The Moth Radio Hour: Brains, Beauty, and Brawn: Stories of Girlhood

moth is supported by AstraZeneca.

AstraZeneca is committed to spreading awareness of a condition called hereditary transthyroidin-mediated amyloidosis, or HATTR.

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Many of us have stories about family legacies passed down through generations.

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I'm so happy this piece of my childhood lives on with no end in sight.

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.

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.

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from PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour.

I'm Sarah Austin Janes.

We at the Moth include stories from everyone, but this episode is dedicated to the young women of the world.

It's about girlhood with five unexpected stories of beauty and brawn.

The Moth's first main stage in Nairobi, Kenya, featured stories of women and girls.

The show was held at the Kenya National Theater and packed with people who had braved Nairobi traffic even in the midst of a rainstorm.

And that theater is where we begin this hour.

Here's Sasanki Missimong, who hosted that inaugural event.

Hello and welcome to the Moth.

Before we begin our official program, please stand and join us in the national anthem.

After the national anthem, Her Excellency, the First Lady of Kenya, Mrs.

Margaret Kenyatta, took the stage.

She was dressed in a perfectly tailored deep blue suit, and on her suit jacket were five pink embroidered moths in a semicircle.

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening.

I'm delighted to join you here for the first presentation of the moth in Kenya.

We are here to celebrate an initiative that provides a platform for girls and women to reach out and share personal stories and personal reflections.

We will hear voices from diverse backgrounds spanning multiple generations.

Traditionally, Africans have been known to be great communicators.

We are great word collectors and that explains why so many of us understand the power of storytelling in the cultural context.

I cannot think of a better way that allows our girls and women's voices to be amplified by shedding light on many urgent issues that they face in their daily lives.

We will always require examples to emulate, stories to give us hope, stories full of courage and optimism that will inspire and encourage us to promote gender equality and women's empowerment.

Finally, I thank the partners here for their unwavering support towards girls and women, and I congratulate every storyteller here for having the courage to share.

I wish you all a good evening.

Thank you.

Thank you so so much, First Lady.

My name is Sisonke.

Sisonke M Semang.

I will be your host this evening.

I am a South African writer and a Moth alumni, and I am very, very pleased to be here in Nairobi.

Sasa!

Ha!

I've been practicing my sheng.

So tonight's Moth main stage, Global Stories of Women and Girls, will showcase graduates of the Moths Global Community Program.

Before we begin, please, people, can we turn off our cell phones?

We want these stories to be broadcast in perfect sound all around the world, so please do not stand in the way of African progress on the global stage.

Can I get a sense of how many of you have heard of the Moth before you arrived here today?

it's time for us to get started.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the stage.

She's already here.

Hi.

Hi, Sandra.

Welcome to the stage, Sandra Kimokoti.

As a child, I idolized my brothers.

I wanted to be just like them.

They were the cool kids in the neighborhood, they were the cool kids in school, and they played sports.

So, by default, I did too.

So, one day, when I was about 10 years old, we had been playing basketball outside, and we were heading back into the house.

So, just as we were in the doorway, my brothers were comparing the size of their biceps, as teenage boys do.

And I kind of got into the flow and I said, Look at me, I have big biceps too.

And one of my brothers turned to me and said,

Who told you girls with muscles are beautiful?

Strike one.

I'm not sure how to describe what I felt at that point.

It was a combination of confusion and hurt.

And I was wondering why it wasn't okay for me to look the way I did.

And I wasn't sure why somebody else should tell me what I'm supposed to look like.

But at 10, I didn't have the words to articulate this.

So I just kept it in my mind.

But from that moment, I carried it with me that as a girl, it was okay to be athletic, but I couldn't be too athletic because at the end of the day, what I looked like took precedence over anything else.

So life goes on.

When I was in the sixth grade, my classmate and I were walking from class, going to take the bus home.

Her older brother and his friend were walking behind us.

So as we walked, her brother says to me,

You have such big cows, you look like a boy.

Strike two.

Wow.

So this kind of teasing about how boyish I looked continued for about a year or so.

I joined high school.

I went to a public boarding school in Kenya.

In my school, we were not allowed to have permed hair.

I had permed hair.

So that meant I had to cut my hair or the school would cut it for me.

So I took myself to the salon, cut off my hair.

I was walking back home.

On my way, I passed by two men walking in the opposite direction.

As they walked by me, I overheard one of the guys say to the other man, is this a girl or a boy?

Strike three.

I was hoping that

high school would be some kind of a new beginning and I could start afresh.

But at that moment, I felt like I would never be able to shake off this perception that I wasn't feminine enough and I therefore wasn't beautiful enough.

So

as I said, life life has to go on.

All through high school I played sports because that's just who I was and that's just what I did.

I played sports.

After high school I started uni in the US and decided I'll try something different, something new.

So I had seen these posters on campus asking girls to come try out rugby so I thought why not?

So I walk onto the pitch the first day.

I find a few girls getting ready, wearing their boots, getting strapped.

One of the coaches walks over to me, starts talking to me.

She stretches out her arms and puts them on my shoulders and feels my shoulders for about five seconds.

And then she says to me,

you're so solid.

This is awesome.

And I just, I bask in that glory for what feels like hours, but it's just a few seconds.

And then she has me make some tackles.

And I realize I really enjoy hitting people without having to go to jail.

So in short, I fell in love with rugby and I loved how we would compete on how strong we were, how fast we were, how hard we could hit.

And it was about what our bodies could do.

It was about how our bodies could perform, not what they looked like.

And my coach mentioned to me, you know, Sandra, if you really want to, you can play professional rugby.

And at the time, I didn't take it too seriously, but it was always at the back of my head.

A few weeks into the season, we were in the gym lifting weights.

Now, our school gym had mirrors all around.

So, as we were lifting, I was looking at myself in the mirror and I realized that my muscle mass had increased significantly, and I had a lot more muscle definition now.

And as I looked in the mirror, all those emotions from when I was 10 and in primary school and in high school of feeling too boyish, too masculine, too muscular, all those feelings came back.

And

the more I played rugby, the the happier I was with what my body could do but the more frustrated I became with what my body looked like

and it was like this internal conflict where I want these two things really badly but I can't have one without compromising the other so at the end of the year we have to break for the summer the coach gives us a training program that has both cardio and weights and I think okay this is my chance So I go home,

I reduce the weightlifting, I amp up the cardio I do way more cardio than I'm supposed to do for my position and I also cut my meal sizes by half that summer I lose 10 kgs

and feels awesome I feel amazing because now my body is morphing into this thin ideal that I believe it's supposed to be so at the end of the summer I go back to school I walk into my coach's office.

I'm expecting a warm welcome.

As soon as I walk through the door, she looks at me and says,

what the hell happened to your body?

So for my position, my biggest assets were my strength and my size.

Before the weight loss, I was already the smallest person in the league in my position.

And I had gone and made myself even smaller.

So what I had essentially done was self-sabotage.

So for the next two years, I played this game where I did just enough.

to be good enough with my position, but always toning down the weight gain and the muscle gain.

And at the end of my third year, I come back home

and I get this opportunity somehow to train with the women's national team in Kenya.

And I think, okay, this might be the door to that career in professional rugby that I've been waiting for.

And I walk onto the pitch that first day.

And these girls, man, these girls are big.

They're strong.

They're fast.

We do a gym session.

The smallest person on that team lifts more weights than I've ever lifted in my entire life.

They're a lot more muscular than I am.

They're just great athletes and they're so unapologetic about it.

And I know this is the competition.

If I want to wear that jersey, if I want to present my country, this is who I have to beat to make the squad.

And at that point, I know that something has to change.

And I know that the self-sabotage has to stop.

And deep down, I always knew that

the body that I needed to perform optimally as an athlete might not be the body that society thinks is ideal for a woman.

But in that moment, I was finally ready to just go out there and be the best rugby player that my body would allow me to be.

Thank you.

That was Sandra Kimokoti.

Sandra has since retired from competitive rugby, but she remains a self-professed gym gym warrior and works as a strategy consultant in Nairobi.

She's noticed a recent trend of more women embracing the strength of their bodies.

And she says, when you walk into a gym here in Kenya, there are a lot more women lifting weights.

And there's more women rugby teams now because more schools are investing in women's programs.

If you'd like to see a picture of Sandra in action on the rugby field and photos of Her Excellency Mrs.

Margaret Kenyatta, the First Lady of Kenya, who introduced this evening.

Visit themoth.org.

There were five other stories told at this main stage in Nairobi, and you may have heard some of them on the Moth podcast, but all of them are included in the women and girls playlist on our website, themoth.org.

And video of the stories is on our YouTube channel, so check those out.

For some women, in the early part of their lives, strength has to be found, almost like a quest.

We need to go out into the world and prove to ourselves that we are tenacious.

And that's what our next story from Wanjiru Kibera is about.

Shiru, as she likes to be called, was part of a Moth Global Community Workshop that we also held in Kenya.

This recording is from the end of that workshop when each person shares their story with the rest of the storytellers in the group.

So there were only about 15 people in the room to hear this.

When people tell these stories, they can be emotionally overwhelming at times, as you'll hear.

Here's Shiru Kibera in Naivasha, Kenya.

In my high school, before we did our final exams, the school had a trip that would go for Admount Kenya.

And this trip was to prepare us before

this trip was to prepare...

The trip was to prepare us for our final exams and it was to teach us endurance and patience and courage.

And so I was very excited for the trip, but I was not very athletic in high school.

I was

sick before, and I had asthma, so this prevented me from playing a lot of sports.

Because

when I would participate in physical activity, I'd get an attack and I was unable to continue.

And my mom and my sister had also previously taken the same trip.

So I really wanted to prove that I could also do it as well.

And I was just as strong and capable as everyone else.

Going on this trip,

I found myself not in the fast-paced group, neither was I in the slow-placed paced group, and I would be in the middle and I'd be walking alone for most of the journey.

And it was very tiring, it was an exhausting trip.

And

the point was to get to a place called Point Lenana, which is the third highest peak in the mountain.

And

the journey was very tiring, as I had said.

And

it took us three days to get to the place where we'd start the ascent onto the summit and the ascent would do it at night and this was to trick our minds so that we wouldn't see how far we'd have to go and would keep walking would keep moving forward when we got to this place we started the ascent at around seven

and just as the rest of the journey I found myself alone as I was making this ascent and

we were told that there were guides along the way in case we got lost, or in case we veered off the path, there would be someone to guide us back.

So I knew that I would be fine, even if I was walking alone.

So they got to a point where I veered off the path and I was walking towards the glaciers.

And we'd been warned about the glaciers because people had actually lost their lives

falling into the glaciers.

But I knew I was fine because there were definitely guards watching us.

And as I was walking, someone yelled at me and they were like,

you're going to get hurt.

Like, come back to the path.

And that frightened me that I wasn't seen at that point but I kept walking and

it was dark as I said and I was alone and I got an asthma attack and I had previously taken already two shots of my ventilation and I was weak and I wasn't allowed to take another because of course medical reasons and so

At this point I thought I should just sit down and wait for the group behind me to catch up and then maybe we would go down in the morning.

And

so,

I thought, you know, this is as far as I can go, and I sat down.

And I was just crying, and I was frustrated, and I was tired.

And then a guide, a guide came up, he wasn't part of our group, he was leading this other man, and he saw me in this mess, he saw me with all this dirt around me.

You know, the whole trip you don't shower, and I was dirty, and I was, I was, I had mucus on my face, and I'd been crying, and I was disturbed by myself.

And the way he looked at me, he had so much kindness in his eyes and he's like we'll go together and I'll help you up

and so the man next to him actually looked a lot worse than me because he had mountain sickness and we were going very slowly up the mountain and he held my hand and

So we went up with him and he kept saying, you can do this, we can go together and you'll make it.

And

just as we reached the top, the point is called Point Lenana.

And as we reached it, the day broke and it was the most beautiful view I've ever seen.

And he was like, Look, you did it.

And I saw the first team there, and they were like, Hi, you made it.

Hi, how are you?

I don't think they really expected anyone after that point to make it.

And

there I was

in this place, and I was just like, this lesson isn't about exams, it's not about success.

It's a lesson in life.

And

up till now, I didn't realize how much the story has affected me in my life.

I've had mountains that I've had to climb alone.

Figuratively, I didn't go up another mountain after this, but

I realized that it feels dark and you're not alone.

The people who

the people

The people were there to hold your hand in the darkness.

And

there's this quote that I later read, and it really just summarizes this whole story for me.

And it says that

tell the story of the mountains you climbed, because your words can become a survival guide in someone else's book.

Thank you.

Shiru Kibera is a visual artist who dreams of opening an interior design business.

In moth workshops, people choose which stories they'll tell.

Shiru chose to tell about a literal mountain, but she said she's had figurative mountains in her life too.

It's just that she's not yet ready to share those stories.

She told me she draws strength from knowing that every mountain journey will come to an end and she will be proud of getting through it.

For gorgeous photos of Shiru on Mount Kenya and to hear more stories from our Moth Global Community program, go to themoth.org.

After our break, two stories.

Gabrielle longs for a career as a welder, and Catherine realizes she and her male best friend have identical taste in women.

Uh-oh.

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

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This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Sarah Austin-Janess, and this hour is all about growing up female.

Finding yourself, being yourself, and moving through the world according to your own rules.

Gabrielle Shelton told this next story at an open mic story slam in New York City.

The theme of the night was persuasion.

Here's Gabrielle live at the moth.

Every single welding shop in Manhattan refused to hire me.

It wasn't my youth or my inexperience, they said.

It was just simply the fact that I was a girl and they didn't know what to do with a girl welder.

The first guy, who was just straight up disgusted, he said, no,

no, it's not right.

One of the other guys said,

I'm sorry, honey, we don't even have a girl's bathroom.

The

corpulent Italian metal shop owner on Grand Street in Soho, He leaned back in his chair, put his cigarette out.

He literally shoved my resume back to me and he said, you know what, don't get me wrong, we wouldn't mind looking at you, but you're just gonna be way too distracting to my men.

So

I kept looking and everybody turned me down.

I had just driven across country from Chicago to New York in my 73 Chevy.

It wasn't the hot rod one.

It was the kind of dorky cream puff post catalytic converter one.

And I had been working as a welder and in foundries in Chicago when I was in school and I'd just come off a six-month gig as an iron worker in Georgia.

And I was a really fucking good welder.

And I didn't understand why nobody would hire me.

The union wasn't really what I wanted.

The iron workers apprenticeship wasn't for me.

It was, you had to start as a flag waiver as a girl, and

it was about a four-month program to even touch a piece of metal, and

I wasn't going to wait for that.

And so I kept looking and sort of broadened my search, and I got a job as a,

in this little theater on Greenwich Street in Spring.

It was sort of this cultish theater community center.

And I was doing props and helping in their tiny little shop.

And then they expanded into the room next door and on the first day that the contractor came in, this guy Joe, I just put my hooks in him right away and I knew he might be a way in.

And so I started stalking him and I would get there before he did so I could help bring the tools up in the elevator.

I started showing up on days that I wasn't even on shift or on call.

I would sort of nonchalantly bring him a coffee or a bacon, egg and cheese on a roll as if I had just had an extra one.

And

I got to know his guys, and Esteban, his head carpenter,

he looked at me one day.

He's like, Do you like working for free?

Or, you know, what's going on here?

And I just told him I needed a job.

I wanted a job and I wanted to be a metal worker and I wanted to be an engineer and I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to figure out cut list and order steel and I wanted to learn how to build everything I possibly could and weld every possible thing I could and design and be a mechanic and engineer everything.

And

he's like, well, you got to ask for a job first, you know.

And so on the last day that they were wrapping up the construction at the theater, I followed Joe down and put his toolbox in his truck.

And

I was standing there and he was looking at me, kind of not really sure what to do with me.

And I was about to ask, but I was in the way and he got in his truck and he sat down and was standing there still.

And he sort of did this half, like, bye, you know, nod.

And he drove off.

And the guys were walking to the subway, and I ran after him.

And I said, Hey, you know, you guys want to get a beer?

And

they said, Sure.

And Esteban was like, Let's tell Shorty, let's get her Heine again and tell her how poorly she swings a hammer.

So we went to the Ear Inn, which was right around the corner.

And

this was 1995, by the way.

I was 22 years old.

And

so that night they told me, actually, that afternoon, afternoon, construction ends pretty early,

we were drinking and sun hadn't set yet.

And they told me a lot of crazy stuff.

It was the whole crew.

And the most important thing they told me is that Joe was starting a new job on Forsyth Street the next morning.

So I picked up Steve and Dave at 26th and 2nd Avenue, 2nd Avenue.

About 6 o'clock in the morning, we drove down.

Steve was this wild ex-heroin addict.

He'd played drums in every punk band in New York.

And he looked like scrappier version of Kramer, if you can imagine that.

And it was real fucked up teeth.

And Dave was a sexy, cool carpenter, or mill worker, sorry.

And

he wore this single conch shell on a leather paste around his neck.

And he had tight jeans, and his hair was in front of his eyes.

And the only real turn off about Dave was that he was a huge Pat Matheny fan and he used to do this fusion air guitar.

Anyway,

so I got the job on Forsyth Street the first day.

Amani and I had to bring up 300 sheets of drywall and chip tile and pole pipes and all that.

At the end of that job,

a couple months later, Joe liked me and we were buddies.

And he told me he hired me full-time.

And I told him, you know, I really wanted to be a metal worker.

And he said, yeah, that's what the guys say.

And he said, you know what, you got to go to Williamsburg.

That's where all the scrappy metal workers your age are going.

And

I know a guy over there, and I'll tell him you're a hard worker.

So I took the L train to Bedford Avenue, got a coffee at the L Cafe, and walked to North 6th Street, made a right,

old meat packing district back then.

And right as the delivery truck was pulling up in front of the shop, kind of smiled, dropped my backpack, started unloading the truck before my new boss even knew my name.

I thank you.

Gabrielle Shelton lives in New York with her husband and two teenage children.

She's been running her own business, a custom metal fabrication studio in Brooklyn, for about 19 years since this story took place.

She's also just opened up a restaurant called Five Leaves in Los Angeles that is filled with her metal work.

She says, quote, I'm happy to report that there are a lot more women welders out there today.

I've trained many women and offered apprenticeships to every woman who's come to me looking for employment or experience.

By the way, if these stories are reminding you of your own, we want to hear from you.

Record a two-minute version of a story you'd like to develop with a Moth director by calling 877-799 Moth.

That's 877-799-6684.

Or visit themoth.org and record it right on our site.

And your story could find its way to the Moth stage or this radio show.

My name is Deborah Nurith.

When I was 14, I was given a horse for my birthday.

It was wonderful.

I did a lot with him, but

he got sick.

He rolled on a rock and he pinched a nerve in his back end and made the

muscle collapse.

My parents couldn't afford for me to keep him.

So we gave him to a little boy.

And I had no idea where he went.

I found him.

The way I found him is I went and worked as a riding instructor at a camp, and he was one of the camp horses.

And the people told me about this strange black horse with a sunken rear end and a crooked tail.

And

I found him.

I had a wonderful summer with him, and I purchased him.

I got him back.

And I had him for quite a few years after that until he passed away.

Remember, you can tell us your story at themoth.org.

Our next storyteller is Catherine Smyka.

She told us at our Open Mic Story Slams in Seattle, where we partner with public radio station KUOW.

The theme of the night was unintended.

Here's Catherine Smica live at the moth.

So I never intended to develop feelings for my friend Scott.

And it's not because Scott is not a really wonderful guy, but because I'm gay and I don't like guys.

He and I met through a friend right after I moved to Seattle and he actually asked me out.

And I remember telling him, you're awesome, but I like women.

And he was like, hey, you're also awesome.

And I also like women.

And I was like, that's so perfect.

Let's be friends.

So Scott and I worked at the same theater for a little bit and we realized pretty quickly we have almost identical taste in ladies.

So it became this really funny running joke between us where we'd usually see the same woman at the same time in the lobby and try to figure out from afar who got to ask her out.

Because if we like figured out that she was probably gay, then she was mine.

If she was straight, she was Scott's.

And then we were out at a bar the first time we couldn't quite determine if this really beautiful woman was gay or straight.

And so Scott had said, Catherine, I have this incredible vision of us walking up to either side of her and saying, One of us would like to buy you a drink.

We hung out.

We hung out all the time.

We both loved good food, action movies, going running, playing Scrabble, and talking about feelings.

We talked about feelings all the time.

And we both run into some pretty crummy dating luck in the past, and we

started talking about what our ideal partner would be like.

And I had told him, like, dude, you are so smart and funny and reliable, and you're a grown-up.

Like, I just need to find the female version of you.

And he's sitting right there.

And

But then sometime over the summer, things began to feel a little bit different.

And he'd walk into my apartment and I'd think, that's a really attractive shirt you're wearing.

Or he'd play me this new song in his guitar and I'd think, I kind of want to make out with you right now.

And I'd be like, what?

This

terrifying feeling that was like kind of nice, but mostly terrifying, because it had taken me years.

to become the token lesbian in all of my circles of friends.

And I was not about to give that up to be with a guy, even even a guy that was like really incredible, like Scott.

And it was this very strange feeling.

Like, I didn't know who I was for a little bit, because it wasn't like I was sitting around thinking that I'd gotten my sexual identity wrong.

Like, jokes on you, you do like men.

Because it wasn't actually a question of liking men or women or both.

And it wasn't even a question of liking women or Scott.

It was the realization that I thought I liked women and Scott and scared the shit out of me.

So I didn't tell anybody, didn't talk about it, certainly didn't tell him.

And the first time I said it out loud, I was hanging out with my sister and I was like, yeah, so Scott and I, what would you say if we were together?

She was like, isn't he a dude?

And I was like, yeah, you know what?

Never mind, forget it.

And the only other time I brought it up was it was at a girls' night and very casually slipped into a conversation we were having.

and then nobody thought it was weird.

And my friend Catherine had said, so just sleep with him and see what happens.

I was like, no, that sounds gross.

And she was like, well, maybe that's your answer.

And

it seems pretty obvious.

But someone else had said, look, you're never going to know unless you try new things.

Like, you know, what's the harm in trying?

So one night, I was getting ready to go to his apartment and I thought, yeah, I am.

I'm going to tell him how I feel.

We're going to take the plunge.

It's going to be great.

And I started walking to his apartment and I got like really excited and I was thinking about all of the awesome movie dates we'd go on and the dinners we'd make each other and the adventures we'd have and we could be each other's plus ones at weddings and we could do all kinds of couple-y stuff.

And I got so excited I started to run.

So I'm like running up pine into Capitol Hill and I'm passing all of these couples who are out walking their dogs with these great arm tattoos.

And I was like, yeah, we're gonna get dogs and take walks and get more arm tattoos.

It's like the best idea I've ever had.

And I like turn the corner at his apartment.

I go running up the steps and I ring the bell and I'm like out of breath and I was like yeah we're gonna be together it's gonna be great and then he answered the door and all of those feelings just rushed right out of me because here he was he's my best friend in the city standing there with a spatula in one hand and a James Bond movie in the other and I very quickly thought about all of the awesome movie dates we'd gone on and the dinners we'd already made each other and the adventures we'd had in the last couple of months.

And I realized we don't have to be a couple to do couple-y stuff.

We're already doing couple-y stuff just about the complicated parts like having sex or arguing about who's turned us to do the dishes.

And

we had a really great thing going.

It didn't need to be a romantic thing because it was even better than that.

It was this like blood brothers type thing, this family type thing and I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Later that night, we ended up talking about us.

And it turns out he'd had the same thought process as I did, that he thought about us together and then realized it was a bad idea because it was was just really great the way it was.

So we sat at his kitchen table eating tofu and gearing up for an Indiana Jones marathon and talking about feelings.

And we were both like, we really are meant to be together.

I never intended to develop feelings for him the same way he never intended to find somebody who liked Sean Connery as much as he did.

We never intended to become family.

But sometimes the best kinds of intentions are formed from the strongest kinds of love.

Thank you.

That was Catherine Smica.

Catherine and Scott never did get together romantically, but they're still very good friends.

I asked her if Scott approves of her current partner, and she says, yeah, he does.

She's been happily married to her wife Courtney for three years, and Scott was the best man at their wedding.

After our break, the daughter of a Vietnam War veteran tries to get her dad's attention when the Moth Radio Hour continues.

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

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This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Sarah Austin Janes.

Crystal Brown tells our last story in this hour, all about girlhood.

Maybe you've noticed, but even though this hour is about young women, men play significant roles in all these stories.

And Crystal's story explores her relationship with her father.

She told a version of this with a group called Cocoon at Middlebury College in Vermont.

And we asked her to expand it a bit for a moth night dedicated to stories of the Vietnam War.

Here's Crystal Brown.

So my father was loud.

He was loving, but he was also distant.

He was a mystery.

He could put all the curse words in one sentence even when he wasn't mad.

He loved to make people happy, but he also didn't mind pissing them off.

And

I have this collection of memories, these stories that I told, that I was told, these stories that I overheard.

Maybe in my imagination I made some of them up, but it's kind of who he is for me.

I know that he was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in a little swamp.

I know that he loved to play football.

I know that he loved to play football so much that he foregoed a college scholarship to go into the Army because they guaranteed he could play football.

I know that he was an athlete through and through.

He joined the Army.

He was stationed in various places.

I know one of those places was Greensboro, North Carolina, where one night he and his buddies went to a party and he wrote a girl, a pretty girl, a note on toilet paper and she ended up marrying him.

My mother.

I know that they traveled.

He was stationed in many places.

They lived in Germany for a little while, right before he was deployed to Vietnam.

But I know that his athletic spirit was always there, even in that military training, and that he followed behind the men in his platoon so closely that when the guy in front of him stepped on a landmine and lost his life, he lost both of his legs.

Then football was no longer an option.

He and my mother moved back to a little town where she was from called Kinston, North Carolina.

They had two kids, a boy, then eight years later, a girl.

That's me.

My brother didn't fulfill my father's athletic vision of life.

He really didn't like to get dirty.

And so then somehow in a snafu of a carpool, I found myself sitting in my friend's ballet class when I was supposed to be at a piano lesson.

And that's how my athletic career began.

I started dancing when I was nine, tap, ballet, jazz, acrobatics, modern point.

And I tried to convince my father those 10 years that I was an athlete too.

I invited him to all the recitals.

He came to one.

He left at the intermission.

Couldn't figure out when it was time to clap, why all the people were dressed alike,

when was a good time to yell.

So

I wanted his attention.

I wanted him to, I wanted to prove to him that I was just as strong and just as athletic as he was, or that at least I had heard he was.

So in high school I started running track.

And so I kind of translated those hurdles into grandgetés, and I was running, and he loved it.

He did not miss one track meet.

He was so loud that I remember distinctly at a home meet when the PA system went out, they asked him to announce all the events.

He would lean over the railing right where the track would meet, and I'd be in a starting block, and he'd be like, All right, let's go, girl.

And then he'd say to my opponents, Hey, you in lane three,

can you beat my daughter?

And instead of, you know, being encouraged, I was mortified.

I took off running just to escape the embarrassing moments.

And most of the time I would win.

But one day I came up out of a starting block and I pulled a muscle in my back and that kind of ended my track career.

So I went back to the studio and kept on dancing.

But

by that time, I had earned enough collateral to ask him to do something for me.

So, being a little girl from the South, there are these things called cotillions.

So, you get a sponsor, you raise this money, and your family presents their daughter to society.

And you have to dance with your daddy.

So, I asked, he grunted.

My mother asked, he fanned her away.

Every father in the neighborhood came by to encourage him and tell him how important it was to dance with me for the cotillion.

And he listened and then quickly turned the conversation to the sports scores of the previous night.

Finally, he relented.

He came to at least three of the rehearsals.

And in the rehearsals, we would saunter back and forth.

He would figure out his spacing and then go back to his seat and grumble.

But I distinctly remember him

having a hesitation, maybe because he spent a lot of his time in his wheelchair at home and he put his prosthetic legs on just to run errands or to be out in public or to yell at track meets or football games.

But that was in his overalls where he felt like he could stumble and the left swagger of the gimp and his prosthetics didn't matter to anyone.

But at that community college gymnasium, he was going to have to stand in front of a little girl who he may not have paid that much attention to before,

and in front of hundreds of people who were watching and waiting for the beauty or maybe for his mistakes.

We stepped out onto the floor, me in my big white dress,

crystals,

sparkles, nails done, hair done,

long white gloves,

and he stepped out in his tuxedo, already foreign.

He grabbed my hand and we started to dance, and he was sweating bullets.

He was so afraid that he would do the wrong move or embarrass me or him.

So I kept whispering in his ear, one, two, three, one, two, three.

And he followed me and I held on to him

and our hearts kind of connected and all that space that had been between us evaporated.

I think for that moment I saw the guy that my mom fell in love with that night at that party.

I saw someone I had never seen before, but it was still my dad.

After the cotillion,

things went back to normal.

He watched his football.

I went to my dance classes.

He He took me to that swamp one day where he grew up.

That's how I know it's real.

I'm not making that part up.

It was a long, arduous truck ride, pickup truck, two radio stations.

Me and a guy, my dad, who doesn't talk.

We pulled up on this dirt road and at the back of the dirt road, in the middle of this swamp was a little shack.

And a woman came out.

She's my grandmother.

Maybe I had met her before, but I didn't remember.

And he left me there with my grandmother for 48 hours with the strict warning of, do not go in the backyard.

There are alligators there.

I'm pretty sure he was lying.

He didn't want my grandmother to have to chase me around, and he wanted to go to the dog races.

So I stayed there for 48 hours.

And I explored every nook and cranny of that little shack.

I didn't find any distinctive clues about who he was or anything like that, but I got the feeling that being confined by those four walls is what made running on that football field for him so amazing.

Same thing that I feel when I step on stages like this

and I get to dance for audiences like you.

All over the world,

I get to step on stage and feel that same adrenaline that he felt.

I get to be immortal for at least 15 minutes.

I think about him often and how our athletic hearts may be one even though we just didn't see eye to eye.

My father died before I graduated from college.

He never saw my professional dance career even though he said I got my dancing talents from him.

He'll never be able to give me away when I finally do get married, but I have the memory of me and him and that big white dress.

Five years or so ago, I was blessed to have a son.

He was born 11 days shy of my father's birthday and three weeks earlier than his due date.

He's surprisingly athletic.

He moves to the beat of his own drum.

He seems to be an old soul.

And

he's a mystery too.

But I love them both.

And I think that as I listen to him

and the small stories that are becoming a part of his life and remembering the big stories that I think give me clues about my father, I think I learned to know both of them at the same time.

Crystal Brown is a native of Kinston, North Carolina, where she remembers cleaning up on Saturday mornings as a child to the music of Marvin Gaye, the Chilites, and Shirley Caesar.

She says she's danced since she was released from the confines of piano lessons at age nine.

Crystal is the founder of In Spirit, the creator of the Liquid Strength Training Module for Dance, and the chair of dance at Middlebury College in Vermont.

I sat in the green room of the Schubert Theater in Boston and spoke with Crystal just after she told this story.

And there were 1,600 people here, and it was sold out, and I was having some deja vu of being here as a dancer and then starting this kind of new adventure as a storyteller.

I tell a lot of stories with my body and make dances about stories that are important to me but being able to just stand and recite the story or give people an entry into the linguistic manner of how my memories work was really important.

Did you feel as you were telling the story like you were seeing your father again?

I did.

I felt like I was unearthing even more information about who he is.

I think, like I say in the story, he and my son kind of remind me of each other in various ways.

And me putting together the memories or the connotations of the memories that I have give me a more

in-depth sense or a more authentic sense that the man I grew up with is still the man I'm getting to know.

How do you think your dad would have reacted to the story?

I think he would have loved it.

I think he would have been hooping and hollering in the audience.

I think he would have been co-signing and

probably

challenging some of the things that I said, but at the end,

it would have all been true.

The man I grew up with is still the man I'm getting to know.

To see a photo of Crystal Brown and her father, and to see other extras related to all the stories you hear on the Moth Radio Hour, go to our website, themoth.org.

So that's it for this episode on girlhood and growing up.

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

Your host this hour was Sarah Austin Janes.

Sarah also directed the stories in the show along with Larry Rosen.

The rest of the Moth's directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, and Meg Bowles.

Production support from Emily Couch.

The Moth would like to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their support of the Moth's Global Community Program.

Moth stories are true, as remembered, and affirmed by the storytellers.

Our theme music is by the drift.

Other music in this hour from Stellwagon Symphonet, John Schofield, Kelly Joe Phelps, and Marvin Gaye.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX.

For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us, your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

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