The Moth Radio Hour: DNA Doesn’t Lie

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Speaker 5 From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bulls, and in this hour, we'll hear three stories of family bonds and our connections in the digital world.

Speaker 5 In 1991, the World Wide Web was unleashed, connecting the world in a whole new way. And these days, we take for granted that we're all walking around, linked to each other by our devices.

Speaker 5 I recently lost my phone while traveling, and the absence of it was really startling. I felt oddly unsafe not being able to call home or call friends.

Speaker 5 I haven't memorized anyone's phone number in years. And not having access to Google or my GPS, I felt completely disconnected because I was.

Speaker 5 In this hour, we'll hear stories of how technology ties us together, and specifically with our families.

Speaker 5 Our first story comes from Meg Meg Farrell. She told this at a main stage we produced in partnership with Live Nation at the Vogue Theater in Vancouver, Canada.

Speaker 5 The theme of the night was Between Worlds. Here's Meg Farrell live at the Moth.

Speaker 7 It was Friday afternoon, and I was at work when I got an email from my wife. And it was empty, except the subject line, which just said,

Speaker 7 These bitches are stealing our sperm. Buy it all now.

Speaker 7 The thing is, is I'm just not an impulsive person.

Speaker 7 It took me five years to ask my wife to marry me. It took me five years because I'm the kind of person that thinks that they can create a perfect moment.

Speaker 7 Whereas my wife, she's just kind of a person who rides any moment out like it's a wave. So I knew when she sent this email that it was a call to action.

Speaker 7 It was a modern-day Paul Revere warning, and the British were these bitches, and they were coming for our sperm.

Speaker 7 And I needed to buy it.

Speaker 7 But the thing is, I'd never really wanted kids.

Speaker 7 When I was little, my mom said to me once, and I'm quoting, she said, I'm going to love you even if you're a serial killer on death row for having killed someone.

Speaker 7 Not only is that redundant, but that is some

Speaker 7 really hardcore unconditional love.

Speaker 7 And I remember thinking, I'm never going to love anyone that much.

Speaker 7 So you see, we hadn't gone into this with the purpose of making a baby. You sure we had casually talked about kids, like how we had casually talked about going to Greece,

Speaker 7 or like we casually talked about taking the dog to the groomer.

Speaker 7 Neither of which we've done, y'all,

Speaker 7 neither.

Speaker 7 In fact, prior to this, my only baby-making experience was when me and my sister went to go get our cabbage patch dolls.

Speaker 7 And she got a brown-haired, brown-eyed girl very much like her. And I chose a half-human, half-cat.

Speaker 7 Like, I'm just not made out for this. I'm not even a nurturer.
Like, I don't even like to be touched. Like, when I see people approaching for a hug, I can feel my bones brace for impact.

Speaker 7 But most of all, I just really didn't want to be like my dad, content with a title, but not dig for a real relationship. Someone that could go five or ten years without talking to their kid.

Speaker 7 Because that ability he has to distance himself from anyone and everything.

Speaker 7 Well, I have that too.

Speaker 7 But then, y'all, my wife said she found a deal.

Speaker 7 There is nothing I love more than a deal.

Speaker 7 50 bucks for three months of unlimited access to all the sperm bank donor profiles. We're talking medical records, written responses, audio interviews, baby pictures.

Speaker 7 Like, ironically, I was about to know more about these donors than I know about my wife.

Speaker 7 and at first it was just like fun it was just fun like all the donors have these surreal names to protect their identity so like statistically there could be a Tristan in the audience but is he sitting next to a bishop Calhoun Othello and Paisley

Speaker 7 it's like some hipster mom on basalts got loose on the website

Speaker 7 And so it just creates this like fantastical environment. So at first it really just was fun.
I remember listening to one audio interview and the donor was asked what his best trait was and he said,

Speaker 7 my best trait is that I'm a genius.

Speaker 7 That is not what geniuses sound like.

Speaker 7 But I was hooked. I couldn't stop looking.
It was like watching people pick their nose in public. Like no matter how much you want to turn away, you can't stop looking.

Speaker 7 Now,

Speaker 7 anybody that's ever made a baby with love and science knows that it is an excruciatingly long timeline, and that your process starts by making decisions that nature usually works out for you.

Speaker 7 Like, for instance, my wife really wanted a blonde-haired, blue-eyed donor like me.

Speaker 7 And I know you don't know my wife, and I know you're probably all thinking that I'm exceptionally attractive, so that makes sense. But the thing is, my wife is super hot.

Speaker 7 Like, so hot that if hot's coming from anywhere, it's coming from her. Like, she is so hot that I net 15 drinks a year just by being the pretty lady's friend.

Speaker 7 But that's what you end up doing.

Speaker 7 You end up dissecting these profiles and pretty soon you start to feel like this mad scientist creating the boldest, most beautiful, definitely not balding Frankenstein there ever was.

Speaker 7 So, after countless profiles and making a decision, then reversing it, then making a decision, then reversing it, we finally found him, our donor.

Speaker 7 And just to put it really simple, he was just someone you would want more of in this world.

Speaker 7 But now there was an actual email demanding actual action by them all now.

Speaker 7 How much is all?

Speaker 9 I wrote.

Speaker 7 Because, like, I know that our health insurance doesn't consider us infertile. We just can't make a baby.

Speaker 7 Another health insurance oxymoron.

Speaker 7 And now, some babies, they'll just run you like five shots of tequila and maybe an STD.

Speaker 7 But babies of love and science, I mean, they can really add up.

Speaker 7 On top of sperm, there's IUI insemination, which will run you like 350 a go, but it only gives you like a 10 to 20% chance of pregnancy.

Speaker 7 And then there's IVF, and that'll get you up to a 30 or 40% chance of pregnancy, but you're also out 15 grand a go.

Speaker 7 Yeah, and then there's doctor's visits, fertility drugs, egg transfers, surrogates. I mean this is a really planned pregnancy.

Speaker 7 Tequila shots don't even come into play until you see the credit card bill.

Speaker 7 So I asked, how much is all?

Speaker 7 Ten vials, she wrote.

Speaker 7 Ten vials at $700 a pop.

Speaker 7 Girl, I could buy you a man for that much money.

Speaker 7 So there I sat with my cursor hovering over my virtual cart filled with a modest amount of virtual sperm.

Speaker 7 And part of me was thinking, my bank's about to freeze my credit card for suspicious activity and I'm going to have to explain that sperm was indeed one of my last three purchases.

Speaker 7 Gas, burrito, and yes, a couple grand of sperm.

Speaker 7 But most most of me knew that I was just really scared, like I'd been in all the big moments of my life, like when I asked my wife to marry me. Because big moments mean big change.

Speaker 7 But I also knew that the only thing I have ever regretted about those moments was not doing them sooner.

Speaker 7 Now, guys, this is not

Speaker 7 what pregnancy looks like.

Speaker 7 This is what beer looks like.

Speaker 7 My wife carried, and our son is 16 months old.

Speaker 7 I'll tell her you said that.

Speaker 7 She did most of the work.

Speaker 7 And I have never been so scared of anything as I am to be a parent. But I can tell you the first time I heard his heartbeat, this strong as a goddamn ox because he's my kid, beat.

Speaker 7 This rhythm of his life, this thing that is so common that everyone in here has it, but in that moment felt so incredibly unique. I heard my wife say, oh God,

Speaker 7 you're not crying, are you?

Speaker 7 Parenting is really hard. I'm sure a lot of you know that.

Speaker 7 And if we're being really honest, I thought I would be a better parent. I'm okay, but I'm not great.

Speaker 7 I

Speaker 7 talk too loud.

Speaker 7 My touch is abrasive.

Speaker 7 And patience is just something I'm really working on.

Speaker 7 Each night we have the same bedtime routine and it always ends with me turning off the light.

Speaker 7 and turning on the noise machine and slowly shutting the door and I always watch as my wife holds our son in her arms and she kisses him so freely and she holds him so tightly

Speaker 7 and she starts into the softest hum that you've ever heard

Speaker 7 and she like me has absolutely no idea what she's doing

Speaker 7 But somehow she is just so much better

Speaker 7 or braver

Speaker 9 or both.

Speaker 7 And I thought that I would be a better spouse. I thought that I would do more.
I thought that I would listen more. I thought that this heart that took me to her would take over.

Speaker 7 I thought that simply because our son, Gus, existed,

Speaker 7 that I would be something different,

Speaker 7 something better,

Speaker 7 something more than who I am.

Speaker 7 In fact, the only thing that I really know to be true is that we have the number one ingredient you need for a happy kid.

Speaker 7 A dog.

Speaker 7 And of course, love.

Speaker 7 So much love.

Speaker 7 A year ago, I quit my job and I'm now a stay-at-home parent. And it is by far the hardest job that I have ever had.

Speaker 7 And I really should have been fired a long time ago.

Speaker 7 But the thing is, my boss is this tiny boy

Speaker 9 who

Speaker 7 for some reason thinks that I'm made of magic.

Speaker 7 What is it they say? Fake it till you make it?

Speaker 7 Abracadabra, bitches.

Speaker 5 Meg Farrell lives in Oakland, California with her wife Jen, her son Gus, and the newest addition to their family, their second son, Ellis.

Speaker 5 Some say you're a mom or a dad the second a baby appears in your life, but Meg thinks those titles are earned over time, not just handed out.

Speaker 5 She figures about the time she's ready to retire, she should be a half-decent parent. Along with being a stay-at-home mom, Meg performs and teaches.

Speaker 5 She's a five-time Moth Story Slam winner and holds two Grand Slam titles. To see a picture of Meg and her family, you can visit themoth.org.

Speaker 5 Coming up, a text, a YouTube video, and a friend request when the Moth Radio Hour continues.

Speaker 10 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.

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Speaker 5 This is the moth radio hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles.
One of the things I love most about a live moth show is the connection you can feel between the storyteller and the audience.

Speaker 5 If a storyteller falters on stage or gets overwhelmed by nerves and loses their way, the audience is there to support them and you can physically feel it in the room.

Speaker 5 You'll hear what I mean with our next storyteller, Anais Brodier. She shared her story live on stage at the Union Chapel in London.
Here's Anais live at the mall.

Speaker 8 Growing up, I always felt that my birthday wasn't the day I was born, but rather the day I arrived in Paris.

Speaker 8 When I was three months old, my parents came to pick me up at Charles de Gaulle Airport, and this was the day we became a family.

Speaker 8 I I always knew I was adopted, and

Speaker 8 I always knew I was adopted, and my mom told me that I was always in her heart, but that it was another woman who gave birth to me.

Speaker 8 I grew up in the suburbs of Paris as an only child. I was a happy balanced kid who could sometimes feel really lonely, and this loneliness couldn't be filled by friends.

Speaker 8 And in darker moments, I felt abandoned,

Speaker 8 and I was wondering if my birth parents didn't love me, and if that's... that was the reason why they decided to put me to adoption.

Speaker 8 But my parents, whenever I had had questions, they would sit me down, take me to the, they would take my adoption files out of the desk drawer, and they would start reading the story to me.

Speaker 8 And even when I was able to read my adoption records myself, it was always the same.

Speaker 8 My birth parents were from Pusan.

Speaker 8 They met when they were really young and

Speaker 8 they started dating,

Speaker 8 but my birth father had to leave Busan for a job.

Speaker 8 My birth mother had gotten pregnant with me

Speaker 8 and because of social stigma at the time in Korea and as she wasn't married and she was still studying at university, her and her family decided to put me into adoption.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 I never felt the need to reach out to them or never really wanted to meet them

Speaker 8 because I had my mom and my dad who loved me

Speaker 8 and they were my real parents, so it didn't matter.

Speaker 8 But one day, I had just turned 25 and I was studying fashion at Central Samatins in London.

Speaker 8 My friend had just sent me a screenshot of a YouTube video featuring me.

Speaker 8 Except I had never made such a video and no one filmed me.

Speaker 8 So I click on the link and discover a short humoristic video entitled High School Virgin.

Speaker 8 It was made by a kid called Kev Jamba in Los Angeles and it was also starring a girl who looked very much like me except maybe she had an American accent.

Speaker 8 And I was startled.

Speaker 8 I was trying to look for her name or a lot of information about her, but there was nothing.

Speaker 8 And so I thought it was just a coincidence and I just dropped it.

Speaker 8 Then a few months later, my friend tells me that he saw that look-alike girl again in a Twitter for the film 21 and Over.

Speaker 8 I find her credit in the cast list.

Speaker 8 She was listed as Asian girl.

Speaker 8 Her name was Samantha Ferdeman.

Speaker 8 She was an American actress who had been in films such as Memoirs of Agea.

Speaker 8 She was born in South Korea on the 19th of November 1987.

Speaker 8 And I stopped right there and thought I read it wrong because it said that she was born the same day as me.

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 8 we had

Speaker 8 the same birth date.

Speaker 8 We looked really similar, except I knew my adoption records by heart and I knew it was just a coincidence after all.

Speaker 8 I immediately called my parents and really wanted to talk to them and as my mom got on the phone she said

Speaker 8 do you think she could be your twin sister?

Speaker 8 And all of a sudden

Speaker 8 I was relieved because I thought that I wasn't totally insane because that's what I was thinking. But also,

Speaker 8 I knew that I was allowed to think something that was supposed to be impossible.

Speaker 8 And I got my dad on the phone right after,

Speaker 8 and as I told him the same thing, he was googling her and found another website with a different birth date.

Speaker 8 He told me that I must have got it wrong, but it was indeed quite a funny coincidence. Except that to me, it wasn't just a coincidence.

Speaker 8 And as I couldn't really focus that day,

Speaker 8 I was just being a zombie wandering around, I thought I would spend the rest of it just casually stalking her on social media.

Speaker 8 So I discovered that she was born, she was an American actress living in Los Angeles,

Speaker 8 that we were indeed born the same day,

Speaker 8 that she was also adopted from South Korea,

Speaker 8 and she recently had discovered that she wasn't born in Seoul,

Speaker 8 but in Pusan.

Speaker 8 And I was also born in Busan.

Speaker 8 So I decided that I should try and reach out to her.

Speaker 3 But how do you...

Speaker 3 How do I do it?

Speaker 8 I didn't have her email address.

Speaker 8 I could could tweet her, hi,

Speaker 8 seems we might be related, so private message me.

Speaker 8 Didn't seem quite appropriate.

Speaker 8 So I decided I would send her a friend request on Facebook as well as a message where I introduced myself quickly. I told her about the video, about the common birthday and birthplace.

Speaker 8 I made a joke about the parent trap film and asked her not to freak out.

Speaker 8 As I was waiting

Speaker 8 for her answer for three days,

Speaker 8 I started feeling really down and thought I was crazy.

Speaker 8 And all of a sudden, I received a notification on my phone saying that she accepted my friend request.

Speaker 8 My heart was beating. I was jumping all around, waiting for what she might say.

Speaker 8 And she wasn't typing anything to me, she just sent me a picture of her adoption records.

Speaker 8 She also said that she didn't have much time to talk to me, but we would chat more the coming days.

Speaker 8 I had made first contact.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 as I was reading through her file,

Speaker 8 It confirmed that we were born the same day, the same year.

Speaker 8 We were both adopted from South Korea, both born in Busan.

Speaker 8 And apart from this, none of our background stories matched.

Speaker 8 So I started thinking that maybe my dad was right

Speaker 8 and maybe it was all just a coincidence.

Speaker 8 For the next week, we I was looking at all her pictures, trying to discover what her life might be.

Speaker 8 And as we got to know each other a little more chatting on Facebook, we decided it was about time to Skype.

Speaker 8 And that was the weirdest experience. When both our faces appeared on the screen, I didn't know where to look at.

Speaker 8 As I, ah,

Speaker 8 no, that's her.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 8 we looked identical.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 where did you start? I didn't know what to ask, and I wanted to say so many things at the same time that it lasted about three hours in the middle of the night.

Speaker 8 And when it was time to hang up, I didn't really want to.

Speaker 8 Then

Speaker 4 we

Speaker 8 she started feeling as we were chatting more, she started feeling

Speaker 8 that kind of long-lost friend or friend that you haven't seen in a while that you miss except we hadn't met

Speaker 8 We decided it might be time to meet in person, but my dad,

Speaker 8 who was quite protective, said that we might want to take a DNA test before everyone got too emotionally involved. We found a doctor that specializes in twins.

Speaker 8 She would help us with the DNA test results. But she also warned us that there was a great chance we might be just doppelgangers.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 it would take a few weeks to get the test results.

Speaker 8 But, you know, it was so intense that regardless of what the outcome might be, we really wanted to meet. So we set up to meet in London to get the test results together.

Speaker 8 So Samantha her two older brothers, her parents flew from America and my parents came from Paris.

Speaker 8 I remember the day we were about to meet her. I woke up, I got dressed, I was looking up at the sky walking towards the Airbnb in Shoreditch where we're supposed to meet.

Speaker 8 And I was thinking, oh my god,

Speaker 8 she might be in this plane right now. She's getting really closer.

Speaker 8 So me and my parents, we get to in front of the flat

Speaker 8 and as I stand in front of the door, I can hear loud voices behind it and I knew it was about to happen.

Speaker 8 So I step into the room

Speaker 8 and it felt like two parallel universes had suddenly merged together. She was sitting right in front of me.

Speaker 8 It felt It looked like a mirror image of myself, except she wasn't moving as I was moving, and so I had to readjust for a little while.

Speaker 8 She then

Speaker 8 started laughing hysterically.

Speaker 8 I did too

Speaker 8 and

Speaker 8 we felt we

Speaker 8 really felt like two magnets that were attracted to each other but

Speaker 8 also having this very special vote that would repel us from each other.

Speaker 8 And my mom, who was standing behind me the whole time, said,

Speaker 8 Oh my god, I have another daughter.

Speaker 8 And my dad,

Speaker 8 who was from the beginning very protective,

Speaker 8 and he was always trying to warn us that we might be just doppelgangers,

Speaker 8 he said, Okay,

Speaker 8 I don't think you need a DNA test.

Speaker 4 We

Speaker 8 then went for lunch and we were just observing each other.

Speaker 8 We were just staring at each other, everyone was just chatting and we were amazed by our resemblance.

Speaker 8 We had the similar loud laughter and our mannerisms were the same.

Speaker 8 After all this emotion, we suddenly

Speaker 8 I really needed to rest and so did she, so we decided to take a nap together in the same bed.

Speaker 8 That might seem quite strange right now, but at the time it felt really natural.

Speaker 8 It was really natural because we were just chatting, got tired, and fell asleep next to each other.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 when I woke up,

Speaker 8 I felt this incredible sense of relief because it felt

Speaker 8 we were being born again but in the same world this time.

Speaker 8 Later that evening

Speaker 8 we

Speaker 8 sat down in front of our laptop

Speaker 8 and we waited for Dr. Siegel to call us on Skype

Speaker 8 and she was quite serious.

Speaker 8 She looked at us and asked us to turn towards each other

Speaker 8 and hug and kiss our identical twin sister.

Speaker 8 She said, DNA doesn't lie.

Speaker 8 She suddenly had

Speaker 8 given us the final proof that this was all true.

Speaker 8 We were really twins, separated at birth, both adopted on two different continents.

Speaker 8 who had found each other through social media at 25 years old.

Speaker 8 Today,

Speaker 8 we still don't know what happened to our birth parents, or why we were given up separately, or which of our stories is true.

Speaker 8 But I do know that I'm not that young girl anymore who felt abandoned.

Speaker 8 I suddenly went from being an only child to having a twin sister, two older brothers, and even more parents living in America.

Speaker 8 Sam Sam and I both have a big extended family, and this is so much and enough to be happy about.

Speaker 8 The fact that we met is a miracle, but the most important thing is that from now on, we have so much to live together,

Speaker 8 and that now we know that our lives are intertwined forever.

Speaker 4 Thank you.

Speaker 5 Anais Brodier lives in Paris and works as the brand manager in her family's fashion business, a luxury leather goods company.

Speaker 5 Anais and her sister Sam still live worlds apart, Sam in Los Angeles, Anais in Paris, but they try to spend as much time together as they can.

Speaker 5 When they're not physically together, they are in constant communication, sometimes just texting silly pictures throughout the day.

Speaker 5 Anais recently got married and her mother and father were there, of course, but also her sister Sam, Sam's parents, and her brothers and their wives were all in attendance.

Speaker 5 And she says she feels safer in the world knowing that now she has this large, extended family.

Speaker 5 Coming up, a woman falls down the ancestry.com rabbit hole when the moth radio hour continues.

Speaker 10 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, PRX.

Speaker 3 The holidays are just around the corner, and this year, my parents are coming to town, which means it's time to get my apartment parent-ready.

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Speaker 5 This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles, and our last story comes from Trina Robinson.
Trina and I first met when she called the Moth's pitch line and left a two-minute pitch.

Speaker 5 She shared her story live at the Westport Country Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut. The theme of the night was the ties that bind.
Here's Trina Robinson live at the moth.

Speaker 6 One day I get a call from my mom and she tells me about this old photo album that all of a sudden turned up in the attic at the house next door to the home that she grew up in.

Speaker 6 Apparently about 50 or 60 years ago, there was a flood in her family's basement and a bunch of things were moved next door and this is one of the things that was left behind.

Speaker 6 It was really old and starting to fall apart. There were about a hundred or so photographs and they were those old-fashioned kind with those decorative decal cut edges.

Speaker 6 It was wonderful. Like my favorite was my, it was a photo of my great-grandmother.
In it, she had a jar of something she had just canned in one hand.

Speaker 6 Her other hand was firmly planted on her hip, and she looked really tough and proud, and it was awesome, because I never knew her, and I got to see her personality there.

Speaker 6 In the album, there were also a bunch of old newspaper articles, and they were largely from the 1930s.

Speaker 6 And in it, it just talked about, you know, like kind of jobs they had and such, and it talked about my family's migration to Chicago in 1866,

Speaker 6 and it said we had come from Kentucky.

Speaker 6 Now, that was the weird part because my family, this part, was actually from Boston, so I just attributed it to reporting error, but it was just so cool to have all these things.

Speaker 6 I didn't think it was possible to go back this far in my family. So I just got addicted.
I went down the genealogy rabbit hole. I got an account on ancestry.com.

Speaker 6 I'm like doing all those census record searches. I see my great-great-grandfather David, the streets he lived on in 1880 and 1900.

Speaker 6 My, or his stepmother, actually, Martha, I saw the street that she lived on in 1870 in Chicago. It was incredible.

Speaker 6 But the one thing when I was doing this research that kept coming up was Kentucky. And the town of Mount Sterling is the, is what actually kept coming up.

Speaker 6 Mount Sterling is about 40 minutes from Lexington. So I was like, okay, there's obviously some about this that I need to actually look into.

Speaker 6 So I went back to ancestry.com. I took all the names associated with Mount Sterling.
I found the message board associated with that community, and I posted them all.

Speaker 6 Find out what was, see what was going to happen.

Speaker 6 A couple days later, I actually got a ping. It was from the Erlanger Historical Society in Kentucky, and they were trying to find out actually what had happened to the slaves.
Now, I

Speaker 6 know my descendants. I'm a descendant of slaves.
I mean, that's obvious. It's just when you see that word next to your family members' names.

Speaker 6 I mean, that was really intense.

Speaker 6 Included in the attachment or in the message was an attachment of an estate inventory for a Kentucky congressman who had died in 1854, and it listed everything he had owned.

Speaker 6 There was a piano, silver, china, a white bull, cows.

Speaker 8 The last category was titled Negroes.

Speaker 6 David, $300.

Speaker 6 Martha, $1,000.

Speaker 6 In addition to my great-great-grandfather David and his stepmother Martha, were the names of 14 other men, women, and children.

Speaker 6 My family.

Speaker 6 I couldn't believe that I actually was able to find this. I mean, like I said, it didn't make sense initially because we were from Kentucky, but no, I mean, we were from Boston.

Speaker 6 That's what I always always thought, but this was saying, no, you are from Kentucky. And I needed to know who these people were.
I wanted to see where they had lived. So I decided to go.

Speaker 6 My boyfriend and I went down there. And when we were on our way to Mount Sterling, you know, I noticed we were getting all these really hard looks.

Speaker 6 And, you know, first we're trying to figure it out, and then it became clear it's because my boyfriend was white. And I guess in these rural communities, this isn't something that they're used to.

Speaker 6 We had lived in New York at the time, and so that was not an issue. So we realized, okay, this is something we need to think about, take note as we're going about our business.

Speaker 6 So we're on this trip, and as we're, I remembered planning this trip beforehand, we were told by the Historical Society of the town in Mount Sterling, they were telling us that we shouldn't come alone because this is very rural and we should actually probably have a guide.

Speaker 6 We met our guides, Joanna and Scott Davidson, on the outskirts of Mount Sterling.

Speaker 6 They had just finished their Sunday morning church service, and we were at a mini-mall where they were having brunch, and we're chatting them up, and they were a really sweet, elderly couple.

Speaker 6 And you know, they said, Okay, just get in your car and follow our truck, and we'll get into town. Great.

Speaker 6 We get in our car, and we pull up behind their pickup,

Speaker 3 and all I see is a flash of red,

Speaker 6 and there's blue,

Speaker 6 The stars and bars of the Confederate flag on their truck.

Speaker 6 The only thing I associate with that flag is violence.

Speaker 6 My family have left this community because of the violence associated with that flag. And here I am following that flag into this community they left and just blocked out of our family narrative.

Speaker 6 Not smart.

Speaker 6 So we're actually sitting there freaking out, Like, what are we gonna do?

Speaker 6 You know, but then it was just like, okay, pull yourselves together, okay? Like, they're elderly. I mean, what are they gonna actually do?

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 my boyfriend, he like steadied himself, and like, okay, he hit the gas and we're off.

Speaker 6 We're following them down the interstate, and we pull off into this really quiet road, and the entire landscape changed.

Speaker 6 It was as if we completely went back in time.

Speaker 2 Everything was really still and quiet.

Speaker 6 The homes were largely these brick structures with these little decorative edges, and they were largely perched up on hilltops, and one of them actually had a, what is it,

Speaker 6 antique hitching post with carriage steps in the front. I mean, my face was just glued to the window, just taking this all in.

Speaker 6 We finally get to the homestead where my family were slaves, and we get out of the car

Speaker 6 and everything is largely overgrown with wildflowers and tall grass.

Speaker 6 And Scott, he starts pointing everything out to me, like where the main house used to be, the native grass and plants and trees, and just so I can get an idea of what my family would have seen.

Speaker 6 And there were these beautiful ancient oak trees and cherry trees and goldenrod.

Speaker 6 I mean, it was fall, fall, so things were starting to fade, but when they were hit by the sun, they were just so beautiful.

Speaker 6 I hated it

Speaker 6 because how could beauty live here?

Speaker 6 We finally get to the main destination. It was this private family cemetery.
It was about 20 or 30 graves, large marble graves.

Speaker 6 Some of them had these loving sentiments carved into them, and a lot of them were actually broken just because of neglect. And

Speaker 6 Scott, though, he's trying to get my attention to this pile of rocks.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 he said, No, these are not a pile of rocks. If you look,

Speaker 6 they're actually embedded in the dirt. These are field stones used as grave markers for the slave graves.

Speaker 6 My family.

Speaker 6 I look hard and I take a look to the side at these big, beautiful pieces of white marble.

Speaker 6 One of them was actually eight feet tall, and it was for the man whose name was on that estate inventory, Richard French.

Speaker 6 And it's completely shadowing the slave part of the cemetery, that pile of rocks.

Speaker 6 that were basically invisible.

Speaker 6 We noticed it was starting to get dark, and we did not want to be there at dark.

Speaker 6 So we were just said our goodbyes and thank you.

Speaker 6 We got back in our car, and as we're driving down the main road, I just couldn't help think about my great, great, great-grandfather Martin when he went down this road for the last time.

Speaker 6 You see, he was freed in a will in 1856.

Speaker 6 The will actually said that he was to go out free.

Speaker 6 When he was freed, he actually didn't go too far. He worked for several years really hard and saved enough money to go back.
And he bought his wife, Martha, and several of his children.

Speaker 6 And they ended up migrating to Chicago in 1866.

Speaker 6 So all of this new information, I just... I just couldn't, I was wondering like what else could be out there.

Speaker 6 I was going to courthouses, university archives, I was doing tons of internet searches and one of my internet searches turned up a personal check written by that man Richard French whose name was on that estate inventory and it was from the 1840s.

Speaker 6 It was on this online auction site and I called them and I said I wanted this check because I just wanted something connected to my family.

Speaker 6 It was no longer available, but he gave me the name of the guy who was actually putting it up because it never sold.

Speaker 6 I contacted him and not only did he have that personal check, he had about 40 other documents related to that family, including three slave documents, two tax records, and one was a bill of sale for a woman named Anna sold from one brother to another.

Speaker 6 And I freaked when I saw that just because Anna's name, that kept, it kept popping up when I was doing my research. Like her name was always beside my known relative.

Speaker 6 So I knew she must be an aunt or a cousin or something. Like she was related.
So I said, I will take those.

Speaker 6 Thank you, those three documents he said no actually you know you actually have to buy the whole lot

Speaker 6 i didn't want to buy these documents you know they were part of our larger lot and i had to buy these and i want to make my money back so that'll be four thousand dollars

Speaker 6 i did not have four thousand dollars i said

Speaker 6 that and i said i will just take the three and no

Speaker 6 didn't budge so then we just started haggling going back and forth

Speaker 6 He finally came down, reduced the price of the slave documents, and sold it to me, sold me everything for $3,600.

Speaker 6 And he arranged a payment arrangement so I could pay in installments.

Speaker 6 But I didn't care because I knew I would never get this opportunity again. To get an original slave document is next to impossible, but documents related to your actual family, that's unheard of.

Speaker 6 So I said, yes.

Speaker 6 So I'm home, I am planning where I'm going to put this. I picked the perfect wall.

Speaker 6 I was going to get it professionally framed using museum quality glass. They finally arrive.
I take the bill of sale for Anna out of its plastic packaging and I hold it in my hands.

Speaker 6 And I'm, you know, looking at the handwriting and

Speaker 6 starting to fade.

Speaker 6 And I start getting nauseous.

Speaker 6 I'm holding the souls of my ancestors in my hands

Speaker 9 and it burned.

Speaker 6 The violence of slavery is not just in those gestures like a whip against bare skin. It is putting a dollar sign next to somebody's name.

Speaker 6 It is passing somebody's soul from one brother to another.

Speaker 6 I took the document, I put it back in its plastic sleeve, I went to the closet, I pulled out this large metal lockbox, put the documents inside, put them back in the closet, and I've rarely taken them out since.

Speaker 6 I just can't look at them every day.

Speaker 6 Not now.

Speaker 6 But the thing is, is that they're home.

Speaker 6 They're with me, and I'm going to take care of them.

Speaker 6 And they're going to be remembered.

Speaker 6 I'm actually currently working with that historical society that took me to that cemetery. And we are working to put together a plaque listing all the names of the slaves in that cemetery.

Speaker 6 And one of them actually recently said to me, You know, why are we doing this? Because no one's going to know about this except for us.

Speaker 6 And I said, Oh no, we are doing this.

Speaker 6 I want their names recorded, cast in bronze, and said out loud:

Speaker 6 David, Martha Martin and Anna these mothers daughters sons and fathers are loved

Speaker 6 thank you

Speaker 5 that was Trina Robinson Trina lives in San Francisco. She's an artist and writer and is currently working on a collection of essays about the research into her family and the stories she's uncovered.

Speaker 5 I recently talked to Trina about her story and about a remarkable coincidence, but I started by asking why she called the moth pitch line.

Speaker 6 I had been working on this story for a while. People kept saying, you know, this doesn't happen to black people to be able to go this far.
And

Speaker 6 I wanted to share it with people to help, not just to help me process, but to help other people see that it's possible, people of African descent, that it might be possible for them to do it too.

Speaker 6 And also just to give a voice to my ancestors and give their names.

Speaker 5 As we were working on the story together, I became kind of inspired to go dig around in my own ancestry. And as I was doing that, I had,

Speaker 5 I came across Mount Sterling in my family tree.

Speaker 6 And I remember calling you and when you told me about Mount Sterling, I was like, yeah, this is a completely small world. This is bizarre that this is even, that we have these kind of connections.

Speaker 5 And then not

Speaker 5 that much longer after, you put up a picture on Facebook and it was a picture of one of those documents.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so that was the tax record, the one that listed my ancestors. It just had like the number of slaves that, you know, that were owned by the Frenches at that point.

Speaker 6 And beside the horses and the number of acres they had had.

Speaker 5 When you posted it on Facebook, I saw the name O'Reere. Yeah.
And O'Rear is my family name or or one of my family names and they were like a notary on that tax document.

Speaker 6 I do remember you telling me that you had recognized a family member's name. You were telling me that information, I'm like,

Speaker 3 that's bizarre.

Speaker 6 You know, I'm like, are you sure that that's correct? I know you said you're from Kentucky, but is that really...

Speaker 5 You know, I even was a little hesitant to tell you at first because it was so not only uncomfortable to face that reality, but just to, you know, I knew how uncomfortable it could be for you.

Speaker 6 I think

Speaker 6 it actually propelled me to tell the story even more, you know, because it made me more present. And it was kind of like a reality check.
Like, okay, no, this is why I'm here.

Speaker 6 I am supposed to be talking about this and the violence of what has happened to my family and

Speaker 6 the reality of slavery. And here we are, like the two ancestors of all these people connected to this one document.
Here we are in the present day coming together.

Speaker 6 And I just felt like, you know, the past was there with us. It just, it was a lot to process.
You know, it was just,

Speaker 6 you know, yeah, it was just a lot.

Speaker 6 I think how we have been able to look at the truth, you know, like dead in the eye and like really face it. And like, it's important to have those uncomfortable conversations.

Speaker 6 And that's, I think, why we are, as a country where we are, is because we don't look at things in the eye. We don't talk to each other.
You know, it's still very segregated in many ways.

Speaker 6 And I think like once people start coming together, especially in like these rural towns in the south, you know, where areas are still very segregated, like, no, let's sit and talk.

Speaker 6 And, like, how do we move forward?

Speaker 5 If you'd like to find out more about Trina or any of the storytellers you heard in this hour, you can connect with us on the World Wide Web at themoth.org. That's it for this hour.

Speaker 5 We hope you'll join us again next time for the Moth Radio Hour.

Speaker 10 Your host this hour was Meg Bowles. Meg also directed the stories in the show.

Speaker 10 The rest of the Moss Directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Janess, and Jennifer Hickson. Production support from Emily Couch.

Speaker 10 Moss stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift.

Speaker 10 Other music in this hour from Blue Dot Sessions, Crun Bin, Paolo Frezu, Richard Gagliano, and Jan Lundgren, and Alabama Shakes. You can find links to all the music we use at our website.

Speaker 10 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour is produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Speaker 10 The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the public radio exchange PRX.org.

Speaker 10 For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story, as many of our storytellers do, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

Speaker 2 The Moth is supported by AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca is committed to spreading awareness of a condition called hereditary transthyroidin-mediated amyloidosis, or HATTR.

Speaker 2 This condition can cause polyneuropathy like nerve pain or numbness, heart failure or irregular rhythm and gastrointestinal issues. HATTR is often underdiagnosed and can be passed down to loved ones.

Speaker 2 Many of us have stories about family legacies passed down through generations. When I was five, my mother sewed a classic clown costume, red and yellow with a pointy hat.

Speaker 2 It's since been worn by my sister, three cousins, and four of our children. I'm so happy this piece of my childhood lives lives on with no end in sight.

Speaker 2 Genetic conditions like HATTR shouldn't dominate our stories. Thanks to the efforts of AstraZeneca, there are treatment options so more patients can choose the legacies they share.

Speaker 2 This year, the Moth will partner with AstraZeneca to shine a light on the stories of those living with HATTR. Learn more at www.myattrroadmap.com.