumble on your
6:04
Speaker 2: head because when you've heard you guys are coming. I
6:07
Speaker 2: threw everything into the closets and hid them.
6:10
Speaker 1: My mother grabs Aggie and heads upstairs for a diaper change.
6:14
Speaker 1: Emily and I trail behind.
6:16
Speaker 2: I want him to be.
6:17
Speaker 1: Fresh and clean.
6:18
Speaker 2: Oh you're so sweet, You're so sweet, my angel.
6:23
Speaker 1: Where the frige is the bag? The friggin bag contains
6:27
Speaker 1: the friggin diapers that my mother bought for our visit.
6:30
Speaker 1: It turns out it's on her lap.
6:33
Speaker 2: I kept a bill because I wasn't sure if you
6:35
Speaker 2: want me to return them or not.
6:38
Speaker 1: Would you be able to return to use diapers? Yeah?
6:41
Speaker 2: You know me. I could return anything. I could return anything.
6:46
Speaker 1: You know that, Johnny, I do know that returning stuff
6:51
Speaker 1: is what my mother lives for. She sees it as
6:53
Speaker 1: a staring contest, a game of chess, but with yelling.
6:58
Speaker 1: I remember once going along with her as she returned
7:01
Speaker 1: a shirt she'd bought for my father two years earlier.
7:07
Speaker 1: It's missing a sleeve, she told the cashier, holding up
7:12
Speaker 1: the article of clothing. The cashier turned it around and around.
7:16
Speaker 1: It's not supposed to have sleeves. The cashier finally said,
7:20
Speaker 1: it's a poncho. A poncho, my mother repeated, as though
7:25
Speaker 1: it were a foreign word, which, in her defense, I
7:28
Speaker 1: suppose it sort of is. I don't care what it is.
7:32
Speaker 1: It's factory defective and my husband can't wear it. Whenever
7:41
Speaker 1: she'd get this way, I'd adopt a stance meant to
7:43
Speaker 1: convey filial loyalty, peppered with a touch of what Vietnam
7:47
Speaker 1: Vets call the thousand yard stare. I've stood next to
7:52
Speaker 1: my mother through countless exchanges, arguments, spectacles, and stinks. But
7:57
Speaker 1: this is the first time I've stood by her side
8:00
Speaker 1: as she diapers my son.
8:02
Speaker 2: Oh look how much peepee he has? Oh, you made
8:05
Speaker 2: a lot of pepi baby. See that's how I knew
8:10
Speaker 2: you were sick. When you were a baby, Johnny, you
8:11
Speaker 2: weren't peeping.
8:14
Speaker 1: What was wrong with me? As a kid, it was
8:16
Speaker 1: easy to be embarrassed by my mother. One time, a
8:20
Speaker 1: popular boy named Jeordie showed up at our house. I
8:23
Speaker 1: wasn't home, but my mother answered the door with her
8:26
Speaker 1: hair on fire. My hair's on fire, she screamed. The
8:32
Speaker 1: next day in school, Jeordie showed the whole class how
8:35
Speaker 1: she screamed it. He wiggled his fingers in the air,
8:38
Speaker 1: looking as though he was about to fall to his knees.
8:42
Speaker 1: That night, I asked my mother what had happened. It
8:46
Speaker 1: was the barbecue, She said, your father wasn't home, and
8:49
Speaker 1: I was so in the mood for barbecued lamb chops.
8:53
Speaker 1: It seems that while examining the chops for signs of spoilage,
8:57
Speaker 1: she leaned her hair sprayed boufont too close to the grill.
9:01
Speaker 1: While this explained the fire atop her head, it did
9:03
Speaker 1: not explain why she answered the door while nursing a
9:06
Speaker 1: fire atop her head. Growing up, this kind of stuff
9:11
Speaker 1: happened all the time, so I was always on high
9:14
Speaker 1: alert for humiliating emergencies. Being back home again, I feel
9:18
Speaker 1: the old muscle memory kick back in. What that smells?
9:22
Speaker 2: Something's burning?
9:24
Speaker 1: Did you turn on the heater? Did you touch the heat? Though,
9:27
Speaker 1: it turns out that one of the rag dolls my
9:30
Speaker 1: mother had been hoarding somehow landed onto one of the
9:32
Speaker 1: old lamps she'd been hoarding and had begun to burn.
9:37
Speaker 2: I could have had a fire because I was so
9:39
Speaker 2: careless for a shim.
9:42
Speaker 1: The day plays out as a series of minor disasters averted.
9:46
Speaker 1: In the morning, my mother loses her cell phone. We
9:49
Speaker 1: find it in the night table. In the afternoon, a
9:53
Speaker 1: screw to my father's glasses falls out. We replace it
9:56
Speaker 1: with a twist tie. At dinner, a waiter charges my
9:59
Speaker 1: mother for or potato. She claims she didn't order, but
10:02
Speaker 1: after ten minutes of Camp David's style negotiations, it's dropped
10:07
Speaker 1: from the bill. Before bed, my father can't find his passport.
10:12
Speaker 1: Why do you need a passport? I ask? You always
10:15
Speaker 1: need a passport, he says. We find it in the
10:18
Speaker 1: night table. In the past, having someone witness all of
10:22
Speaker 1: this would have made me feel anxious, But now having
10:26
Speaker 1: Emily here makes me feel like I have an ally.
10:30
Speaker 1: Turning to her in the midst of some crisis is
10:32
Speaker 1: like looking directly into the TV camera and winking at
10:36
Speaker 1: the audience.
10:42
Speaker 2: Doggy Day two.
10:49
Speaker 1: After we put Oggie to sleep, Emily and I lie
10:51
Speaker 1: in bed. I ask for her thoughts and reflections on
10:55
Speaker 1: the trip so far. Oh, come on, come on, no comment?
11:04
Speaker 1: How could she resist? Look at how my mother acts
11:07
Speaker 1: with Aggie, I say, trying to get Emily going, I
11:11
Speaker 1: saw her put a pocket mirror under his nose while
11:13
Speaker 1: he was sleeping to see if he was still breathing.
11:16
Speaker 1: After every spoonful she feeds him, she asks, if he's choking.
11:20
Speaker 4: You realize, though, that you say all that about Aggie
11:24
Speaker 4: now too, like just a tiny little cough, and you
11:27
Speaker 4: are doing it.
11:28
Speaker 1: Is he breathing?
11:29
Speaker 4: Can he sit like that? Can he touch that thing?
11:32
Speaker 4: Can he eat that? Can he do that? Is he
11:34
Speaker 4: supposed to be doing that?
11:35
Speaker 1: What's wrong?
11:36
Speaker 3: What's wrong?
11:36
Speaker 1: What's wrong? What's he doing? What's he doing? Is he choking?
11:39
Speaker 1: What's wrong?
11:40
Speaker 4: You do a lot of that kind of thing.
11:43
Speaker 1: I can see to Emily that maybe I do just
11:46
Speaker 1: a little of that kind of thing. But I wasn't
11:48
Speaker 1: even in the parking lot of the ballpark of aDNA Goldstein.
11:55
Speaker 4: You one day you dropped, you dropped Aggie off, and
12:01
Speaker 4: you called me right afterward because you were so worried.
12:05
Speaker 4: Do you remember this?
12:07
Speaker 1: I do remember this. It was Aggie's first week of daycare.
12:12
Speaker 1: He shares a babysitter with two little sisters, But on
12:15
Speaker 1: that particular morning, when the babysitter opened the door, she
12:18
Speaker 1: was alone. She told me the girls were napping in
12:22
Speaker 1: another room.
12:23
Speaker 4: You called me and said she was there alone. She
12:27
Speaker 4: said they were in bed. I don't know. Maybe she
12:29
Speaker 4: killed the whole family, and now she's going to kill Oggi.
12:33
Speaker 1: And you weren't joking.
12:35
Speaker 4: Like you knew it was a crazy thought, but you
12:39
Speaker 4: needed me to tell you she didn't kill their family.
12:42
Speaker 4: She's not going to kill Aggie.
12:44
Speaker 1: I did not need you to tell me that.
12:47
Speaker 4: And you're misremembering you were freaked out.
12:51
Speaker 1: You were freaked out. I thought I was very stoic.
12:55
Speaker 1: You called me and.
12:56
Speaker 4: Said, I think the nanny is gonna murder our child,
12:58
Speaker 4: and that she murdered the whole family.
13:00
Speaker 1: That we do daycare with. I don't consider that stoic.
13:05
Speaker 5: All right.
13:05
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just imaginative. That's one way to look
13:10
Speaker 1: at it. Yet another way to look at it is
13:13
Speaker 1: that I'm also crazy, just like my mom. Well, set
13:18
Speaker 1: my hair on fire and open the front door. In
13:27
Speaker 1: the days after Ougi was born, I couldn't stop thinking
13:30
Speaker 1: terrible thoughts. Things I couldn't speak, not even to Emily.
13:34
Speaker 1: With this new overwhelming love for my son came new
13:37
Speaker 1: overwhelming fears for his safety, his heartbreaks to come, for
13:42
Speaker 1: his old age, his loneliness, so I started seeing a therapist.
13:48
Speaker 1: I explained how worry was the lingua franca of my childhood.
13:53
Speaker 1: I wasn't allowed a paper route because it was a
13:55
Speaker 1: good way to get abducted, no barefoot in because of
13:58
Speaker 1: rusty nails. And I didn't even learn to swim until
14:02
Speaker 1: junior high because water that's where people go to drown.
14:07
Speaker 1: Worry and fear were how my mother communicated love. I
14:10
Speaker 1: said to my therapist with a shrug, But love is love.
14:14
Speaker 1: The important thing is that we feel it. But my
14:17
Speaker 1: therapist's response troubled me. She said that love was the
14:21
Speaker 1: transcendence of fear, that you might even say fear was
14:25
Speaker 1: the opposite of love. Sitting at my childhood desk with
14:29
Speaker 1: Aggie's toys scattered at my feet, my therapist's words returned
14:33
Speaker 1: to me. If I was becoming my mother, would AGGI
14:37
Speaker 1: someday become me? Someone weighed down by fear? And worry?
14:41
Speaker 1: Was our genetic line nothing more than an inglorious chain
14:45
Speaker 1: of Russian dolls? Should my therapist save the notes from
14:48
Speaker 1: our sessions so I can send Aggie to her at
14:50
Speaker 1: a discounted rate. I didn't want my son becoming me,
14:55
Speaker 1: and there were only two people who could help me
14:57
Speaker 1: understand how I became me, wh who charged New York
15:01
Speaker 1: therapy rates that might leave me bankrupted before I'm cured?
15:05
Speaker 1: And the other my mother day three. As a child,
15:14
Speaker 1: I felt trapped and embarrassed by my mother. As an adult,
15:17
Speaker 1: I came to be amused by her. It's only as
15:20
Speaker 1: a freshly minted father visiting home for the first time
15:24
Speaker 1: that I'm beginning to see that I am her.
15:27
Speaker 2: How much you pay for apples seventy but I'm desperate?
15:33
Speaker 1: This is what we normally talk about. Where to get
15:35
Speaker 1: the best price on paper plates? Where to get the
15:38
Speaker 1: best price on honeydew melon?
15:40
Speaker 5: Dina?
15:40
Speaker 3: What do you pay for a bottle of water.
15:43
Speaker 2: Twenty four for a dollar eighty eight?
15:46
Speaker 5: Bottle water.
15:49
Speaker 2: Cox twenty four for six forty nine?
15:51
Speaker 1: Will you pay for a loaf of bread? But after dinner,
15:54
Speaker 1: after Aggie's gone to sleep, my mom and I sit
15:57
Speaker 1: down at the kitchen table to have a different converse station.
16:01
Speaker 1: Emily is reading in bed, and my father's watching TV
16:04
Speaker 1: in the basement. It's just us. Hello, Hello, go ahead
16:09
Speaker 1: and talk here. I am Why do you say here?
16:13
Speaker 5: I am?
16:14
Speaker 2: Well?
16:15
Speaker 1: Where should I say there?
16:16
Speaker 2: I am?
16:18
Speaker 1: Tonight? I want to talk about the fear, that thing
16:21
Speaker 1: my family lives inside, like a snowsuit with a broken
16:24
Speaker 1: zipper that can no more be removed than our own flesh.
16:28
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the nameless thing that binds
16:31
Speaker 1: all Goldstein's, that ignites us, propels us, and ultimately paralyzes us. Well,
16:37
Speaker 1: I think about this stuff now, because you know, I
16:39
Speaker 1: have I have a I have a son, and I think,
16:46
Speaker 1: but I think he's so beautiful.
16:48
Speaker 2: And I saw those blue eyes like no horas Bay's eggs.
16:53
Speaker 1: My mother's not talking crazy talk, she's talking Yiddish.
16:56
Speaker 5: So Bay's eggs.
16:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, what does that mean?
17:00
Speaker 5: Bad O?
17:00
Speaker 1: I shouldn't hurt them. The bad eye, the evil eye,
17:06
Speaker 1: the belief that merely saying something positive is enough to
17:09
Speaker 1: invite evil forces to snuff the good thing out. So
17:13
Speaker 1: even bringing up a normal son to mom question about
17:16
Speaker 1: good parenting is enough to attract the eye. On the
17:20
Speaker 1: day of my bar Mitzvah, my mother carefully sewed a
17:23
Speaker 1: red ribbon into my underwear. In this way, she reasoned,
17:27
Speaker 1: should the evil eye turn its gaze upon me, I'd
17:30
Speaker 1: be protected by my underwear. Why do you think you
17:35
Speaker 1: do that evil eyed stuff? It's what you say, it's cuckoo.
17:43
Speaker 2: I know it's cuckoo, but I can't help it.
17:45
Speaker 1: But then that's just a superstition. I don't know everybody
17:48
Speaker 1: does it. I've never met anybody who puts red ribbons
17:52
Speaker 1: in their own I'm saying I personally have never met
17:54
Speaker 1: anyone who does that. So I can't say everybody puts
17:57
Speaker 1: red ribbons in their underwear. But what what is it
18:00
Speaker 1: supposed to be? Warding off? But what is the evil eye?
18:06
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is how conversations with Dina often go.
18:12
Speaker 1: The derail hit dead ends. So when I ask her
18:16
Speaker 1: why was our home the way it was? I expect
18:19
Speaker 1: more of the same, But instead my mother grows quiet.
18:31
Speaker 1: I worry, Yeah, I do too.
18:35
Speaker 2: I'm afraid of this, afraid of that. Well, I was irrational.
18:39
Speaker 2: I wasn't thinking right, and I have a chance to
18:42
Speaker 2: redo my a little bit.
18:44
Speaker 1: Not with you, but with Augie. She stops talking and
18:49
Speaker 1: stares into her lap for a while. We just sit there.
18:56
Speaker 2: I look upon this as a second chance. I want
19:00
Speaker 2: to correct my mistakes, Johnny, I want to redeem myself.
19:05
Speaker 1: That's it. My mother doesn't usually talk this way if
19:10
Speaker 1: something's causing her grief. She returns it to the store,
19:14
Speaker 1: sends it back to the kitchen, and so talk of
19:17
Speaker 1: second chances and redemption. The words sound weird coming out
19:21
Speaker 1: of her mouth, and I don't know how to respond.
19:25
Speaker 1: Where's all this coming from? I ask? Are you thinking
19:28
Speaker 1: of something specific? It's too painful. I don't want Maybe
19:34
Speaker 1: if you talk about it, you won't talk about it.
19:37
Speaker 1: I don't think it could be anything. Then I can't.
19:41
Speaker 1: I can't talk about it. Don't press me, please well,
19:45
Speaker 1: I don't want to force you. I don't want to
19:46
Speaker 1: make you feel bad. I am ashamed of myself. Let's
19:50
Speaker 1: change the subject, and with that the conversation ends. I'd
19:57
Speaker 1: gotten to my mother for answers about my childhood, but
20:00
Speaker 1: instead she has left me with questions I didn't even
20:02
Speaker 1: know I had. What had happened that was so bad?
20:06
Speaker 1: She couldn't even talk about it? What was she so
20:09
Speaker 1: afraid to tell me? After the break, I find out, Hello, Hello,
20:20
Speaker 1: So mom's upstairs with Emily. Do you have any insight?
20:24
Speaker 1: Day four? I sit down with my father to see
20:27
Speaker 1: if he has any idea what the second chance is
20:30
Speaker 1: that my mother's talking about. He's hesitant to talk because
20:34
Speaker 1: that goes against his strategy of staying out of the drama.
20:37
Speaker 1: In fact, most of my childhood memories of him are
20:41
Speaker 1: of a man in bed napping with a large volume
20:44
Speaker 1: of World War II history splayed open on his chest.
20:47
Speaker 1: This retiring nature might be the secret to having stayed
20:51
Speaker 1: married to my mother for more than fifty years. What
20:55
Speaker 1: is the thing that she is carrying around with her?
20:57
Speaker 3: She's a very private person and she feels she doesn't
21:01
Speaker 3: want to be intruded upon. Don't take it the wrong way, so.
21:05
Speaker 1: You have no inkling. You don't know what's going on.
21:07
Speaker 3: Doesn't even discussed with me. I don't know what guilt,
21:10
Speaker 3: I don't know what she's talking.
21:10
Speaker 1: Don't find it odd or intriguing in a way.
21:13
Speaker 3: It's a touchy subject for her, and she's very reluctant
21:18
Speaker 3: to talk about it.
21:20
Speaker 1: Talk about it. What's the it?
21:21
Speaker 3: I don't know. You have to ask her, and she's
21:23
Speaker 3: going to shut down. She's going to shut down.
21:28
Speaker 1: This means she'll try to change the subject or start
21:31
Speaker 1: to yell. But today I don't care. I just want
21:34
Speaker 1: to know what the big secret is. I wonder what
21:38
Speaker 1: it is? I say to Emily, who knows? She says
21:41
Speaker 1: while brushing her hair. So many things about your mom
21:44
Speaker 1: are a mystery to me, like why is the kitchen
21:47
Speaker 1: faucet always running full blast? And why does she keep
21:50
Speaker 1: offering me paper towels. I think she says, you should
21:54
Speaker 1: just let it go, but of course I can't. What
22:01
Speaker 1: had my mother done that she wanted a second chance at?
22:05
Speaker 1: Was it for the time she bought me a shirt
22:06
Speaker 1: for my birthday that she later admitted was actually a dress?
22:11
Speaker 1: Did you want to redo the time she dropped me
22:13
Speaker 1: off at a birthday party and hollered out the car window.
22:17
Speaker 1: Have fun? But if you get diarrhea and someone's on
22:20
Speaker 1: the toilet, just making the bathtub diarrhea is not a
22:24
Speaker 1: time for pride. Of course I now see the wisdom,
22:28
Speaker 1: but as a child, her words were a source of shame.
22:33
Speaker 1: I need to know. So I invite my mother out
22:35
Speaker 1: for a Sunday stroll with Oggie and me. Maybe if
22:38
Speaker 1: she can just relax, it'll come out like diarrhea.
22:45
Speaker 5: We'll talk.
22:46
Speaker 2: What should I say?
22:48
Speaker 1: Learn to take your robble?
22:50
Speaker 5: So tell me?
22:52
Speaker 1: So, do you find walking with Hoggie relaxing?
22:55
Speaker 2: Very relaxing? So nice? It's a pleasure, my little friend.
23:02
Speaker 1: To start things off. I lobber an easy question, cocktail
23:06
Speaker 1: party stuff. What's your first memory?
23:13
Speaker 2: Kindergarten? And we lived on Colonial four h three nine Colonial,
23:18
Speaker 2: And I remember my father used to play peinockle and
23:22
Speaker 2: he had a thumb that was the nail like the
23:26
Speaker 2: thumbnail was very cut off, and all of a sudden
23:30
Speaker 2: I thought of it, and I started screaming and crying
23:32
Speaker 2: and carrying on. I'm worrying. Oh, I remember, how old
23:38
Speaker 2: are you must have been four or five.
23:40
Speaker 1: So an early memory is being at kindergarten and remembering
23:44
Speaker 1: your father's thumbnail and starting to cry. What was it
23:48
Speaker 1: that upset you about it?
23:50
Speaker 2: I read about it because it wasn't like a regular thumb.
23:55
Speaker 2: I was worried crazy.
23:58
Speaker 1: I tried a guide her towards happy red inniscences, but
24:01
Speaker 1: all her memories are awful. Rheumatic fever, scarlet fever, her
24:06
Speaker 1: mother slapping her in Woolworth's for whining about a balloon
24:09
Speaker 1: she wanted, waking up in the middle of the night
24:11
Speaker 1: to find a wall in the kitchen covered in moths.
24:14
Speaker 2: Then I remember my mother's pressure cooker in that house
24:18
Speaker 2: hits the ceiling and pea soup was splattered everywhere, all
24:26
Speaker 2: your memories.
24:27
Speaker 1: Let's hear another memory. With the small talk exhausted, I
24:33
Speaker 1: trepidaciously bring the subject back around to the do over.
24:37
Speaker 2: I don't know, Johnny. I don't want to talk about it.
24:40
Speaker 2: I don't want to remind myself the way I felt.
24:45
Speaker 2: Doesn't conjure up good memories. Please, and that's the.
24:49
Speaker 5: End of it.
24:49
Speaker 2: I don't want to go into details.
24:54
Speaker 1: Nonetheless, for the rest of the day, I can't stop
24:57
Speaker 1: myself from asking for details, I asked, as she puts
25:01
Speaker 1: away the breakfast dishes.
25:05
Speaker 2: I have nothing more to say, Johnny.
25:06
Speaker 1: Leave me be, I ask, as she cuts coupons while
25:09
Speaker 1: watching Judge Judy with Emily in broad strokes.
25:13
Speaker 2: Alone, Please Emily take him off me?
25:17
Speaker 1: And while she peels boiled eggs for lunch, Leave me alone.
25:21
Speaker 1: Later we all sit down for dinner and with it
25:24
Speaker 1: some wine.
25:25
Speaker 2: What's wrong with me?
25:27
Speaker 1: I think I'm off my rock. My mother rarely drinks wine.
25:32
Speaker 2: Oh my god, how did I get like this?
25:36
Speaker 5: Mom?
25:36
Speaker 1: You just had a glass of wine. As she drifts
25:41
Speaker 1: off into an inebriated slumber, I give it one last try,
25:47
Speaker 1: can I Is there anything you need to tell me? No,
25:50
Speaker 1: any secrets to reveal No, I was getting nowhere day five?
26:03
Speaker 1: All right, you want to change him? What? It's our
26:10
Speaker 1: last day, and I've decided to give it a rest.
26:13
Speaker 1: I stop asking weird questions and we all just hang out.
26:17
Speaker 1: We talk about the price of things, We yell from
26:19
Speaker 1: room to room, We search for lost cell phones, and
26:22
Speaker 1: grow pleasantly bored with each other's company. Overall, it's pretty nice. Well,
26:28
Speaker 1: while putting Aggie down for a nap, my mother has
26:31
Speaker 1: a question for me, Sonny, what was it.
26:34
Speaker 2: That you were hoping to get from me? Oh?
26:38
Speaker 1: I really did just want to be able to have
26:40
Speaker 1: a conversation, that's all I'm not. I don't want to.
26:42
Speaker 1: I don't want to cause your distress.
26:44
Speaker 2: You're not causing distress.
26:46
Speaker 5: It's it's what it was.
26:49
Speaker 1: And I don't even want to talk about old, painful stuff.
27:00
Speaker 2: Who was sweet?
27:03
Speaker 3: What?
27:05
Speaker 1: She lays Aggie down, She stands over the crib. She
27:08
Speaker 1: starts to say something, but then trails away. What are
27:12
Speaker 1: we saying? All right, I'm gonna turn it off. Then
27:22
Speaker 1: I was not adopted. I had no secret twin, and
27:26
Speaker 1: my mother had no secret family. There were no murders,
27:30
Speaker 1: no affairs. It turns out that my mother's big secret.
27:34
Speaker 1: The thing that was so hard for her to say
27:36
Speaker 1: was that she was sorry for a lot of things,
27:39
Speaker 1: some small, some not so small. Some I remember, some
27:44
Speaker 1: I don't, calling me names, screaming at me a lot.
27:48
Speaker 1: How she could have been nicer to my girlfriends, How
27:51
Speaker 1: she used to pull my hair, hit me. Hitting kids
27:55
Speaker 1: was like the hula hoop. Back then, I say, a fad.
27:59
Speaker 1: Everyone did it. It wasn't right, she says. Back then
28:03
Speaker 1: people didn't know better. I say, I should have known better.
28:06
Speaker 1: She says, I forgive you. I say, I don't forgive myself.
28:12
Speaker 1: So I forgive her again, and I mean it, And
28:16
Speaker 1: then I turned the recorder back on.
28:24
Speaker 2: I love you, honey. You made it a little easier
28:27
Speaker 2: for me.
28:28
Speaker 1: Thank you. I love you too much. When you become
28:39
Speaker 1: a parent, your whole life changes, but you forget that
28:43
Speaker 1: some things stay the same. I'd been so focused on
28:47
Speaker 1: becoming a better father that I forgot I was still
28:50
Speaker 1: a son. And maybe learning to be a better son
28:54
Speaker 1: is how you become a better dad. Anyway I want
28:59
Speaker 1: him to be. On the last morning of our visit,
29:03
Speaker 1: my mother and I head to the park. As a kid,
29:06
Speaker 1: the park was someplace I usually went with my grandfather
29:09
Speaker 1: or father. One of the only times I remember going
29:12
Speaker 1: with my mother, two collies appeared out of nowhere and
29:15
Speaker 1: began chasing us. I remember we separated and the dogs
29:19
Speaker 1: chased her while I hid behind a tree. I look
29:23
Speaker 1: around the playground from my own childhood with her. I
29:26
Speaker 1: knew most things were out sandbox because someone could have
29:29
Speaker 1: peed in there. Same for the swings, monkey bars, teeter totters,
29:33
Speaker 1: and merry go rounds. But then something surprising happens. Picking
29:38
Speaker 1: Aggie up out of the stroller, my.
29:40
Speaker 2: Mother says, I'll take him down the slide.
29:43
Speaker 1: He's never he's never gone down the side.
29:45
Speaker 2: Come with Bobby Henney. We'll go down the slide together.
29:47
Speaker 1: Okay, you're gonna go with him down the side. Well,
29:50
Speaker 1: what do you think I'll put himself? I didn't. You're
29:53
Speaker 1: not afraid to go down the slide.
29:54
Speaker 5: Why would I be afraid?
29:56
Speaker 1: I don't know. Okay, be careful, yeah.
30:00
Speaker 2: On my nervis, I wasn't afraid.
30:02
Speaker 1: Be careful. I don't know. My mother hands me back
30:08
Speaker 1: Aggie and holding onto the railing, she carefully climbs the
30:12
Speaker 1: steps to the top of the slide. When she gets there,
30:15
Speaker 1: I climb up too, and hand Aggie back to her
30:19
Speaker 1: with hesitation. She positions them onto her lap and I
30:23
Speaker 1: run around to the bottom of the slide to await
30:25
Speaker 1: their arrival.
30:26
Speaker 5: And you stand there and catch us in chase bad for.
30:30
Speaker 1: Me, And then Dina lets go.
30:33
Speaker 2: You're gonna go down.
30:34
Speaker 1: Whoo whoo. He's having fun. Huh, so much fun in fact,
30:45
Speaker 1: that my mother decides to do it again. And so
30:49
Speaker 1: again she climbs up the steps, all three of them,
30:53
Speaker 1: to the top of the ladder, and from the grand
30:56
Speaker 1: height of three and a half feet, my mother and
30:59
Speaker 1: son descend the toddler slide once more, sliding sliding down
31:05
Speaker 1: the snide. Oggie loves it, so they do it again
31:14
Speaker 1: a third chance, a fourth, and even a fifth. Then
31:19
Speaker 1: we move on to the bouncy caterpillar, the rope bridge,
31:22
Speaker 1: and the swings.
31:24
Speaker 2: Swim swingy Oggy's going swingy, the itsy bitsy spider win
31:34
Speaker 2: up the water.
31:36
Speaker 1: Parenthood is like a redo of your own childhood, and
31:40
Speaker 1: grandparenthood is like a redo of that. That's all life is,
31:45
Speaker 1: learning and relearning the same lessons over and over all
31:49
Speaker 1: of us, like those itsy bitsy spiders crawling up endless
31:53
Speaker 1: water spouts, trying to make just a little more progress
31:56
Speaker 1: each time we set out. There's comfort in knowing that
32:00
Speaker 1: no one ever gets it right, no matter how many
32:03
Speaker 1: chances we get. But hopefully at least a few things
32:07
Speaker 1: go right, a few purely kind gestures somehow get through,
32:11
Speaker 1: And for everything else we ask for forgiveness, And if
32:16
Speaker 1: we're lucky, we'll receive it, and if we're luckier, we'll
32:20
Speaker 1: forgive ourselves too.
32:27
Speaker 5: Horrors.
33:17
Speaker 3: Now that the vernitures returning to its.
33:21
Speaker 2: Goodwill home, now that the last month's rent is scheming
33:30
Speaker 2: with the damaged.
33:31
Speaker 3: Pole, take this moment to dissolved, if we meant it,
33:38
Speaker 3: if we tried, but felt.
33:42
Speaker 1: Around for far too empty from things that accidentally talk.
33:53
Speaker 1: Eavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein along
33:56
Speaker 1: with Khalila Holt. The senior producer is Caitlin Roberts, editing
34:00
Speaker 1: by Jorge just Alex Bloomberg and Wendy Tour Special thanks
34:04
Speaker 1: to Emily Condon, Emmanuel Berry, Pat Walters, and Jackie Cohen.
34:09
Speaker 1: The show is mixed by Kate Bolinski, music by Christine
34:12
Speaker 1: Fellows and John K. Sampson. Additional music credits for this
34:15
Speaker 1: episode can be found on our website Gimbletmedia dot com
34:19
Speaker 1: slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans
34:22
Speaker 1: courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by
34:25
Speaker 1: Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight. This is
34:29
Speaker 1: our last episode of the season, but we're already looking
34:31
Speaker 1: for stories for season three, so if you have one,
34:35
Speaker 1: email us at Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com. And if
34:38
Speaker 1: you see fit phunch in some stars for us on iTunes.
34:42
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Oh oh sign
35:04
Speaker 5: M