#15 Dina

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Speaker 4 This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something.

Speaker 5 Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing.

Speaker 7 If anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA.

Speaker 10 OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation.

Speaker 14 Learn more at don'tsleep on osa.com.

Speaker 4 This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company.

Speaker 1 Yellow.

Speaker 3 Why, hello?

Speaker 17 Now, what kind of of greeting is that?

Speaker 1 You've got your radio voice on.

Speaker 17 Could you elaborate on what you mean by that?

Speaker 1 I know in the first second if I'm being recorded or not based on

Speaker 1 your inflections.

Speaker 17 Well, I always talk like this, Jackie.

Speaker 17 Back to you.

Speaker 1 The way you're speaking with me now is never the way you would normally speak.

Speaker 17 Okay, wait, hang on a second.

Speaker 17 I'm just talking normal.

Speaker 1 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 17 Hey.

Speaker 1 No. Hey, Jackie.
Try again. Jackie? No, you you wouldn't say my name like that.
How's it going?

Speaker 3 Too much energy. Hi.

Speaker 1 I can tell.

Speaker 17 Anyway, it can't be a radio voice because I do a podcast.

Speaker 18 It's a podcast voice.

Speaker 17 All right, and welcome to the show.

Speaker 17 From Gimlet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode: Dina.

Speaker 3 Hello, hello. Okay.

Speaker 17 So we just got to Montreal.

Speaker 3 We, we.

Speaker 17 What's that?

Speaker 19 Isn't that how you say yes in French?

Speaker 17 Yeah, but you just say it once. You just say we.
We.

Speaker 17 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 17 Five days.

Speaker 17 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 17 Growing up, though, it was everything of affliction: candy corn of affliction, road trips of affliction, bedtime stories of affliction.

Speaker 17 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 17 Yelling through closed doors, yelling across the kitchen table. My father yelling into a junk drawer desperately trying to find a working pen.

Speaker 17 My mother yelling into a clogged toilet, desperately trying to make it go down.

Speaker 17 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 17 Man, when I move out of here, I'd say in my teens, I'm going to live like Sting.

Speaker 17 Peace and quiet. Meditation, tea, and tantric sex.

Speaker 17 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 17 Day one.

Speaker 3 There they are.

Speaker 17 My parents' Toyota pulls up to the airport pickup. They pass us.

Speaker 17 And passes us.

Speaker 3 Try to catch their eye.

Speaker 19 They don't see us.

Speaker 3 Here.

Speaker 17 We're right here.

Speaker 17 My mother jumps out.

Speaker 17 She runs back towards us, pointing at Aggie's ears.

Speaker 3 His ears are exposed. Hi.

Speaker 17 Both my mother and father wear their woollen caps pulled down well past their ears.

Speaker 17 In younger, stronger days, they might have stretched those caps right down over their feet, but they're old now. My mother, Dina, 72, and my father, Buzz, 83.

Speaker 20 I want want to drive slow, not too fast.

Speaker 21 I want to go carefully here, okay?

Speaker 17 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 3 It's like a funny feeling in my throat, like it's like really

Speaker 3 emotional.

Speaker 3 It's like a dream. You know, it's like a dream.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's like such a weird feeling.

Speaker 17 I think the weird, elusive feeling my mother is trying to describe is happiness.

Speaker 3 It's just wonderful to see him. I hope he's going to be warm enough.
Did you bring him a little something?

Speaker 3 Home, sweet home.

Speaker 21 Be it ever so home.

Speaker 17 Walking through the door, I'm a 12-year-old again, home from school and looking forward to zoning out with Petticoat Junction.

Speaker 17 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 17 Parenting a newborn leaves a person with no time for squats, so don't judge, Alex.

Speaker 22 So nice in here.

Speaker 23 Wait, wait, I can't believe it.

Speaker 17 Normally the house, a modest, semi-detached bungalow, has a certain storage unit bomb shelter vibe.

Speaker 17 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 17 But today, the place looks positively sparse.

Speaker 3 Judd, 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 17 My mother grabs Auggie and heads upstairs for a diaper change. Emily and I trail behind.

Speaker 3 I want him to be fresh and clean. Oh, you're so sweet.
You're so sweet, my angel. Where the friggin is the bag?

Speaker 17 The friggin' bag contains the friggin' diapers that my mother bought for our visit.

Speaker 17 It turns out it's on her lap.

Speaker 3 I kept the bill because I wasn't sure if you want me to return them or not.

Speaker 17 Would you be able to return used diapers?

Speaker 3 Yeah, you know me. I could return anything.
I could return anything.

Speaker 3 You know that, Johnny.

Speaker 17 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 17 I remember once going along with her as she returned a shirt she'd bought for my father two years earlier.

Speaker 17 It's missing a sleeve, she told the cashier. Holding up the article of clothing, the cashier turned it around and around.

Speaker 17 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 17 I don't care what it is. It's factory defective, and my husband can't wear it.

Speaker 17 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 17 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 3 Oh, look how much pee-pee he has.

Speaker 3 Oh, you made a lot of pee-pee, eh, baby.

Speaker 3 See, that's how I knew you were sick when you were a baby, Johnny. You weren't peeping.

Speaker 3 What was wrong with me?

Speaker 17 As a kid, it was easy to be embarrassed by my mother. One time, a popular boy named Jordy showed up at our house.
I wasn't home, but my mother answered the door with her hair on fire.

Speaker 17 My hair's on fire, she screamed.

Speaker 17 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 17 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 mood for barbecued lamb chops.

Speaker 17 It seems that while examining the chops for signs of spoilage, she leaned her hairsprayed buffant too close to the grill.

Speaker 17 While this explained the fire atop her head, it did not explain why she answered the door while nursing a fire atop head.

Speaker 17 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 3 What's that smell?

Speaker 3 Something's burning.

Speaker 17 Did you turn on the heater?

Speaker 3 Did you touch the heat? No.

Speaker 17 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 3 I could

Speaker 17 The day plays out as a series of minor disasters averted. In the morning, my mother loses her cell phone.
We find it in the night table. In the afternoon, a screw to my father's glasses falls out.

Speaker 17 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 17 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 17 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 17 Turning to her in the midst of some crisis is like looking directly into the TV camera and winking at the audience.

Speaker 17 Day two.

Speaker 17 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 17 No comment. Oh, come on.
This, come on.

Speaker 17 No comment. How could she resist? Look at how my mother acts with Auggie, I say, trying to get Emily going.

Speaker 17 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 19 You realize, though, that you say all that about Aggie now, too. Like just a tiny little cough, and you are doing a is he breathing? Can he sit like that? Can he touch that thing? Can he eat that?

Speaker 19 Can he do that? Is he supposed to be doing that? What's wrong?

Speaker 24 What's wrong?

Speaker 19 What's wrong? What's he doing? What's he doing? Is he choking? What's wrong?

Speaker 19 You do a lot of that kind of thing.

Speaker 17 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 19 You, one day

Speaker 19 you dropped Auggie off and

Speaker 19 you called me right afterward because you were so worried. Do you remember this?

Speaker 17 I do remember this. It was Augie'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 17 She told me the girls were napping in another room.

Speaker 19 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 19 Like, you knew it was a crazy thought, but you needed me to tell you she didn't kill their family. She's not going to kill Agi.

Speaker 22 I did not need you to tell me that.

Speaker 19 You're misremembering. You were freaked out.

Speaker 19 You were freaked out.

Speaker 22 I thought I was very stoic.

Speaker 19 You called me and said, I think the nanny is going to murder our child and that she murdered the whole family that we do daycare with. I don't consider that stoic.

Speaker 22 All right. I mean, I'm just imaginative.

Speaker 19 That's one way to look at it.

Speaker 17 Yet another way to look at it is that I'm also crazy, just like my mom.

Speaker 17 Well, set my hair on fire and open the front door.

Speaker 17 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 17 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 17 I wasn't allowed a paper route because it was a good way to get abducted, no barefooting because of rusty nails.

Speaker 17 And I didn't even learn to swim until junior high, because water, that's where people go to drown.

Speaker 17 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. But my therapist's response troubled me.

Speaker 17 She said that love was the transcendence of fear, that you might even say, fear was the opposite of love.

Speaker 17 Sitting at my childhood desk with Agi's toys scattered at my feet, My therapist's words returned to me.

Speaker 17 If I was becoming my mother, would Aggie someday someday become me? Someone weighed down by fear and worry? Was our genetic line nothing more than an inglorious chain of Russian dolls?

Speaker 17 Should my therapist save the notes from our sessions so I can send Aggie to her at a discounted rate?

Speaker 17 I didn't want my son becoming me, and there were only two people who could help me understand how I became me. One who charged New York therapy rates that might leave me bankrupted before I'm cured.

Speaker 17 And the other,

Speaker 17 my mother.

Speaker 17 Day three.

Speaker 17 As a child, I felt trapped and embarrassed by my mother. As an adult, I came to be amused by her.

Speaker 17 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 22 How much do you pay for apples?

Speaker 3 79 a pound, but if I'm desperate, I.

Speaker 17 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 20 Dina, what do you pay for a bottle of water?

Speaker 22 What do you pay for a loaf of bread?

Speaker 17 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 17 Emily's reading in bed, and my father's watching TV in the basement. It's just us.

Speaker 3 Hello, hello. Go ahead and talk.
Here I am.

Speaker 17 Why do you say here I am?

Speaker 3 Well, where should I say? There I am.

Speaker 17 Tonight, I want to talk about the 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 17 I want to talk about the nameless thing that binds all Goldsteins. that ignites us, propels us, and ultimately paralyzes us.

Speaker 17 Well, I think about this stuff now because you know I have I have a I have a son and

Speaker 3 I think

Speaker 3 he's so beautiful and I saw those blue eyes like Know Horace Obeys Eggs only

Speaker 17 My mother's not talking crazy talk. She's talking Yiddish.

Speaker 17 Yeah, what does that mean?

Speaker 3 The bad eye shouldn't hurt them.

Speaker 17 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 17 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 17 In this way, she reasoned, should the evil eye turn its gaze upon me, I'd be protected by my underwear.

Speaker 17 Why do you think

Speaker 17 you do that evil eye stuff?

Speaker 3 I know It's not only me, it's the Moroccan superstar.

Speaker 17 But you say it's cuckoo.

Speaker 3 I know it's cuckoo, but I can't help it.

Speaker 17 But then that's a superstition.

Speaker 3 I don't know. Everybody does it.

Speaker 17 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 you can't say everybody puts red ribbons in their underwear.

Speaker 17 But what is it supposed to be warding off?

Speaker 3 The evil eye.

Speaker 17 But what is the evil eye?

Speaker 17 I don't know.

Speaker 17 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?

Speaker 17 I expect more of the same.

Speaker 22 But instead, my mother grows quiet.

Speaker 24 I worry.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I do too.

Speaker 3 I was afraid of this, afraid of that.

Speaker 3 Well, I was irrational. I wasn't thinking right.
And I have a chance to redo my a little bit, not with you, but with Augie.

Speaker 17 She stops talking and stares into her lap. For a while, we just sit there.

Speaker 3 I look upon this as a second chance.

Speaker 3 I want to correct my mistakes, Johnny. I want to redeem myself.
That's it.

Speaker 17 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 17 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 17 Are you thinking of something specific?

Speaker 3 It's too painful.

Speaker 24 I don't want to.

Speaker 17 Maybe if you talk about it, you won't have to do anymore.

Speaker 3 I don't have to talk about it. I can't.

Speaker 3 I don't think it could be anything that I'm going to do. I can't.
I can't talk about it. Don't don't press me.
Please.

Speaker 17 Well, I don't want to force you. I don't want to make you feel bad.

Speaker 3 I'm ashamed of myself.

Speaker 3 Let's change the subject.

Speaker 17 And with that, the conversation ends.

Speaker 17 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 17 What had happened that was so bad she couldn't even talk about it? What was she so afraid to tell me?

Speaker 17 After the break, I find out.

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where you can see the sky.

Speaker 2 Best business plan based on a combination of advanced network performance, coverage layers, and security features. Best network based on analysis by OOCLA of Speed Test Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

Speaker 4 This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something.

Speaker 5 Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity?

Speaker 9 They may be happening to you without you knowing.

Speaker 7 If anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA.

Speaker 10 OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen oxygen deprivation.

Speaker 14 Learn more at don'tsleeponosa.com.

Speaker 4 This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company.

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Speaker 22 hello hello so mom's upstairs with emily do you have any insight day four

Speaker 17 i sit down with my father to see if he has any idea what the 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 17 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 17 This retiring nature might be the secret to having stayed married to my mother for more than 50 years.

Speaker 22 What is the thing that she is carrying around with her?

Speaker 20 She's a very private person and she feels

Speaker 20 she doesn't want to be intruded upon. Don't take it the wrong way.

Speaker 22 So, you have no inkling. You don't know what's going on.

Speaker 20 She doesn't even discuss it with me. I don't know what guilt.
I don't know what she's talking about.

Speaker 22 You don't find it odd or intriguing in a way?

Speaker 20 It's a touchy subject for her, and she's very reluctant to talk about it.

Speaker 17 Talk about it.

Speaker 22 What's the it?

Speaker 20 I don't know. You have to ask her, and she's going to shut down.

Speaker 20 She's going to shut down.

Speaker 17 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 17 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 17 And why does she keep offering me paper towels? I think, she says, you should just let it go. But of course, I can't.

Speaker 17 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 17 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 17 Diarrhea is not a time for pride.

Speaker 17 Of course I now see the wisdom, but as a child, her words were a source of shame.

Speaker 17 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 17 like diarrhea.

Speaker 3 Talk?

Speaker 3 What should I say?

Speaker 21 Well, I just take your global.

Speaker 17 So tell me, um,

Speaker 17 so do you find walking with Augie relaxing?

Speaker 3 Very relaxing, so nice. It's a pleasure to walk with my little friend.

Speaker 17 To start things off, I I lobber an easy question. Cocktail party stuff.
What's your first memory?

Speaker 3 Kindergarten. And we lived on Colonial, 4039 Colonial.
And I remember my father used to play Pinoccho.

Speaker 3 And he had a thumb that was, the nail, like the thumbnail was very shh. 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 3 How old are you? Must have been four or five.

Speaker 17 Wait, so an early memory is being at kindergarten and remembering your father's thumbnail and starting to cry?

Speaker 17 What was it that upset you about it?

Speaker 3 I was worried about it because it wasn't like a regular thumb.

Speaker 3 I was worried crazy.

Speaker 17 I try to guide her towards happy reminiscences, but all her memories are awful.

Speaker 17 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 3 Then I remember my mother's pressure cooker in that house hit the ceiling and pea soup was splattered everywhere.

Speaker 17 All your memories. Let's hear another memory in her life.

Speaker 17 With the small talk exhausted, I trepidaciously bring the subject back around to the do-over.

Speaker 3 I don't know, Johnny.

Speaker 3 I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to remind myself.
The way I

Speaker 3 felt doesn't conjure up good memories, please. And that's the end of it.
I don't want to go into details.

Speaker 17 Nonetheless, for the rest of the day, I can't stop myself from asking for details.

Speaker 3 Here we go.

Speaker 17 I ask as she puts away the breakfast dishes.

Speaker 17 I don't want to think about things.

Speaker 3 I have nothing more to say, Johnny. Leave me be.

Speaker 17 I ask as she cuts coupons while watching Judge Judy with Emily.

Speaker 17 In broad strokes.

Speaker 3 Please, Emily, take him off me.

Speaker 17 And while she peels boiled eggs for lunch.

Speaker 3 Leave me alone!

Speaker 17 Later, we all sit down for dinner, and with it, some wine.

Speaker 24 What's wrong with me? I think I'm long off my rocker.

Speaker 17 My mother rarely drinks wine.

Speaker 23 Oh my god, how how did I get like this?

Speaker 24 Mom, you just had a glass of wine.

Speaker 23 I'm gonna be okay

Speaker 17 as she drifts off into an inebriated slumber. I give it one last try.
Mom?

Speaker 17 Good night.

Speaker 22 Is there anything you need to tell me?

Speaker 24 No.

Speaker 17 Any secrets to reveal?

Speaker 24 No.

Speaker 17 I was getting nowhere.

Speaker 17 Day five.

Speaker 17 Alright, you want to change him?

Speaker 17 What, honey?

Speaker 17 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 17 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 17 But while putting Auggie down for a nap, My mother has a question for me.

Speaker 3 Johnny, what was it that you were hoping to get from me?

Speaker 20 Oh, I really just want to be able to have a conversation.

Speaker 21 That's all.

Speaker 21 I don't want to cause you distress.

Speaker 3 You're not causing any stress.

Speaker 3 It's what it was.

Speaker 21 I don't even want to talk about all the painful stuff.

Speaker 17 She lays Auggie down. She stands over the crib.
She starts to say something, but then trails away.

Speaker 3 What were you saying?

Speaker 24 Why?

Speaker 21 No, no.

Speaker 24 Why? Because I'm not equal.

Speaker 17 Alright, I'm going to turn it off then.

Speaker 17 I was not adopted. I had no secret twin.
And my mother had no secret family. There were no murders, no affairs.

Speaker 17 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 17 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 17 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 17 I should have known better, she says.

Speaker 17 I forgive you, I say.

Speaker 17 I don't forgive myself.

Speaker 17 So I forgive her again, and I mean it.

Speaker 17 And then I turn the recorder back on.

Speaker 23 I love you, honey.

Speaker 23 You made it a little easier for me, thank you.

Speaker 22 I love you too, Ma.

Speaker 17 When you become a parent, your whole life changes, but you forget that some things stay the same.

Speaker 17 I'd been so focused on becoming a better father that I forgot I was still a son.

Speaker 17 And maybe learning to be a better son is how you become a better dad anyway.

Speaker 3 I wanted to be safe.

Speaker 17 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 17 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 17 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 17 Same for the swings, monkey bars, teeter-totters, and merry-go-rounds.

Speaker 17 But then something surprising happens. Picking Auggie up out of the stroller, my mother says...

Speaker 3 I'll take him down the slide.

Speaker 17 He's never gone down the slide.

Speaker 3 Come with Bobby, honey. We'll go down the slide together, okay, honey? You're going to go with him down the slide? Well, what do you think? I'll put him himself.

Speaker 17 I didn't. I can't.
You're not afraid to go down the slide?

Speaker 3 Why would I be afraid?

Speaker 17 I don't know. Okay, be careful.

Speaker 3 Do you want me to carry him to you? Yeah, now you got nervous. I wasn't afraid.

Speaker 17 Be careful.

Speaker 24 But what's the idea of braid? I don't know.

Speaker 17 My mother hands me back Auggie, and holding onto the railing, she carefully climbs the steps to the top of the slide.

Speaker 17 When she gets there, I climb up too and hand Auggie back to her.

Speaker 17 With hesitation, she positions him onto her lap, and I run around to the bottom of the slide to await their arrival.

Speaker 3 And you stand there and catch us in case God forbid.

Speaker 17 And then, Dina lets lets go.

Speaker 3 He's having fun, huh?

Speaker 17 So much fun, in fact, that my mother decides to do it again.

Speaker 17 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 3 sliding down the slide.

Speaker 17 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. Swingy, swingy.

Speaker 3 Auggie's going swingy.

Speaker 3 The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout.

Speaker 17 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 17 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 17 There's comfort in knowing that no one ever gets it right, no matter how many chances we get.

Speaker 17 But hopefully, at least a few things go right. A few purely kind gestures somehow get through.

Speaker 17 And for everything else, we ask for forgiveness. And if we're lucky, we'll receive it.

Speaker 17 And if we're luckier, we'll forgive ourselves too.

Speaker 3 And the horror some basics only in the short.

Speaker 3 Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home

Speaker 3 Now that the last month's rent is skeening with the damaged deposit

Speaker 3 Take this moment to decide

Speaker 3 if we meant it, if we tried.

Speaker 3 But felt around for far too much

Speaker 3 from things that accidentally touched.

Speaker 17 Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Khalila Holt. The senior producer is Caitlin Roberts, editing by Jorge Just, Alex Bloomberg, and Wendy Dorr.

Speaker 17 Special thanks to Emily Condon, Emmanuel Berry, Pat Walters, and Jackie Cohen. The show is mixed by Kate Bilinski.
Music by Christine Fellows and John K. Sampson.

Speaker 17 Additional music credits for this episode can be found on our website gimletmedia.com slash heavyweight.

Speaker 17 Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at heavyweight.

Speaker 17 This is our last episode of the season, but we're already looking for stories for season three.

Speaker 17 So if you have one, email us at heavyweight at gimletmedia.com. And if you see fit, punch in some stars for us on iTunes.

Speaker 17 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 4 This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something.

Speaker 5 Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity?

Speaker 9 They may be happening to you without you knowing.

Speaker 7 If anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA.

Speaker 10 OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation.

Speaker 14 Learn more at don'tsleep on osa.com.

Speaker 4 This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company.

Speaker 25 Honestly, honestly, honestly, no one wants to think about HIV, but there are things that everyone can do to help prevent it. Things like PrEP.

Speaker 25 PrEP stands for pre-exposure prophylaxis, and it means routinely taking prescription medicine before you're exposed to HIV to help reduce your chances of getting it.

Speaker 25 PrEP can be about 99% effective when taken as prescribed. It doesn't protect against other STIs, though, so be sure to use condoms and other healthy sex practices.

Speaker 3 Ask a healthcare provider about all your prevention options and visit findoutaboutprep.com to learn more. Sponsored by Gilead.

Speaker 26 Hey, audiobook lovers, I'm Cal Penn. I'm Ed Helms.
Ed and I are inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with our new podcast, Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.

Speaker 18 Each week, we sit down with your favorite iHeart podcast hosts and some very special guests to discuss the latest and greatest audio books from Audible.

Speaker 26 Listen to Iarsay on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow IarSay and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.