The Moth Radio Hour: Mama Bear

In this hour, stories of mothers as protectors, rescuers, and, sometimes, meddlers. 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. Storytellers: Donald Harrison plays piano at a gay bar. Luann Sims throws a broccoli-themed party. Muneesh Jain travels to every baseball stadium in the country. Xochitl Gonzalez is a wedding planner tempted to take sides. Podcast # 919

• 0:13Speaker 00

  This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Jennifer Hixson. In this hour, we'll be hearing stories by and about mothers, the matriarch, your most insightful critic, or your greatest defender, often both at once. Consider the archetype: mama bear, fiercely protective, running on instincts, able to fend off your worst enemies and soften your darkest hours. Sometimes the mama bears in our lives are our grandmas, or our sisters, our neighbors. There was a crossing guard in the town I grew up in. I pity the impatient driver who'd honk or inch up while us kids were crossing. Nuh-uh, not on her watch. We met our first storyteller, Donald Harrison, in Philadelphia. Here he is, at St. Anne's Church in New York City.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  The year I turned 30, I decided it was about damn time I got a job playing the piano and singing in a gay bar. Sometimes you just reach that phase of your life, you know? But it wasn't any gay bar. It was a Philadelphia institution called Tavern on Comac. I had always loved Tavern. It is a medium-sized gay piano bar. Back then, every wall and surface was covered in mirrors. There's a baby grand piano off in the corner, and piano players every night accompanying themselves. There's also a guest microphone next to them, and customers can come up and do a solo with the piano player. It's great. This seemed like the dream side gig for me. I mean, a chance to perform every week?

• 1:47Speaker 01

  People clapping at me on a regular basis? Free drinks? Yes, please. So, I auditioned, and to my amazement, I got the job. When I first started working at Tavern, I inherited a small crew of regulars. My shift was happy hour on a Friday, which meant that my crew of regulars was mostly older gentlemen. Men who had been going to that same bar, though the name and layout had changed over the years for decades. They were 20, 30, 40, sometimes 50 years older than me. They could remember when the piano was over here, when the piano was over there, and they could recite the long lineage of piano players who had preceded me, just as you might the kings and queens of France.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  My regulars terrified me. I wasn't what you'd call a seasoned or very professional singer when I first started working there. In fact, on my third Friday on the job, one of these inherited regulars pity tipped me a single dollar and then stormed out of the bar after he told me that my performance of "On the Street Where You Live" was "perfunctory."

• 2:55Speaker 01

  My background in English meant I understood this word. And I understood it to mean that I had sung without feeling.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  My background in being anxious meant I was rather destroyed by this bit of feedback.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  However, this man went on to say that my perfunctory performance also proved I had no respect for the American songbook. "That's right, I wasn't just bad at a single song, but I was lousy at the entire canon I was attempting to perform." "Cool," I thought, "thanks for the note. I'll just keep going."

• 3:32Speaker 01

  But what I wanted was to do that job well, and that meant making men like him happy. Because not only was this the generation of gay men who had preceded me, who had spent decades of their lives fighting for our rights and our visibility, living their lives in such a way so as to make comfortable the life I have today, but this was also the generation of men who had kept alive this grand piano bar tradition, singing the same songs, making the same requests, belting out "Over the Rainbow" for the 50,000th time, holding on to this brand of music and live performance no matter where the piano was or who the piano player was.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Inside those mirrored walls was their space and their tradition, and I wanted to be a part of it.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  One of these regulars was named Mike. Do you know that line from the Christmas song "Do You Hear What I Hear?" that goes, "With a voice as big as the sea..." Well, Mike has that sort of quintessential Pacific Ocean kind of voice. It's wide, it's deep, and it's capable of totally drowning out everyone around him.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  But Mike isn't just loud. He is also guilty of what I like to call the "I could've danced all night" power move.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  The last line of "I Could Have Danced All Night" from "My Fair Lady" is, as maybe you know, hopefully you know, "I could have danced, danced, danced all night."

• 5:04Speaker 01

  The person performing the song gets to decide how long that little beat is at the end. "I could have danced, danced, danced." Hold for drama? "All night."

• 5:15Speaker 01

  The "I Could Have Danced All Night" power move occurs when someone who's not performing the song decides that from their spot out in the audience, they will decide when to come in on that final note.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  The person who comes in ahead of the piano player does not do it by accident. No, he does it to assert his dominance. This is a type of musical theater conquest. And it's during these moments in so many songs that Mike takes over. But Mike's music is joyful music, and I love him for it. Yes, he overrules my timing. Yes, he sings too loudly. But there's no question that he means well, that it's inside of Tavern that he's living his best life. So, one night, a few months into my tenure there, it's 7:30 on Friday, and I've got one person sitting at the piano with me. The one fan I have earned in all the weeks of playing so far: my mom.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  My mom was there the first night I ever played there, which was, not incidentally, also her first night in a gay bar. She had been back a few times since. And she would tell anyone who would listen that she was there to hear her baby sing. So there she is, perched alone at the piano when in walks Mike. These two had not yet arrived there on the same night, but I had envisioned their meeting. And I had envisioned it in much the way an astronomer might, the meeting of celestial objects.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  I watched as Mike crossed the room, got a drink at the bar, and then sat down across the piano from my mom. It was just the three of us at this point. What could I do but begin to play the lullaby of Broadway? In my timid and perfunctory way.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  So I start, "Come on along and listen to..." And then Mike joins in, "The lullaby of Broadway."

• 7:17Speaker 01

  I glance over the sheet music at my mom's eyes. And my mom's eyes say, "What the fuck?"

• 7:26Speaker 01

  I continue, "The hip-hooray and ballyhoo..." And Mike continues, "The lullaby of Broadway." I look at my mom. My mom's eyes say, "What? This cannot be happening. How are we all accepting this? Where's the manager?" But Mike's still like, "Milkman's on his way." And I can see outrage really starting to build up in my mom. And she begins by giving Mike a less-than-savory look, a look I myself have received many times throughout my life. This does nothing, so then she starts gesturing toward that guest microphone. And the message for Mike is clear: "Go up there, do your own solo, then sit down and shut up."

• 8:11Speaker 01

  I shake my head at her. "Please, Mom. No. This is the way of the world here. And so it has been since time immemorial, and so it ever shall be. We must endure this." But she persists. And before long, Mike finally clocks her disdain. And he says something like, "Do you have a problem, lady?" And my mom says, "I'm just trying to listen to my son." And then they start to argue over the piano. I decide my only power in this situation is my ability to overwhelm them with my show tune. So I play louder. They argue louder. Still, the lyrics are an absurd mismatch to what's unfolding in front of me. It's all the daffodils who entertain at Angelo's and Maxi's.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Through this, I hear Mike say something like, "Do you know how long I've been coming here, honey?" And I think, "Shit. We have already reached a honey point in this gay bar argument."

• 9:11Speaker 01

  And I, myself, am starting to sweat. And I'm starting to get very angry. Because you know what? It's hard enough to come in here, week after week, and play these songs for these men, and get called inadequate in all manner of vocabulary words that are fancy AF.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  But now, now I have to do it with my mom coming in and causing trouble for me. So I get angrier at her. Because of course, Mike sings too loudly, we all know that. But he is a regular. This is the one place he should be able to go to escape the judgment and scorn of middle-aged suburban straight ladies from New Jersey.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  On the other hand, Mike does sing way too loudly. And my mom is in a gay bar for like, the fifth time in her life. And she wants to hear me sing. And I'm proud of her, and she's proud of me, and she should be able to do it. But still, they're going at it over the piano, and my lullaby of Broadway is getting really insane on my wall. "You rock a bar your baby round till everything gets hazy." And I'm not wanting the song to end, because then what's gonna happen? What's this ridiculous fight gonna sound like when the piano is quiet? The stupid, noob, bad piano player and his mom coming in and yelling at everybody?

• 10:29Speaker 01

  But then,

• 10:31Speaker 01

  you know, then I'm worried like, is Mike gonna say something truly hurtful to my mom? Or is my mom, who is a personal trainer, going to beat up Mike?

• 10:41Speaker 01

  I watch as my mom stands up and begins to move toward him. I wouldn't say that she looks like a lioness stalking over for the kill, but you know, I wouldn't not say it.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  I feel powerless to stop whatever is about to happen. And I reach the end of the song, what else can I do but finish? Two other people clap. My chest is heaving in that way, it does after the big final notes of show tunes, all up there by myself like, and my mom gets close to Mike, and Mike looks up at her. And then, they hug.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  They hug. Now my own eyes say, "What the fuck?" What incredible transformation has occurred while I was so savagely pounding out the last few lines of the lullaby of Broadway?

• 11:32Speaker 01

  In a moment, I would learn that Mike's question, "Do you know how long I've been coming here, honey?" had led them to discuss their respective ages. A very mature place to take this conversation, I might add. But this conversation about their ages led them to discover that they had been born within hours of one another. My mom and Mike were not two comets doomed for mutual annihilation in the midnight sky. They were birthday buddies.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  And it was on this common ground that we could all begin to try to get along.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  It's been almost 12 years since my mom and Mike met that night at Tavern on Mac, and I've played there almost every Friday we've been open since. A lot of regulars have come and gone over the years. Some are no longer with us. But my mom and Mike are still two of my most faithful. Many times over these years, people have come up to my mom and they've told her how awesome it is that she's there, a mom watching her son play piano in a gay bar. My mom talks to them and she hangs out with them. And they tell her their own moms wouldn't come to a place like this. My mom threatens to text them and ask them, "Why?"

• 12:54Speaker 01

  This is the territory she's found for herself around that piano. Mike is still exactly the same. He still sings way too loudly. My mom still gives him the stink eye. But a couple of years back, they went out to dinner together to celebrate their birthdays.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  It turns out that there continue to be timeless standoffs across that piano, whether my mom's involved or not. But in the end, keeping that grand piano bar tradition alive is about coming together, this glorious mishmash of ages and generations, to make that loud and joyful music together. And for that, I'll be home on Friday. Thank you.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  That was Donald Harrison. In addition to being a pianist, he's a writer who also works in learning and development. To see a picture of Donald and his mother, visit themoth.org, where you can also download the story or pitch a story of your own. Several years ago, Donald's mom started doing her own number at the mic. Her go-to song? "When You're Good to Mama." How fitting.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Our next story is from mother of two, Luann Sims, who told this at a story slam in Philadelphia. The theme was celebrations. Here's Luann.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  We were sitting around the dinner table, trying to come up with a theme for my son's fourth birthday party. He mentioned Star Wars, but I dismissed it. Star Wars parties are a dime a dozen. We need something more original. My dad put a bite of asparagus in his mouth and said, "Why don't you have an asparagus party?"

• 14:52Speaker 02

  "That's ridiculous. We're not having an asparagus-themed birthday party. Eddie doesn't even like asparagus." "Yeah," my son said, "I don't like asparagus. I like broccoli." And so it was settled.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  The next day, I photoshopped my son's face onto a crown of broccoli and sent invitations to all of our family and friends. "Please come to a broccoli party."

• 15:22Speaker 02

  I decorated all in green, of course. There was a broccoli-shaped cake and a photo cutout thing where you could put your face in, get your picture taken as a stalk of broccoli.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  There was even a broccoli-shaped pinata.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  The kids were all anxious to hit the pinata, but before I let them, I gathered them around to tell them the legend of Captain Broccoli. Captain Broccoli was just a regular guy who wanted to be a superhero. But when he went to apply for the job, he found out that all of the good, important superhero jobs were already filled. So the only thing left for him to do was to become the superhero for times that aren't that important. So if you're trapped under a dresser, you want to call for Superman or maybe Jesus to come and help you.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  But if you get the wrong flavor popsicle, you want to call Captain Broccoli. And the way that you call Captain Broccoli is like this. Teba, tuba, taba, taba, tuba. Which is a nonsense phrase from my childhood. Finally, it was time to hit the pinata. They don't sell broccoli-shaped pinatas, so I had to make it. And apparently, this was a pinata of steel. Because the kids went through the line three or four times each, and nobody could even make a dent in the pinata. And everyone was getting really frustrated, so we decided to let the birthday boy, my son, just hit it until it opened. So we hit it eight or nine times,

• 16:58Speaker 02

  and finally, there was a little crack at the top. And the kids started to get really excited. "Hit it again!" we yelled. And they started chanting his name. "Eddie, Eddie, Eddie." And he hit it again, and the crack got bigger. And the kids got in their ready positions with their loot bags open. "Hit it again!" And he hit it again. And finally, the pinata cracked open, and the kids were foaming at the mouth. And you should have seen their little faces when nothing came out of that pinata but raw broccoli.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  I thought, I thought that it would just be funny.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  But it turned out to be a fascinating psychological experiment.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Some of the kids hit the ground immediately and started grabbing as much broccoli as they possibly could.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  Now, these kids might be from vegetarian families, but I think there's a population of children that no matter what it was, it could be dog poop flying out of that, if it comes shooting out of a piñata, they're gonna fight other children for it.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Most of the kids stood there dumbfounded,

• 18:14Speaker 02

  not knowing what to do. And my husband's in the background saying, "It's broccoli, it's good for you." I saw one little girl reluctantly bend down and fill her bag, only to dump it out again when she thought no one was looking.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  But I started to feel bad when I noticed that some of the kids were actually crying.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  And I heard one little girl say, "I thought it was gonna be candy." And I thought, "No kidding, that's the joke."

• 18:47Speaker 02

  So, I reminded them, "Who do you call when you need help?" And they just glared at me and said, "We're not playing this game, you've done enough damage." I said, "Trust me, who do you call?" And one angry little boy said, "Captain Broccoli." "And how do you call him?" Nobody remembered. I reminded them, "Tiba, tuba, taba, taba, tuba." Again, "Tiba, tuba, taba, taba, tuba." Again, "Tiba, tuba, taba, taba, tuba." And on the third round, Captain Broccoli, the actual Captain Broccoli, in the form of my slightly inebriated brother,

• 19:28Speaker 02

  wearing green tights, a magnificent cape, a black Zorro mask, and a tremendous two-foot-high crown of broccoli, came running out the back door, leaping off the deck, and spreading candy to all of the crying children.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  The following year, we had a Star Wars party.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  And the Oscar goes to Luann Sims for most creative execution of a four-year-old birthday party. Luann Sims lives in Pennsylvania, where she's an occasional co-host of the morning show at WCH Radio. Luann's brother Jim, DBA Captain Broccoli, was so popular that he went on to make appearances at other children's events. He ultimately retired when no one wanted to store the costume with the giant broccoli floret hat. To see pictures of Captain Broccoli with Eddie at the party, the pinata, and an actual shot of a shocked little girl as she beheld that broccoli, visit themoth.org.

• 20:46Speaker 00

  In a moment, a story about a son's passion for baseball. I mean, he's really passionate. When The Moth Radio Hour continues.

• 20:58Speaker 03

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

• 21:04Speaker 04

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• 23:04Speaker 00

  This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hixson. Next up, Muneesh Jain hopes that his obsession with sports can lift him out of a depression. From a show in Traverse City, where we partner with City Opera House and interlock in public radio, here's Muneesh.

• 23:24Speaker 06

  My parents are from India, so in our house, that meant we had a high bar set for academic achievement and a specific type of professional success, doctor, lawyer, engineer. By the time my sister was 12, she knew she was going to be a doctor, just like my dad. When I was nine, I called the family meeting to let everyone know I was never going to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or an engineer. I was going to be a gymnast.

• 23:50Speaker 06

  My parents, they tolerated it, but told me that one day I was going to have to grow out of it. But I went to the gym six days a week, five hours a night. And by the time I was a teenager, I was training for the Olympics, and multiple injuries ended my career. My folks, they said, "All right, you got that out of your system. Now it's time to focus on your education."

• 24:09Speaker 06

  I needed them to be impressed with me. The way they were my sister, I just, I couldn't wrap my head around doing it their way. So I came up with a bigger idea. When I was 19, I got a job with ESPN. I was producing live segments for SportsCenter, ESPN News, hanging out with my sports idols. My folks, they kept reminding me, "Don't let this get in the way of your schoolwork." Alright, fine, if that wasn't good enough, I came up with a bigger idea. I left the network and moved to Detroit, Michigan, a city that I love. And I started a sports magazine. I sold ads, I found distributors, I built a staff with grown ass people who had kids older than me. And we were killing it. We were up to 50,000 subscribers, people were recognizing me on the street.

• 24:51Speaker 06

  Hell, Muhammad Ali said he liked my magazine. But every time I'd see my parents, they'd just ask me, "When are you going back to college? Get that degree." This time, there was no bigger idea. I had to make this work. I doubled down, worked twice as hard, which also meant that I pretty much stopped sleeping entirely and started drinking and drugging the nights away to manage my stress levels. And when I was 24, my doctor told me that I was six months away from a heart attack. I either had to get rid of the magazine, or die. So I gave up. And something broke inside of me. And I couldn't face my parents. I, I took the money I'd saved from ESPN and the magazine and I ran away.

• 25:36Speaker 06

  I moved to New York into a tiny, 160 square foot studio apartment where the windows didn't even open. And it was there that my self-imposed exile began. Slowly losing contact with every human I'd ever met. The delivery guy would just leave the food outside my apartment because I couldn't even make eye contact with him. I was a failure. My parents would call and I never knew what to say. My dad would lecture me that I wasn't even a part of the family anymore. My mom would yell at me that I needed to get my life together. And every conversation just ended in tears. So I stopped answering their calls. Then they started sending me money to keep me alive and I took it and that made me hate myself so much more. And so I just stopped leaving my apartment entirely.

• 26:21Speaker 06

  The TV would be on 24 hours a day. I wasn't watching at all. I just needed flashing images and noise to block out the constant stream of shame, regret, self-loathing that was clanging around the inside of my skull.

• 26:38Speaker 06

  And that became my life. Every day, all day. Living in near isolation. For five years. One day, a baseball game just happened to be on. Now, I hadn't watched a sporting event of any kind since the death of my magazine. It was always just too hard. But on this day, I was so broken. I just stared emotionlessly at the screen in front of me. And within a couple of innings, something strange was happening. I felt myself sitting up in my bed, engaging with something outside of my own head. I was smiling, I mean, actually smiling for the first time in five years. By the time the game ended, I'd already ordered the MLB TV package and just started mainlining baseball.

• 27:20Speaker 06

  I was watching every game, reading every article, going back over the last five years to see everything that I'd missed. In the middle of it all, I remember that dream I had when I was six. You know, one day, I'm gonna see a baseball game at all thirty MLB stadiums. It's one of those silly things that a lot of baseball fans wanna do, but few actually get a chance to do it. And the ones who do it, do it over the course of a lifetime, like a normal human person. But in this moment, nobody even knew that I existed. I could disappear off the planet and no one would notice. So I said, screw it. I'm gonna do it, and I'm gonna do it in one season. I'm gonna drive seventeen thousand miles in ninety-five days and go to a baseball game at all thirty ballparks.

• 28:04Speaker 06

  I started obsessively poring over maps and schedules, planning out my route every time I'd go down to the bodega to buy another pack of cigarettes. Instead, I would take that money out of the ATM, go back up to my apartment, shove it underneath my mattress. By the time the next baseball season came around, I'd saved six thousand dollars and quit smoking. I was ready to go. I called my parents to let them know what I was doing and they really didn't know what to say. They were just happy that I was alive. And I hit the road. Every forty-eight hours, I was in a new city. But I didn't want to just sit in the ballpark alone. I needed a way to reintegrate myself into society. The problem was, I had completely forgotten how to even have a conversation with somebody else.

• 28:48Speaker 06

  So I invented a podcast. I couldn't have cared less if anybody actually listened to this thing. I just needed an excuse to go talk to strangers. And it was working. People were talking to me about the stats of their favorite ballplayers, the histories of their ballparks. One kid at Citi Field at a Mets game spent twenty minutes meticulously breaking down why it was that the Yankees sucked.

• 29:13Speaker 06

  And I bounced from ballpark to ballpark. I noticed that my conversations, they were evolving. I talked to a father and son in Baltimore, where after our official interview, the father pulled me aside to quietly confide in me that he didn't really have a relationship with his eldest son, but his youngest, his youngest loved baseball. So he knew that at least they'd be able to talk about that. I talked to a mother and daughter in San Francisco, who'd been going to games together for twenty years. Three generations of women in Texas. The grandmother proudly shoving little Laney, her nine-year-old granddaughter, in front of my microphone, saying, "Little Laney, tell the nice man, what do you do all your school reports on?" And little Laney excitedly screams out, "The Texas Rangers!"

• 29:55Speaker 06

  And I realized we weren't really even talking about baseball anymore. We were talking about family connection.

• 30:03Speaker 06

  By the time I got to LA, I'd already driven eight thousand miles on my own. I was halfway done with my tour, but this, this was my hell week. Because the Angels and the Dodgers rarely play at home at the same time, I had to catch a game in Anaheim, drive seventeen hours up to Seattle, turn back around, drive seventeen hours back to LA, then thirty hours to Minnesota. It's four thousand miles in ten days, but I was a man possessed. Nothing was gonna stop me. After my Angels game, I hopped in the car and headed up north. But about halfway into the drive, my vision starts to get blurry and my body starts to uncontrollably shake. I pull over just in time to open the door and projectile vomit all over the side of the highway. I didn't know what to do, so I called my dad.

• 30:47Speaker 06

  He just sighed into the phone and said, "You had food poisoning. What am I supposed to do from here?" Gatorade and Pepto Bismol. My mom gets on the phone and starts screaming at me. "This is ridiculous. You need to take better care of yourself." And I hung up. I wasn't in the mood for another lecture. I made it to Seattle in time for my game by double-fisting Gatorade and Pepto Bismol. I was staying with some family friends, so I knew they'd be able to take care of me. The next day, I hear a knock at the door. Nobody's home, so I walk upstairs and through the glass door, I see the silhouette of a four-foot-ten, ninety-pound little woman.

• 31:25Speaker 06

  I open the door and just say, "What are you doing here, mother?"

• 31:31Speaker 06

  And she says, "I'm here to help you drive." Now, she must have seen the panic on my face, because she followed that up with, "And I've been listening to your podcast. I know you don't take bathroom or food breaks when you're on the road, so I'm not gonna take any breaks either. We're gonna stay on your schedule."

• 31:47Speaker 06

  I didn't know she was listening to the podcast. And then she said one more thing. "I'm driving the whole way, so you've got two options. You sit next to me, and you can sleep, or we can talk." Now, I honestly can't remember the last time my mom and I had been in the same room together without it devolving into tears. So I said, "Okay, mama." I got in the car, and I immediately went to sleep.

• 32:14Speaker 06

  I slept the entire way to LA, and when we got there, she said, "I'm not gonna go to the baseball game with you." I said, "Why not?" She said, "Because you've got work to do, and if people see you there with your mother, they're not gonna wanna talk to you." I said, "You're being ridiculous. Of course you're gonna come," and I got her a ticket. We're at Dodger Stadium, and I start interviewing the gentleman sitting next to me, as I'd done at every ballpark before. My mom, she moves to the seat behind us to give us some space to chat. And after the interview's over, I can hear her talking to her new seatmate. And her new seatmate's asking, "Wow, you must be a huge baseball fan to do this type of road trip."

• 32:47Speaker 06

  And my mom just answers, "No. I really don't like baseball.

• 32:54Speaker 06

  I like watching my son watch baseball."

• 32:58Speaker 06

  I pretended like I didn't hear that. After the game was over, we're walking back to the car and she stops me. She wants to show me a picture she'd taken during the game. And I looked down at her phone and it's actually, it's a picture of me and the guy that I'd been interviewing. And she just said, "Look, you're smiling." I said, "When are you going home, mama?" And she said, "No, no, no, no. I'm gonna drive with you to Minnesota, too." This time, there was no panic on my face. I said, "Okay, we're gonna split the drive and let's talk." As we made our way out east, I started talking to my mom the way that I've been talking to these strangers at the ballpark these last couple of months, asking her stories about her life.

• 33:41Speaker 06

  You know, this woman, she survived three wars between India and Pakistan. I didn't know that. She told me the story of how her and my dad's arranged marriage came to be. I knew they were arranged, I just never knew how or why it happened. I don't know why I never bothered to ask her that. Right before we got to Minnesota, we made a quick pit stop in South Dakota at Mount Rushmore. And as we're walking up to the monument, my mom peeled off to call my dad and I was eavesdropping and I could hear her say, "As immigrants to this country, we'd always wanted to see Mount Rushmore. We just never found a reason to make the trip. This is all so exciting. I can't wait for you to be able to see our son.

• 34:26Speaker 06

  He's just so happy." Thank you.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  That was Muneesh Jain. His mom flew home after getting him safely to the next stadium and he eventually finished the tour, fulfilling his dream of seeing all 30 stadiums in one single season. Since their mother-son road trip, Muneesh talks to his mom or someone in his family almost every single day. Each summer since, Muneesh travels to ballparks across the country, taking pictures, talking to fans, and eating ice cream out of a mini helmet. He's currently at work on a memoir on how baseball saved his life. To see some pictures of Muneesh with his mom, visit themoth.org where you can also download the story.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  In a moment, the bride and her mother are at a crossroads when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

• 35:38Speaker 03

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

• 35:44Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Dr. Mary Claire Haver, board-certified OB-GYN and menopause specialist. My podcast, UnPaused, is the place for bold, unfiltered conversations about what it really takes for women to thrive in the second half of life. Every week, I sit down with medical experts and leading voices to talk about the health issues that matter most. Because UnPaused isn't just about the years you live, but how well you live them. Listen and follow UnPaused with me, Dr. Mary Claire Haver, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 36:17Speaker 00

  This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hixson. We're highlighting stories about protective mothers. Sometimes they save the day, and sometimes they mean well, but it gets complicated. Our next story is told by Xochitl Gonzalez. You may recognize her name as the author of critically acclaimed novels Olga Dies Dreaming and Anita DeMonte Laughs Last. But before she was a published writer, she spent some years as an acclaimed wedding planner. Here's Sochil.

• 36:49Speaker 08

  So years ago, I was a wedding planner. Wedding planning obviously requires you to be detail-oriented and have excellent time management skills. But you also need to really learn how to deal with some batshit situations. So this particular batshit happened in 2009. And I remember because it was the end of the recession and I was broke, and I was just finishing up my divorce and starting to date again. And so, one day, my office phone rings, and nothing good starts with a whisper. But the woman on the other end says, "My daughter's getting married in a few weeks, and you've gotta save this wedding." And she refuses to give us any more details, insisting that we must come uptown to her

• 37:33Speaker 08

  apartment, because only then will we understand the scale of her conundrum. And while this sounded crazy, I realized that I was broke, and so I agreed to go. And as she was hanging up the phone, she says, "By the way, I'm very, very rich."

• 37:51Speaker 08

  And she was. Because when we got there, she lived in one of those grand old apartment buildings on Park Avenue, the kind with the doorman with the uniform and the cap. And he opens the brass door, and they're in this giant lobby, and there's only two elevators, because each elevator goes up and opens into its own apartment. And so we get up to the apartment, and the maid, in the maid outfit, greets us and takes us down a long corridor into the library that's really just a room for books. And there, waiting for us alone, is the mother of the bride. And we're going to call her Mia, just for sake of convenience. And Mia says, "This is dire." She's embarrassed of all of it.

• 38:32Speaker 08

  And not the library or the maid, per se, but her daughter was embarrassed of being rich. And she had been living as a closeted rich person her entire adult life. None of her friends knew that she was rich. Her future in-laws didn't really have any idea. And so now, you know, this has been driving Mia crazy, right? She's like, she's refusing my finery. She's living in squalor. She's refusing Mia's clothes. She's walking around in Old Navy. And it's just been a nightmare. And Mia, it's the cross that poor Mia's had to bear for the last two decades. Only now, everything is coming to a head with this engagement. Because last year, Mia's other daughter got engaged, and Mia threw her a giant wedding

• 39:15Speaker 08

  at the Pierre and plastered the ballroom in orchids. And so now this daughter realizes, "Well, I can't let my mother have anything to do with this. Otherwise, the jig is up. Everyone's gonna know that I'm rich." And by the way, this impoverishedman posturing isn't completely new, nor new to me. As long as I've known rich people, I've known people like this. In fact, probably amongst us now, someone just asked you to Venmo them $5 for Starbucks, and next week they'll secretly be skiing with their rich parents in Aspen. But in any case... Mia's daughter decides she's gonna take matters into her own hands and plan this wedding herself, armed, of course, with Mia's checkbook. And so she goes along, and now the wedding's a few weeks away, and Mia finally goes to the tasting, and Mia finally sees the venue,

• 40:00Speaker 08

  and Mia finally realizes, this is a piece of shit. And she turns to her daughter, and she's like, "You can pretend to be poor all you want, but I can't have my friends and family coming to this." And so they get into a giant fight, and they agree that the only way to resolve this is by hiring a wedding planner. And the only wedding planner that the two of them could agree upon was my company. Now, I wanna say that I was surprised by this, except that, at the time, a lot of my competitors were really doing opulence, as in plastering the ballroom of the pier with orchids. And we were known for doing, what I like to think of as understated luxury, which in 2009 meant we knew how to make a barn seem like a five-star restaurant. So that this landed in our lap didn't completely surprise me. And at the time, you know,

• 40:45Speaker 08

  we would take turns with the batshit, and the turn was mine, and so now it's me. And the reason why the meeting was so urgent was because Mia had to get to us before her daughter did. Her daughter was planning on calling us on the morrow and hiring us for this affair, and Mia was like, "I needed you to get here so I could explain to you how things were gonna work, and they were gonna work like this." You say yes to everything she says. If she asks what it costs, you say it's already included in the contract. And then secretly, you and I are gonna plan the wedding that I want.

• 41:17Speaker 08

  Now, I would've felt badly about this, except that the next day, when I met the daughter, she actually did have terrible taste. Or at the very...

• 41:25Speaker 08

  At the very least, mildly insulting ideas of what she thought poor people would do at their weddings. I mean, she would've had everybody sitting at picnic tables and drinking out of jam jars if she had her chance. Like, and, and so, you know, I felt like I could do a service here, 'cause Mia was kind of a riot, and as I said, I was kind of broke. Plus, Mia took an immediate interest in my love life, which I really appreciated at the time, because my friends, after having just survived my divorce, were over it. And I had just met this guy. You know, I'd been married to my ex-husband for 10 years, and so I'd never online dated. And I went on the internet, and I met this guy, and he was charming, and he was handsome, and he had a great job. And above all, he had this thing that I used to really look for in a guy at that time.

• 42:09Speaker 08

  He had a sadness about him. And...

• 42:14Speaker 08

  I don't know why I needed that. I just did. And it was so sad. I mean, it was so sad. He...

• 42:24Speaker 08

  He married his college sweetheart. They'd always intended on having a big family. Year after year after year goes by. There's infertility problems. Instead of bringing them together, it pulls them apart. And he's so open, and he's so vulnerable, and he's so sad. And I just was all in. You know, we're texting, we're calling, we're running all over Manhattan, traipsing around at all hours of the night, arguing the existence of God. All in. And Mia couldn't get enough. I mean, she was making up reasons to have meetings, to get me to come uptown, and we'd share three bottles of wine. And I'd tell her all about it. And there we were. And everything was great until everything was terrible, because Mia's daughter decides that she wants to reduce the carbon footprint of the wedding.

• 43:07Speaker 08

  And she wants to do this by having edible escort cards so that we don't waste anything. The escort card, for those of you who don't know, is the little piece of paper that's at the cocktail hour that tells you what table to sit at when the dinner starts. And Mia's daughter decides that we're gonna save the environment by having bacon-wrapped dates with a toothpick in them and a teeny little tag that has your name and then the table number. And then you're just gonna eat it. And so I did what I was supposed to do. And I said, "Oh, yes. Oh, that is a great idea." And then immediately when she left, I emailed Mia and said, "What are we gonna do? It's gonna look like a table full of floating turds."

• 43:43Speaker 08

  And Mia replies, "Oh, Jesus Christ, I wish you were my daughter." Now, they say that there is no accidents, but that night Mia forgot to log out of her Gmail. And her daughter went on the computer and saw the correspondence. And insisted, as one would imagine, that I be fired immediately. Except that Mia couldn't quit me. And I don't know that I could quit Mia. And so, instead, we devised this elaborate ruse, more elaborate than the original ruse. And we were going to have one of my employees, and I'm not proud of this, but we had one of my employees pretend that she worked for the caterer.

• 44:26Speaker 08

  And we sent an email introducing them and saying that I was hands-off. It's all in this woman's hands. And they go off, and she tells her, this woman, all of her hopes and dreams, and nothing that the bride and this woman has, say, holds any water, because the only thing that matters is what happens between me and Mia. And so, they're off planning this modest eco-friendly wedding. And Mia and I are planning this lavish, I mean environmentally unsound affair. We are making custom-made furniture. We've got flowers imported from Holland wrapping around the windows of this loft. We're reflooring the floors. We're covering, I mean, we're landscaping a deck. We, it was gonna take three days to just set this party up before it even happened. And in the meantime, I'm still dating this guy. Only, it's starting to get weird.

• 45:09Speaker 08

  This divorce is starting to feel very, very complicated. It involved real estate and a soft real estate market. And only in New York does somebody say to you, well, you know, it's so difficult because of the soft real estate market. And you say, of course. But I was starting to feel like I was unwittingly sleeping with a married man, and it didn't feel good. And so, I was like, you know, why don't you get, let things settle? See how long this takes, let things settle. Or let the market perk up, either one. And then, call me, and let's see where we are. You never know. And I really was trying to be very zen about the whole thing, because I was really into him. But it was hard, because he was also kind of rich, and I was also kind of broke. And he never said that he was rich, but he said things. You know, he talks about how he'd gone to this prep school.

• 45:53Speaker 08

  He got, had a big wedding of his own at the Plaza. I could put two and two together, and so could Mia. And she was really cheering this on. She'd grown up poor, so she was like, marry rich. It's so fun. It's so fun.

• 46:10Speaker 08

  So...

• 46:13Speaker 08

  A couple days after this breakup of sorts, Mia calls me, as usual, frantic, urgent, panicked. Napkins. We've gotta talk about napkins. You've gotta get uptown to this linen store, and we need to talk about these napkins. And we are there, being persnickety about napkins for like forever, until we then go and have our usual lunch, where we split a salad and two bottles of wine. And she's asking about the guy, and I tell her, you know, about what happened and how I had to make the break. And I was like, you know, I'm holding out hope. You never know, love finds a way. And all of a sudden, I just remember something that I couldn't believe I'd never brought up before. And I was like, you know what Mia, it's so funny. I was like, you know, he actually went to the same prep school as your fake poor daughter. I was like, I wonder if you know him? Know him?

• 46:58Speaker 08

  Does Mia know him? The elevators? Mia lives on 17 South. His parents live in 17 North. She'd just seen him the weekend prior in the Hamptons with his wife and their six-year-old son. Mia remembered the son's age because she had been at the kids' bris.

• 47:18Speaker 08

  There is no divorce. There is no apartment on the market. There is nothing but this guy being a terrible, terrible person. Which, at this point, I'm also not that sure that Mia and I aren't. Because we are still going behind her daughter's wedding, back to plan this wedding. We are not only having this adulterous mother-daughter affair, but we're running a con on this poor girl whose worst sin is that she's got terrible taste in escort cards. I just was starting to feel terrible, but you know, I was in too deep. So the day of the wedding comes, and I'm there, setting up, and I'm folding the beautiful napkins, and I'm fixing the forks, and everything is perfect. I mean, the flowers are fully in bloom,

• 48:03Speaker 08

  the hundred-dollar bottles of wine are all chilled. I've got five staff members there, secretly disguised as waiters.

• 48:10Speaker 08

  And very, very nice-looking waiters because Mia didn't like the original uniform and so we upgraded, obviously. Now, clearly, I couldn't be there because the bride never wanted to see my face again. So I take myself to a restaurant a few blocks away and I'm calling in orders to my staff and I'm texting with frantic Mia who's like, "She's gonna find out what we've been up to, she's gonna find out what we've been up to." And I am assuring her, "Mia, we're almost at the finish line, it's gonna be a beautiful day, just a few more hours to get through, she's never gonna find out." Now, I didn't realize that the reason why Mia was so confident that her bride was gonna find, that her daughter was gonna find out, is because Mia was gonna get drunk and tell her. And so halfway through the reception, she pulls her daughter aside and confesses the entire scheme.

• 48:54Speaker 08

  And this poor girl, on her wedding day, realizes that her life these last few weeks has been a lie. She's surrounded by traitors everywhere she turns and she, of course, sees red and who can blame her? Take it from me, finding out that you've been deceived does not feel good. And she says to Mia, "I refuse, you can never see her again, you can never talk to her again. If I find out that you're having any more contact with the wedding planner, I'm cutting off all contact with you." And so Mia acquiesces and she agrees to family therapy and individual therapy and she's never gonna see me again and she sends me a dramatic text message that says, "She knows everything, this is goodbye."

• 49:34Speaker 08

  Except Mia being Mia, of course it wasn't really goodbye, you know? I still hear from her every now and then, maybe a call, sometimes a text. But you know, in looking back, I sometimes can't help but wonder, was this gorgeous lavish wedding really worth the culminating in a fight between mother and daughter? Would they have been better off with picnic tables and jam jars and escort cards that looked like turds? Then again, relationships can be mended, but wedding photos are forever. Thank you very much.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  That was Xochitl Gonzalez. Sochil eventually left the world of hors d'oeuvres and seating plans to become a writer, cultural critic, producer, screenwriter, and bestselling author. To all the mothers out there who fiercely defend and protect, support, and okay, sometimes overstep, here's hoping your efforts are received as love. I asked my daughter about her earliest memory. She said she was about three and had an ice cream cone, and I asked her for a bite. And get this, the bite I took was too big. I'm sorry, Annabelle, but in my defense, I'm sure I only took that big bite to prevent the cone from toppling over. I'm forever looking out for you, kid.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.

• 51:15Speaker 03

  This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, 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 Jenness, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Marina Kluch, Leanne Gully, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Casa. Moth Stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Stan Whitmire, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Duke Levine, and Larry Goldings and John Snyder.

• 51:58Speaker 03

  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, which we always hope you'll do, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

• 52:26Speaker 09

  Kate holds the key to every brand asset your business has ever made. She's the only person who knows the difference between teal turquoise and the correct company blue. But she's going on vacation. Luckily, before the company falls into design disarray, you realize you can put Kate into Canva. Save every color font and logo to a brand kit everyone can access. And Kate can vacation happily in the knowledge that no one will ever use Comic Sans. What will you Canva today?