In this episode, stories of support coming from surprising places -- and moments of seemingly divine intervention. Family ties, a raucous subway ride, and hidden treasure. This episode is hosted by Moth Producer Chloe Salmon. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Storytellers: A young Hope Iyiewuare rebels against his family's chore rotation. Onnesha Roychoudhuri takes a stand on the subway. Gregory Brady finds himself unprepared for a triathlon. Charlotte Cline and her boundary-resistant family navigate a loss. Wang Ping starts a banned book club during the Cultural Revolution in China. Podcast # 709 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Full Episode
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Chloe Salmon. A saving grace is what usually rescues something or someone from being a lost cause. But I've always appreciated another, more optimistic view. A saving grace as the support we get unexpectedly, and often when we most need it. In this hour, stories of finding grace in surprising places.
It seems fitting that our first story comes from a man named Hope. He told it for us at a slam in Chicago where we partner with public radio station WBEZ. Here's Hope Iyeoye live at the Moth.
So growing up in Houston, I was shaped by a couple things that I couldn't escape. One of them was my siblings. And they're good people. My sister, Praise, is three years older than me. My younger brother, Peace, is one year younger. And Truth is two years younger. But don't let the names fool you. They're OK.
And we're all really close in age and we're all really close in size, so we were really cramped. And the second thing that shaped me, this tiny apartment, two bedrooms, the bathroom was frankly disgusting, for the kids at least. A big part of that was the routine of us cleaning that, and the entire house, honestly, the entire apartment. My mom would come into our room.
We heard her before we saw her, because she was singing Nigerian gospel music. And we knew that it was that Saturday that we were going to clean the bathroom. It was a little traumatizing. The bathroom itself, there was a corner that was just completely mildewed. I think the roaches there would rent to other roaches. It wasn't a good look for anybody.
But thankfully, we were able to move out of that apartment. My mom and dad bought a house. thankfully moving up, but that routine continued. We had the Saturday morning gospel music, the Saturday morning cleaning, things continued as usual.
I'm thinking back to a time when I was about 15 and my mom had come upstairs, she was directing us where we were gonna go, and she points to me and she's like, Hope, alright, go fix up that room, sparkling, sparkling clean, and then go take care of this bathroom. And the one thing siblings are good for is the chore rotation. It was not my week for the bathroom.
And I mean, as people who have been in bathrooms before, no one likes to clean them. And it was not my week, more importantly. I tried to get my mom to see the injustice of making me clean it when it was Truth Week, and she said, no, I'm going to go to the store. When I get back, you're going to help clean this bathroom. So I storm off. I head to my room.
I try to slam the door, but I catch it real fast because I'm raised right. And I just, like, pace around my room, and I'm looking at, I need to release this anger. So I see the wall right beside my window, and I'm just, I'm getting ready. I draw back, and I smack the wall. I expected to hear that same pop. But instead of hearing that pop, I feel my fist give a little.
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