Chapter 1: What kind of stories are featured in this episode?
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Michelle Jalowski. In this hour, stories of eye-opening encounters. I always feel like there's a special kind of magic that happens when a random encounter with a stranger or a chance conversation has the power to shift my whole perspective.
It's so easy to live in an echo chamber, especially these days, and honestly, I love a reminder that I'm not always right, or that things can be different than they initially seemed to me. All the storytellers in this hour have the opportunity to shift their perspectives in ways big and small, and they take it.
Our first story comes from one of our open mic story slams in Asheville, where we partnered with Blue Ridge Public Radio. Live from the Gray Eagle in North Carolina, here's Mandy Gardner.
So I'm walking through the cemetery, and I have been for quite some time. I just assumed that there would be a sign that would point me to where she lay. She was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. But I found signs that pointed the way to Eugene O'Neill, but no Anne Sexton. And I'd been walking around the cemetery for quite some time when I finally found a little guard shack.
It was actually a little visitor center, but it was closed because it was Sunday, and the cemetery was mostly shut down that day. But I walked around the outside of the building. I had traveled all the way to Boston from my home in Atlanta and I really wanted to pay my respects. But I just couldn't find her. So I came upon the office and I found a door that was propped open by a mop bucket.
And I am not the kind of person who just breaks into places. I'd never done this before, but I'm staring at this mop bucket and I'm thinking about why I'm there. And why I'm there is because when I was in high school in the early 1990s in South Carolina, they didn't have a law that was about not talking about gay people or the existence of queer or trans people. They just didn't.
And the school board in my town actually banned the book The Grapes of Wrath because it took the name of the Lord in vain. So you can imagine there were no queer stories told at all. So when I was 15 years old and starting to realize that this was my life, I thought it meant that I was going to be lonely.
for the rest of my life, and then probably hell awaited me on the other side of that, because I had no other stories that told me anything different. So like many other queer and trans kids, I had to go looking for my own stories that would give me some sort of glimmer of what my future life might be like. And Anne Sexton, who was not queer, she was a married lady, but she wrote poems about
lesbian desire about love. She wrote a poem called Song for a Lady and put it in a book entitled Love Poems. And that little poem, that little scratch of a poem was so beautiful and it gave me a little glimpse of intimacy, of actual happiness that I could aspire to one day. So yeah, in my early 20s, when I had the opportunity and the money, I went to Boston, and I went to go visit her grave.
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Chapter 2: How does Mandy Gardner's story in a graveyard change her perspective?
And anticipating a blank stare in response, I said, Anne Sexton? And he said, Anne Sexton, is she here? He turns to the boys in the car. Hey guys, you remember those Anne Sexton poems we read in English class? Anne Sexton, I fucking love her! And I remembered one of my favorite lines of Anne Sexton's poetry is, live or die, just don't poison everything.
And I left there and I vowed to myself that I would always tell my story every opportunity that I got because you never know whose life you might save and you might even change the world.
Mandy Gardner lives with her wife Bailey in Asheville, North Carolina. She's the associate director of marketing at an impact investment firm, and she's proud to be a multi-story slam winning teller who has competed in two Moth Grand Slams in Asheville. I asked Mandy if her relationship to teenage boys has changed in the intervening 24 years since this story took place.
She told me she realized she wasn't afraid of teenage boys at all. She was afraid of bullies. She said, and now I understand that bullies are not born. They are cultivated.
Music
Our next story comes from an open mic story slam in Chicago, where we partner with public radio station WBEZ. Here's Caroline Brennan, live at the Moth.
Growing up, my sisters and I would dare each other to run to the mailbox and maybe even raise the flag if we had the nerve to show we were there. And I know it doesn't sound that thrilling, but this was a no-go zone. Our mailbox was off limits to anyone but our dad, who was a career military officer. And I think growing up, we just thought that was the norm, that only soldiers got the mail.
Because our lives were dictated by rule and order and fear. And our dad was a very intimidating, towering figure, which is why it really came out of nowhere when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And within three weeks, we were planning his funeral.
So my four sisters and I were very fortunate enough to be able to go home to Austin, Texas and be at his side and be able to say goodbye, which is a gift. And everything was just really new and unexpected. And so too was the revelation when our father told us from the hospice bed, all of his five girls around him, and all of us well into our 30s, that we had a brother.
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Chapter 3: What family secret does Caroline Brennan uncover?
And it was weird growing up knowing that there was this big thing missing in my life, but not having any language for it. I remember when I was a kid, my friends would eventually ask me, like, hey, where is your dad? And I never knew what to say to them. So most times I just started to cry. Or other times I would get angry at them for even asking such a thing. And I would say, I don't have a dad.
And that felt like a true statement to me because I didn't have memories of my dad. I wanted to know things. I wish people said, wow, you look just like your dad. You smile like your dad. You run like your dad. But nobody ever said anything. So I didn't say anything. And the silence went on for decades. But then in March of 2020, completely out of the blue,
I received a phone call from the Baltimore City State Attorney's Office informing me that the man who killed my dad was appealing his sentence and that somebody in my family could write a victim impact statement and read it at his hearing. Also in 2020, I was turning 32 and it was messing with my head big time.
I cannot wrap my head around the fact that I was turning the age my dad was when he died. I became fixated on this idea of turning 32, but completely dreading it. I was so obsessed with the number 32 that I had a friend tattoo it on me that year. Turning 32 just felt so symbolic. I mean, the same year I'm turning this age that my dad was when he died, I might meet the man who killed him.
I knew I needed to do something big to acknowledge this birthday. So in October, on my actual birthday, I decided that I would walk the entire perimeter of Manhattan in one day because somebody told me it's actually 32 miles long. I wrote this essay and I sent it to all my friends and family explaining the significance of this birthday. And I invited people to walk with me.
I was floored by people's responses. My mom immediately went out and bought a pair of hokas and said she would walk with me. Some of my mom's siblings apologized to me for never talking about my dad. I had friends who didn't live in New York who said, I'm gonna go on a 32 minute walk in honor of you and your dad.
And I set up this tracker on Google Maps so that anyone anywhere could see my path throughout the day. I started walking at 7 a.m. from the base of Manhattan from South Ferry Station. And as I began to walk along the west side, various people from my life started to show up. A roommate from grad school came and she walked with me for a few miles.
Some cousins on my mom's side of the family came and they brought their three kids and we kicked a soccer ball through Battery Park. And as I continued to just cruise up the West Side Highway, more and more people started to show up. Even this guy that I recently matched with on Hinge came and walked with me for a few miles. And then my cousin Andrew showed up.
Andrew is the son of my dad's younger brother. He's just a year younger than me, so he was almost two when my dad was killed. My uncle had told his kids that my dad had died in a car crash and it wasn't until Andrew was in his 20s that he learned how my dad really died. I invited my uncle to do the walk and I even finally asked him to tell me stories about my dad.
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