Speaker 1: Pushkin Khalila Holt, Welcome to the studio.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Today's Encore presentation is an episode called Dina. Spoiler alert.
Speaker 1: You know who Dina is?
Speaker 2: Your mom?
Speaker 3: She's my mother.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Even I have a mother, Khila Holt. You know when
Speaker 1: you like call me like, what is it? You call
Speaker 1: me a motherless cuss sometimes when you get upset. No,
Speaker 1: this episode is about my mother. What do you remember
Speaker 1: about the production?
Speaker 2: I remember it, and I hope I'm not speaking out
Speaker 2: of turn, no please, but I remember it being like
Speaker 2: an emotional one for you to work on, like there
Speaker 2: was a lot you had to delve into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. My wife Emily was like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're doing all these episodes about other people and intimate
Speaker 1: moments from their lives. You have to have a little
Speaker 1: skin in the game. And yeah, it was kind of scary,
Speaker 1: but I came out the other end stronger and jollier
Speaker 1: and balder than ever.
Speaker 2: And if our listeners come out the other end of
Speaker 2: this episode, they'll get to hear an update from Dina
Speaker 2: herself on her birthday.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, I talked to my mother to catch
Speaker 1: up with her on her various projects. So let's get
Speaker 1: ready to listen voraciously. I'm ready, but before we do,
Speaker 1: let's hear a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 2: Thanks sponsors, Yello.
Speaker 4: Why hello? Now, what kind of greeting is that you've
Speaker 4: got your radio voice on? Could you elaborate on what
Speaker 4: you mean by that?
Speaker 5: I know in the first second if I'm being recorded,
Speaker 5: or I could on your inflections?
Speaker 1: Well, I always talk like this, Jackie. Back to you.
Speaker 1: The way you're speaking with me now is never the
Speaker 1: way you would normally speak. Okay, wait, hang on a second,
Speaker 1: I'm just talking normal. You're not talking normal your radio voice.
Speaker 4: Hey, what's going on? It's still not.
Speaker 3: It's still not. It's still not.
Speaker 4: Hey.
Speaker 1: No, hey Jackie again Jackie, No, you wouldn't say him
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 4: How's it going?
Speaker 1: Too much energy?
Speaker 5: Hi?
Speaker 3: I can tell anyway.
Speaker 1: It can't be a radio voice because I do a podcast.
Speaker 1: It's a podcast voice, all right, And welcome to the
Speaker 1: show from Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is
Speaker 1: Heavyweight Today's episode. Dina. Hello, Hello, Okay, uh so we
Speaker 1: just got to Montreal.
Speaker 4: We wee? What's that?
Speaker 6: Is that?
Speaker 2: How you say yes in French?
Speaker 4: Yeah? But you just say it once you to say,
Speaker 4: we wit.
Speaker 1: Folks are about to meet us, pick us up at
Speaker 1: the airport to take us back to their place, where
Speaker 1: we will be staying for the next five days, five days,
Speaker 1: five days in my childhood home, in the childhood bed
Speaker 1: i've not slept in in decades. My wife Emily and
Speaker 1: I are here for passover, to sup upon the bread
Speaker 1: of affliction. Growing up, though, it was everything of affliction,
Speaker 1: candy corn of affliction, road trips of affliction, bedtime stories
Speaker 1: of affliction. I moved out when I was nineteen, but
Speaker 1: from age one to eighteen, what I remember most is
Speaker 1: the vague feeling of worry permeating the household. Worry that
Speaker 1: manifested is yelling, yelling through closed doors, yelling across the
Speaker 1: kitchen table, my father yelling into a junk drawer, desperately
Speaker 1: trying to find a working pen. My mother yelling into
Speaker 1: a clogged toilet, desperately trying to make it go down.
Speaker 1: But more often than not, the yelling wasn't over anything
Speaker 1: at all. We were just a naturally loud, anxious family,
Speaker 1: a race of nervous giants shrunk into the bodies of
Speaker 1: little Jews.
Speaker 7: Man.
Speaker 1: When I move out of here, I'd say in my teens,
Speaker 1: I'm going to live like sting peace and quiet, meditation,
Speaker 1: tea and tantric sex. And now, after years of oolong
Speaker 1: roubis and lemon roubis, I'm home again for my first
Speaker 1: trip back with Emily and our five month old son Agi.
Speaker 4: Day one.
Speaker 1: Here they are my parents. Tyota pulls up to the
Speaker 1: airport pickup. They pass us and passes us.
Speaker 4: Try to catch the eye. They don't see us here.
Speaker 4: We're right here.
Speaker 1: My mother jumps out. She runs back towards us, pointing
Speaker 1: at Oggie's ears.
Speaker 3: His ears are exposed.
Speaker 5: Hi, Hi, emily ears are exposed.
Speaker 1: Both my mother and father where their woolen caps pull
Speaker 1: down well past their ears. In younger, stronger days, they
Speaker 1: might have stretched those caps right down over their feet,
Speaker 1: but they're old now. My mother Dina seventy two, and
Speaker 1: my father Buzz eighty three.
Speaker 3: I want to drive slowly, not too fast.
Speaker 8: I want to go carefully.
Speaker 1: Okay while Buzz is high strung. Dina's intensity is capable
Speaker 1: of raising the emotional temperature of any space she occupies
Speaker 1: in elevators, walk in pantries, and tiotas. Her powers are
Speaker 1: especially cute, like.
Speaker 5: A funny feeling in my throat, like it's like really emotional.
Speaker 7: It's like a dreamed you know, it's like a dream.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like such a weird feeling.
Speaker 1: I think the weird, elusive feeling my mother is trying
Speaker 1: to describe is happiness.
Speaker 3: It's just wonderful to see him.
Speaker 7: But I hope he's going to be warm enough. Did
Speaker 7: you bring him up something?
Speaker 3: Home?
Speaker 8: Sweet home?
Speaker 1: Walking through the door, I'm a twelve year old again,
Speaker 1: home from school and looking forward to zoning out with
Speaker 1: petticoat junction. I'm a sixteen year old rushing to the
Speaker 1: bathroom to gargle out the smell of cigarettes. I'm a
Speaker 1: forty eight year old, a grown ass man with a
Speaker 1: grown ass ass. Parenting a newborn leaves a person with
Speaker 1: no time for squats. So don't judge Alex.
Speaker 4: So nice in here.
Speaker 6: I don't believe it.
Speaker 1: Normally, the house, a modest, semi detached bungalow, has a
Speaker 1: certain storage unit, bombshelter, vibe, walls of toilet paper, a
Speaker 1: cold room full of canned fruit, cocktail needle points of
Speaker 1: biblical scenes, and torreadors all leaned up against the walls
Speaker 1: for fear of pounding in a nail and regretting it forever.
Speaker 1: But today the place looks positively sparse.
Speaker 5: Johnny, Just don't open a closet or in shore everything.
Speaker 5: I'll tumble on your head.
Speaker 3: Because when you've heard you guys are coming.
Speaker 5: I threw everything into the into the closets and hid them.
Speaker 1: My mother grabs Aggie and heads upstairs for a diaper change.
Speaker 1: Emily and I trail behind.
Speaker 3: I want him to be fresh and clean. Oh you're
Speaker 3: so sweet, You're so sweet, my angel. Where the fridge
Speaker 3: is the bag?
Speaker 1: The friggin bag contains the friggin's that my mother bought
Speaker 1: for our visit. It turns out it's on her lap.
Speaker 5: I kept the bill because I wasn't sure if you
Speaker 5: want me to return them or not.
Speaker 1: Would you be able to return used diapers?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know me. I could return anything. I could
Speaker 5: return anything.
Speaker 1: You know that, Johnny, I do know that returning stuff
Speaker 1: is what my mother lives for. She sees it as
Speaker 1: a staring contest, a game of chess, but with yelling.
Speaker 1: I remember once going along with her as she returned
Speaker 1: a shirt she'd bought for my father two years earlier.
Speaker 1: It's missing a sleeve, she told the cashier, holding up
Speaker 1: the article of clothing. The cashier turned it around and around.
Speaker 1: It's not supposed to have sleeves. The cashier finally said,
Speaker 1: it's a poncho. A poncho, my mother repeated, as though
Speaker 1: it were a foreign word, which in her I suppose
Speaker 1: it sort of is. I don't care what it is.
Speaker 1: It's factory defective and my husband can't wear it. Whenever
Speaker 1: she'd get this way, I'd adopt the stance meant to
Speaker 1: convey filial loyalty, peppered with a touch of what Vietnam
Speaker 1: vets call the thousand yards stare. I've stood next to
Speaker 1: my mother through countless exchanges, arguments, spectacles and stinks. But
Speaker 1: this is the first time I've stood by her side
Speaker 1: as she diapers my son.
Speaker 5: Oh look how much peep he has.
Speaker 3: Oh, you made a lot of ppa baby.
Speaker 5: See that's how I knew you were sick. When you
Speaker 5: were a baby, Johnny, you weren't peeping.
Speaker 4: What was wrong with me?
Speaker 1: As a kid, it was easy to be embarrassed by
Speaker 1: my mother. One time, a popular boy named Jordie showed
Speaker 1: up at our house. I wasn't home, but my mother
Speaker 1: answered the door with her hair on fire. My hair's
Speaker 1: on fire, she screamed. The next day in school, Geordie
Speaker 1: showed the whole class how she screamed it. He wiggled
Speaker 1: his fingers in the air, looking as though he was
Speaker 1: about to fall to his knees. That night, I asked
Speaker 1: my mother what had happened. It was the barbecue, she said,
Speaker 1: your father wasn't home, and I was so in the
Speaker 1: mood for barbecued lamb chops. It seems that while examining
Speaker 1: the chops for signs of spoilage, she leaned her hair
Speaker 1: sprayed boufont too close to the grill. While this explained
Speaker 1: the fire atop her head, it did not explain why
Speaker 1: she answered the door while nursing a fire atop her head.
Speaker 1: Growing up, this kind of stuff happened all the time,
Speaker 1: so I was always on high alert for humiliating emergencies.
Speaker 1: Being back home again, I feel the old muscle memory
Speaker 1: kicked back in. What's that smells?
Speaker 5: Something's burning?
Speaker 4: Did you turn on the heater?
Speaker 1: Did you touch the heat?
Speaker 7: Though?
Speaker 1: It turns out that one of the rag dolls my
Speaker 1: mother had been hoarding somehow landed onto one of the
Speaker 1: old lamps she'd been hoarding, and had begun to burn,
Speaker 1: I could.
Speaker 5: Have had a fire because I was so careless for
Speaker 5: a hush shim rush.
Speaker 1: The day plays out as a series of minor disasters averted.
Speaker 1: In the morning, my mother loses her cell phone. We
Speaker 1: find it in the night table. In the afternoon, a
Speaker 1: screw to my father's glasses falls out. We replace it
Speaker 1: with a twist tie. At dinner, a waiter charges my
Speaker 1: mother for a potato. She claims she didn't order, but
Speaker 1: after ten minutes of Camp David's style negotiations, it's dropped
Speaker 1: from the bill. Before bed, my father can't find his passport.
Speaker 1: Why do you need a passport? I ask, You always
Speaker 1: need a passport, he says. We find it in the
Speaker 1: night table. In the past, having someone witness all of
Speaker 1: this would have made me feel anxious, But now having
Speaker 1: Emily here makes me feel like I have an ally.
Speaker 1: Turning to her in the midst of some crisis is
Speaker 1: like looking directly into the TV camera and winking.
Speaker 4: At the audience. N Doggy.
Speaker 1: Day two good. After we put Aggie to sleep, Emily
Speaker 1: and I lie in bed. I ask for her thoughts
Speaker 1: and reflections on the trip so far.
Speaker 9: No comment.
Speaker 1: Oh, come on, come on, no comment. How could she resist?
Speaker 1: Look at how my mother acts with Aggie, I say,
Speaker 1: trying to get Emily going. I saw her put a
Speaker 1: pocket mirror under his nose while he was sleeping, to
Speaker 1: see if he was still breathing. After every spoonful she
Speaker 1: feeds him, she asks if he's choking.
Speaker 9: You realize, though, that you say all that about Aggie
Speaker 9: now too, like just a tiny little cough, and you
Speaker 9: are doing it.
Speaker 3: Is he breathing?
Speaker 9: Can he sit like that? Can he touch that thing?
Speaker 9: Can he eat that? Can he do that? Is he
Speaker 9: supposed to be doing that?
Speaker 3: What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? What's he doing? What's
Speaker 3: he doing? Is he choking?
Speaker 4: What's wrong?
Speaker 9: You do a lot of that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I concede to Emily that maybe I do just a
Speaker 1: little of that kind of thing. But I wasn't even
Speaker 1: in the parking lot of the ballpark of Adina Goldstein.
Speaker 9: One day you dropped, You dropped Aggie off, and you
Speaker 9: called me right afterward because you were so worried.
Speaker 1: You remember this, I do remember this. It was Aggie's
Speaker 1: first week of daycare. He shares a babysitter with two
Speaker 1: little sisters. But on that particular morning, when the babysitter
Speaker 1: opened the door, she was alone. She told me the
Speaker 1: girls were napping in another room.
Speaker 9: You called me and said she was there alone.
Speaker 4: She said, were in bed.
Speaker 9: I don't know. Maybe she killed the whole family and
Speaker 9: now she's going to kill OGGI and you weren't joking,
Speaker 9: like you knew it was a crazy thought, but you
Speaker 9: needed me to tell you she didn't kill her family.
Speaker 9: She's not gonna kill Aggie.
Speaker 1: I did not need you to tell me that.
Speaker 9: And you're misremembering you were freaked out.
Speaker 3: You were freaked out.
Speaker 1: I thought it was very stoic.
Speaker 9: You called me and said, I think the nanny is
Speaker 9: gonna murder our child, and that she murdered the whole family.
Speaker 1: That we do daycare with.
Speaker 4: I don't consider that stoic, all right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just imaginative.
Speaker 2: That's one way to look at it.
Speaker 1: Yet another way to look at it is that I'm
Speaker 1: also crazy, just like my mom. Well, set my hair
Speaker 1: on fire and open the front door. In the days
Speaker 1: after Aggie was born, I couldn't stop thinking terrible thoughts things.
Speaker 1: I couldn't speak, not even to Emily. With this new
Speaker 1: overwhelming love for my son came new overwhelming fears for
Speaker 1: his safety, his heartbreaks to come, for his old age,
Speaker 1: his loneliness. So I started seeing a therapist. I explained
Speaker 1: how worry was the lingua franca of my childhood. I
Speaker 1: wasn't allowed a paper route because it was a good
Speaker 1: way to get abducted, no barefoot in because of rusty nails.
Speaker 1: And I didn't even learn to swim until junior high
Speaker 1: because water that's where people go to drown. Worry and
Speaker 1: fear were how my mother communicated love. I said to
Speaker 1: my therapist with a shrug. But love is love. The
Speaker 1: important thing is that we feel it. But my therapist's
Speaker 1: response troubled me. She said that love was the transcendence
Speaker 1: of fear, that you might even say fear was the
Speaker 1: opposite of love. Sitting at my childhood desk with Aggie's
Speaker 1: toys scattered at my feet, my therapist's words returned to me.
Speaker 1: If I was becoming my mother, would AGGI someday become me?
Speaker 1: Someone weighed down by fear and worry? Was our genetic line,
Speaker 1: nothing more than an inglorious chain of Russian dolls. Should
Speaker 1: my therapist save the notes from our sessions so I
Speaker 1: can send Aggie to her at a discounted rate. I
Speaker 1: didn't want my son becoming me, and there were only
Speaker 1: two people who could help me understand how I became me,
Speaker 1: One who charged New York therapy rates that might leave
Speaker 1: me bankrupted before I'm cured, and the other my mother
Speaker 1: day three. As a child, I fell trapped and embarrassed
Speaker 1: by my mother. As an adult, I came to be
Speaker 1: amused by her. It's only as a freshly minted father
Speaker 1: visiting home for the first time that I'm beginning to
Speaker 1: see that I am her. How much you pay for
Speaker 1: apples seventy?
Speaker 4: But if I'm desperate, this is what we normally talk about.
Speaker 1: Where to get the best price on paper plates, Where
Speaker 1: to get the best price on honeydew melon?
Speaker 7: Dina?
Speaker 8: What do you pay for a bottle of water.
Speaker 3: Twenty four for a dollar eighty eight? Bottle water cox
Speaker 3: twenty four for six nine?
Speaker 1: Will you pay for a loaf of bread? But after dinner,
Speaker 1: after Aggie's gone to sleep, my mom and I sit
Speaker 1: down at the kitchen table to have a different conversation.
Speaker 1: Emily is reading in bed, and my father's watching TV
Speaker 1: in the basement.
Speaker 4: It's just us.
Speaker 1: Hello, Hello, go ahead and talk here I am Why
Speaker 1: do you say here?
Speaker 7: I am? Well?
Speaker 3: Where should I say?
Speaker 4: There?
Speaker 1: I am tonight. I want to talk about the fear,
Speaker 1: that thing my family lives inside, like a snowsuit with
Speaker 1: a broken zipper that can no more be removed than
Speaker 1: our own flos. I want to talk about the nameless
Speaker 1: thing that binds all Goldstein's, that ignites us, propels us,
Speaker 1: and ultimately paralyzes us. Well, I think about this stuff
Speaker 1: now because you know I have I have a I
Speaker 1: have a son, and I I think, but I think.
Speaker 5: He's so beautiful, and I saw those blue eyes like
Speaker 5: no hors bays eggs.
Speaker 1: My mother's not talking crazy talk, she's talking Yiddish.
Speaker 3: So Bay's eggs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what does that mean?
Speaker 3: The bad oy shouldn't hurt them?
Speaker 1: The bad eye, the evil eye, the belief that merely
Speaker 1: saying something positive is enough to invite evil forces to
Speaker 1: snuff the good thing out. So even bringing up a
Speaker 1: normal son to mom question about good parenting is enough
Speaker 1: to attract the eye. On the day of my bar Mitzvah,
Speaker 1: my mother carefully sewed a red ribbon into my underwear.
Speaker 1: In this way, she reasoned, should the e the lie
Speaker 1: turn its gaze upon me. I'd be protected by my underwear.
Speaker 4: Why do you.
Speaker 1: Think you do that evil eyed stuff? It's what you say,
Speaker 1: it's cuckoo.
Speaker 3: I know it's cuckoo, but I can't help it.
Speaker 1: But then that's a superstition.
Speaker 3: I don't know everybody does it.
Speaker 1: I've never met anybody who puts red ribbons in their
Speaker 1: own I'm saying I personally have never met anyone who
Speaker 1: does that. So I can't say everybody puts red ribbons
Speaker 1: in their underwear. But what what is it supposed to be?
Speaker 1: Warding off? But what is the evil eye?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: This is how conversations with Dina often go. The derail
Speaker 1: hit dead ends. So when I ask her why was
Speaker 1: our home the way it was? I expect more of
Speaker 1: the same, But instead my mother grows quiet.
Speaker 4: I worry, Yeah, I do too.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid of.
Speaker 3: This, afraid of that.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 5: I was irrational. I wasn't thinking right, and I have
Speaker 5: a chance to redo my a little bit.
Speaker 3: Not with you, but with Augie.
Speaker 1: She stops talking and stares into her lap for a while.
Speaker 1: We just sit there.
Speaker 5: I look upon this as a second chance. I want
Speaker 5: to correct my mistakes. Johnny, I want to redeem myself.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 1: My mother doesn't usually talk this way. If something's causing
Speaker 1: her grief, she returns it to the store, sends it
Speaker 1: back to the kitchen, and so talk of second chances
Speaker 1: and redemption. The words sound weird coming out of her mouth,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how to respond. Where's all this
Speaker 1: coming from?
Speaker 4: I ask?
Speaker 1: Are you thinking of something specific?
Speaker 3: It's too painful. I don't want.
Speaker 1: Maybe if you talk about it, you won't talk. I
Speaker 1: don't think it could be anything.
Speaker 4: Then I can't.
Speaker 3: I can't talk about it. Don't don't press me.
Speaker 1: Please, well, I don't want to force you. I don't
Speaker 1: want to make you feel bad.
Speaker 4: I am ashamed of myself.
Speaker 3: Let's change the subject.
Speaker 1: And with that the conversation ends. I'd gotten to my
Speaker 1: mother for answers about my childhood, but instead she's left
Speaker 1: me with questions I didn't even know I had. What
Speaker 1: had happened that was so bad? She couldn't even talk
Speaker 1: about it? What was she so afraid to tell me?
Speaker 1: After the break, I find out, Hello, Hello, So mom's
Speaker 1: upstairs with Emily.
Speaker 4: Do you have In day.
Speaker 1: Four, I sit down with my father to see if
Speaker 1: he has any idea what the second chance is that
Speaker 1: my mother's talking about. He's hesitant to talk because that
Speaker 1: goes against the strategy of staying out of the drama.
Speaker 1: In fact, most of my childhood memories of him are
Speaker 1: of a man in bed, napping with a large volume
Speaker 1: of World War II history splayed open on his chest.
Speaker 1: This retiring nature might be the secret to having stayed
Speaker 1: married to my mother for more than fifty years. What
Speaker 1: is the thing that she is carrying around with her?
Speaker 8: She's a very private person and she feels she doesn't
Speaker 8: want to be intruded upon. Don't take it the wrong way.
Speaker 4: So you have no inkling. You don't know what's going on.
Speaker 8: It isn't even discussing with me. I don't know what guilt.
Speaker 3: I don't know what she's talking.
Speaker 1: Don't find it odd or intriguing in a way.
Speaker 8: It's a touchy subject for her, and she's very reluctant
Speaker 8: to talk about it.
Speaker 4: Talk about it. What's the it?
Speaker 8: I don't know. You have to ask her, and she's
Speaker 8: going to shut down. She's gonna shut down.
Speaker 1: This means she'll try to change the subject or start
Speaker 1: to yell. But today I don't care. I just want
Speaker 1: to know what the big secret is. I wonder what
Speaker 1: it is, I say to Emily, who knows? She says
Speaker 1: while brushing her hair. So many things about your mom
Speaker 1: are a mystery to me, like why is the kitchen
Speaker 1: faucet always running full blast? And why does she keep
Speaker 1: offering me paper towels? I think she says, you should
Speaker 1: just let it go, but of course I can't. What
Speaker 1: had my mother done that she wanted a second chance at?
Speaker 1: Was it for the time she bought me a shirt
Speaker 1: for my birthday that she later admitted was actually a dress?
Speaker 1: Did you want to redo the time she dropped me
Speaker 1: off at a birthday party and hollered out the car window.
Speaker 4: Have fun?
Speaker 1: But if you get diarrhea and someone's on the toilet
Speaker 1: just making the bathtub die, arhea is not a time
Speaker 1: for pride. Of course, I now see the wisdom, but
Speaker 1: as a child, her words were a source of shame.
Speaker 4: I need to know.
Speaker 1: So I invite my mother out for a Sunday stroll
Speaker 1: with Aggie and me. Maybe if she can just relax,
Speaker 1: it'll come out like diarrhea talk.
Speaker 3: What should I say?
Speaker 1: Let I just take your level, So tell me.
Speaker 4: So, do you find walking with Hogy.
Speaker 3: Relaxing, very relaxing, so nice.
Speaker 5: It's a pleasure to walk with my little friend.
Speaker 1: To start things off, I lobber an easy question, cocktail
Speaker 1: party stuff. What's your first memory?
Speaker 5: Kindergarten? And we lived on Colonial four h three nine Colonial,
Speaker 5: And I remember my father used to play peanockle and
Speaker 5: he had a thumb that was the nail like the
Speaker 5: thumbnail was very cut off, and all of a sudden
Speaker 5: I thought of it and I started screaming and crying
Speaker 5: and carrying on. I'm worrying. Oh, I remember how old
Speaker 5: are you must have been four or five.
Speaker 1: So so an early memory as being at kindergarten and
Speaker 1: remembering your father's thumbnail and starting to cry.
Speaker 4: What was it that upset you about it?
Speaker 5: Shorried about it because it wasn't like a regular thumb.
Speaker 3: I was worried crazy.
Speaker 1: I tried to guide her towards happy reminiscences, but all
Speaker 1: her memories are awful. Rheumatic fever, scarlet fever, her mother
Speaker 1: slapping her in Woolworth's for whining about a balloon she wanted,
Speaker 1: waking up in the middle of the night to find
Speaker 1: a wall in the kitchen covered in moths.
Speaker 5: Then I remember my mother's pressure cooker in that house
Speaker 5: hits the ceiling and pea soup was flattered everywhere.
Speaker 1: All your memories, Let's hear another memory. With the small
Speaker 1: talk exhausted, I trepidaciously bring the subject back around to
Speaker 1: the do over.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Johnny.
Speaker 5: I don't want to talk about it. I don't want
Speaker 5: to remind myself the way I f felt. Doesn't conjure
Speaker 5: up good memories. Please, and that's the end of it.
Speaker 3: I don't want to.
Speaker 5: Go into details.
Speaker 1: Nonetheless, for the rest of the day, I can't stop
Speaker 1: myself from asking for details. Here we go, I ask,
Speaker 1: as she puts away the breakfast dishes.
Speaker 5: I I have nothing more to say, Johnny.
Speaker 1: Leave me be, wait, I ask, as she cuts coupons
Speaker 1: while watching Judge Judy with Emily in broad strokes.
Speaker 5: Alone, Please Emily take them off me.
Speaker 1: And while she peels boiled eggs for lunch, Leave me alone.
Speaker 1: Later we all sit down for dinner and with it
Speaker 1: some wine.
Speaker 3: What's wrong with me? I think I'm off my rock.
Speaker 1: My mother rarely drinks wine.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, how did I get like this?
Speaker 7: A mom?
Speaker 1: You just had a glass of wine as she drifts
Speaker 1: off into an inebriated slumber. I give it one last try,
Speaker 1: can I Is there anything you need to tell me? No,
Speaker 1: any secrets to reveal? No, I was getting nowhere. Day five?
Speaker 1: All right, you want to change him? What any It's
Speaker 1: our last day and I've decided to give it a rest.
Speaker 1: I stop asking weird questions and we all just hang out.
Speaker 1: We talk about the price of things, We yell from
Speaker 1: room to room, We search for lost cell phones, and
Speaker 1: grow pleasantly bored word with each other's company. Overall, it's
Speaker 1: pretty nice. Well, while putting Aggie down for a nap,
Speaker 1: my mother has a question for me.
Speaker 5: Sonny, what was it that you were hoping to get
Speaker 5: from me?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 1: I really just want to be able to have a conversation,
Speaker 1: that's all I'm not. I don't want to I don't
Speaker 1: want to cause your distress.
Speaker 3: They're not causing distress. It's it's what it was.
Speaker 4: And I don't ever want to talk about old, painful
Speaker 4: for stuff.
Speaker 5: But what.
Speaker 1: She lays Aggie down, she stands over the crib. She
Speaker 1: starts to say something, but then trails away. What we're saying.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna turn it off. Then I was
Speaker 1: not a doctor did I had no secret twin, and
Speaker 1: my mother had no secret family. There were no murders,
Speaker 1: no affairs. It turns out that my mother's big secret,
Speaker 1: the thing that was so hard for her to say,
Speaker 1: was that she was sorry for a lot of things,
Speaker 1: some small, some not so small. Some I remember, some
Speaker 1: I don't, calling me names, screaming at me a lot.
Speaker 1: How she could have been nicer to my girlfriends, How
Speaker 1: she used to pull my hair, hit me. Hitting kids
Speaker 1: was like the hula hoop. Back then, I say, a fad.
Speaker 1: Everyone did it. It wasn't right, she says. Back then
Speaker 1: people didn't know better. I say, I should have known better.
Speaker 1: She says, I forgive you. I say, I don't forgive myself.
Speaker 1: So I forgive her again, and I mean it, And
Speaker 1: then I turned the recorder back on.
Speaker 3: I love you, honey. You made it a little easier
Speaker 3: for me. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I love you too, Mum. When you become a parent,
Speaker 1: your whole life changes, but you forget that some things
Speaker 1: stay the same. I had been so focused on becoming
Speaker 1: a better father that I forgot I was still a son.
Speaker 1: And maybe learning to be a better son is how
Speaker 1: you become a better dad anyway, I want him to
Speaker 1: be safe. On the last morning of our visit, my
Speaker 1: mother and I head to the park. As a kid,
Speaker 1: the park was someplace I usually went with my grandfather
Speaker 1: or father. One of the only times I remember going
Speaker 1: with my mother, two colleagues appeared out of nowhere and
Speaker 1: began chasing us. I remember we separated and the dogs
Speaker 1: chased her while I hid behind a tree. I look
Speaker 1: around the playground from my own childhood with her. I
Speaker 1: knew most things were out sandbox because someone could have
Speaker 1: peed in there. Same for the swings, monkey bars, teeter totters,
Speaker 1: and merry go rounds. But then something surprising happens. Picking
Speaker 1: Aggie up out of the stroller, my mother.
Speaker 5: Says, I'll take him down the slide.
Speaker 1: He's never he's never gone down the side.
Speaker 3: Come with Bobby, Honey, we'll go down the slide together.
Speaker 4: Okay, you're gonna go with him down the slide. Well,
Speaker 4: what do you think i'll put himself? I didn't. You're
Speaker 4: not afraid to go down the slide. Why would I
Speaker 4: be afraid? I don't know. Okay, be careful, Yeah, now
Speaker 4: you've got my nervous I wasn't afraid be careful. I
Speaker 4: don't know.
Speaker 1: My mother hands me back Aggie and holding onto the railing,
Speaker 1: she carefully climbs the steps to the top of the slide.
Speaker 1: When she gets there, I climb up too and hand
Speaker 1: Aggie back to her with hesitation. She positions him onto
Speaker 1: her lap and I run around to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the slide to await their arrival.
Speaker 3: And you stand there and catch us in chase.
Speaker 1: Part from me, and then Dina lets go, You're.
Speaker 3: Gonna go down.
Speaker 4: Whoo whoo. He's having fun.
Speaker 1: Huh, so much fun in fact, that my mother decides
Speaker 1: to do it again, And so again she climbs up
Speaker 1: the steps, all three of them, to the top of
Speaker 1: the ladder, and from the grand height of three and
Speaker 1: a half feet, my mother and son descend the toddler
Speaker 1: slide once more.
Speaker 5: Slidey snidey down the slide.
Speaker 1: Oggie loves it, so they do it again a third chance,
Speaker 1: a fourth, and even a fifth. Then we move on
Speaker 1: to the bouncy caterpillar, the rope bridge, and the swings.
Speaker 3: Swam, sleepy doggies going sweeny.
Speaker 5: The itsy bitsy spider quin up the water.
Speaker 1: Parenthood is like a redo of your own childhood and
Speaker 1: grandparenthood is like a redo of that. That's all life
Speaker 1: is learning and relearning the same lessons over and over,
Speaker 1: all of us, like those itsy bitsy spiders crawling up
Speaker 1: endless water spouts, trying to make just a little more
Speaker 1: progress each time we set out. There's comfort in knowing
Speaker 1: that no one ever gets it right, no matter how
Speaker 1: many chances we get. But hopefully at least a few
Speaker 1: things go right, a few purely kind gestures somehow get through.
Speaker 1: And for everything else we ask for forgiveness, and if
Speaker 1: we're lucky, we'll receive it, and if we're luckier, we'll
Speaker 1: forgive ourselves too.
Speaker 7: I love the horrors and faces.
Speaker 3: Now that the fern entures returned to its.
Speaker 5: Good will hol.
Speaker 3: Now that the last month's rant is scheming with the
Speaker 3: damage to take.
Speaker 4: This moment to des if we mention Chi felt around from.
Speaker 1: It's been nearly a decade since I recorded that episode
Speaker 1: with my mother. Recently I flew home to Montreal to
Speaker 1: see her again, same airport, same toyota, same parents, nearly
Speaker 1: leaving me on the current.
Speaker 4: Oh I didn't, I've already gone in.
Speaker 1: I've come to visit this weekend because it's my mother's
Speaker 1: eightieth birthday. She's planned a big dinner as well as
Speaker 1: a visit to the Senior Center, where I'm told there
Speaker 1: will be music and dancing.
Speaker 4: You don't want to.
Speaker 3: Come with me to the club?
Speaker 4: Do you want me to?
Speaker 1: Only if you feel like I can come for a
Speaker 1: little bit, if.
Speaker 3: You're gonna have to say, for like an hour and
Speaker 3: a half, two hours?
Speaker 1: So why can't I just drop in and say, Hi, Hey,
Speaker 1: how much do you have to pay?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 3: I can pay that, I know, but for five seconds
Speaker 3: it doesn't pay.
Speaker 6: One day they had the salsa.
Speaker 4: I got up to dance. Then, Oh you like that?
Speaker 4: I loved it, and they all loved.
Speaker 3: Nobody was Dan, just your mom and me because they
Speaker 3: know I'm always begging him to come dance, and I
Speaker 3: couldn't stop dancing.
Speaker 6: Hi, guys from Minnesota, Hello, because he's no.
Speaker 3: Because some people watch on zoom, they don't come, okay
Speaker 3: because they don't want to pay the five Do.
Speaker 4: You think that's why you're hitting? Maybe they don't have trouble, No.
Speaker 6: Don't want to.
Speaker 1: Maybe they can't afford it. They can't afford it.
Speaker 4: There rich say they too long to stay. Just shut
Speaker 4: up and kiss me. Let's clap our hands.
Speaker 6: Whoa yeah, there we go. And how about some feet
Speaker 6: in the tap of feet all the time.
Speaker 8: Oh my gosh, you're almost dancing.
Speaker 4: Watch out.
Speaker 9: Whoa nice by.
Speaker 3: Wishes to our March celebrants, Dean and Goldstein, March sixth today.
Speaker 7: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: Do you have happy birthday?
Speaker 3: Thank you, Johnny, Thank you, sweetheart. You made a.
Speaker 1: Special So I wanted to talk with you about the
Speaker 1: Dina episode. You were seventy two in that.
Speaker 3: In that woman. I was a young girl at seventy two.
Speaker 1: What is different now that you're eighty? That's different than
Speaker 1: when you were in your seventies.
Speaker 3: I changed, I don't know. I'm trying to change even.
Speaker 1: More in what way?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm trying not to get so crazy over things.
Speaker 1: So when you listen to yourself as a young girl
Speaker 1: of seventy two, worried about Aggie, that he's going to
Speaker 1: get cool, that he's not wearing a hat, how does
Speaker 1: that make you feel?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 3: I still worry, like when the children go naked, like
Speaker 3: I call it naked, they don't button up their coats.
Speaker 1: What are the things that you can think of that
Speaker 1: that have changed?
Speaker 3: Well? I got sick. That changed a lot.
Speaker 1: This is when you had your heart attack.
Speaker 3: I mean, I still get anxious sometimes.
Speaker 1: What do you do to try to cope with the
Speaker 1: anxious anxiousness?
Speaker 3: I don't think so much.
Speaker 1: What else changed though when you because I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: before you went into the surgery, the heart surgery, you
Speaker 1: had sort of made your peace. Yeah, you don't remember
Speaker 1: any of that.
Speaker 3: Oh, I wouldn't know. I was that brave. I didn't
Speaker 3: realize that. The doctor told me that he told you
Speaker 3: I wasn't going to make it. He told me when
Speaker 3: they sent me into the basement of the Sante Hospitals
Speaker 3: for tests, and the technician and the doctor there told
Speaker 3: me was that I wasn't going to make it. And
Speaker 3: I remember crying and I was all by myself in
Speaker 3: that horrible dark basement, and then I said stop it.
Speaker 3: I talked to my and I said stop it already,
Speaker 3: It's enough. And I was okay. After that, you know,
Speaker 3: I stopped crying and I went up and I did
Speaker 3: what I had to do.
Speaker 1: Going through something the way that you did with having
Speaker 1: the heart attack the heart surgery, did it make you
Speaker 1: more philosophical?
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm still not a terrific person. I'm still not a saint,
Speaker 3: even though i'd like to be. I still gossip and
Speaker 3: I still say bad things about people, and I still yell,
Speaker 3: and I still get mean. So I can't say I'm better.
Speaker 3: I want to be better, but I'm not not as
Speaker 3: good as I should be. I'm far from an angel.
Speaker 1: Do you ever think that maybe you're a little harsh
Speaker 1: with yourself?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 1: So, how's your idioth birthday today? How's it feelingly?
Speaker 3: Because you're here, that doesn't I don't feel like i'm old.
Speaker 3: You feel in my heart some days I feel i'm sixteen.
Speaker 1: Thank you for talking to me.
Speaker 3: You're welcome.
Speaker 4: I love you.
Speaker 3: I love you more, Johnny, You're my precious boy.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everyone who helped put the episode together. This
Speaker 1: is the last of our summer encores, but I fear not.
Speaker 1: Denigoldtem's Precious Boy will be back with a new season
Speaker 1: of Heavyweight on September eighteenth.