You Can't Go Back: The Moth Radio Hour

This Episode originally aired on November 15th, 2022. In this episode, bold attempts to revisit the past. A quarterback makes a trip back home, a wife attempts to understand her husband's past, a young man discovers the rodeo, and an adult is cast in a high school play. This episode is hosted by Moth Senior Director Jenifer Hixson. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Ivan McClellan discovers the Black Rodeo. Rachel McCormick attempts to understand her immigrant husband's past. Steve Peebles is offered a role in a high school play, despite being an adult. Kimberly Reed confronts her past, and future, when she is forced to make a trip to her hometown. Podcast # 791

• 0:13Speaker 00

  This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Jennifer Hixson. In this hour, stories about putting fresh eyes on the past, returning to the scene, and finding new details you may have missed the first time around. Whether you see your past through rose-colored glasses, or one of those magnifying mirrors that highlights every blemish, whisker, and scar, the passage of time always sheds new light. Our first story is by Ivan McClellan. He told this in Jackson Hall, Wyoming, where we partner with Center for the Arts. Here's Ivan.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  I was born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas. Go Chiefs!

• 0:55Speaker 01

  The neighborhood that I grew up in had many sides. It was urban and country at the same time. It was beautiful, and sometimes it could be terrifying. My sister and I would run around in a five-acre field behind our house. All summer long, we would play, and we would eat blackberries until our fingers were sticky, and then we'd run home through the thistle, pick thorns out of our socks on the front porch. And then at twilight, the lightning bugs would come out, and we'd scoop them up in mason jars, throw some leaves in there, screw the lid on tight, poke holes in the top so they could breathe. At night, some nights, gunshots would ring out on the block, and my sister and I would

• 1:37Speaker 01

  lay on the floor and look up as the police helicopters lit up the street looking for suspects. There were a lot of gangs in the neighborhood, and they would walk around with pit bulls, and whenever they ran across a rival gang member, they would fight their dogs. I wasn't in a gang. I was a nerd and a church kid, but when I ran across this one guy, he would sic his dog on me. And I would go running, and all the backs of my pants got eaten up, and I got really fast.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  My mom worked two or three jobs to keep us fed. And we were latchkey kids. And we determined it was unsafe to go outside. So we quit going out in that field and playing. As I got closer to the end of high school, my prospects were kind of slim. I could go be a delivery truck driver. I could be a pastor at my uncle's church. Or I could go work at the assembly line at the Ford plant. I didn't really want to do any of those things. I wanted to be a photographer. And so I decided I was gonna figure out a way out of Kansas. I never felt like I fit in there. And I knew somewhere there was a community where I belonged. So I saved up $500 that summer.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  And I just upped and moved to New York City. And that money was gone in a week. And I just like worked any job that I could get. I didn't know anybody. So I like handed out flyers. I blew up balloons. I played guitar in the park. Anything I could do for money. Until some way, through a bunch of luck, I got a job as a photographer and a junior designer at an ad agency. I didn't know anything that anybody was talking about. They would say ROI, SEO, KPIs. And I would just nod my head and Google what they had said. And I did that long enough that I actually started to get pretty good at my job. And I got promoted.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  I went from junior designer to designer. And I went from designer to senior designer. And from senior designer to art director. Every time that I got promoted, I saw fewer and fewer black people around. Until I got a job as a creative director. I moved to Portland, Oregon. And I hardly ever saw black people at all. Like I was in this sea of white men at work. And I was never a culture fit. Like I understood their culture. But they had no clue who Luther Vandross was. Or they had never stayed up till 2:00 a.m. watching Showtime at the Apollo. They had no idea why I might be afraid of dogs. This led to a case of imposter syndrome. I felt like I didn't belong in the rooms that I was in.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  That I was gonna be found out, thrown out in the street, forced to move back to Kansas.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  One day I was at a party. I didn't know anybody there except for the person whose birthday it was. And so I was just drinking by myself and sulking in the corner. Somebody tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around and there's a tall black man with a salt and pepper Afro. And he introduces himself. He says his name is Charles Perry, says he's a filmmaker. I say, "Oh, I'm a photographer. What are you working on?" He said, "I'm working on a movie about black cowboys." I said, "What, like a, like a western?" He said, "No, like a documentary." I kinda laughed. I was like, "Oh, there's not enough black cowboys to make a whole documentary." Like, I, I knew a thing or two about cowboys. Like, I grew up watching Bonanza and Gunsmoke and Lonesome Dove reruns.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Like, uh, my, my school choir used to sing the National Anthem at the American Royal Rodeo in Kansas. Uh, I viewed the cowboy to be the archetype of American independence in great. But black cowboys, the only black cowboys I knew were Sheriff Bart in Blazing Saddles and Cowboy Curtis on Pee Wee's Playhouse.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  So, we kept talking and he said, "Well, you gotta see it for yourself, man. Come with me to a black rodeo in Oklahoma this summer." I said, "Absolutely." It was exactly the opportunity that I had been looking for. Like, I had never felt more separated from black culture. And it, it going to a rodeo seemed like the furthest thing from working at a computer that I could think of. And so I went home and I bought my plane ticket and I just sat there for the next few months anticipating what this could possibly be like. In my head, it was like Soul Train, but everybody was on a horse.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  So August came around and I caught my flight to Oklahoma City. I drove an hour and a half to Oakmoggi, parked my car, got out, and got just suffocated by a hundred and five degree heat. It was a hundred and five degrees, it was a hundred percent humidity. As I was walking through the grass, chickers were biting my ankles and there were grasshoppers jumping up on my clothes. There was just a haze of barbecue smoke over the entire lawn. I couldn't breathe. And everywhere I looked, there was a white horse trailer glistening in the sun. And there was R and B music and gospel music and hip hop coming out of the trailers.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  And everywhere around me, there were black cowboys, thousands of them. I saw young men riding their horses with no shirt, a gold chain, basketball shorts and Jordans. And they were walking up, hitting on women and talking trash to the other riders. And I saw old men just sitting stoically on their horses and they had precise stetsons and trimmed mustaches, pinky rings, and their shirts were so starched, you could hear them crunch when they moved their arms. And the women bedazzled from head to toe, bedazzled hats, bedazzled shirts with fringe, bedazzled jeans, and they had long braids and acrylic nails. And they were settling down these muscular quarter horses.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  And they were gonna be riding forty miles per hour in the barrel race later that afternoon. Like, I couldn't have fit in any less. I was wearing khakis and wingtips. But I felt so welcomed by this group of people. Everybody was so eager to share a smile, let me take their photo and share their story. I met a man named Robert Criff. Robert had this leather raisin of a face. And he had this beautiful horse named Summertime. He pulled on her reins and she put her legs down on the ground like she was bowing. It was so elegant. And he shook my hand. He had these twelve grit sandpaper hands.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Mine almost started to bleed because I've got dragonfly wings for hands from working in tech for so long. And he offered me a bottle of water, which I desperately needed at this point, because I'm like soaking wet. Not a bead of sweat on his face. In fact, nobody else at the rodeo was sweating at all. And I looked like I had just gotten baptized. So, he was wearing a Kansas City hat, so I said, "Where you from?" He said, "I'm from Kansas City, Kansas." I said, "I'm from Kansas City, Kansas. Where about?" He said, "Oh, I live just off of Fifty-Eighth in Georgia." I grew up off of Fifty-Seventh in Georgia. It turns out that he lived on the other side of the five acre field where, from where I grew up.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  I, I, I never saw a horse back there. I never met Robert Criff. But he knew my grandma. He knew my pastor. We went to the same high school. In fact, he told me that half of the people at the rodeo come down from Kansas City every year for their family reunions. I was embarrassed. I felt silly because this entire culture was right under my nose. My whole life and I knew nothing about it. And I felt kind of ripped off because I was hanging out with these criminals chasing me with their dog. And I could have been hanging out with cowboys a field away. It immediately changed my perception of home away from a place of pain and poverty and violence.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  To a place of independence and grit and cowboys. I was proud to be from there. The rodeo started and a rider rode around the arena carrying a flag, a Pan African flag. It's the American flag, but it's red, black and green. And a singer belted out, "Lift every voice and sing." And she sang it with so much sincerity. And so much energy that I heard it for the first time. She said, "Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us. Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us." And that to me was what this rodeo was about. What we had been forced to do in slavery, work the land, work with animals.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  We could now do in a celebratory mood for our own profit and our own entertainment. I photographed that rodeo with absolute joy. And I got home and I looked at the photos and I was just blown back by all of the vibrance. And all of the energy and the fashion. It was like I had gone to Oz. Clicked my heels back to gray homogeneous Portland, but I had proof that I had been there.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  My favorite photo is of this rodeo queen. Her name is Jasmine Marie. And I asked her to take her photo. And she stands there and throws her hair off of her shoulders. And she's standing there with her chin up and her hair blowing back. And her crown is glistening in the stadium lights. And she looks like actual royalty. I love all of these photos. Whenever I'm feeling separated from the culture, I just open them up and look through them. And I'm immediately taken back to Oakmoggy. And I go back every year. I've taken my family with me. I've been to dozens of black rodeos around the country. My work has been featured in museums. It's been featured in magazines and published in a book.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  And I've seen the figure of the black cowboy elevated in film and television. And it's become a part of a narrative about identities in the West. But I do this so that my kids, when they draw a picture of a cowboy, they'll color it in with a brown face. And I do it so that I'll never again forget that this is a part of who I am as a black man in America. Thank you.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  That was Ivan McClellan. Ivan is a photojournalist and designer. His current photo project, Eight Seconds, focuses on the stories of black cowboys around the country. Ivan lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and two children. Between May and October, he takes pictures at rodeos around the country.

• 12:50Speaker 00

  To see some of his beautiful photographs, visit themoth.org.

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Ivan said he's discovered a bunch of trail riding clubs in the community where he grew up in Kansas. Now, when he goes home, he always hangs out with black cowboys. He's mostly on the ground taking pictures, but sometimes he even gets up on a horse. He might even be developing some calluses.

• 13:21Speaker 00

  In a moment, a woman celebrates her honeymoon without her new husband. And a grown man finds himself, somewhat reluctantly, back in high school when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

• 13:48Speaker 03

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• 14:49Speaker 00

  This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hixson. In this hour, stories from people revisiting the past. In this next story, a new bride finds a unique way to walk in her husband's shoes. We met Rachel McCormick when we did a storytelling workshop for students at a high school in the Bronx where she was a teacher. She told a story to model the form for the students, and we were so intrigued, we asked her to share more. Here's Rachel McCormick, live at a community showcase in the Bronx.

• 15:23Speaker 04

  I spent my honeymoon in a tent in the desert alone. It was the summer of 2010 and I had just married the man of my dreams. He was funny, smart, and caring. He didn't really speak much English, but I figured, hey, that was something we could work on. We had met four years earlier on a soccer field in Poughkeepsie, New York, as I ate a mango on a stick and nursed a sprained ankle. When the game was over, Edvi came up to me and he heaved me over his shoulders so I wouldn't have to limp through the mud, and I was in love.

• 16:08Speaker 04

  I later learned that Edvi had come to the United States from Oaxaca, Mexico, one week before September 11th, 2001. And he had come here by crossing the desert between Sonora and Arizona on foot. Because of this, some people call him illegal. Other people say that he doesn't have papers. I mean, he has plenty of papers: birth certificate, diplomas, tax returns, but none of those papers authorize him to live in the United States. Because of this, Edvi can't travel. He rarely leaves the confines of New York City because he fears deportation.

• 16:52Speaker 04

  Fear is a big part of Edvi's life, and it's rooted in several near-death attempts to cross the border. In the months leading up to our marriage, we would sit on the couch and he would tell these stories of having to drink all sorts of nasty things to stay alive in the desert, like water from car radiators, and water from cow tanks, and even water from his own pee. He told this one story about getting lost in the mountains and having to slaughter a goat from somebody's ranch and roast it over tumbleweeds under the light of the moon. Knowing all of this a few weeks before our wedding, I told Edvi that I wanted to honeymoon alone

• 17:37Speaker 04

  in the desert on the border in the same place he had nearly died several times. His reaction, like most other people's, was, "Why?" Well, on one level, I wanted to have one last adventure before I had a bunch of his beautiful babies. And I figured that traveling to the desert was the only thing I could do ethically while my new husband stayed at home working 12-hour shifts as a busboy. I also wanted to see with my own two eyes this border that had transformed Edvi from a human being into an illegal alien. So, in honor of Edvi's struggle, I packed a bag

• 18:20Speaker 04

  and I went to the desert south of Tucson, Arizona, to volunteer for two weeks with the organization No More Deaths, which, among other things, seeks to end human suffering on the US-Mexico border. When I got there, I thought I knew what to expect based on the tales that Edvi and his friends had told of their perilous journeys. I had even written my senior thesis at Vassar about narratives of violence on the US-Mexico border, back in those days when I thought I knew everything. But I was not expecting this. What lay south of the airport and the urban sprawl of Tucson looked more like a cross

• 19:04Speaker 04

  between a science fiction movie and footage from a foreign war zone than the country I thought I knew. Don't get me wrong, it was absolutely beautiful. Not sand, like the Sahara, but bright maroon soil and prickly green plants and animals that howled. As I pitched my tent in the middle of this beauty, I started to notice other things, too, like the helicopters that constantly flew overhead and the Border Patrol agents that would jump out of bushes and point their guns at anything that moved, including me. Their weapons should have scared me, but unfortunately, I realized

• 19:48Speaker 04

  that as a white woman, I was probably safe, whereas somebody brown like Edvi certainly wasn't.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  In those two weeks in the desert, I thought a lot about Edvi. He was my only real connection between what was happening on the border and was happening at home in New York. I thought about Edvi as he danced at our wedding, and I also thought about him as he cried at our wedding because none of his family could be there. And it wasn't just Edvi that I thought about. I thought about the millions of other people who had made the same decision as him to leave their families behind and walk north.

• 20:28Speaker 04

  In my first week in the desert, I didn't actually meet any of these migrants, but I saw signs of their presence all around. I saw their footprints in dry riverbeds and discarded backpacks everywhere, filled with Red Bull and children's toys and photographs. And in the middle of all this, my task was to work with other volunteers from No More Deaths to leave jugs of water in different spots in the desert. Because if you decided to walk from Mexico over the mountains to some US interstate to get picked up, it's physically impossible to bring enough water with you to survive. So the volunteers and I would spend the daylight hours leaving hundreds of gallons of water in different places,

• 21:14Speaker 04

  hoping that people would find them and drink them and stay alive. At night, we would sleep under the stars as the desert came to life with javelinas and rattlesnakes and so many different people from so many different places, walking north. It wasn't until my second-to-last day in the desert that I actually met one of the people I was trying to help. I had been walking a trail with a couple of other volunteers when we heard this faint groan in the bushes to our right. As we got closer to the noise, we could see that there was a man there, lying on his back and struggling to keep his eyes from rolling into the back of his head.

• 21:57Speaker 04

  As I got even closer, I could see that his lips were cracked and his complexion was nearly gray.

• 22:06Speaker 04

  I was in shock. All I could think to do was to stare at this man and to check to see if he was alive. And as I looked at his face, I could have sworn that I saw Edvi, my new husband, so far from home and yet so close to death.

• 22:25Speaker 04

  And on the flight back to New York, all I could think about was this man. Where had he come from? Where had he been going? Had he survived the damages of dehydration and exposure? And I wondered, how had Edvi survived?

• 22:43Speaker 04

  I'll probably never really know, but frankly, I'm just glad that he did. Thank you.

• 22:57Speaker 00

  That was Rachel McCormick. Rachel and Edvi eventually had two daughters, Sarah and Anna. They created a happy life in New York City, but spent more than two decades battling the US immigration system. After the 2024 election, they made the tough decision to leave the US and move to Mexico so they could stay together as a family and ensure Edvi's safety. They are adjusting to life in a new country. To learn more about their story, you can visit themoth.org.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  Do you have a story about putting yourself in someone else's shoes? About revisiting your past? Seeing things a bit differently? Have you looked at life from both sides now? We'd love to hear. You can pitch us your story by recording it right on our site or call 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-6684. The best pitches are developed for Moth shows all around the world.

• 24:10Speaker 00

  Our next story was told by Steve Peebles at a Story Slam in Chicago, where we partner with public radio station WBEZ. The musical he mentions is "My Favorite Year." And just for context, in the movie version, the lead role is played by Peter O'Toole. Here's Steve Peebles.

• 24:31Speaker 05

  So I'm playing Templeton the Rat in a production of Charlotte's Web. It runs two shows a week for thirty dollars a show. But it's not really the way that I thought my career was going to go. I'm two years out of college, I was a serious actor, here I am. I get a call from my buddy Jonathan, he says, "Hey man, you doing a show right now? I'm wearing the Rat costume." And I'm like, "Not really, what's up?"

• 24:56Speaker 05

  He says, "Maine South is looking for an immediate replacement for My Favorite Year. You'd rehearse three days next week, you'd go on Friday, Saturday." If you don't know, My Favorite Year is a musical about a TV variety show. And Maine South is a high school. And I kind of focus on that detail, I said, "Maine South is a high school." And he's like, "Yeah, the kid playing Alan Swan got caught drinking at a party. But they open tonight, so he's on this weekend and then you're on next weekend." And like, I'm a full adult. I'm not trying to do high school musical, let alone an actual musical at an actual high school. And I'm like, "Okay, so what does this high school want to pay me to learn a show in a week?" And he was like, "Two thousand dollars."

• 25:41Speaker 05

  And I got in my car, and I got a copy of the script, and I went to the show that night.

• 25:47Speaker 05

  And guys, it's a great show. Okay, so Alan Swan is this old Hollywood icon who gets called in last minute as an emergency replacement, as a guest host on this variety show. And when he shows up, he's an alcoholic mess, which like, ouch, but okay, that's in my wheelhouse.

• 26:06Speaker 05

  And he's ruined his career, he's ruined his life, he's estranged from his daughter, and all he's got to do is pull it together in this week to do this show, and he does this Musketeer sketch where he sings, and he fights with a sword, and he wins his daughter back. I'm excited! And I go to meet the music director, who was my contact, and I said, "Hey, I'm Steve, we talked on the phone." She said, "Hey, you're saving my life, when was the last time you played this role?" I said, "No, I just got the script this afternoon." And she leans in, she narrows her eyes. She says, "The only reason I got the board to agree to let me hire an actor is I said I would get somebody who had played the part before. So when was the last time you played this part?" And I was like, "Last summer at my college?" She was like, "Good answer, let's go meet the director."

• 26:55Speaker 05

  So like Alan Swan on the back burner, I've got two hallways to figure out how to play Steve Peebles, who has totally played Alan Swan before, but can't do any of the things associated with having played that part. So I meet the director, we go over some scheduling, and he's like, "Is there anything you want to change from like the way that you did it in your last production?" And I was like, "No, this guy's good, I want to respect his choices." And the fight choreographer is like, "How are you with a sword?" And I was like, "In my production, we did it with daggers, which is not a good lie for a musketeer fighting play." And then we go into another room and we meet the cast and crew, who have all been assembled, and the director says,

• 27:38Speaker 05

  "Hey guys, this is Steve, he's gonna be taking over as Alan." And that's the sound you hear. And I said, "Hey guys, I saw your show tonight, I'm really excited to jump into this with you." And that is the exact response that I get. Because I'm not the understudy in this situation, I'm the outsider who's shouldering out their friend. And I was prepared to do a show at a high school, I was not prepared to be in high school again. So I go home and I slam a script through my ear, because if I don't show up memorized, ready to go, these kids are never gonna give me an inch. And I do it. And I show up on Monday, and I'm playing, and I'm singing songs about losing my daughter

• 28:21Speaker 05

  and destroying my life, and they're playing with me. And then it's Friday, and if you've never gone on as an understudy, it feels a lot like this, you don't really know what's gonna happen next, no matter how much you've rehearsed. It's blind adrenaline. It's like Catch Me If You Can, it's just two hours of me being like, "Do you concur? Do you concur? Do you concur?" And thank God, they keep concurring. And we take our bow, and the audience really erupts, because they're so glad their kids got to do their show again, and they're so glad that I'm not a disaster. And it really feels like I gave a thousand dollar performance, and I have to do it again the next day, and I'm a little more loose, and I'm having a lot of fun. And I'm climbing the 15-foot ladder to go swinging on this rope at the end of the show, and I'm up there for a while,

• 29:06Speaker 05

  so I got time to reflect. And I think, "Man, this stupid gig wound up being a lot of fun." And while I'm reflecting, I think that this stupid gig actually taught me everything that I was supposed to know about being a professional.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  That was Steve Keedles. Steve is still a professional actor and is an artistic associate with Shattered Globe Theatre. He wasn't able to dig up a photo of himself playing Templeton the Rat, or his character from the musical, but did send us a picture of himself backstage doing one of his all-time favorite plays, Spamalot. I have something in common with Steve. In college, I also played Templeton the Rat in a production of Charlotte's Web, such a fun role. But then my college contacted my hometown newspaper and sent in a picture of me in costume. The caption read something like, "Jennifer Hixson plays a sniveling rat", which was cute, except that the photo that ran right next to my rat portrait was a beautiful headshot of our neighbor's daughter

• 30:08Speaker 00

  announcing that she was accepted into the London School of Economics. Perfect.

• 30:24Speaker 00

  In a moment, a kid graduates high school and leaves Montana behind, but returns many years later to reveal a huge secret, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

• 30:49Speaker 03

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• 32:32Speaker 00

  Our final story is from Kimberly Reed. She told it in New York City, where WNYC is a media partner of The Moth. Here's Kimberly.

• 32:52Speaker 07

  So I get a phone call from my mom, and she tells me that my father is about to get on an emergency life flight from our home in Montana to go to Denver to get an emergency liver transplant. My mom is kind of perennially optimistic, and she's telling me, "Don't worry, it's gonna be okay, we're gonna pull through this, it's gonna be all right." But I know something is really wrong, so I get the next flight I can to go from where I'm living here in New York, hoping that I get there before my father dies.

• 33:33Speaker 07

  And I'm really glad I got that flight as fast as I did because I was able to spend a couple hours with my father before he passed away. And before I know it, I'm at the side of his hospital bed with my mom, and we're sobbing because he's passed. My dad was a, he was a strong silent type. He was, um, he was a, grew up on a farm and he was the town, one of, one of two town eye doctors. So, he could fix anything, you know, he could fix tractors or eyes, he can, you know, no matter what. And he was always doing it like behind the scenes, you know, he never wanted to take credit for it.

• 34:20Speaker 07

  It was apparent that my mom and I and my two brothers were gonna have to be fixing things ourself this time around. And the first thing my mom did was, was to call my two brothers, one's a year older, one is a year younger. And it was gonna be really comforting to see my younger brother, we were really close. It was gonna, he was really gonna support me. It was gonna be much more complicated seeing my older brother. We'd always had a really complicated relationship. And there was something really big about me that he did not know.

• 35:00Speaker 07

  And that's that the last time he saw me, um, years and years before, I was male. He was not aware that I had transitioned from being male to being female. And, you know, I always wanted to, to tell him. I was trying to find the right time, the right place, trying to, you know, get up the nerve.

• 35:24Speaker 07

  I was worried about his reaction, maybe that, you know, he was a bit conservative, he had a temper. I didn't know how it was gonna happen and I just kept putting it off and, um, never found the right time. And here we are, at the time where I have to deal with all this stuff.

• 35:42Speaker 07

  Uh, Mark wasn't the only one who didn't know my story, my whole hometown didn't know about me either. And, you know, I was trying to find a way to tell Mark, I just kinda figured with my hometown, I just, I just will never go back there again. So my mom, uh, calls my brother and in one phone call tells him that he lost his father and that he now has a sister.

• 36:12Speaker 07

  And I have to say, I mean, Mark was, he was really great. He, he got off the plane, we met him at the airport, he gave me a hug.

• 36:20Speaker 07

  But it was awkward, as you can imagine. And, you know, I think we did what a lot of families do at times like that. You just kind of fall back on tradition. And we wanted to do something that my mom and dad had always done every year.

• 36:39Speaker 07

  Because you see, it was my father's birthday. He had passed away 20 minutes before, before his 65th birthday. So we all went to Applebee's. And we got a slice of sizzling apple pie. Put a candle in it. And my brother Mark, who really worshipped my father, got the honor of, of blowing out the candle. And when he was blowing out the candle, I still remember the expression on his face. He was, you know, trying to process my father's passing. He was figuring out why it had been so long that the two of us hadn't talked. Something that really frustrated him.

• 37:24Speaker 07

  And it was just all kind of coming together. I, I took a business card out of my purse. It was for this job that Mark didn't even know I had. It had my new name on it. And I wrote my cellphone number on it. And I gave it to Mark. I said, "Look, you know, we haven't talked for so long, but here. Anytime, anyplace, no barriers, call me any, we're, you know, we can talk anytime you want." And my mom started crying because her, you know, her, her children were reuniting. And also because, you know, for years she had been running interference between the two of us and using every excuse in the book to explain why I wasn't getting back to him

• 38:08Speaker 07

  or why, you know, packages to me were being returned because they had the wrong name on them. And, you know, her job, running interference, was over.

• 38:19Speaker 07

  So Mark was in shock. We were all in shock. I was in shock because I was thinking about the fact that, you know, nobody in my hometown knew. And I'm wondering if I can go back for the funeral, if I should go back, if my mom and my brothers really want me to, really deep down.

• 38:45Speaker 07

  And I'm thinking that, you know, I never even thought I was gonna go back to my hometown and now I'm being pulled back right into it. As contradictory as it may seem, as soon as there was a reason to go back, I had this really deep, strong yearning to go back. I mean, I had gone to school in New York and San Francisco and traveled all over the world in this place that I thought of as home that I think I really repressed, knowing that I couldn't go back there, right? I don't need to go back there. But as soon as there was a reason for me to go back there, a very strong reason, I really, really wanted to go. I wanted to see the house,

• 39:29Speaker 07

  the only house I had ever known growing up. I wanted to go back to my hometown and these people that, you know, comprise this community that I thought of as home. Right? And my mom

• 39:44Speaker 07

  reassured me that she wanted me to be there, that she in fact needed me there for support, my brothers too. And my mom had a plan to get us there. You know, our family had been separated for a long time. So she had the idea for all of us to rent a car and drive the 20 hours from Denver back to Montana. So before you know it, there we are in the car. You know, my brother hasn't seen me for years, especially not as female, and here we are. And we had so much to do. We were planning his service, my father's funeral service. We were writing his obituary. My mom wanted to figure out, and I did too, wanted to figure out how we could introduce

• 40:29Speaker 07

  the information about me while still keeping the focus on my father. So she had me driving out in the, you know, across Wyoming, 70 miles an hour. She had me take dictation of her friends and she wanted to invite them over for tea.

• 40:46Speaker 07

  So she had this really strategic list. It's like, "You invite Judy, and she's gonna tell all the people in the arts community that my mom was involved in. And you're gonna tell June, and June is gonna tell all the people at Dad's office. And we'll find somebody else in the... She's gonna tell everybody at the church." And the next night, there they were, eighteen of my mom's best friends, and the minister from the church where the service was gonna be performed. They're drinking tea. And my mom says, "You all know very well by now that I've lost my husband. And I know a lot of you have wondered what happened to my middle son, who seemed to disappear."

• 41:31Speaker 07

  And she said, "I want you to know tonight that I have a daughter, and her name is Kim. And this is my child, and I love my child, and I hope you do too. And we can focus on this tonight. We can talk about this tonight. You all are my ambassadors. If someone has questions at the funeral, and I'm caught up in things, I'm going to point them to you and let you tell this story, because you can talk about it in a sensitive way." And she, you know, took a couple questions from the people there.

• 42:14Speaker 07

  And the whole tea party ended... Slightly different than the tea party we hear about in the news. The whole thing ended with everybody raising their teacups and saying, "Hip hip hooray for Kim, hip hip hooray for Kim." There were a couple amens and some applause. And then everybody went home, and I swear there was a brownout from all the simultaneous phone calls.

• 42:42Speaker 07

  That were being made, dispensing the information, right? So then the next night, there was a viewing of my father's body at the funeral home. And I had elected not to go because, you know, I didn't want the focus to be on me. I was gonna keep it on everybody, keep it on my father. But my best friend, Tim, from high school, was at the viewing. And he calls me up. He had only known the new me for a couple of days. I hadn't even told him. But he knew me really well. And he knew I was chickening out. And he called me from the funeral party, and he said, "Hey, I got a lot of people here that really wanna see you."

• 43:27Speaker 07

  I should probably tell you that the people he's talking about are the football team.

• 43:35Speaker 07

  Because I used to be on the football team. And so...

• 43:46Speaker 07

  Applause for that, right? And so Tim says, "Where are you? I got a lot of people who wanna see you." I'm like, "Yeah, I don't wanna go and, you know, I wanna keep the focus on my dad. I don't wanna be there." He's like, "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Either you come down here, or we're gonna come up there. What's it gonna be?" I said, "I'll... Come up here, I guess." So before I know it, the football team is at my front door.

• 44:13Speaker 07

  And a couple of them have cases of beer under their arm. One case gets tossed in the snowbank to keep it cold. It's just like high school. And all of a sudden, they're in my living room. And it's this wake instantly, and this show of support from me and for the memory of my father, right? And they're in my living room. This living room I never even thought I would see again.

• 44:40Speaker 07

  And people were either laughing or crying, mostly laughing.

• 44:46Speaker 07

  And I remember looking around the room, and there's Kevin. He was one of the co-captains of the football team with me. And I look over there, and there's my brothers, Mark and Todd, and they were, you know, we were all very close in age, so we had friends in common, and they're telling stories about my dad. And there's, um, I look over on the couch and there's Frank. I probably should have also told you that not only was I on the football team, but I was the quarterback. And so I look over on the couch and there's Frank.

• 45:30Speaker 07

  He's an offensive lineman. It's the job of an offensive lineman to protect the quarterback. And Frank is protecting me, once again, 20 years later, under very different circumstances. And he's got his arm around my girlfriend. They're laughing and knocking back cans of cheap beer. And that was the moment that I knew things were gonna be okay somehow. And there was one more person there that night, and that was my mom. And she told me something that we ended up repeating quite a bit that weekend through the services.

• 46:14Speaker 07

  She came up and she said, you know, Dad was always fixing things and it looks like he fixed this too. She said, you know, even though your father has died, you've been reborn. Thank you very much.

• 46:33Speaker 00

  That was Kimberly Reed. About a year and a half after her father's funeral, Kim went back to Montana to attend her high school reunion. She brought her camera, and her award-winning film, Prodigal Sons, documents that trip. She also directed the feature documentary, Dark Money, which explores political corruption in Montana and elsewhere in the US. She also co-wrote an opera that's been performed all over the world. Recently, I got a chance to catch up with Kim about life since her moth story, which she first told in 2011.

• 47:20Speaker 00

  When you went back to Montana that first time and subsequent times, I'm wondering, what did you expect from people?

• 47:29Speaker 07

  I tended, at that time in my life, to presume what other people's reactions to me were going to be, instead of letting them have their own reaction. And I was wrong about a lot of people. You know, I thought that there would be rejection there and there wasn't. You know, I had sort of set up this barrier that wasn't really there. And the fact that that barrier got broken with my father's death and then the subsequent reunification with my brother that happens.

• 48:09Speaker 07

  I'm just so glad that that happened because if it hadn't and if, you know, we hadn't kind of documented that and told those stories, I don't know that I ever would have figured it out. And there's a lot of people that don't, and I think that that's sad. There's a flip side to all of that. I think what happens to me is, in the story that I tell for The Moth, is a really beautiful story of reunification and love. And it's, you know, still warms my heart to think of it that way. That's not everybody's story.

• 48:50Speaker 07

  I think it's important to tell my story and to tell stories of trans joy and love. And just the fact that we're just kind of like everybody else, as boring as everyone else. And I mentioned earlier that we've come a long way in the way that our society accepts LGB and especially T folks.

• 49:16Speaker 07

  Um, but there's a flip side to that, and that's that there's been more talk about trans folks in our society. But that also comes with kind of a dark underbelly of reaction and blowback and especially violence against trans folks. And, and that's an important thing to acknowledge as we take in these stories of, you know, how far we've come. It's also creating a lot of, of blowback in certain sectors of our society. I mean, half of the states in the country have laws that are designed specifically

• 49:57Speaker 07

  to target trans folks and to remove rights that we have right now. So especially when you're talking about medical treatment for trans kids, I think it's like, especially targeted and, and cruel. And it sort of feels like we're becoming, sort of feels like we're becoming the latest social wedge issue. So two steps forward, one step back, you know, just keep moving forward.

• 50:23Speaker 00

  Well, I'm so glad we have your story of how a family can react that hopefully will lead the way for other families, open their hearts up to it.

• 50:33Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's, that's, that's why we tell these stories, right?

• 50:37Speaker 00

  That was Kimberly Reed. Visit themoth.org to get a link to the trailers for Kim's films and projects. That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time, and that's the story from The Moth.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, Catherine Burns, and Jennifer Hixson, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show along with Larry Rosen. Co-producer is Vicky Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Janes, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Kluchay, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Gladowski, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Casa. Moth Stories Are True is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour is from Epidemic Sound. Podcast music, production support from Davey Sumner.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Reese Dennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.