Punks, Blessings, Burlesque and Lotus Flowers: The Moth Radio Hour

This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Suzanne Rust, the Moth's curatorial producer. Sometimes people ask me what moth stories are about. I tell them they are really about everything and anything, which explains the title of this episode, Punks, Blessings, Burlesque, and Lotus Flowers. Like this title, moth stories are like life itself, a variety show with every act imaginable. But what often unites them are common themes, like self-discovery, finding sanctuary, learning to forgive, and acknowledging blessings of different kinds. Our first story is from Eddie Lafter, who discovers just what she needs in a most unlikely place. She told this story at our Moth Teacher Institute. Here's Eddie. I'm on my way to see live music for the first time and I'm so much more anxious than I think I have any right to be because this band I'm about to see I'm completely and utterly obsessed with and I've seen every interview YouTube will physically let me watch and I listen to them so much at this point it's probably doing something unhealthy to me I don't know how that would work but it's happening and this is because when I listen to them all of a sudden I feel like I'm big and like I'm powerful and like nothing can touch me when I'm walking down the street which is really not something I feel ever at this point in my life and I feel so small and clunky and I don't fit into my own body right and I'm kind of starting to think that the middle school mentality that I'll never fit into any scenario I go to is just going to be how I live my life and I feel like I just have to accept this at this point so it doesn't make any sense that I'm this anxious to see this band but I'm trying to think about what I can expect and I'm just kind of thinking about how in movies Punk shows are always like a bunch of loud, aggressive, intoxicated white boys, and that doesn't really seem like my scene. And I'm spiraling a bit, and I'm looking around on the train, and I see this girl who's about like 9 or 11. I don't know how age works, but she's there, and she's with her dad, and I'm like, wonder if they're going to the punk show. And then I'm more of a mess, and I'm still spiraling. And then I get off the train, and we get to the venue, and it doesn't look like a venue, but it definitely is a venue, because I get inside, and it's dark, and everyone's bigger than me, and it's really loud, and I pick a direction, and I just start walking, and I see my eighth grade math teacher. And, because of course I see my eighth grade math teacher. So I go up and talk to my eighth grade math teacher. Because that's how he wants to spend his Friday. And I get up to him and it was a lot less awkward than you would think. And he asked me about music and what bands I listen to. And I forget every single band I've ever heard of ever. And I'm like, this one. And thankfully I'm interrupted by the first band that's up. and they introduce themselves and they have this very nice, welcoming speech about accepting everyone who's at the show. And I'm like, oh, wow. And then they start screaming and they sound like they're wounded animals. But then there's this weird pop music playing underneath it and they're still screaming. And then after each song ends, the front person goes, thank you, and then continues screaming for the next song and it's awesome. And then this goes on for a bit and it stops and then I kind of creep out of the corner that I'm in and the next band is up. and they again start screaming, of course, as you do. But these guys, they legitimately sound like they're demons. And just from how they're moving, the way this man's eyes look, whatever the noise is that's coming out of him. And for some reason I start to relax a bit and people are starting to dance around me in this sort of way where it feels like there's a big sense of unity in the room and I don't know where that's coming from. And then my band has gone up to two their instruments and I'm like, and then I text my friend and I'm like, I see the front woman and she's like, and I'm like, and this is all over text. And I'm so excited and I can feel everyone else is just as excited as I am. And it feels like the room is like buzzing, which is so crazy because no one's ever excited about what I'm excited about. And then they start playing and it's like all of the air and sound gets sucked out of the room and we're all watching them. and we're all just so excited to be there, but it's beyond excitement at this point. And it's like everybody is where I am in my head right now, and we're all just there together, and we're all having the same experience. And they start to play more songs, and they start to get into the music a little bit more, and everyone else around me is doing that as well, and they start to play my favorite songs, and currently everybody else's favorite songs too. And people are trying to dance more, and there's this woman in front of me, and all she's doing is jumping up and down, which in any other context would look ridiculous, but it doesn't at all look ridiculous now, and I can do that too. So I start to move and jump around a bit, and then I get that same sense of power and freedom that I get when I listen to it normally, but it's fresher or revived or something, and then someone kind of nudges me and pushes me out of the way and takes my front middle spot, and I'm about to get internally offended because conflict is scary. And, but then I just see that this woman was just making space for her girlfriend to go up next to her. And I'm like, this is a room full of punk queer women. And I just, I didn't know that was a thing. And I just need a minute to like sit and process that. And I look around and I see the girl from the train sitting on her dad's shoulders with like these big clunky headphones. So her ears don't get all messed up. And I would think that it would be weird for a kid to be here. But she looks like she's exactly where she's supposed to be. and I start to realize that I feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be too. And so I just let myself hold on to that and the last thing I want to do is run away and hide in a corner and I really feel like I belong here. And I'm so happy and I've never felt this kind of happy before and then still in a show and there's like a mosh pit that's forming next to me which I don't go in because I would get squashed like a little tiny person pancake. But I'm like on the side of it and I can still feel all of the energy from it, and I'm still riding off of that excitement that I'm feeling, and that everybody else is feeling as previously mentioned, and then eventually the band, they stop playing, and I feel, and I come back to my body, and I really don't want to leave the room, but I realize that I have to, and I kind of look at the front woman, and I'm like, ah! And then I leave and get on the subway, and I'm looking at all these other people who are at the show with me, and I can tell because they're holding little various bits of merch or whatnot, and I'm looking at them and I'm realizing that they're all like me in some way and in so many different ways they're like me, which I really didn't think was a thing. And I didn't realize that I had something to grow up into before. I don't really know what I thought would happen to me, but I just never had an image that my life could go somewhere and I could stay being the weirdo person I am and have it make sense in the world around me. and I started to realize that the small feeling that I'm holding on to, I don't need it anymore, and I never needed it, and that I'm not that small person, and I'm not going to be small forever, and I don't need to be, and that I'm going to be okay, and it's just so crazy to think about. Thank you. That was Eddie Laughter. Eddie is a Brooklynite and a student at Smith College where she studies different forms of storytelling as well as what the moon looks like in low-light pollution. We're proud to say that Eddie is also one of the Moth's education program alumni teaching interns. Eddie was just 15 when she attended that concert, and in case you were wondering, the band was the Screaming Females. I had to Google them. They're still one of her favorite groups, and listening to them brings her a lot of joy and comfort. Here's a taste of their music. To see photos of Eddie on her way to a Screaming Females concert, go to our web extras at themoth.org. Next up, a Broadway debut of sorts and a hidden talent when the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Suzanne Rust. This next story is about a young man's growing awareness of his sexuality and might not be suitable for everyone. So if that's you or those around you, please just rejoin us in about seven minutes. I'll spare you from my mediocre singing voice, but you know how the song goes. They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway. They say there's always magic in the air. Well, our next teller, Christopher Bruhn-Horan, found even more on Broadway. He told this story at one of our Los Angeles Story Slams, which is supported by the public radio station KCRW. Here's Christopher. the first time that I saw the sign that said the Gaty Theater all male burlesque I was on a yellow school bus with my Cub Scout troop traveling through lower Manhattan on our way to see the Radio City Rockettes I must have been 10 years old all the other boys were singing a very rowdy rendition of our favorite bus song. Ravioli, I love ravioli, ravioli, it's the one for me. And they were super, super excited about the pictures of the Rockettes that they had seen. These long-legged dancers always posed with their legs in a kick line. But here I was looking out the window at West 46th Street at this sign that said, All Male Verlesque. Now, I didn't know what was going on up that dark stairwell, and I didn't know what the two or three guys were doing who were looking over their shoulder before they went up, but I knew that I wanted to find out. I knew that I liked boys the way that most boys liked girls, as early as first grade when on a jammed family car trip going somewhere, I was thrown in the backseat on my cousin John's lap and I didn't want to get out of the car. In fifth grade I played my first spin the bottle game and I just was acutely aware that I wanted that bottle to land on either Chip or Billy or Pat and it just kept landing on Bridget over and over and over and if it did land on two boys they just spun it again like nobody cared and it wasn't even an option and you know my the The environment in my small town about gay was hostile, and my body and my voice betrayed me. I strutted where other boys walked, and people were starting to mistake me for my mother when I picked up the phone and said hi. People like my father, who should have known better. And junior high was the worst. I mean, it truly got dangerous. people started calling me faggot in the hallway and it just I was taking shit wherever I went at the at the time I my thinking was that if I just became very small and and I didn't say anything about it that maybe it would go away you know I might handle that differently today but then I just thought if I start fighting with people I'm gonna be bloody every day of my life and so around the same time my best buddy Agnes and I we started sneaking down to New York City on the bus and she was an underdog as well. She was Polish with the unfortunate last name of Spackowitz, Agnes Spackowitz. And kids were cruel to her as well. And we loved the movie Fame. We loved the soundtrack. We used to sing it in the streets. We felt so very free in New York City. We would sit on the steps of the School of Performing Arts pretending to be students. And that was when I saw the Gady Theater again. and my heart started to race and I steered Agnes over by the entrance carefully noting that shows began on the hour beginning at 1 p And later I left her at the New York Public Library browsing and I ran the four blocks and two avenues it took to get me back there And I was as shady as anybody else going up. I guess nobody goes up proudly. And I threw my shoulders back with this pitiful attempt to look older, but the bored lady taking tickets, she couldn't even be bothered to look at me. And it was just one crank of the turnstile, and I was in there. And I was in there, and I remember the whole place, it had just this feeling of forbidden. It took a while for my eyes to adjust. It was just black. There was men everywhere, ranging in age from 20 to 80, but nobody was looking at anybody. and I remember noticing that somebody had cared enough to hang wallpaper but there were sweat marks on it where the dancers leaned against it to tie their shoes and I was scared, I didn't know what to do and I was frozen and I remember I heard muffled voices and I knew that there was a movie playing so I pushed the lobby doors open and there for the first time in my life in big technicolor in huge screen was gay pornography and I had never seen men having sex before suddenly the movie stopped and music started to play and the screen went up and there was a black box stage and I realized all male burlesque means strip show and I had no idea I was that young and this construction worker walks out on the stage and somebody says into a microphone gentleman Dino and this Italian guy comes out on the stage and I realize I'm about to watch a strip show And he literally starts to dance awkwardly like he was in pain. Nobody moves. We're all as embarrassed as he is. Nobody's catcalling or whistling like they do at women in movies. And then suddenly, you know, he's done and he's just down to his underwear. He leaves the stage and I'm sitting there with my testosterone churning, wondering like what's going to happen. And then he comes back on stage with a slow song starts to play. This time he's stark naked with nothing but work boots. And he just walks around, not even bothering to dance anymore, just displaying himself like a toddler who hasn't been schooled yet or a rooster in a barnyard. Anyway, I ended up going back to the gaiety. The next time I went back to the gaiety, I had $60 in my pocket and I hired a dancer who looked just like Leroy from Fame. And I ended up going back there about 10 more times throughout high school. It was my secret that I told no one about. I had my first experience with a guy there in a fire escape, just off the backstage entrance. It wasn't my ideal. I remember we locked eyes with having that gaydar radar that we have, and we went back there, and he obliged. It was nothing that I was proud of at the time, but I went back there recently with my husband on a trip to New York. and I saw the Gaiety Theater and it's gone. The marquee is gone. Everything about that era. And I told my husband what I did and I was very proud of that kid who had done that, who had had the courage to find sanctuary and survive. That was Christopher Brune Horan. He lives in Los Angeles with his husband and their sons. He's a playwright, essayist, and educator who, among other things, developed a storytelling program for inmates at the Men's Central Jail in Los Angeles. It's hard to be different, especially when you're a kid, and Christopher remembers being bullied and feeling isolated. He was afraid of anyone discovering the truth about him. Although his best male friend was also gay and they spoke every day, they didn't share that information with each other until they were in their 20s. He says that the outside messages they got were that scary. Eventually, he found his people in drama club and musicals in high school, but he always felt afraid and self-conscious. I asked Christopher what advice he'd give to his younger self, and he said, tell someone, anyone, shame is the worst. One day you'll stand in front of 150 people and marry the man of your dreams with your brother as best man and your Irish Catholic father weeping in the front row next to mom. You're a trailblazer and you don't even know it. To see photos of Christopher as a child and as a teen on one of his undercover trips to New York City, go to themoth.org. There are times in life when you need to find creative ways to control chaos. Our next story was told by Louise Newton-Keog at a story slam in Melbourne, Australia, where we partner with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ABCRN. Here's Louise. Hi. So when I was in grade three, I learnt a valuable lesson about controlling the universe from my little sister Helen and a pair of dodgy rosary beads. So there wasn't a lot of control in my life at home at that stage. I mean, my mum was living with a mental illness and my dad was a Vietnam vet who tried to manage his PTSD with alcohol. So there was a lot of chaos, not much control. And certainly not much an eight-year-old could do about it. But when I was in grade three, I thought I'd solve this. I thought I could find a way to control the universe. You see, grade three is a very special time when you go to a Catholic primary school. It's the year of the First Holy Communion, which basically means you get the bread and the wine and also means that you get to wear a white dress and eat lots of fairy bread and drink lemonade at the party afterwards. So it was a fairly big deal. It also means you get your first ever religious education. So in our school, religious education, they introduced these two amazing, wonderful storytelling nuns. And these women, if they were alive today, would be on the moth for sure. Now, the first nun was called Sister Mary Claude Teald, and she liked to tell stories of gloom and doom and what would happen if we sinned. So she would tell stories that you'd never forget, like the boy who went to church and refused to kneel, and then when he went outside he got hit by a bus and by both legs and had to kneel for the rest of his life. So, yeah, that one stuck with me forever. And then there was Sister Vincent, Sister Mary Vincent, and she was this amazing Oprah-esque woman, and she could, honestly, she would not be out of place, you know, as a motivational speaker today. And she said, basically, she said, the secret to the universe, the way you could, or Jesus is what she called the universe, It says just to follow Jesus, to put what you want out to God and he would help you. So follow Jesus, do what he asked you to do, be good and Jesus would solve everything. So I thought, oh, cool. So if I'm really good, if I am really, really good, then Jesus will listen and he will answer my prayers and my mum will be fine and my dad won't drink and this was what I thought I would do. So I made it, my mission was to be good. The goodest kid that ever was. And the trouble with that is I didn't actually know how to do that because I was a pretty good kid anyway. So I thought there were three things. One was my times tables, which was another big deal in grade three. So I went out of my way to learn them. I spent every night before I went to sleep reciting from two twos to twelve twelves and back again. And the other one was I did the dishes without complaining, even when it was not my turn. Felt really proud. and the other one was not fighting with my brother and sisters and that was hard because once they cottoned on to what I was doing they absolutely went out of their way to make me crack. It's like let's see if we can make the angel crack this time. So that was hard but I persevered. Didn't seem to help but then came the glory day when it was our feast day and the whole school was given rosary beads. The entire school and apparently they were blessed by the Pope himself so that was a big deal. but these were the dodgiest rosary beads you've ever seen if I can explain pink little beads of plastic held together by flimsy white string and on the end was a silver cross honestly if you paid two dollars for them you'd be ripped off but in my mind they were the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life and for me this was the key to the universe because I thought ha ha I've got the rosary beads now I know what to do so I became a blesser and I didn't actually know what blessing I didn't really know what I was doing so my way of blessing people would be to touch them with the rosary beads and say, you are blessed and so what I would do every night before I went to bed before I set my times table I would go in house touching my family my mum, my dad, my father, my sisters saying you are blessed and then I moved on to my cats, my dog then I moved on to my toys Then I moved on to my times table and so on. And I did this every single night. Now, there were some interesting reactions at home. Dad, who the only thing he loved more than beer was the Catholic Church, prayed Jesus and thought, finally, he had one. And I was planning my trip into the convent when I was 15. Mum was a bit bemused, but she thought, oh, well, if it makes me happy and it doesn't seem to be bothering anyone, what the heck? My brother Patrick, who was a bit older and a bit further along the Enlightenment journey, he thought it was hysterical. and he also used every opportunity he could to tease me like just as I was about to bless him he'd lock himself in the bathroom or his cupboard and say, I think it'll be a while I'd say, but Patrick, I can't bless you before I go to bed, come on My sister Mary, she really just got angry and was like, don't tell me about those things so then I had to become a convert blesser but what do I do? I would go up to her and I'd just go or when she was brushing her teeth I'd accidentally bump into her and she'd say, you are blessed but my sister, and I hope she didn't hit me my sister Helen, she became my disciple she became a blesser she was two years younger than me and she followed me, blessing everything behind me we were the blessers but Helen actually took it one step further than me she blessed objects so she started blessing the wall, the floor, the couch the taps I was really impressed but I didn't do that well I did bless the odd wall but only one or two But then, of course, this kept going and something had to give and it did. One night, I had gone through my blessing ritual, was in bed doing my times tables, waiting for Helen to finish hers and turn the lights off when there was a bang. And the lights went out. And smoke. We could smell smoke. And there was silence. And then I heard my mother screaming my sister's name. And that's when I realised there was something really, truly wrong. So I jumped out of bed and Dad had found a way to turn the lights on. And my sister Helen was on the bed shaking uncontrollably and in her hand was a black cross. And it turns out my sister had tried to bless the electricity with a metal cross. Now she was okay and Dad believed that Jesus had saved her and Patrick believed that Jesus just wanted to shut us up. but truly that she was saved by the fine mattress that she was leaning on. But it did have an instantaneous effect. We were cured. That was it. We were done. The days of controlling the universe with rosary beads were over. Thank you. That was Louise Newton-Keogh. She lives in Melbourne with her husband, where she's a student advocate at La Trobe University. And while she rarely tells stories these days, she does write daily and calls it her true passion. Louise is still very close to her four siblings, and they often reminisce about growing up in their tiny house filled with cats, rosary beads, and violins. She's pleased to say that her sister Helen has shown no ill effects from the electric shock she received so long ago. And during the dark times, Louise says that she will reach for the rosary beads, but only to pray never to bless However she does count her blessings daily To see photos of Louise as a child and with her sister go to thewebextras at themoth In a moment, a story from a woman reconciling her complicated past with her father and his demons, when The Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Suzanne Rust. This next story is about a father-daughter relationship complicated by the horrors of war. Pauline Wynn told this story in Perth, Australia's Octagon Theatre in 2008. You'll hear that the recording quality back then isn't quite up to today's standards, but we think you'll be fine with it. Here's Pauline. When Saigon fell to communist rule in 1975, my father realized that he had no choice but to escape Vietnam. And the only way that he could do this was to build a boat and smuggle himself and his family out to sea. I was three years old at the time and my brother Lewis was two. My grandmother begged my father not to leave. She couldn't understand how a parent would want to risk perishing their children out at sea. But my father is a very determined man. He stands at just five foot one, a little shorter than myself. But what he lacks in inches he makes up for in fearlessness and determination. and he had already made up his mind. He would rather die trying than risk imprisonment or to suffer a fate far worse, the re-education camps. It's not enough that they take our freedom, he would tell me. They want to take our thoughts as well. My father was determined that if we died, we will all die together. so in October 1977 armed with only a rudimentary map and a compass to guide him my father steered our vessel our tiny vessel out into the South China Sea we spent our days drifting and waiting and praying we prayed that a foreign ship might come and save us We prayed that we might find friendly shores. We prayed that the pirates wouldn't attack us and we prayed that our supplies would not run out. But our prayers were not always answered. Ship after ship after ship ignored our SOS, the most basic code of the sea. And at gunpoint, a group of Malaysian soldiers pushed us off supposedly friendly shores. We ended up in Thailand where we spent a very difficult year and in 1978 Australia finally accepted us. The government housed us at Westbridge Migrant Hostel and my father quickly found a job working on the production line at the Sunbeam factory in Campsie. Sunbeam gave him the graveyard shift from 2pm to 2am and they gave him all the jobs that nobody wanted. The train ride home was the worst, my father would later tell me. Every night was dangerous for him. The locals threatened to beat him, and the bigots threatened to kill him. My father cried every day going home on that train. A lot of us cried in those days. We came into this new world with nothing. Nothing. No job, no house, no money. We didn't know the laws, the systems or the language. My father had nightmares. And it's the same dream over and over. He's back in Vietnam. He's preparing for our escape. He's back in the water, drifting day after day with nowhere to go, and then he wakes up. My father had constant flashbacks to the war. Part of his job as a lieutenant in artillery was to return to the scene and count the dead bodies after a kill. One shell killed so many. The scars from his own bullet wounds resemble a question mark down the length of his spine. But determined to succeed, my father took on a second job and then a third job and then a fourth job. and at home he was always angry. He had an anger in him that none of us could explain. He would throw things, he would yell at us, he would smash things and sometimes he would just stand there and scream. My father was determined to raise four high achievers. He wanted to make sure that the sacrifices that he and my mother made were honoured. It wasn't long until he started offloading his anger upon my mother. Soon after that he started to offload his anger upon his children as well. If someone were to ask me now what it is that I remember most about my childhood, It would be the overwhelming stench of fear. Fear followed us every day of our lives. Fear stayed with me everywhere. My father kept three instruments of torture. The first was a flexible cane whip. The second was a stiff and shiny billiard stick. and the third was fear. Twice a year from the age of 7 to 13 we would bring our school her reports with absolute fear and loathing. For every B he cained us once. For every C he cained us twice. And this ritual required us to lay flat on our stomachs and not budge a millimetre until he was finished. blow after blow, hacking at the flesh of our buttocks and our thighs. And when he was done, he threw us a dollar for every A. My father would find any reason to beat us, and sometimes he would beat us for no reason at all. One of his most well-used and memorable quotes, I created you and I have the power to destroy you. yeah, he did that all right. At 17, I ran away from home and I spent many years hiding from my father. I would look over my shoulder everywhere that I went, paranoid that familiar faces were following me. You see, I wanted my fears forgotten, not faced up to. But there comes a time in your life where you need to overcome your fears by looking at it in the face. And for the sake of my mother, and for the sake of my brothers, and for all the shame that I had dumped upon my family in the years that I was gone, I reluctantly reconciled with my father. Out of duty, I would go home to visit, and I hated those visits. I hated the sense of claustrophobia and the sense of suffocation that I always felt in his presence. the meetings were always so stifled and false and tense but what I hated the most was the overwhelming realisation that I had grown up to be just like him I too was angry all the time angry at my loved ones angry at my work colleagues angry at the world angry at myself. Angry people are very skilled at noticing all that is wrong. And I carried this anger for many years. And later when my partner and I wanted to have a child, I was determined that this cycle end there. I was determined to not be the same person I had always been because I was frightened. Frightened of history repeating, frightened of treating my own child the way I had been treated, and I needed the cycle to end there. I could not pass on my anger to the next generation. Towards the end of my pregnancy, I landed a book deal to write a memoir about my family. And as I'm writing this book, my fears returned. As I'm writing this book, I'm thinking, how am I possibly going to survive my father's reaction to this story? There are ten chapters all up in my book, and it's not meant to be a scathing account about my father. It is a beautiful story about personal freedom and family and hope. But in order to talk about the good things, I have to talk about the bad things as well. and it was my plan to finish my book and give it to my father in its entirety so that he could see the full arc of the story and so that he could see what a beautiful story it really is but as I'm writing this book this cloud of dread is hanging over me I know that one day it's going to be published and I know that one day the world's going to read it and I'm just dreading the day my father's going to read it but there's a job to be done and a story that needs to be told, and so I write. By the end of the seventh chapter, my father demands to read my story, and I freak out. I freak out because he can't read it now. It's not finished. The seventh chapter is actually the most confronting chapter, and it was the most difficult chapter for me to write, and it possibly is the most scathing chapter about my father and he can't possibly read it now. But you don't say no to my father. And I had no choice but to hand over my unfinished manuscript, the story about his life written by his prodigal daughter. And I didn't hear from my father for two months. And I needed to hear from my father. I needed to find some sort of closure so that I can finish my book and move on. Father's Day came, and I decided to go home and face the music. So I'm in my car with my beautiful baby daughter, Mia, and we're driving home to Bonnerique to confront my parents. and I am so nervous and so scared with this confrontation that I can hardly breathe. I'm not scared that he's going to hit me or be violent or anything like that. We've passed that stage in our lives. I'm scared because I've exposed him to the world. I've exposed our family's story to the world and our family's secrets. I'm scared because he might give me some ridiculous ultimatum like, I forbid you to publish this book or something crazy like that But I scared because I about to do something that never been done before I about to take responsibility to end this family pattern I about to confront my father in order to make things better than before. And so Mia and I are waiting at the front door and I've taken with me a case of my father's favourite red wine as a peace offering. And when the doors open, they take Mia, they kiss her, they cuddle her, they're so happy to see her. And I see that they've made a feast for me. And we sit down to eat and I ask my father, Dad, what do you think about my story? He says, good, good, good, but there's just one thing. What's that one thing, Dad? The fish sauce recipe is wrong. What do you mean the fish sauce recipe is wrong? There's no water involved, no water involved. And I'm thinking, oh my God, this can't be happening. And later on I ask him again, Dad, what do you think about my book? I get the same response about the fish sauce recipe. And I'm so frustrated. We're never going to define our relationship. We're never going to connect. I'm doomed. I'm never going to finish my book I won't be able to move on I get my baby ready I'm getting my things ready and I'm just about to leave and I ask him one last time Dad what do you think about my book? And in a voice so sad and serious he says do you know why Buddha sits on a lotus flower? No dad why does Buddha sit on a lotus flower? There is nothing as beautiful as a lotus flower. Out of watery chaos it grows, emerging from the depths of a muddy swamp and yet remains so pure and unpolluted by it. So pure you can eat it, all of it. The roots, the stems, the leaves, the seeds, the petals. But the lotus flower has another characteristic. Its stem you can easily bend but you cannot easily break. It has tenacious fibres that hold the plant together. My children are lotus flowers. You have grown out of the aftermath of war. You have grown up in Cabramatta during its murkiest time. And you have grown out of me. I am mud. I am mud. I am dirt. I am shit. I am very lucky to have you all. And with those words, my father gave me everything that I had been waiting over 20 years for. He never gave me an apology. He gave me acknowledgement. Acknowledgement of the harm that he had inflicted. If someone were to ask me now, what things I think about when I think of my father? I would say I think about forgiveness. I think of redemption. And I think about hope. But most of all, I think about unfailing courage in the face of any adversity. That was Pauline Wynn. Colleen is an award-winning author, speaker, entrepreneur, and the co-founder of the renowned Vietnamese restaurant Red Lantern in Sydney, Australia. Her book, Secrets of the Red Lantern, Stories and Vietnamese Recipes from the Heart, is about her family's journey from their native Vietnam to Australia. Our final story was told by Denise Bledsoe Slaughter at a story slam in Washington, D.C., where we partner with public radio station WAMU. Here's Denise. Okay. First of all, I want to say that I'm going to strangle my friend, J.R., who talked me into doing this. Okay. So you all support murder. Thank you. I am 66 years old. I went to grad school at Brown University. This is a brief story about Pearl Wolf, one of my two mothers. everybody should have a black mother and a Jewish mother. Okay, I have been privileged to have had both. And Pearl was my Jewish mother at Brown for six years. In my last year of grad school, I had custody of my younger brother, who I might note I still have custody of. 45 years later, you do the math. It's gotten worse with age. But really, he was in the ninth grade. I took custody of him. My brother's gay. And he and his father, my stepfather, were not getting along. I told my mother I'll take him to school with me for a couple of weeks. It turned into the whole year. And Providence weather is not that bad. but it can get cold in the winter, and it did. It changed the trajectory of my life in many ways, and one of those was that I had to work. And the money that I made was not enough for that first oil delivery, so we were cold. And I called family members around the country. We were not poverty stricken, but it wasn't a whole lot of extra money. I called my older sister. Oh, wow, I wish you had called me a couple of weeks ago. I just got back from Nassau. And, you know, I don't have any money to spare. I called my mother's famous sister, Velma, whose husband's name was Jacques. Actually, it was Jack. when I first met him. And as soon as I mentioned money, she says, oh, you need to speak to Jacques. Jacques, of course, says, we don't have any money. And I knew it was a lie. I needed $180, which today doesn't sound like a lot, but what's this, 1976, that was a lot of money. So I'm whining to Pearl, with whom I work. And Pearl, you've got to imagine, is this short, squat woman. You know, she looked like she was a bodybuilder in her youth or something. And she had a cigarette permanently glued to the inside of her lip, and she could talk with it like Susan Hayward in the movies. And so she says, what do you need? I said $180. She said, come by the house tonight. I'll give it to you. I said, Pearl, I don't know when I'll be able to pay it back. And she said, that's okay. That's okay. And so she loaned me that money, and it got us through the winter. And the point of my story is that at the end of that year, I told her I would pay her back. I still didn't have $180. She said, you got a little refrigerator, right? And I said, yeah, I do, as a matter of fact. What are you going to do with it? And this was the end of my grad school years. I said, I don't know. I said, you want it? She had three children lined up to go to Brown. So she said, I'll take the refrigerator. So that was my introduction to bartering. And I paid off my debt to Pearl in any number of ways. And just as a footnote to my story, my brother, who went on to become a soldier, so thank you for your service. I thank him for his. He also was diagnosed with HIV in 1983, and he's still alive. He's survived all these years. Oh, no. No, that would be too simple. He became a crack addict and an alcoholic. and that is what you should be applauding. He survived that. He finished his undergraduate years and just got his master's in rehab counseling. So I thank Pearl Wolf for keeping us warm. Denise Bledsoe Slaughter is a self-described workaholic who looks forward to resting when she retires. but for now she's a special assistant at the University of the District of Columbia. She also works with a non-profit that provides education and career skills to low-income residents in the D.C. metro area. She says that helping people realize their ambitions is what keeps her going. I followed up with Denise to see how she was doing these days and she joked that except for the vagaries of aging, she's doing just fine. And while her brother still has his struggles, she is proud of his accomplishments and is still there for him 100%. To see a poem that Denise wrote about Pearl but never got to deliver, go to themoth.org. Pearl is no longer with us, but all these years later, Denise says that she is forever grateful for the friendship, tough love and guidance she provided, and the belly laughs that they shared. And I heartily agree with Denise. Everyone should have a black mother and a Jewish mother. I was so lucky to have had the amazing Edna Rust as my mother and fortunate to have a few Jewish mothers of my own. Sarah B. and Susie S., thanks for being there. Well, that's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from the Moth. This episode of the Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, Catherine Burns, and Suzanne Rust, who also hosted the show. Co-producer is Vicki Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch. The stories were directed by Leah Tao, with additional education program coaching by Melissa Brown. The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Janess, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Cloutier, Brandon Grant, Inga Gledowski, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Caza. The Moth Teachers Institute is made possible by generous support from Alice Gottesman. Thanks also to the Perth International Arts Festival. Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Screaming Females, Chill, Blue Dot Sessions, Farm Duke Tong, and the Fearless Flyers. 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.