Matters of the Heart: The Moth Radio Hour

This episode originally aired on March 28th, 2023. In this hour, stories of love—passions, parents, and dating apps. A woman swipes for a second chance, a little girl finds her calling, and fathers find ways to relate to their children. This episode is hosted by Moth Director Meg Bowles. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Storytellers: Kristy Hawkins thumbs her way through the prospects of love. Kemp Powers is convinced he will never be a good dad. Niall Ashdown and his father bond over their love of birds. Esther McManus keeps the baking tradition alive. Podcast # 810

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:12Meg Bowles?

  This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles, and in this show, we'll hear stories from the heart. Deep loyalty, great pride and affection, unbridled passion. Love is a common theme in Moth stories, perhaps because love touches every corner of our lives. We cherish and celebrate it, we daydream about it, and often find ourselves in pursuit of it, like our first storyteller, Kristy Hawkins. Kristy shared her story at a Grand Slam in Denver, Colorado, where we partner with local public radio station KUNC. Here's Kristy Hawkins, live at The Moth.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  I got divorced recently, and my friends and family have decided that it's time for me to get back out there. One of them actually suggested that I should get on Tinder. And I'm not so old and out of it that I don't know what Tinder is. I know what it is. Actually, when I first got divorced, I asked my 21-year-old niece if she thought I should sign up for the Grindr. She explained to me that Tinder and Grindr are not the same thing. But I don't really know how these sites work. I know what they are, but as my friend described it to me that night, and with the swiping left and the swiping right, it occurred to me, this sounds so much like junior high.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  I mean, in junior high, when you liked somebody, you would write a note and ask them, do you like me back? Check one, yes, no, maybe? And then you wait for a response. It's straightforward. But for me, that's terrifying. If this is how dating is gonna be, I'm not sure I want in, because I have really traumatic experiences with these notes. See, when I was 13, I was in love with a boy named Ryan. Ryan was tall, and blond, and blue-eyed, and he was smart and quiet. He's what the kids today would call a hot nerd. And I was not a hot nerd. I was what the kids today would just call a nerd.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  And I had a perm, and I had super-thick glasses, and I wore turtlenecks almost exclusively, like, every day. I mean, Ryan was way out of my league, and I knew that, but it didn't stop me from loving him. I just loved him. And I was not at all subtle about my love for Ryan. So a couple of his friends caught on that I liked him, and these boys, Marcus and Adam, would just tease me about it. But I didn't care. I was in love. Well, this all came to a glorious, glorious head the Friday before spring break of my eighth-grade year.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  I went to my locker to get my books to go home, and there was a note stuck in my locker. And the note, I opened it up and read it, and it was from Ryan. And it said, "Dear Kristy, I really like you. Do you like me too? Check one, yes, no, maybe? Love, Ryan." It said "love." I mean, it was happening. Like, this is happening. I floated to the bus, and I read and reread that note all the way home, imagining how Ryan and I were just gonna be together forever. And I knew that we would not be able to make our dreams come true until after spring break, because back in those days, we didn't have cellphones.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  So I would have to wait until we got back to school. But when I got home, we were ready to leave on vacation for spring break, and the phone rang just as we were walking out the door. And my mom answered it. And she called that it was for me. And when I got closer, she stage whispers to me, "It's a boy." Like, she's as surprised as I am, because I am not a kid that ever got called by boys, believe me. And so I just knew it was Ryan. He was ready to get the party started. Like, he could not wait for spring break to be over. He wanted this to happen now. So I was super cool. I was like, "Hey, Ryan, what's up?" And he was like, "Hey, Kristy, it's Ryan."

• 4:34Speaker 01

  And then he took a big breath, and he said, "You know that note you got in your locker? Well, I didn't write it. Marcus wrote it. It was just a big joke, and he thought it was really funny, but I didn't think it was funny. I just thought it was kinda mean. So I thought I had to call and tell you that I don't like you." Oh, man. I felt all the feelings. Like, I was crushed, beyond crushed. But I gathered my wits, and I said, "Oh, God, Ryan." Like, I totally knew it was a joke the whole time. Like, I would never fall for that. "Well, anyway, Ryan, my mom's calling me, so I have to go. I'll see you at school." And I just fell apart. I cried, and cried, and cried. I cried for seven days straight at spring break.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  But when I got back to school, I hid my feelings. I never said a word about it to Ryan. I never said a word about it to Marcus. I just went on with my life. But fast-forward 15 years, and I ran into Marcus in a bar. And I asked him, after a few drinks, "Why in the hell did you do that to me? That was so mean." And he said, "I had a huge crush on you." And that was my way of showing it. Um, okay. Well, you know, that sounds kinda sweet. So we got married. Yeah. We got married. And we had three kids. And we spent 10 years together. But wait, wait.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  You guys heard me at the beginning of this show say that I just got divorced, right? So, I'll spare you the details, but when Marcus left, it was like getting that note all over again, and then getting a call telling me that the whole thing was just a joke. So here I am. I'm 40. I'm going on 14. And I have to start dating again, and we have to do it with technology. I mean, when I was in my 20s, we just, like, put on beer goggles and wrote a number on a napkin and hoped for the best. Like, that seems simple. This is gonna be tough. But I'm trying to look on the bright side.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't wear glasses anymore, and I don't perm my hair, and I don't wear turtlenecks that often. So I'm liking my chances. I am liking my chances. So I am here tonight to tell you that I am gonna get on the Grindr, and I am gonna find a Ryan, and I am gonna be swiping left and swiping right, and one of these days, I'm gonna get swiped back.

• 7:19Meg Bowles?

  Kristy Hawkins works from home for a large healthcare company. And when she's not working or playing chauffeur for her three kids, she's entertaining the friends and family who are always coming in and out of her house. She says life is very busy, but lots of fun. When Kristy found out we were airing her story, she shared it with her ex-husband, Marcus. They're still friends and co-parenting-like champions, she says. When Marcus heard the story, he wrote to her and said, "You say all those things like hair, and perm, and turtlenecks, like they made you unattractive, but that isn't true. I loved your red turtleneck and Sally Jesse's and the short-on-the-sides curly-on-top do.

• 8:00Meg Bowles?

  It's amazing how we feel about ourselves and how other people see us." In the last year, Kristy says she's gotten more serious in her search for love, and she's currently swiping and getting swiped a lot. She shared some classic yearbook photos of Marcus and Ryan, and yes, she is sporting her famous turtleneck. You can see those on our website. They're pretty cute. Our next story comes from Kemp Powers. He told it way back in 2011 at a Moth Grand Slam we produced in Los Angeles, in partnership with KCRW. Here's Kemp, live at The Moth.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  I'm 37 years old, and I wasn't really very good at much of anything in my 20s, least of all marriage. But the decision to get a divorce wasn't an easy one. For a lot of people, the legal tangle is what stops them from getting a divorce. But in my world, that wasn't really a big decision maker. It was because we had a daughter. And going through it, that meant that on some level, I was going to be losing her, if not literally, then figuratively. So when people have a really bad breakup, it's not uncommon for one parent to be left feeling like, basically, their kid is better

• 9:34Speaker 02

  off without them. And in my case, it wasn't very hard to convince me. To put it very simply, I really, really, really sucked at being a dad. When my daughter was a small infant, I swore that she was going to break some kind of record for falling out of bassinets, falling out of cribs, falling out of beds. And it always seemed to happen when I was the one that was watching her. And I was hardly ever around. I traveled so much for work. And in the rare occasions that I was there, any effort that I made to try to bond with her always seemed to backfire. I bought her this, when she was three months old, I bought her this gangly little puppet that I named Sanchez, after my favorite reggae

• 10:15Speaker 02

  dancehall singer. And she was, she was really in the Sesame Street, so I really thought that this puppet was going to bring her a lot of joy. Instead, it just fucking terrified her. And from there, things just continued to get worse. I mean, by the time, when she was six months old, I decided that it was really smart for her to know that fire was dangerous, and it was something that she should stay away from. So one day, when I was making a cup of tea, I picked her up. Holding her in one hand, and the hot kettle in the other, I explained very carefully that you should never, ever, ever touch hot things, because they could hurt you. At least I did in my mind. Because in reality, by the time I got to the word "touch," she'd already reached out and grabbed the bottom

• 11:00Speaker 02

  of the steaming kettle and burned herself. So by the time my daughter was one years old, I was already pretty much afraid to be left alone with her. She suffered from a febrile seizure at 18 months, and vomited in the middle of the night and inhaled it, almost choking to death. She was in the hospital for a week. And I remembered looking at her in that incubator with the tubes up her nose and the butterfly IV in her hand and thinking to myself, dude, you're just going to fucking get somebody killed. And so I didn't fight, because I didn't really think I had any right to. I didn't fight the incredibly restrictive visitation rights that I had. I didn't fight when her mother asked for

• 11:43Speaker 02

  my approval to relocate to Phoenix. And I didn't even fight when the visitation that we did agree upon fell by the wayside, because at the end of the day, you know, they were too busy in their life out there for her to keep up with her schedule of visitation in Los Angeles. So my friends, they were really supportive, but they weren't really able to offer me any counsel. It was this really bizarre twist, that we had all grown up in this world where divorce was just a fact of life. But suddenly, I found myself in this adult world, where every single family that I knew was nuclear. It was like we were suddenly back in the 50s, only I didn't have to drink out of a separate water fountain, and I didn't have to worry about getting lynched from having had a kid with

• 12:25Speaker 02

  a white lady. But every single person that I knew my age was either so happily married that it bordered on kind of sickening, or so relentlessly single that it bordered on parody. And my friends loved me, and I loved them too. But to all of them, to the friends who were married, I was basically that single guy that they could live vicariously through. And to the ones who were single, I was the divorcee with all the responsibility that proved to them that them not having any kids and not getting married had been the right decision to make. So I basically went on with my life and got used to the routine that we had. That was all I really had. The sporadic phone calls, the grudging pickups

• 13:08Speaker 02

  that happened at the halfway point between Los Angeles and Phoenix. It was a barren place, filled with more scorpions and dust devils than people. And our drives out of the desert, my daughter and I hardly ever spoke. And I was pretty glad about that, because not talking meant that I never really had to explain why we were in the situation that we were in. So one day back in March, I get this telephone call, early in the morning, and it's from my daughter. And I'm pretty surprised, because she almost never calls me. When I answer, she's distraught. She's crying. She says, Dad, a tsunami has just destroyed Japan, and it's heading for California. You need to get out of bed right now and get to a high point immediately. Now, initially, I just had to assure her that there was no

• 13:53Speaker 02

  chance that a tidal wave was going to wash away Koreatown anytime soon. But she was still too worried to be calmed down, so to assuage her fears, I had to talk to her. And we talked. We talked about her piano lessons. We talked about her upcoming 13th birthday. We talked about her now six-year-old brother who lived with me, who she missed dearly. And we talked about me, who she missed just as much. It turned out that she still had her puppet Sanchez, which she hung on the wall next to her bed. When my daughter's 13th birthday came around, we made a pact. Going forward, we would speak every Sunday at 12:00 PM, no matter where we were. And when we spoke, she would get to ask me one

• 14:34Speaker 02

  question. It didn't matter what the question was, I had to give her the answer. And this was something that made me a little bit nervous, because I was finally going to be held accountable for something. When the first question came, it was, what was my favorite book? After that, it was, what was my favorite movie? A week later, what was my favorite song? And as the weeks turned into months, these questions revolved about the things I'd done, the places I'd been, and how I was living my life. My daughter is 13 years old and 5'10" tall. But I can still pick her up, and I can still hold her in my arms. We talk every week now, and when I hold her, every time that I see her, and when I do, I just make sure that I keep that hot kettle just a little bit out of reach. Thank you.

• 15:31Meg Bowles?

  Kemp Powers is an author and a celebrated writer and director for both stage and screen. His screen adaptation of his award-winning play, One Night in Miami, was nominated for an Academy Award. He's an amazing storyteller all around, and dare I say, a pretty great dad. In an email, Kemp gave me a little update. He said, "In 2020, after my daughter graduated magna cum laude from her college in Arizona, she returned to Los Angeles and moved into my house. She's currently working at a Los Angeles publicity firm, and continues to live at home with Dad until she can save up enough to get her own place." You can find out more about Kemp and any of the stories you hear in this hour on our website, themoth.org.

• 16:22Meg Bowles?

  Coming up, a shared passion for the brilliance of birds, except for pigeons, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

• 16:53Speaker 03

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

• 16:59Meg Bowles?

  This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles. Sometimes, our love for things isn't appreciated by others in quite the same way. Something one person finds mundane might be magical through someone else's eyes. Our next storyteller, Neil Ashdown, developed a love of birds as a boy that has stuck with him long into adulthood. During the pandemic, the ordinary little feathered friends became lifelines. He said in an email, "In the midst of my not going out, a sparrowhawk sat in a tree and ate its meal, and then sat there digesting it for another hour. Birds always fail to disappoint me." Sounds like love to me. Neil shared a story that gives us a little insight into his particular ornithological

• 17:42Meg Bowles?

  obsession at an evening we produced at the Union Chapel in London. Here's Neil.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  When I was eight years old, I was in a primary school classroom drawing. I didn't know what I was drawing. And then, when I'd finished my drawing, I realised what I'd drawn was a bird. And it was probably a robin. And from that moment on, I realised that the most important thing in the world was birds. Birds were brilliant, they still are. Birds can sing and fly. Think of anything else that can do both those things. Don't think too hard, it's not the point of the story. They can also dance and dive and swim, they are just brilliant.

• 18:36Speaker 04

  And the good thing about this was that my dad kind of agreed with me. And so, we instantly struck up this common interest slash obsession with birds. If we had summer holidays, the usual criteria didn't apply to our summer holidays as to its relative success or failure. We didn't judge it by the weather, for example, it was always in Scotland, so there was no point in judging it by the weather anyway. Or the landscape, which of course is beautiful in Scotland, we didn't judge it by that. No, we judged it by how many new birds we saw during that trip. There was one year when we saw nine. Nine.

• 19:17Speaker 04

  That was the best holiday ever. Better than anybody else's holiday here that you've ever had, it was fantastic. And so, a lot of my childhood memories are sort of pivot around bird-related experiences. If I could choose one, I would choose the time we stopped our camper van in a lay-by. If there's anybody American here, it's like a little bit of a road off a main road. And there was a big patch of grass there. And we got out of the van, and we started to get mobbed by a pair of lapwings. Now, lapwings are like... Anybody know what a lapwing is? One person. There's so much work to do.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  A lapwing is like a small glover, that size of a crow. And it's also known as a peewit, because of the noise it makes, which is "peewit". It was a bit close to the mic, sorry about that. And so, they mob you if you get near their nest. And so, I'm getting mobbed, and my dad's getting mobbed. And we get into the camper van, or we used to call it a caravet back then. I realised caravet sounds like some awful trendy marketing solutions firm. But it was actually what we called a camper van back then. And we got inside, and then we got ready for bed, because we were staying overnight in our camper van in the lay-by. And then, my dad, about dusk, got out the van again and walked back across the grass.

• 20:44Speaker 04

  And he came back quite excited, quite agitated, and he said, "I've found the nest. There's five eggs in it." And I was like, "Brilliant, brilliant, let's go, let's go, let's go, Dad." He said, "No. We have already disturbed the birds enough, we must leave them. You are in your pyjamas, it is bedtime." So I thought, "That is so unfair." I lay in bed, in my sleeping bag, just railing against the injustice of this pointless, spiteful decision. And I woke up, sort of, in the morning, after a very sulky night's sleep. And I was actually woken up, it was about quarter to six, way too early, by a rough hand shaking my shoulder.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  And then, two big hands picked me up, shook off my sleeping bag, and dropped me into a pair of Wellington boots, threw a coat on me, still had my pyjamas on. And we walked out across the dew-soaked tussocky grass, back towards the nest. And when we got to the brink of the nest, the eggs had gone. And had been replaced by five little downy brown chicks. Beautiful little baby birds, they'd hatched in the night. When I romanticise it in my head, I think there's still little bits of dried yolk on their fur. And just before we get to too close, they start to lift up on really long legs, they're outsized legs,

• 22:10Speaker 04

  and totter off over the tussocky grass, a bit like drunk women on stilettos. Or, if that offends you, drunk men on stilettos. Drunk people on stilettos. But it was wonderful, it was the most exultant moment of my young life, it was just heaven. Cut to, about forty-one years later, give or take a month, and I'm holding that self-same hand, and I'm in an ambulance. And my dad is on his back, and he's frailer and he's paler. And he looks like he's dying, I think he is dying.

• 22:51Speaker 04

  His breath is shallow, his feet have swollen up in a grotesque way. He might have pneumonia, his kidneys are just not working, he hasn't been able to hear for years. And I'm holding his hand, and I'm looking at him, and I'm thinking, "Well, if this is it, then this is it." He keeps telling us he's had a good life, he doesn't need any more life, there's nothing else to achieve particularly. If this is it, he'll be fine. And there's no need to grieve, just let him go, because there are lots of losses. You suffer as a child with your parent, there are little losses, little moments of grief during your life. When he can't put you on his shoulders anymore, that's a loss. When he drops you off at university, in my case, university, and waves goodbye,

• 23:35Speaker 04

  and you're standing there on your own two feet, on your own, that's a loss. When you're going for a walk, looking for birds, and you turn around, and your dad, far from being fifty yards in front of you, is a hundred yards behind you. And he looks old, that's a loss. And this is a loss too, this strange distortion of my father lying in an ambulance. And the other thing I think is that if he is gonna die, given my work schedule at the moment, it would be really good if it was around now, because I've got to go back to finish off my theatre tour. I'm doing a theatre tour in Houston, Texas, I've got to fly back there.

• 24:20Speaker 04

  And actually, I know that sounds callous, but I've been working with these people for about four or five months. And during that time, they have seen me through my fiftieth birthday in Brooklyn, got me very, very drunk, paid for me to go and see LeBron James play basketball, one of the greatest experiences of my life as well. And then, I got very, very poorly myself, my stomach was very, very bad. And they helped me through that, and I never missed a show, and they have looked after me. And I owe them the last month of this tour, I owe them Houston. So we get to the hospital, and somehow, my dad gets into a bed on the ward. And then, the next day, he's a bit brighter, actually, he's perked up a bit.

• 25:00Speaker 04

  And then, he's not well, he's not going to get better, I don't think, but he's perky, you know. And then, that continues for a few more days. And it gets to the point where I hear from my brothers and sisters that my dad has decreed that in no circumstances must I stay here. I must go to Houston and finish the tour. So I get to the point where I have to go, I have to get on a train. So I go and see him for what might be the last time. I try to think of something profound to say, or something useful to say. So, as any Englishman would do, I end up sitting there saying nothing.

• 25:41Speaker 04

  And listening to the birds that are singing outside, there's blackbirds, and there's a robin. There's a pied wagtail flittering around, they like car parks, so inevitably, they're there. And there's also pigeons, a few pigeons cooing around, I hate pigeons, actually. When I say I love all birds, I don't love all birds, I hate pigeons. I have a visceral contempt for pigeons, I think they're the shittest bird ever invented. They're tiny little pinheads, and, you know, they're bloody everywhere, doesn't matter where you go in the world, there's always pigeons. And they fly quite impressively, so they always look like they might be something more interesting. "Ooh, that could be a hawk", "No, it's another effing pigeon, it's another pigeon", I don't like pigeons.

• 26:25Speaker 04

  So anyway, I sort of lean forward, because I have to go, and I lean forward. And my dad, who, as I've said, is hard of hearing, I wouldn't have heard the blackbird, or the robin, or anything like that. I lean forward to him, and I say, "I love you." And he says, "What?" And I say, "I love you." And I stand up, kiss him on the cheek, and I walk out of the hospital ward. And just as I'm leaving, I hear my dad say, in a loud voice, "I know you do." So I get on a train, and I get on a plane, and I'm in Houston, and I'm doing my show.

• 27:08Speaker 04

  And probably two and a half weeks later, at about half past eight in the morning, I get a phone call. And it's my wife, and my wife says, "Hello darling, how are you?" And I say, "I'm fine, how are you?" She says, "Yeah, yeah, I'm good, I'm good, how was the show?" "Oh, it was great, yeah, yeah, it's good, it's going very well, thanks." "Good, well, your dad passed..." And then, the line goes dead on the word "passed". And I'm thinking, "Oh no, oh no, it's got to be passed away." So I'm waiting for the phone to ring, but it takes a bit of a while for the phone to ring again. And I'm thinking, "Well, it doesn't have to be away, it could be passed wind, it could be passed muster in a series of difficult physical tests.

• 27:53Speaker 04

  It could be passed caring." The phone rings again, and it's my wife, she says, "What happened?" I said, "I don't know, the line went dead." She said, "Well, your dad passed away this morning." "Okay." So, I don't... It's a strange thing when your eyes absolutely fill with tears in an instant, but that's what happened. And I listened to the rest of the story, and I heard the fact that my mum was with him, and she read a beautiful poem to him as he passed away by W. B. Yeats. And I thought, "That's good, that's a good way to go." And I went out into the lounge in our apartment in Houston. And I sort of felt, in a strange way, as close to my dad as I've ever felt.

• 28:36Speaker 04

  And easily as far away from my family as I'd ever felt. And I looked out the window, before I could do that, Stu, one of my colleagues, came out of his room and said, "All right, mate." And I said, "He's gone." And he held me and let me cry a lot more, which I did a lot, very hard, for about thirty seconds, and then stopped. And then, I looked out this window, and by the window, that's overlooking a busy Houston street, there is a telegraph wire. And as I look out the window, a bird comes out of the sky and lands on the telegraph wire. And it's a pigeon.

• 29:21Speaker 04

  And I look at the pigeon and the pigeon looks at me.

• 29:26Speaker 04

  It's quite a jaunty little chap, you know. Looks at me as if to say, "All right, mate."

• 29:32Speaker 04

  And I look at him and I say, "No. No, I'm sorry. If you think you are going to be the punctuation mark at the end of the story of my my father's life and my relationship to him, if you think you are going to be the point where it comes full circle, if you think you're going to supply some sort of congruency to the narrative arc of my life with my dad, then you are sadly mistaken, sir, because you are a pigeon. And my dad was an eagle. My dad was an owl. My dad was an eagle owl.

• 30:11Speaker 04

  So the pigeon looks at me and somewhat apologetically lifts off and flies away.

• 30:18Speaker 04

  And I watch it go. And so I'm still waiting for the punctuation mark. That was about two years ago.

• 30:26Speaker 04

  Hasn't arrived yet.

• 30:29Speaker 04

  All I'm left with is a sense of absence. That something's not there.

• 30:38Speaker 04

  But every so often, I get a sense that he is still around. And the last time it happened was about a year ago. I was in a Cornish woodland in a clearing, sunshine dappling through the leaves. And this little wood was full of of song and wing. And my father was in every note and in every feather.

• 31:05Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 31:17Meg Bowles?

  That was the actor, writer, and improv comedian Neil Ashdown. Neil still feels his father when birds are about. In an email, he told me, "My mom was on her own during the COVID lockdowns and the birds and the feeders in the garden probably kept her going more than anything else. And in that, I'd like to think that dad is keeping her going." When I asked Neil about his thoughts on love, he said, "Love has its flip side: loss. Once you lose a treasured loved one, it sharpens the love for those left behind and the fear of losing them. I deeply love what I'm grateful for, and I'm grateful for what and who I love." As Neil mentioned in his story, he thinks of his father as owlish.

• 31:58Meg Bowles?

  And he almost got a tattoo of an owl after his father died, but thought he'd probably think that was stupid. And he added, "I'm not very good with paint, so I resisted."

• 32:10Meg Bowles?

  You can find out more about Neil and see pictures of him and his father on their bird adventures on our website, themoth.org.

• 32:28Meg Bowles?

  Something I love about working at The Moth is listening to stories that come in on our pitch line. People call in and leave a two-minute pitch. The stories are sometimes funny or heartbreaking, small moments and big moments that left a lasting impression. If you have a story, we'd love to hear it. Just visit our website and look for "Tell a Story," and you can find all the info for how to pitch us. Pitches are developed for shows all around the world.

• 33:02Meg Bowles?

  Coming up, the magic of a great love, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

• 33:18Speaker 03

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

• 33:26Meg Bowles?

  This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles, and our final story in this hour comes from Esther McManus. She shared it an evening we produced in Somerville, Massachusetts, in partnership with local public radio station WBUR. Live from the Somerville Theater, here's Esther McManus.

• 33:49Speaker 05

  Good evening.

• 33:52Speaker 05

  I am so proud to be here.

• 33:57Speaker 05

  And I thank you.

• 34:00Speaker 05

  And I thank you for being here.

• 34:04Speaker 05

  So my story is, some 35 years ago, I was asked to open a restaurant called Le Bus in the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia. It was called Le Bus because it started as a school bus.

• 34:31Speaker 05

  We made things that, at the time, seemed and were really very unusual, and nobody made them. French baguettes, crusty bread, brioche, even the tricky croissants.

• 34:56Speaker 05

  We were so popular that we had to open a real bakery to be ready for the demand. So my boss and I, David, went all over the world: France, Germany, New York, Seattle, begging bakers to teach us their trade.

• 35:23Speaker 05

  Soon, we had bread in almost every table in the restaurant of Philadelphia. We were a hit.

• 35:38Speaker 05

  Then, one day, out of the blue, in 1998, I received a call from a woman who was scouting to find bakers to be guests at the Julia Child TV show.

• 36:04Speaker 05

  And she asked me to send my croissants to her to try them.

• 36:14Speaker 05

  I couldn't believe my ears. For me, you understand, it's a real dream. I was born in Marrakech, Morocco, in 1936, the 13th child of my family and the last one. My saint mother cooked and baked every day except shabbat. My father was a rabbi and a farmer.

• 36:51Speaker 05

  Every morning, when I would wake up, I'd see my mother and her maid blowing on a small charcoal burner to make a fire in order to heat water to make the daily bread. We did not have electricity. I was mesmerized to look at my maid, stooped on a small, low table with this huge mass

• 37:28Speaker 05

  of dough kneading it while her whole body is rocking to make it crackly and beautiful, while my mother encouraged her to do it a little longer, please, until this dough became silky and bubbly.

• 37:53Speaker 05

  Then, they made round loaves, left them to rise until they were ready to go to the public oven to be baked. It was my job, as a little girl coming from school, to bring the golden loaves home. They smelled so good. And I felt that that was the time that my passion for the magic of flower and water was planted in me and never left.

• 38:38Speaker 05

  And here I was, receiving a call from Julia Child.

• 38:47Speaker 05

  I better be ready. So every day, I made batch after batch of croissants.

• 38:59Speaker 05

  Imagine how happy my neighbors were.

• 39:05Speaker 05

  When the day came to send the croissants to Julia, I wrapped every one individually, froze it, packed it lovingly, and wrote her a letter in French. "Chère Julia, partir c'est mourir un peu," which means, "To leave is to die a little." Same for my croissants. They left me, so they died a little.

• 39:41Speaker 05

  But here is a way to revive them and bring them back to life. In a 300-degree oven, Fahrenheit, please, bake them for 10 minutes and enjoy. I then tied the bag into my bicycle and went to FedEx.

• 40:10Speaker 05

  They assured me the croissants will arrive the next morning to Cambridge, Massachusetts, right your home.

• 40:27Speaker 05

  Then it all hit me. I just sent croissants to Julia Child. Me, this little girl who saw the most basic bread made in the most primitive way by women who did not know how to read and write. And now I'm sending chic, elegant croissants to this divinity called Julia Child.

• 41:11Speaker 05

  But I was worried. Will she like them? How many bakers sent her their croissants? I did not sleep that night because I went through despair to hope. In the morning, at 10:30, the phone rang. Esther, I love your buttery croissants.

• 41:45Speaker 05

  Would you be on my show? I lost my voice. I couldn't talk. I think I said, merci, Julia. A month later, I went to Boston for the show.

• 42:17Speaker 05

  I carted a suitcase with croissants, fresh, frozen, pain au chocolat, almond croissants, and those that were frozen in different stages of the making of a croissant, just in case I would need them in the show.

• 42:51Speaker 05

  When I arrived to Julia's home, which was also the studio, I was in another world. Cameras everywhere, screens, people running around. No one even noticed I was there. Then Julia arrived, bigger than life. She graciously introduced me to the guest audience, and then she became the student and I the teacher.

• 43:34Speaker 05

  But the air conditioning did not work. The heat was intense, humid. The dough was melting in my hands. I couldn't do anything. I was nervous, but determined. Thank God I had those doughs. I took one of them, filled it with the butter, wrapped it in the butter, gave the regular turns, the classical turns for pastel pastry, and went through every step of every move

• 44:19Speaker 05

  that you make for the croissant. You have to understand, croissants are capricious, and they don't forgive much. But when they went to the oven, a miracle happened. All those layers, butter dough, butter dough, butter dough, butter dough, all rose harmoniously at the same time and produced the best croissant.

• 45:01Speaker 05

  It was a triumph. Julia said, in her face, with the biggest joy I ever saw her showing, she took a piece of a hot croissant, a huge one, in her mouth, and while chewing on it, she showed this beautiful inside of the croissant to the audience and said to me, even in France, they don't make croissants like these anymore.

• 45:41Speaker 05

  Then she added, keep the tradition alive. Here's this little girl from Marrakech, spending her life, pursuing her passion for what flower magic can do in multitude ways. Yes, Julia, I am keeping the tradition alive. Thank you.

• 46:16Meg Bowles?

  That was Esther McManus. Over the years, she and Julia developed a friendship, and Esther told me about a night when Julia came to Philadelphia and Esther invited her for dinner. At first, it was meant to be a small affair, but the guest list quickly grew to include all the chefs in Philadelphia, so she put them to work. The menu, she said, was a simple Moroccan home meal with couscous, grilled racks of lamb, miniature bastillas, which is a Moroccan pigeon pie, and a French dessert, millefoy.

• 47:01Meg Bowles?

  The evening was a success. Julia loved the meal, and they all apparently enjoyed the wine a little too much. Esther says, for her, baking is like a disease with no cure, but a good disease. Her advice is to be patient when you bake and do it over and over again until your fingers learn to recognize when the dough is right. She says that baking is hard, boring at times, and unforgiving, but for her, the reward is always making someone happy.

• 47:42Meg Bowles?

  You can find a recipe for Esther's amazing croissants in Julia Child's book, Baking with Julia, and on our website, themoth.org. Esther also shared some wonderful pictures spanning her career in the kitchen. That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us again next time. And until then, here's wishing you happiness and joy in all the things and people you

• 48:12Meg Bowles?

  love.

• 48:37Speaker 03

  This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, Catherine Burns, and Meg Bowles, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show. Co-producer is Vicky Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch. The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jennifer Hickson, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Kluch, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Glodowsky, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Kaza. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from George Brandl Egloff and Epidemic Sound.

• 49:20Speaker 03

  Podcast music production support from Davey Sumner. We received 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.