2025 Update: Dina

Speaker 1 Pushkin

Speaker 2 Kaleholt, welcome to the studio.

Speaker 3 Thanks.

Speaker 2 Today's encore presentation is an episode called Dina. Spoiler alert.
You know who Dina is?

Speaker 3 Your mom.

Speaker 4 She's my mother.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That's right.
Even I have a mother, Khalila Holt.

Speaker 4 You know when you like call me like, what is it?

Speaker 2 You call me a motherless cuss?

Speaker 3 You've never got to be aware of it.

Speaker 7 Sometimes when you, when you get upset.

Speaker 2 No, this episode is about my mother. What do you remember about the production?

Speaker 3 I remember it, and I hope I'm not speaking out of turn. No, please.
But I remember it being like an emotional one for you to work on.

Speaker 8 Like there was a lot you had to delve into.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 5 My wife, Emily, was like, you know, you're doing all these episodes about other people and intimate moments from their lives. You have to have a little skin in the game.

Speaker 2 And yeah, it was kind of scary. But I came out the the other end stronger and jollier and balder than ever.

Speaker 3 And if our listeners come out the other end of this episode, they'll get to hear an update from Dina herself on her birthday.

Speaker 2 That's right. Yeah, I talked to my mother to catch up with her on her various projects.

Speaker 9 So let's get ready to listen voraciously.

Speaker 10 I'm ready.

Speaker 2 But before we do, let's hear a word from our sponsors.

Speaker 3 Thanks, sponsors.

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Speaker 18 Yellow.

Speaker 16 Why, hello.

Speaker 1 Now, what kind of greeting is that?

Speaker 19 You've got your radio voice on.

Speaker 20 Could you elaborate on what you mean by that?

Speaker 19 I know in the first second if I'm being recorded or not based on

Speaker 19 your inflections.

Speaker 21 Well, I always talk like this, Jackie.

Speaker 9 Back to you.

Speaker 19 The way you're speaking with me now is never the way you would normally speak.

Speaker 1 Okay, wait, hang on a second.

Speaker 22 I'm just talking normal.

Speaker 19 But you're not talking normal. This is your radio voice.
Hey, what's going on? It's still not. It's still not.
It's still not.

Speaker 9 Hey.

Speaker 19 No. Hey, Jackie.
Try again. Jackie? No, you wouldn't say my name like that.
How's it going? Too much energy.

Speaker 23 Hi.

Speaker 19 I can tell.

Speaker 20 Anyway, it can't be a radio voice because I do a podcast.

Speaker 7 It's a podcast voice.

Speaker 20 All right, and welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 From Gimlet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, Dina.

Speaker 24 Hello, hello.

Speaker 23 Okay.

Speaker 7 So we just got to Montreal.

Speaker 11 Oui, we.

Speaker 20 What's that?

Speaker 8 Isn't that how you say yes in French?

Speaker 4 Yeah, but you just say it once.

Speaker 7 You just say we.

Speaker 24 We.

Speaker 20 My folks are about to meet us. Pick us up at the airport to take us back to their place where we will be staying for the next five days.

Speaker 1 Five days. Five days in my childhood home.
in the childhood bed I've not slept in in decades. My wife Emily and I are here for Passover, to sup upon the bread of affliction.

Speaker 1 Growing up, though, it was everything of affliction, candy corn of affliction, road trips of affliction, bedtime stories of affliction.

Speaker 1 I moved out when I was 19, but from age 1 to 18, What I remember most is the vague feeling of worry permeating the household. Worry that manifested as yelling.

Speaker 1 Yelling through closed doors, yelling across the kitchen table. My father yelling into a junk drawer, desperately trying to find a working pen.

Speaker 1 My mother yelling into a clogged toilet, desperately trying to make it go down.

Speaker 1 But more often than not, the yelling wasn't over anything at all. We were just a naturally loud, anxious family.
A race of nervous giants shrunk into the bodies of little Jews.

Speaker 1 Man, when I move out of here, I'd say in my teens, I'm going to live like Sting,

Speaker 1 peace and quiet, meditation, tea, and tantric sex.

Speaker 1 And now, after years of oolong rooibus and lemon rooibus, I'm home again. for my first trip back with Emily and our five-month-old son, Aggie.

Speaker 1 Day one.

Speaker 26 There they are.

Speaker 1 My parents' Toyota pulls up to the airport pickup.

Speaker 6 They pass us.

Speaker 1 And passes us.

Speaker 7 Try to catch their eye.

Speaker 4 They don't see us.

Speaker 10 Here.

Speaker 10 We're right here.

Speaker 1 My mother jumps out.

Speaker 1 She runs back towards us, pointing at Aggie's ears.

Speaker 18 His ears are exposed.

Speaker 23 Hi. My Emily.

Speaker 15 His ears are exposed. My boy's old face aches all in

Speaker 1 Both my mother and father wear their woolen caps pulled down well past their ears. In younger, stronger days, they might have stretched those caps right down over their feet.
But they're old now.

Speaker 1 My mother, Dina, 72, and my father, Buzz, 83.

Speaker 4 I want to drive slow, not too fast.

Speaker 29 I want to go carefully here, okay?

Speaker 1 While Buzz is high-strung, Dina's intensity is capable of raising the emotional temperature of any space she occupies. In elevators, walk-in pantries, and Toyotas, her powers are especially acute.

Speaker 18 It's like a funny feeling in my throat like it's like really

Speaker 15 emotional.

Speaker 18 It's like a dream.

Speaker 27 You know, it's like a dream.

Speaker 27 Yeah,

Speaker 27 it's like such a weird feeling.

Speaker 1 I think the weird elusive feeling my mother is trying to describe is happiness.

Speaker 18 It's just wonderful to see him. him.
I hope he's going to be warm enough. Did you bring him a little something?

Speaker 18 Home, sweetheart.

Speaker 29 Be it ever so hard.

Speaker 1 Walking through the door, I'm a 12-year-old again, home from school and looking forward to zoning out with Petticoat Junction.

Speaker 1 I'm a 16-year-old, rushing to the bathroom to gargle out the smell of cigarettes. I'm a 48-year-old, a grown-ass man with a grown-ass ass.

Speaker 1 Parenting a newborn leaves a person with no time for squats, so don't judge, Alex.

Speaker 25 So nice in here.

Speaker 18 Wait, wait.

Speaker 10 I can't believe it.

Speaker 1 Normally the house, a modest, semi-detached bungalow, has a certain storage unit bomb shelter vibe.

Speaker 1 Walls of toilet paper, A cold room full of canned fruit cocktail, needle points of biblical scenes and torreadors, all leaned up against the walls for fear of pounding in a nail and regretting it forever.

Speaker 1 But today, the place looks positively sparse.

Speaker 18 Johnny, just don't open a closet or a drawer. Everything will tumble on your head.
Because when we heard you guys are coming, I threw everything into the closets and hid them.

Speaker 1 My mother grabs Auggie and heads upstairs for a diaper change. Emily and I trail behind.

Speaker 18 I want him to be fresh and clean.

Speaker 30 Oh, you're so sweet.

Speaker 18 You're so sweet, my angel.

Speaker 27 Where the frigg is the bag?

Speaker 1 The friggin' bag contains the friggin' diapers that my mother bought for our visit.

Speaker 1 It turns out it's on her lap.

Speaker 18 I kept the bill because I wasn't sure if you want me to return them or not.

Speaker 4 Would you be able to return used diapers?

Speaker 18 Yeah, you know me. I could return anything.
I could return anything.

Speaker 18 You know that, Johnny.

Speaker 1 I do know that. Returning stuff is what my mother lives for.
She sees it as a staring contest, a game of chess, but with yelling.

Speaker 1 I remember once going along with her as she returned a shirt she'd bought for my father, two years earlier.

Speaker 1 It's missing a sleeve, she told the cashier. Holding up the article of clothing, the cashier turned it around and around.

Speaker 1 It's not supposed to have sleeves, the cashier finally said. It's a poncho.
A poncho? My mother repeated, as though it were a foreign word, which, in her defense, I suppose it sort of is.

Speaker 1 I don't care what it is. It's factory defective, and my husband can't wear it.

Speaker 1 Whenever she'd get this way, I'd adopt a stance meant to convey filial loyalty, peppered with a touch of what Vietnam vets call the thousand-yard stare.

Speaker 1 I've stood next to my mother through countless exchanges, arguments, spectacles, and stinks, but this is the first time I've stood by your side as she diapers my son.

Speaker 18 Oh, look how much pee-pee he has.

Speaker 18 Oh, you made a lot of pee-pee, eh, baby.

Speaker 18 See, that's how I knew you were sick when you were a baby, Johnny. You weren't peeping.

Speaker 10 What was wrong with me?

Speaker 1 As a kid, it was easy to be embarrassed by my mother. One time, a popular boy named Geordie showed up at our house.
I wasn't home, but my mother answered the door, with her hair on fire.

Speaker 1 My hair's on fire, she screamed.

Speaker 1 The next day in school, Geordie showed the whole class how she screamed it. He wiggled his fingers in the air, looking as though he was about to fall to his knees.

Speaker 1 That night, I asked my mother what had happened. It was the barbecue, she said.
Your father wasn't home, and I was so in the the mood for barbecued lamb chops.

Speaker 1 It seems that while examining the chops for signs of spoilage, she leaned her hairsprayed buffant too close to the grill.

Speaker 1 While this explained the fire atop her head, it did not explain why she answered the door while nursing a fire atop her head.

Speaker 1 Growing up, this kind of stuff happened all the time. So I was always on high alert for humiliating emergencies.
Being back home again, I feel the old muscle memory kick back in.

Speaker 2 What's that smell?

Speaker 18 Something's burning.

Speaker 4 Did you turn on the heater?

Speaker 27 Did you touch the heat? No.

Speaker 1 It turns out that one of the ragdolls my mother had been hoarding somehow landed onto one of the old lamps she'd been hoarding and had begun to burn.

Speaker 18 I could have had a fire because I was so careless.

Speaker 1 The day plays out as a series of minor disasters averted. In the morning, my mother loses her cell phone.
We find it in in the night table. In the afternoon, a screw to my father's glasses falls out.

Speaker 1 We replace it with a twist tie. At dinner, a waiter charges my mother for a potato she claims she didn't order, but after 10 minutes of Camp David-style negotiations, it's dropped from the bill.

Speaker 1 Before bed, my father can't find his passport. Why do you need a passport, I ask.
You always need a passport, he says. We find it in the night table.

Speaker 1 In the past, having someone witness all of this would have made me feel anxious. But now, having Emily here makes me feel like I have an ally.

Speaker 1 Turning to her in the midst of some crisis is like looking directly into the TV camera and winking at the audience.

Speaker 1 Day two.

Speaker 1 After we put Auggie to sleep, Emily and I lie in bed. I ask for her thoughts and reflections on the trip so far.

Speaker 2 No comment. Oh, come on.
This, come on.

Speaker 1 No comment. How could she resist? Look at how my mother acts with Auggie, I say, trying to get Emily going.

Speaker 1 I saw her put a pocket mirror under his nose while he was sleeping to see if he was still breathing. After every spoonful she feeds him, she asks if he's choking.

Speaker 8 You realize, though, that you say all that about Aggie now, too. Like just a tiny little cough, and you are doing it.
Is he breathing? Can he sit like that? Can he touch that thing? Can he eat that?

Speaker 8 Can he do that? Is he supposed to be doing that? What's wrong?

Speaker 6 What's wrong? What's wrong?

Speaker 8 What's he doing? What's he doing? Is he choking?

Speaker 6 What's wrong?

Speaker 8 You do a lot of that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 I concede to Emily that maybe I do just a little of that kind of thing, but I wasn't even in the parking lot of the ballpark of Adina Goldstein.

Speaker 10 You, one day

Speaker 8 you dropped Auggie off, and

Speaker 8 you called me right afterward because you were so worried. Do you remember this?

Speaker 1 I do remember this. It was Auggie's first week of daycare.
He shares a babysitter with two little sisters. But on that particular morning, when the babysitter opened the door, she was alone.

Speaker 1 She told me the girls were napping in another room.

Speaker 8 You called me and said she was there alone. She said they were in bed.
I don't know, maybe she killed the whole family and now she's going to kill Auggie. And you weren't joking.

Speaker 8 Like you knew it was a crazy thought,

Speaker 8 but you needed me to tell you she didn't kill their family. She's not going to kill Auggie.

Speaker 31 I did not need you to tell me that.

Speaker 8 And in you're misremembering. You were freaked out.

Speaker 8 You were freaked out.

Speaker 32 I thought I was very stoic.

Speaker 8 You called me and said I think the nanny is gonna murder our child and that she murdered the whole family that we do daycare with. I don't consider that stoic.

Speaker 4 All right. I mean, I'm just imaginative.

Speaker 8 That's one way to look at it.

Speaker 1 Yet another way to look at it is that I'm also crazy, just like my mom.

Speaker 1 Well, set my hair on fire and open the front door.

Speaker 1 In the days after Augie was born, I couldn't stop thinking terrible thoughts. Things I couldn't speak, not even to Emily.
With this new overwhelming love for my son came new overwhelming fears.

Speaker 1 For his safety, his heartbreaks to come, for his old age. his loneliness.
So I started seeing a therapist. I explained how worry was the lingua franca of my childhood.

Speaker 1 I wasn't allowed a paper route because it was a good way to get abducted, no barefooting because of rusty nails.

Speaker 1 And I didn't even learn to swim until junior high because water, that's where people go to drown.

Speaker 1 Worry and fear were how my mother communicated love, I said to my therapist with a shrug. But love is love.
The important thing is that we feel it.

Speaker 1 But my therapist's response troubled me. She said that love was the transcendence of fear, that you might even say, fear was the opposite of love.

Speaker 1 Sitting at my childhood desk, with Agi's toys scattered at my feet, my therapist's words returned to me.

Speaker 1 If I was becoming my mother, would Aggie someday become me? Someone weighed down by fear and worry? Was our genetic line nothing more than an inglorious chain of Russian dolls?

Speaker 1 Should my therapist save the notes from our sessions so I can send Aggie to her at a discounted rate?

Speaker 1 I didn't want my son becoming me, and there were only two people who could help me understand how I became me.

Speaker 1 One who charged New York therapy rates that might leave me bankrupted before I'm cured, and the other, my mother.

Speaker 1 Day 3

Speaker 1 As a child, I felt trapped and embarrassed by my mother. As an adult, I came to be amused by her.

Speaker 1 It's only as a freshly minted father visiting home for the first time that I'm beginning to see that I am her.

Speaker 32 How much do you pay for apples?

Speaker 18 $79 a pound, but if I'm desperate, I can.

Speaker 1 This is what we normally talk about: where to get the best price on paper plates, where to get the best price on honeydew melon.

Speaker 4 Dina, what do you pay for a bottle of water?

Speaker 18 I get like $24 for $1.88.

Speaker 6 Bottle water.

Speaker 18 Cokes, $24 for $6.49.

Speaker 32 Will you pay for a loaf of bread?

Speaker 1 But after dinner, after Auggie's gone to sleep, my mom and I sit down at the kitchen table to have a different conversation.

Speaker 1 Emily's reading in bed, and my father's watching TV in the basement. It's just us.

Speaker 2 Hello, hello.

Speaker 14 Go ahead and talk.

Speaker 18 Here I am.

Speaker 21 Why do you say here I am?

Speaker 18 Well, where should I say?

Speaker 27 There I am.

Speaker 1 Tonight I want to talk about the fear, fear, that thing my family lives inside, like a snowsuit with a broken zipper, that can no more be removed than our own flesh.

Speaker 1 I want to talk about the nameless thing that binds all Goldsteins, that ignites us, propels us, and ultimately paralyzes us.

Speaker 20 Well, I think about this stuff now because, you know, I have a I have a son, and

Speaker 14 I think

Speaker 18 he's so beautiful, and I saw those blue eyes like Know Horace Obey's eggs only.

Speaker 1 My mother's not talking crazy talk. She's talking Yiddish.

Speaker 20 Yeah, what does that mean?

Speaker 18 The bad eye shouldn't hurt them.

Speaker 1 The bad eye, the evil eye, the belief that merely saying something positive is enough to invite evil forces to snuff the good thing out.

Speaker 1 So even bringing up a normal son-to-mom question about good parenting is enough to attract the eye. On the day of my bar mitzvah, my mother carefully sewed a red ribbon into my underwear.

Speaker 1 In this way, she reasoned, should the evil eye turn its gaze upon me, I'd be protected by my underwear.

Speaker 20 Why do you think

Speaker 21 you do that evil eye stuff?

Speaker 27 I know you're not being me. It's the Moroccan stuff.

Speaker 21 But you say it's cuckoo.

Speaker 18 I know it's cuckoo, but I can't help it.

Speaker 21 But then that's a superstition.

Speaker 18 I don't know. Everybody does it.

Speaker 20 I've never met anybody who puts red ribbons in their underwear. I'm saying I personally have never met anyone who does that.
So I can't say everybody puts red ribbons in their underwear.

Speaker 21 But what is it supposed to be warding off?

Speaker 18 The evil eye.

Speaker 21 But what is the evil eye?

Speaker 21 I don't know.

Speaker 1 This is how conversations with Dina often go. They derail, hit dead ends.
So when I ask her, why was our home the way it was? I expect more of the same.

Speaker 9 But instead, my mother grows quiet.

Speaker 6 I worry.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I do too.

Speaker 18 I was afraid of this, afraid of that.

Speaker 18 I was irrational. I wasn't thinking right.
And I have a chance to redo mine a little bit, not with you, but with Augie.

Speaker 1 She stops talking and stares into her lap. For a while, we just sit there.

Speaker 18 I look upon this as a second chance.

Speaker 18 I want to correct my mistakes, Johnny. I want to redeem myself.
That's it.

Speaker 1 My mother doesn't usually talk this way. If something's causing her grief, she returns it to the store, sends it back to the kitchen.
And so, talk of second chances and redemption.

Speaker 1 The words sound weird coming out of her mouth, and I don't know how to respond. Where's all this coming from? I ask.

Speaker 1 Are you thinking of something specific?

Speaker 18 It's too painful.

Speaker 6 I don't want to.

Speaker 20 Maybe if you talk about it, you won't have to anymore.

Speaker 15 I don't want to talk about it.

Speaker 6 I can't.

Speaker 20 I don't think it could be anything that I can't.

Speaker 15 I can't talk about it.

Speaker 15 Don't press me.

Speaker 18 Please.

Speaker 20 Well, I don't want to force you. I don't want to make you feel bad.

Speaker 18 I'm ashamed of myself.

Speaker 18 Let's change the subject.

Speaker 1 And with that, the conversation ends.

Speaker 1 I'd gone to my mother for answers about my childhood, but instead, she's left me with questions I didn't even know I had.

Speaker 1 What had happened that was so bad, she couldn't even talk about it. What was she so afraid to tell me?

Speaker 1 After the break, I find out.

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Speaker 4 Hello, hello. So mom's upstairs with Emily.

Speaker 14 Do you have any insight?

Speaker 1 Day four.

Speaker 1 I sit down with my father to see if he has any idea what this second chance is that my mother's talking about. He's hesitant to talk because that goes against his strategy of staying out of the drama.

Speaker 1 In fact, most of my childhood memories of him are of a man in bed, napping, with a large volume of World War II history splayed open on his chest.

Speaker 1 This retiring nature might be the secret to having stayed married to my mother for more than 50 years.

Speaker 32 What is the thing that she is carrying around with her?

Speaker 33 She's a very private person and she feels

Speaker 33 she doesn't want to be intruded upon.

Speaker 16 Don't take it the wrong way.

Speaker 25 So you have no inkling. You don't know what's going on.

Speaker 33 She doesn't even discuss it with me. I don't know what guilt.
I don't know what she's talking about.

Speaker 32 You don't find it odd or intriguing in a way?

Speaker 33 It's a touchy subject for her and she's

Speaker 33 very reluctant to talk about it.

Speaker 4 Talk about it.

Speaker 32 What's the it?

Speaker 33 I don't know. You have to ask her and she's going to shut down.

Speaker 33 She's going to shut down.

Speaker 1 This means she'll try to change the subject or start to yell. But today I don't care.
I just want to know what the big secret is.

Speaker 1 I wonder what it is, I say to Emily. Who knows, she says, while brushing her hair.
So many things about your mom are a mystery to me. Like why is the kitchen faucet always running full blast?

Speaker 1 And why does she keep offering me paper towels? I think, she says, you should just let it go.

Speaker 1 But of course, I can't.

Speaker 1 What had my mother done that she wanted a second chance at? Was it for the time she bought me a shirt for my birthday that she later admitted was actually a dress?

Speaker 1 Did she want to redo the time she dropped me off at a birthday party and hollered out the car window, have fun, but if you get diarrhea and someone's on the toilet, just make in the bathtub.

Speaker 1 Diarrhea is not a time for pride.

Speaker 1 Of course I now see the wisdom, but as a child, her words were a source of shame.

Speaker 1 I need to know, so I invite my mother out for a Sunday stroll with Auggie and me. Maybe if she can just relax, it'll come out

Speaker 1 like diarrhea.

Speaker 14 Talk?

Speaker 18 What should I say?

Speaker 22 Let me just take your logo.

Speaker 2 So tell me, um...

Speaker 32 So do you find walking with Auggie relaxing?

Speaker 18 Very relaxing. So nice.
It's a pleasure to walk with my little friend.

Speaker 1 To start things off, I lobber an easy question. Cocktail party stuff.

Speaker 7 What's your first memory?

Speaker 18 Kindergarten. And we lived on Colonial, 4039 Colonial.
And I remember my father used to play Pinocchio.

Speaker 18 And he had a thumb. that was the nail like the thumbnail was very sh cut off and all of a sudden I thought of it and I started screaming and crying and carrying on and worrying.
Oh, I remember.

Speaker 10 How old are you?

Speaker 18 Must have been four or five.

Speaker 7 So an early memory is being at kindergarten and remembering your father's thumbnail and starting to cry? Yeah.

Speaker 21 What was it that upset you about it?

Speaker 18 I was worried about it because it wasn't like a regular thumb.

Speaker 18 I was worried crazy.

Speaker 1 I try to guide her towards happy reminiscences, but all her memories are awful.

Speaker 1 Rheumatic fever, scarlet fever, her mother slapping her in Woolworths for whining about a balloon she wanted, waking up in the middle of the night to find a wall in the kitchen covered in moths.

Speaker 18 Then I remember my mother's pressure cooker in that house hit the ceiling and pea soup was splattered everywhere.

Speaker 21 All your memories.

Speaker 7 Let's hear another memory in her life.

Speaker 1 With the small talk exhausted, I trepidaciously bring the subject back around to the do-over.

Speaker 18 I don't know, Johnny.

Speaker 18 I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to remind myself.
The way I

Speaker 18 felt doesn't conjure up good memories, please. And that's the end of it.
I don't want to go into details.

Speaker 1 Nonetheless, for the rest of the day, I can't stop myself from asking for details.

Speaker 15 Here we go.

Speaker 1 I ask as she puts away the breakfast dishes.

Speaker 1 I don't want to think about things.

Speaker 18 I have nothing more to say, Johnny. Leave me be.

Speaker 1 Wait, see, I ask as she cuts coupons while watching Judge Judy with Emily.

Speaker 2 In broad strokes.

Speaker 27 Please, Emily, take him off me.

Speaker 1 And while she peels boiled eggs for lunch.

Speaker 1 Leave me alone.

Speaker 1 Later, we all sit down for dinner, and with it, some wine.

Speaker 6 What's wrong with me? I think I'm off my rocker.

Speaker 1 My mother rarely drinks wine.

Speaker 6 Oh my god, how did I get like this?

Speaker 25 Mom, you just had a glass of wine.

Speaker 18 I'm gonna be okay.

Speaker 1 As she drifts off into an inebriated slumber, I give it one last try. Mom,

Speaker 33 good night.

Speaker 34 Is there anything you need to tell me?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 20 Any secrets to reveal?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 1 I was getting nowhere.

Speaker 1 Day five.

Speaker 4 Alright, you want to change him?

Speaker 1 It's our last day, and I've decided to give it a rest. I stop asking weird questions, and we all just hang out.

Speaker 1 We talk about the price of things, we yell from room to room, we search for lost cell phones, and grow pleasantly bored with each other's company. Overall, it's pretty nice.

Speaker 1 But while putting Augie down for a nap, my mother has a question for me.

Speaker 18 Johnny, what was it that you were hoping to get from me?

Speaker 25 Oh, I really just want to be able to have a conversation. That's all.

Speaker 31 I don't want to cause you distress.

Speaker 18 You're not causing me stress.

Speaker 18 It's what it was.

Speaker 25 I don't even want to talk about all the painful stuff.

Speaker 1 She lays Auggie down. She stands over the crib.
She starts to say something, but then trails away.

Speaker 14 What were you saying?

Speaker 14 Why?

Speaker 6 Why? Because I'm one equal.

Speaker 1 I was not adopted. I had no secret twin.
And my mother had no secret family. There were no murders, no affairs.

Speaker 1 It turns out that my mother's big secret, the thing that was so hard for her to say, was that she was sorry. For a lot of things.
Some small, some not so small. Some I remember, some I don't.

Speaker 1 Calling me names, screaming at me a lot. How she could have been nicer to my girlfriends.
How she used to pull my hair. Hit me.

Speaker 1 Hitting kids was like the hula hoop back then, I say. A fad.
Everyone did it. It wasn't right, she says.
Back then, people didn't know better, I say.

Speaker 1 I should have known better, she says.

Speaker 1 I forgive you, I say.

Speaker 1 I don't forgive myself.

Speaker 1 So I forgive her again, and I mean it.

Speaker 1 And then I turn the recorder back on.

Speaker 18 I love you, honey.

Speaker 18 You made it a little easier for me, thank you.

Speaker 34 I love you too, Mom.

Speaker 1 When you become a parent, your whole life changes, but you forget that some things stay the same.

Speaker 1 I'd been so focused on becoming a better father that I forgot I was still a son.

Speaker 1 And maybe learning to be a better son is how you become a better dad, anyway.

Speaker 23 I want him to be safe.

Speaker 1 On the last morning of our visit, my mother and I head to the park. As a kid, the park was someplace I usually went with my grandfather or father.

Speaker 1 One of the only times I remember going with my mother, two collies appeared out of nowhere and began chasing us. I remember we separated and the dogs chased her while I hid behind a tree.

Speaker 1 I look around the playground. From my own childhood with her, I knew most things were out.
Sandbox, because someone could have peed in there.

Speaker 1 Same for the swings, monkey bars, teeter-totters, and merry-go-rounds.

Speaker 1 But then something surprising happens. Picking Auggie up out of the stroller, my mother says, I'll take him down the slide.

Speaker 7 He's never gone down the slide.

Speaker 18 Come with Bobby, honey. We'll go down the slide together, okay, honey?

Speaker 7 You're gonna go with him down the slide?

Speaker 18 Well, what do you think? I'll put himself.

Speaker 7 I didn't. I intend.
You're not afraid to go down the slide?

Speaker 18 Why would I be afraid?

Speaker 20 I don't know. Okay, be careful.

Speaker 14 Look at the dogs.

Speaker 23 Do you want me to carry him to you?

Speaker 27 Yeah, now you got me nervous.

Speaker 18 I wasn't afraid.

Speaker 7 Be careful. But what's there to be afraid?

Speaker 22 I don't know.

Speaker 1 My mother hands me back Aggie, and, holding onto the railing, she carefully climbs the steps to the top of the slide.

Speaker 1 When she gets there, I climb up too and hand Auggie back to her.

Speaker 1 With hesitation, she positions him onto her lap, and I run around to the bottom of the slide to await their arrival.

Speaker 18 And you stand there and catch us in case Barbara beats.

Speaker 1 And then, Dina lets go.

Speaker 26 He's having fun, huh?

Speaker 1 So much fun, in fact, that my mother decides to do it again.

Speaker 1 And so, again, she climbs up the steps, all three of them, to the top of the ladder. And from the grand height of three and a half feet, my mother and son descend the toddler slide once more.

Speaker 1 Aggie loves it, so they do it again. A third chance, a fourth, and even a fifth.
Then we move on to the bouncy caterpillar, the rope bridge, and the swings.

Speaker 1 Swingy, slingy,

Speaker 30 Auggie's going swingy.

Speaker 18 The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout.

Speaker 1 Parenthood is like a redo of your own childhood. And grandparenthood is like a redo of that.
That's all life is. Learning and relearning the same lessons over and over.

Speaker 1 All of us, like those itsy bitsy spiders, crawling up endless water spouts, trying to make just a little more progress each time we set out.

Speaker 1 There's comfort in knowing that no one ever gets it right, no matter how many chances we get.

Speaker 1 But hopefully, at least a few things go right, a few purely kind gestures somehow get through.

Speaker 1 And for everything else, we ask for forgiveness. And if we're lucky, we'll receive it.

Speaker 1 And if we're luckier, we'll forgive ourselves too.

Speaker 18 And the horrors and basic zooming the shore.

Speaker 18 horror

Speaker 18 Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home

Speaker 18 Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damaged body, take this moment to decide

Speaker 18 if we meant it, if we tried

Speaker 18 but felt around from far too much

Speaker 18 deep from things that accidentally fallen

Speaker 20 nearly a decade since I recorded that episode with my mother.

Speaker 25 Recently, I flew home to Montreal to see her again.

Speaker 32 Same airport, same Toyota.

Speaker 4 Same parents nearly leaving me on the curb.

Speaker 35 Oh, I didn't, I thought he got in. I thought he got in.

Speaker 4 Sorry.

Speaker 4 I've come to visit this weekend because it's my mother's 80th birthday. She's planned a big dinner, as well as a visit to the senior center, where I'm told there will be music and dancing.

Speaker 18 You don't want to come with me to the club, hey?

Speaker 7 Do you want me to?

Speaker 18 No, only if you feel like it.

Speaker 20 I can come for a little bit.

Speaker 18 No, if you're gonna come, you have to stay for like an hour and a half to two hours.

Speaker 4 So, why can't I just drop in and say hi?

Speaker 4 How much do you have to pay?

Speaker 18 Well, ten dollars.

Speaker 14 I can pay that.

Speaker 18 No, I know, but after five seconds, it doesn't pay.

Speaker 29 One day, they had the

Speaker 35 salsa, a salsa group. And I got up to dance then.

Speaker 10 Oh, you liked that? I loved it.

Speaker 27 And they all applauded. I loved it.

Speaker 35 Nobody was there, just your mom and me.

Speaker 27 Because they know I'm always begging him to come dance in the house.

Speaker 10 I couldn't stop dancing.

Speaker 10 This is my son.

Speaker 35 Hi, a guy from Minnesota.

Speaker 2 Hello.

Speaker 18 He has to pay $10.

Speaker 10 Yeah. $10 he has to pay.

Speaker 27 Yeah, because he's not a man.

Speaker 10 No, no one.

Speaker 10 Johnny, no, no, no.

Speaker 18 Oh, because some people watch on Zoom, they don't come

Speaker 18 because they don't want to pay the five dollars.

Speaker 23 You think that's why, or you think maybe they just have trouble?

Speaker 10 No, they don't want to pay.

Speaker 20 Maybe they can't afford it.

Speaker 10 They can't afford it.

Speaker 15 They're rich.

Speaker 24 to you

Speaker 23 and say that you'll understand.

Speaker 15 Just shut up and kiss me.

Speaker 23 Let's clap our hands.

Speaker 26 Woo!

Speaker 26 Yeah, there we go.

Speaker 23 And how about some feet? We can tap our feet at the same time.

Speaker 23 Oh my gosh, you're almost dancing.

Speaker 8 Watch out.

Speaker 8 Woo!

Speaker 8 Nice.

Speaker 8 Hey.

Speaker 8 Hey.

Speaker 15 Say the birthday wishes to our March celebrants.

Speaker 18 Dina Goldstein,

Speaker 26 March the 6th. Happy birthday today.

Speaker 26 Happy birthday.

Speaker 18 Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 26 Happy birthday to you.

Speaker 26 Happy birthday to you.

Speaker 26 Happy birthday, dear Mildren.

Speaker 26 Happy birthday to you.

Speaker 28 Happy birthday.

Speaker 18 Thank you, Johnny. Thank you, sweetheart.
You made it special.

Speaker 4 So I wanted to talk with you about the Dina episode.

Speaker 34 You were 72 in that

Speaker 18 I was a young girl at 72.

Speaker 34 What is different now that you're 80 that's that's different than when you were in your 70s?

Speaker 18 I changed. I don't know.
I'm I

Speaker 18 I'm trying to change even more.

Speaker 34 In what way?

Speaker 18 Well, I'm trying not to get so crazy over things.

Speaker 34 So when you listen to yourself as a young girl of 72

Speaker 34 worried about Aggie, that he's going to get cold, that he's not wearing a hat, how does that make you feel?

Speaker 18 Well, I still worry, like, when the children go naked, like, I call it naked, they don't button up their coats.

Speaker 31 Are there things that you can think of that

Speaker 22 have changed?

Speaker 18 Well, I got sick. That changed a lot.

Speaker 34 This is when you had your heart attack. Yeah.

Speaker 18 I mean I still get anxious sometimes.

Speaker 34 What do you do to try to cope with the anxiousness?

Speaker 18 I don't think so much.

Speaker 34 What else changed though when you because I remember you know before you went into the surgery, the heart surgery, you had sort of made your peace.

Speaker 34 Yeah, you don't remember any of that?

Speaker 18 No, I didn't know I was that brave.

Speaker 18 I didn't realize that.

Speaker 18 The doctor told me that he told told you I wasn't going to make it.

Speaker 18 Somebody told me when they sent me into the basement of the Sante Hospital for tests, and the technician and the doctor there told me

Speaker 18 that I wasn't going to make it. And I remember crying.
I was all by myself in that horrible dark basement. And then I said, stop it.
I talked to myself. And I said, stop it already.
It's enough.

Speaker 18 And I was okay after that.

Speaker 18 You know, I stopped crying crying and I went up and I did what I had to do.

Speaker 34 Going through something the way that you did with having the heart attack, the heart surgery, did it make you more philosophical?

Speaker 18 I don't know. I'm still not a terrific person.

Speaker 18 I'm still not a saint, even though I'd like to be. I still gossip and I still say bad things about people

Speaker 18 and I still yell and I still get mean.

Speaker 18 So I can't say I'm better. I want to be better, but I'm not as good as I should be.
I'm far from an angel.

Speaker 34 Do you ever think that maybe you're a little harsh with yourself?

Speaker 6 No. No.

Speaker 34 So how's your 80th birthday today? How's it feeling?

Speaker 18 Lovely because you're here.

Speaker 18 I don't feel like I'm old.

Speaker 34 How old do you feel?

Speaker 18 In my heart, some days I feel I'm 16.

Speaker 34 Thank you for talking to me.

Speaker 18 You're welcome. I love you.
I love you more, Johnny. You're my precious boy.

Speaker 2 Thanks to everyone who helped put the episode together.

Speaker 4 This is the last of our summer encores, but fear not, Dina Goldstein's precious boy will be back with a new season of heavyweight on September 18th.

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Speaker 11 Wow, that's really good water. With electrolytes for taste, it's the kind of water that says, I have my life together.
I'm still pretending the laundry on the chair is part of the decor.

Speaker 11 Yet, here you are, making excellent hydration choices.

Speaker 11 I do feel more sophisticated. That's called having a taste for taste.
Huh, a taste for taste. I like that.
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Speaker 11 This is an iHeart podcast.