The Moth Radio Hour: Relative Silence

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This is the Moth Radio Hour.

I'm Jay Allison, producer of this show.

In this episode, Family Secrets, from dark pasts to childhood pranks, stories from Nigeria, India, Greece, and the U.S., all about the truths that can bind kin together, or the truths we keep even from our own blood.

Our first story is from Anika Mahajan.

Annika told this story at one of our open mic slams in Chicago where we partner with public radio station WBEZ.

Here's Anika.

So my grandfather is the biggest miser that I have ever known in my entire life.

Don't get me wrong, he's a good guy and I loved him,

but that was after I really got to know him.

But up until my early years, I thought he was quite the penny pincher, to put it nicely.

So my brother, Anand, and I, we are two years apart.

We both spent most of our childhood with our grandparents because my father had a transferable job and they made the wise parenting decision of just dropping us off at our grandparents' place.

So my grandparents lived in this small town, almost a village in India, in the state of Maharashtra called Chikli.

So it was a little village where my grandfather was a lawyer.

He was well respected, well feared as well.

And his father before him was also a lawyer and a landlord.

So all that put together, ours was a well-educated and pretty well-to-do family in the otherwise poor and

not so well-to-do neighborhood.

So my brother and I grew up in a neighborhood filled with lots of kids and all the kids were scared of my grandfather as was everybody else.

Now I say my grandfather was a miser because I noticed a lot of things about him growing up when I was 10 or 12.

One peculiar thing he used to do was he used to turn off the main power supply to our house before he left to work, before he went to court.

Why do you need electricity in the day, he would say,

read a book.

And

he would turn it back on only he was after he was back and after it was dark and and still we would just turn on little lights like that and never like the big tube lights what we had in our house.

This was alright during the school year but it was particularly difficult in the summer vacation when all of us were home for three months straight.

And this was one particular summer when I was 10, my brother was 12

and it was also very hot in the part of the country where we grew up.

So it could be like 120 degrees on some days.

So, it was not possible for us to play outside all the time.

And without electricity, we had to come up with very innovative ways to keep ourselves busy.

And one way was the kids these days may not know, but it was to play outside.

We used to play outside, but like I said, sometimes there was this fear of getting burned because of the sun.

So, we had to play inside.

And we had this

big house

built by the British back in the day, it's 100 years old.

So our house has this large lobby right outside, rectangular.

So the kids, our friends and my brother and I came up with this novel game.

It was called indoor cricket.

So just like cricket, which is just like baseball, not really.

So we came up with this like really intricate game where you know there was a pitcher, the batsman, there was a no the pitcher is the bowler right, yeah.

Sorry, so there was a bowler, there's a batsman and things like that.

We came up with really detailed rules: like you know, you couldn't do overarm bowling, you had to do only underarm, you could be out even if it is one toss catch, you could score certain runs when hits the wall, when it hit something else.

So, it was a very intricate game.

One afternoon, we were playing this game, and I was batting, whatever it's called in baseball terms,

and I was feeling particularly heroic that

afternoon.

And when my friend pitched it underarm, you know, I swung my bat, and I was, and the moment it hit the bat, you know, fuck.

And I realized,

and I realized something's gonna go wrong.

The ball just went in top speed, and I could see, I still remember, I see the ball flying away, and it went straight for the wall in front of me.

And there was a tube light on the wall up, and it just hit it right in the center, and splat.

The tube light just broke into like millions of pieces and came came

shattering down

and that was that we were just panicking and we were all frozen in our feet one of my friends he was so scared that he ran away and we never saw him for rest of the summer

but my brother and I we had to do something because the whole indoor cricket worked like a clockwork only because we knew that my grandfather left at 10 a.m.

in the morning and he was back at 4 p.m.

in the afternoon so we had to get an order in that particular room before 4.

So we put on our best problem-solving hat and we cleaned the mess right there.

And then we wanted to find out what to do about the tube light.

We couldn't buy a new one.

We didn't have the resources to go get one.

Not the money, obviously.

Because he never gave us anything.

But then it struck in that moment that because we grew up in this household where head of household is my grandfather, Azoba, as we called him, we never threw away anything even if it didn't work we always kept it so I knew there were some tube lights lying around in the house I quickly grabbed one so it didn't work but it wasn't broken so we put it back up into into the slot wherever the now broken tube light was and we put it there and we were very confident that we wouldn't be caught because my grandfather never turns on the tube light in the night.

So yeah, he came back, he saw the tube light, you know, he didn't find anything fishy.

That day went by.

Three months went by,

and the tube light never got turned on.

One night, he was reluctant, it was winter, so he had to turn it on.

And I was right there.

And he goes, What happened to the tube light?

But I was ready for three months.

I have been practicing.

When this moment comes,

what I'm gonna do.

So he goes,

What happened?

And I just put my best practice shrug, and I go,

I don't know.

and that was that.

So, the tube light got replaced, and you know, it was never spoken of again.

It's been years since that incident.

My grandfather passed away, and I was back in the house a few years after that.

I was sitting in the same lobby, and very fondly, I was looking at the slot where the broken tube light was.

Remembering my grandfather

very fondly at that time, and I realized that I have been sitting in a very low-lit room.

The tube light was still not on.

And in that moment, I realized that I am my miser grandfather now.

Thank you.

That was Aniga Mahajan.

Anaga was born and raised in a small town in India.

She lives in California now with her husband, her baby, Auggie, and their Akita, Radley.

She loves telling stories about growing up in the 90s in India.

She said, this story in particular is a favorite of hers and her brothers.

We asked Anaga in what ways she's like her miserly grandfather and she said in so many ways, the most reliable of which is her making her husband get up from the dinner table when he forgets to switch off the lights upstairs.

Anaga also tells us that in his later years her grandfather became a big softy and that they were friends.

Although he never found out about the light, she imagines that if he did, he would have enjoyed knowing and done his best to absolve Anaga and her brother of the crime.

Our next story is from Okeoma Erojikwe.

In the fall of 2020, when the world was collectively quarantined by the pandemic, the Moth brought people together virtually for a global community showcase.

People from around the world tuned in over Zoom to hear stories celebrating women and girls.

The audio will sound a little different than our usual live audience because the tellers were not on stage.

They were sharing from their homes.

And with no clapping at the end, we encourage you to give Okioma a hand when she's done.

Here she is, live from her living room in Abuja, Nigeria.

My grandma and my grandpa were such a beautiful couple.

Their home in the rural part of eastern Nigeria held fond memories for me as a child.

Their home was the spot where I and the other my cousins

would gather over Christmas and long vacation to spend our holidays.

It was really fun.

I remember how we could dance and jump the stairs and have so much fun, shouting, and nobody ever told us to keep quiet.

The highlights of my vacation would be remembering how we sat around my granddad as he told us stories about the animal kingdom kingdom and how the tortoise was the wisest of all animals.

And my grandmom, on the other hand, loved cooking and would always

prepare special delicacies of our traditional meal and serve us after the session.

My grandmom was a lovely person.

She loved having people around her.

And I loved her personality.

We were quite close.

She taught me most of the important things I knew knew today,

taught me to cook, taught me to clean, taught me like values, taught me to always stand by the truth and speak the truth at all times, to be kind and to be patient as well.

Then, when I turned 16, my granddad had a fall on our famous play stairs and he broke a limb.

He was transferred from the village where he was to the town where I stayed with my parents.

I stayed with my parents to receive better health care.

My grandmom had visited a couple of times to check on him and perhaps wished he could come home earlier and went back to the village.

But sadly, towards the end of that year, my granddad died

away from my grandmom.

My father was quite devastated, so was the rest of my siblings and the entire family.

He had called me, my dad had called me and said I should go stay with my grandmom to keep her company for some time.

And I was delighted to do so.

She was my friend.

So I looked forward to that.

But then my dad told me that the custom, the part of the country where I come from, that my grandmom is not meant to hear about my dad's, my grandfather's death

until certain elders and relatives are gathered to kind of give her comfort before this news gets to her.

And he emphasized that I should make sure my grandmom doesn't have a hint of what happened.

And I agreed on this.

A few days later,

I traveled to see my grandmom.

And she was quite delighted to see me, asking me how everybody was, how the husband was, how my siblings were.

And I quickly told her everyone was fine.

We had a lovely meal that day, and we talked deep into the night.

It was later that night when I had retired to my bedroom,

that I realized the enormity of the task ahead of me.

It meant I was going to keep a vital information from someone that was so close to me and so dear to me.

I had to deal with this.

Days later, I went shopping with my grandmom, did our chores, cooked, did massages which she taught me how to.

There were awesome moments I recall there.

But in the midst of this,

I was in a battle, a constant conflict with myself.

And I kept thinking,

why would my dad tell me to do not to tell my grandma?

And I remembered I had promised to keep it to myself.

Then I'm like, how will she even react when she knows her husband is dead?

I mean, we continued this way.

It even got worse when one morning my grandmom wakes up and tells me, oh, Okoma, I had a horrible dream last night.

And I'm like, what happened?

And he said, something terrible had happened to your grandpa.

And I said, no, mama, he's fine.

Grandpa is fine.

I had lied to her.

I had lied to someone that taught me the value of speaking the truth at all times.

Then shortly after that,

We had woken up one morning to the sound of cars coming into the house and we quickly went to receive, I mean, know what happened.

And

we met my parents and some other elders, and my grandmom welcomed them, yes, but I mean, she was quite apprehensive and wondered why they would come so early in the morning.

And in the midst of it all, I noticed the women

were going around her,

trying to comfort, you know, just stay around her.

Then the men walked in, all sat down.

Then she was just looking around, and someone said, told her that my grandfather had died.

And as soon as she heard this,

she just sprang up from where she was and she started pacing around.

Then she screamed.

Then she continued screaming and she kept on saying, I knew it.

I knew it.

I knew it.

And in that same moment, she turned to me in the corner where I was and she said to me, Okoma, YouTube, you knew about this?

I could clearly remember

the look of disappointment in her eyes.

I felt

that betrayal from her voice.

And in that moment, I was frozen and I felt like my world came crashing on me.

I

sneaked away, shaking into the room.

I didn't share this with anyone.

I rather withdrew myself from her.

I avoided everywhere she was.

I didn't bother trying to do things like we did before.

I mean, there were moments where she sent me on errands I could go, but it wasn't the same anymore.

And this went on for some time.

Then, at some point, I realized I was missing a great part of my grandmom.

I was missing the home I found in her.

We were decades apart, yes, but she's someone that shared and understood my world.

so i decided to go have a conversation with her

i decided to just say something perhaps she would open up a conversation and i could apologize because i felt so guilty i had done something so wrong

but when i spoke to her i was amazed nothing had changed

she was her normal warm self she was happy

She was quick to tell me, oh, come, let's cook.

Oh, come, the massage thing.

And I'm like, what really happened?

Was it that it wasn't wasn't that serious or was it that it was all in my head

or is it that time had healed out the disappointment she felt with me

but then

i was glad i confronted this fear

i was glad i was able to gain so many more years of friendship with her

And I was happy we didn't allow a custom to come between what we held so dear.

And I realized in all this that in confronting our fears and facing our truths, we find peace.

Thank you.

That was Okiyama Erojikwe.

She grew up in Ensuka, a small but beautiful university town in the eastern part of Nigeria.

She was the fourth child and the first girl in a close-knit family of seven.

She says the kids in her family always spent their summer vacations with their grandparents in the countryside, which is how she formed the strong bond she had with her grandmother.

Okiyama told us that keeping the death of a loved one for so long from her grandmother had untold effects on her as a child, and that Although she doesn't believe in keeping such information for so long from the spouse, the one part of the culture that she embraces is that it allows the bereaved to come together to mourn at the time the news is delivered?

She says the relatives gathering gives a sense of community, comfort, and cohesion during the mourning period.

To see photos of Okeoma and her grandmother, you can visit our website, themoth.org.

When we return, a 12-year-old girl is sworn to secrecy by family members.

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

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This is the Moth Radio Hour.

I'm Jay Allison.

We're exploring stories about the mysteries in families from all around the world.

The Next Secret has its roots in Greece and spans not only continents, but generations.

Angela Derekis Taylor told this story in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, where we were presented by the Greenwood Historic Fund.

The show took place amid the historical graves, and the small live audience was socially distanced.

Because of the venue, you may hear some city noises, including sirens, which will give you a feeling of verisimilitude, perhaps helping you picture a warm September evening in the grass at Greenwood.

A quick caution: that this story contains graphic descriptions of violence.

Here's Angela.

I never knew my Greek grandmother, a person I would have called Yaia,

because

she got very sick and died when my dad was only five years old.

He didn't remember anything about her, and there were no photos, no mementos.

So I just didn't know anything except that her name was Maria, which was my middle name.

But other than that, no one ever talked about her.

It was almost like she didn't exist.

I did know my grandfather, though, a man I called Papu, and I loved him very much.

My dad used to tell me stories about how he came from Greece in the early 1900s and how he worked really hard and tried to make a better life.

But things didn't work out for Papua and by the time I was born in 1961, Papu was a sickly old man living by himself in a tenement apartment in the South Bronx.

My dad used to bring me to visit him all the time and I loved to go and visit him because he made my favorite dish, chicken rice pilaf.

And I can picture it now as a little girl sitting on his lap and eating that warm, creamy rice with a little bit of that cool, strained yogurt on top.

And he'd bounce me on his knee and he'd pat me on my head and he'd tell me I was kolokoritsi, a good girl.

And I love that man very much.

Papu died when I was 12, and the funeral was terrible.

The Greek tradition is that the casket is open during the Mass, and at the end of the Mass, you're supposed to go up and kiss the body and say goodbye.

I had never seen a dead body before, and I really did not want to go up and do that.

But my dad took my hand, and we went up together to the coffin, and we said goodbye to Papu.

And when we got home from the funeral, my dad told me that he needed to tell me something about our family, but that what was going to tell me was a secret and that I could never tell anyone and then he told me the truth about the way his mother had died the truth was that she didn't get sick and die when he was five years old the truth was that my grandfather killed my grandmother

Supposedly she had a boyfriend, they had an argument, they were in the kitchen, my grandfather went crazy, he picked up a knife, and he stabbed her to death.

And after after my dad told me this, I was

in shock.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

I mean, who wants to hear that, that your grandfather killed your grandmother?

I didn't know what to do.

I didn't know what to say.

I was like, why isn't he in prison?

Why didn't he never go to prison?

And my dad said, well, he did go to prison for a little while.

And then my dad got all teary.

And then I felt so bad.

I loved my dad too.

I didn't want to upset him.

So I just gave him a hug and and promised him that I would keep the family secret.

And I did a pretty good job keeping the secret for most of my life.

I mean there were a few times in my crazy years, one of those 4 a.m.

drunken stupor, bet you can't top this story kind of times.

But other than that, I kept the secret.

I put it out of my mind.

I buried it.

Several years after the funeral, my aunt, my dad's sister, went to Greece.

She had found her mother's family.

And when she came back from that trip, she brought a single photograph.

It was a black and white 8x10 studio portrait.

And it was the first time that I had ever seen what my grandmother looked like.

And after my dad showed me the picture, he took it and he put it back in a manila envelope and stuck it in a drawer.

And I was thinking, gee, why didn't he frame it and put it up on the family picture wall?

And then I realized that it was still a secret, that she was still a secret.

So life goes on.

I

am married.

I'm middle-aged.

I've got two kids of my own.

I'm sitting on the computer and I'm googling my last name.

And up pops this article.

And the headline says, Kill's wife tries suicide.

It was in the New York Times.

It was dated February 8th, 1935, teeny tiny.

So I start to read this article, and it says, in a jealous rage, Peter DeRicus stabbed his wife.

Peter DeRicus, that's my grandfather, that's Papu.

And then my grandmother's named and my dad is named and my aunt is named.

And after I read this article, I'm like, wow, this really happened.

She really existed.

These are my people.

And suddenly my lifelong secret became an obsession.

I just wanted to know everything that I possibly could about my grandmother.

I tried to talk to my dad and he was not happy.

He was like, Look, you know, this is a secret.

I don't want to talk about this.

You know how upsetting this is.

He's like, Please, don't resurrect my mother.

So, on my own, I decided to do some research.

I found her death certificate, and I also found some court documents.

And when I read these documents, I learned that my grandmother had been stabbed 43 times

in her hands,

neck,

arms, chest, and back.

And after I read this, I

was in shock again.

My grandfather, he actually was convicted of first-degree manslaughter and served only three and a half years in prison before he was paroled.

I found that pretty unbelievable, how someone could stab someone 43 times and only go to prison for three and a half years.

But I thought, well, I don't know, maybe in 1935,

if you thought your wife had a boyfriend, it was okay to kill her.

And then I thought, well, things have changed for women, but maybe not that much.

And I started to get this visceral anger towards my once-beloved grandfather.

And at the same time, I felt this abundance of love in my heart for my grandmother, for this person that I never knew.

And I wanted to

know everything about her.

I wanted to go to Greece.

I wanted to visit her grave.

And so I spoke to my aunt and my aunt told me that my grandmother's body never made it back to Greece.

In fact, she was buried in an unmarked grave in a cemetery in Queens.

So I went to the cemetery to find her grave and I'm following the groundskeeper and we're driving through a very beautiful cemetery like this and I'm thinking, all right, not so bad, beautiful place.

And then we approached this area called the Hillside and it got really dingy and desolate.

And the next thing I know, we're out of the car and I'm following this man and he points this headstone and he says, okay, this is, you know, this is where she is.

And I'm like, no, no, no.

There is no headstone.

It's unmarked.

That's a man's name.

This can't be it.

And he explains to me that in this particular area, the bodies are buried, six people, one on top of the other.

And my grandmother is at the very bottom.

And this man's name on the headstone is the body on top of hers.

And then there are four other unnamed bodies on top of that.

And I just felt so sad.

Like, how could somebody live their life and then there be nothing to ever show that they ever existed?

And my knees buckled, and I, you know, I got down, and I was, had my hands on the earth, and I don't know what I was doing.

I was trying to get close to her, to feel her, to, you know, I wanted to have her exhumed, right, and give her a proper burial.

And after 75 years, there was nothing to exhume.

So I talked to the cemetery people, and I'm like, look, I'd like to get her a headstone.

Can I do that?

They're like, you can, but you got to put that man's name on it too.

I'm like, fine, put everybody's name on it.

So

I I get permission and I go home and I'm really feeling good.

I'm like, okay, this is good.

We're going to give my grandmother her rightful place in our family again.

We're going to get her a headstone.

We can go visit.

And, you know, I felt good about it.

And then I get there and I'm doing some posting on my social media and I, you know, talk to my family and they were not happy.

I really didn't expect the backlash that I was going to get.

I had cousins, my aunts' kids, most, not all of them, but some of them like really angry and talking about me behind my back and saying I was, you know,

trying to do something for my own personal gain, exploit the family.

And then I get this Facebook message from some 24-year-old guy in Greece who I don't know, telling me that he's my fourth cousin.

And he starts telling me that I don't know the truth and my grandfather was a really good man and she was bad, she was loose, she dishonored the family and he warned her and he told her to stop and she didn't listen and he just did what he had to do and I should just you know forgive him and I was like forgive him

I don't know you know from what I knew from my dad my grandfather never expressed any remorse at all as a matter of fact he said she deserved it and I was like here's this poor woman 29 years old imagine the terror fighting off her husband stabbing her I mean what about two little kids a five-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl, my dad and my aunt losing their mother?

And I was like, forgive him?

What about her?

You know, can we forgive her?

I don't care what she did.

And I questioned the whole boyfriend thing, but whatever.

I don't care what she did.

She didn't deserve that.

Nobody deserves that.

And I was like, you know what?

I don't care what you people say.

I just was going to go on and do my own thing.

Except for my dad.

I did care about what my dad had to say.

And he was really upset.

And he's, look, Angela, he said, this is not your story to tell.

This is very personal.

This is my story.

You don't know what it was like growing up without a mom.

It's really not your place.

Leave it alone.

And I said, Dad,

I understand and I feel what you're saying.

But it is my story.

That was my grandmother, too.

She was killed at 29 years old.

If she had lived, I would have known her.

I would have had a relationship with her.

I said, I just want to give her her rightful place in our family.

And after that, my dad gave his blessing, and he and my aunt were actually very helpful in getting the headstone made.

And on a beautiful day in May

of 2010, a dozen of us family members gathered around a brand new headstone with my grandmother's name on it.

We represented four generations of my grandmother's descendants.

My aunt, who was 81 at the time, she brought seashells and she scattered them around the headstone just like she might have done as that little six-year-old girl.

My dad was 80, he brought that photograph which he had had framed and he put it on an easel next to the headstone.

My cousins who were there brought flowers and read poems.

My sons, my older son, held the music while my younger son played Amazing Grace on the saxophone.

And some people thought it wasn't wise to have an 11 and a 12-year-old boy involved in all of this, but I did.

I thought it was important for my boys to know that what happened in our family was not okay.

And I also wanted to alleviate them of the burden of this 75-year family secret.

And after our family did all their things, Father Nick started with the incense and going around the headstone, and he was chanting and praying in Greek.

It was beautiful, it was intoxicating.

And my dad took my hand and he leaned over and he whispered, Thank you, daughter.

Now I don't have to feel shame anymore.

And I felt my grandmother's spirit all around us.

I felt like she was bursting out of the bottom of that grave and just free from this 75-year secret.

And I felt all of her love all around us.

And I looked at my dad and my aunt, so happy that they could say goodbye to their mother.

And then I looked at the headstone.

And my dad said to me, You're a good girl, Angela.

Colo Corizzi.

Your grandmother would be proud of you.

And I don't know if that was true, but what I did know that on that day, I wasn't saying goodbye to my grandmother.

I was just getting to know, my Yaya, this woman, Maria Anastasio Derekas.

Angela Derekis-Taylor is an award-winning writer and performer.

She says that in the beginning, her father only acquiesced to what he called her demands, but that he was touched at the memorial and seemed to find peace.

She says in the 11 years since he has gone back and forth between emotions, sometimes upset that Angela is talking about the family secret and at others, thanking her for being a good granddaughter.

She told us she now thinks her grandmother most likely had no one she could turn to for help.

Her family was back home in Greece, and domestic violence wasn't acknowledged.

Learning more about her grandmother and this long-held family secret inspired Angela to become an advocate with an organization called My Sister's Place that helps victims of domestic violence.

She wonders if there had been an organization like this around back in the 30s, perhaps things would have turned out differently for her grandmother.

If you are experiencing domestic violence, you can get help.

The domestic violence helpline is available 24-7 at thehotline.org or 1-800-799-SAFE.

By the way, Angela sent us this story via the Moth pitch line.

And if she's inspired you to pitch us a story of your own, you can record it right on our website or call 877-799-MOTH.

You may be contacted to tell a story of your own.

Coming up, discovering family histories with the help of Dan Rather and the CBS Evening News.

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

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You're listening to the Moth Radio Hour, and I'm Jay Allison, producer of this show.

Our last story in this episode, exploring the secrets that families keep from others or each other, comes from Graham Shelby.

Graham told this story in New York City, where we partnered with POV.

Here's Graham Shelby.

When I was a kid,

I loved TV.

I really loved TV.

I was an only child, and other children kind of made me nervous.

And the people I trusted most tended to be on TV.

And I especially enjoyed detective shows like The Rockford Files and Murder She Wrote and Magnum PI because they were so smart.

You know, you'd start off with a mystery and there'd be some suspense and drama.

And then at the end, they'd worked it all out.

It was great.

Life was pretty suspense-free, but there was this one mystery I wanted to solve.

It was my father.

I'd never met him.

I didn't know where he was.

I didn't really know what had happened to him.

I grew up with my mom and my stepfather.

He was the one who picked me up at kindergarten and grounded me sometimes and taught me how to tell a joke and catch a football and stuff like that.

But I was always curious about this other father I'd had, especially because nobody wanted to talk about him.

Now, over the years, I had put together a few pieces of information I'd asked or overheard.

I knew his name was Jimmy.

I knew he was tall.

I knew he liked barbecue.

And I knew that when he would get really tickled about something, he would fall on the ground and grab himself and kick his feet in the air.

And I knew that because apparently I did that too.

And I also knew that he had been a green beret in Vietnam.

And

when I was still a baby, my mom left him, took me, and we didn't come back.

And at some point after she remarried, Jimmy signed some papers so that my stepfather could adopt me.

But

I wanted to know why all that had happened.

And it was hard to get a straight answer out of anybody.

And so I kind of did what the TV detectives did, which is take the facts you have and then try to come up with a story that explains them.

And so I just went to my mom one day and said, Mom, was Jimmy a bad guy?

And she said, What do you mean?

I said, Well, was he a bad guy?

Was he mean?

Was that why we left?

And she said, No, no,

he wasn't a bad guy.

He was just

messed up

by the war.

And that was all she'd really say.

I was like, what does that mean?

Why would the war make it so he couldn't be my dad?

And I was secretly mad at all of them.

I was mad at Jimmy for screwing up whatever he'd done to make my mom want to leave him.

And I was secretly mad at my parents for not leveling with me about what was going on.

And I didn't know how I was ever going to get any answers until I was 12.

And that's when Jimmy showed up.

But he didn't show up in person.

He showed up on TV.

Apparently, how it all happened was in Vietnam, he had this friend.

And

the friend asked him, you know, if something happens to me, write a letter to my mom, okay?

And Jimmy said, sure.

And the friend didn't make it home.

And it took Jimmy 13 years to write the letter to his friend's mother.

But when this lady got it, she was so moved that she contacted this reporter she knew, and somehow there was going to be a story about the two of them on Memorial Day on the CBS Evening News.

Jimmy called my mother first time in years to tell her all this.

My mom's explaining this to me, and inside I'm going, what the heck?

This what this is crazy.

This is really cool.

This is crazy.

But I'm also like, I'm finally going to get some answers.

And mom says, so do you think you want to watch it?

And I'm 12, so I say, yeah, I guess.

But as we get closer to the broadcast, I realize I do not want to watch this with my parents.

That would be really, really awkward.

So I go over to my grandparents' house and I actually sneak into this kind of little room at the back of the house.

And I turn on the TV.

It's like this little black and white knob.

And

I'm listening.

There comes Dan Ratheray, he says, the story of two soldiers who fought side by side in Vietnam, only one came home, and now their families find peace of mind years after the agony of war.

And then

there's this kind of footage of men running around in

a compound, and there's, you know, explosions.

And then I hear this voice.

And it's Jimmy's voice.

And he has this deep,

raspy voice.

And he says, he's talking about his friend.

And he says, the real battle was after I came back.

And then they show his face right there on the TV.

And I've never watched a moment of TV more closely than I watched that.

I leaned in, I was like inches from the screen.

I can barely process what he's saying, but I'm just looking at his eyes and his nose and the shape of his chin because I want to see if I can see myself in there.

And there's something,

but it's not 100% clear.

And then the scene changes and the lady he wrote to, she comes on and she talks about how this letter that she got from Jimmy really

helped her, really solve this mystery that she'd been struggling with of what had really happened to her son.

She says, I feel peaceful now.

I can put that at rest.

And it shows the two of them, they go to a church service, they go to a picnic, and then they're kind of standing in this graveyard next to a headstone, their arms on each other.

And Jimmy says, You know, writing that letter was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but I'm really glad I did because

I helped this lady who really had been searching.

And then they hug and they smile

and they disappear.

And I'm like,

what was that?

It was like, look, the the emotional equivalent of sensory overload.

I couldn't really put it all together in my head, but I would try to just pull chunks out.

What did I just see?

And I felt like I got an impression.

For one thing, Jimmy was kind of impressive.

I mean, he came off looking impressive.

He was kind of strong and noble.

Reached out to help this lady.

So he was good.

But I was also jealous and confused.

He reached out to help somebody from his past.

It wasn't me.

So if Jimmy's not a bad guy,

maybe I'm bad.

Maybe it's me.

Maybe he saw that, and that's why he let me go.

He fought for his country, fought for his friend, but he didn't fight for me.

Time passed, we didn't hear from Jimmy.

Then about three years later,

I hear about this movie called Platoon, which is supposed to show like kind of a realistic vision of what the war was like.

And I go see it, and it's like amazing and horrible and confusing.

And I decide, I'm just going to write Jimmy.

I'm just going to do it.

I get my address from my mom, and I write him a note, and I just sort of introduce myself.

I think, you know, I said I'd take him karate.

I was trying to sound impressive.

And I write him, and he writes me back.

So he's glad to hear from me, and

we can meet sometime.

And, we kind of keep writing for a while.

And we send each other mixtapes.

And

eventually we start talking on the phone.

And he has this voice.

He talks like, hey, kid, how you doing?

And eventually we meet in person.

When I'm 18, I say, all right, I'm ready.

Let's meet in person.

And it's kind of like when you meet somebody you've only seen on TV, only it was my father.

And we're like in this parking lot halfway between his house in Indiana and my house in Kentucky.

And

I can tell he's staring at my face the way I stared at his on TV,

looking for himself.

And we have a little awkward hug, and we kind of go sit down in the hotel room.

And he says, Is there anything you'd like to ask me?

And I freeze.

All the questions that I've had, where you been?

Like,

I can't think of any of those.

Partly, I think I'm afraid of hurting his feelings, afraid he might disappear again.

So he talks.

And then he tells me some stories, and I learn a few things.

And

he takes out this picture album, and he opens it up, and I don't really get much out of any of the pictures, his family and some time of the war, till I see the very last one.

It's a picture of him in his soldier uniform.

He's about 21, and he looks exactly like me.

And I know this is my father.

So after that, I go home.

Talk to my mom about this.

She kind of opens up, tells me some stories.

Jimmy and I keep talking.

He tells me some stories.

And eventually, I learned the truth about us.

And the truth was, there was nothing wrong with me.

The fake stories that I had made up to tell myself were worse than the real story my parents were trying to keep from me, to protect me from.

The real story is that Jimmy grew up with an alcoholic father who beat him up.

And then Jimmy went to war.

And one night in the war, he asked his three best friends to go wait for him in this one part of the camp till he got off duty.

And the last thing he said to these guys was, I'll be there in 10 minutes.

Two minutes later, the mortar started dropping.

Ten minutes later, Jimmy found their bodies.

He said it was like walking into a butcher shop.

And the truth is also that in the brief time Jimmy was my father,

he changed my diapers.

He sang

songs to me like Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night and Rock-A-By Sweet Baby James.

And he drank a lot and he smoked a lot of weed.

And when my mom asked him to stop, he said no.

He said, this baby is not going to change my life.

And when she said we were leaving, he cried.

And when she asked him to stay away while I was growing up, he agreed.

So knowing all this, I asked myself, like, should Jimmy have fought for me?

But when I think about it, he was already in a fight inside himself.

I still, though, would have liked it if maybe at some point he would have said, I'm sorry, kid,

it wasn't your fault.

But he didn't say that.

He did one time say,

You were better off with your mom, your stepdad, and you would have been with me.

But I've missed you, kid, every day of your life.

I knew Jimmy the rest of his life, and he always thought of his moment on CBS as one of the proudest times of his life.

When he died, we showed it at his funeral.

I have three sons now, and someday I'm going to show that video to them.

And I'll tell them about Jimmy, even though I know that for them he'll always just be a face on TV.

But I won't.

For my kids, I'm not mysterious.

I'm dad.

And I'd like to be better at that than I am, but I'm decent.

I'm, you know,

flawed, but well-intentioned and loving, like my parents.

including the man who let me go.

And if I could say one thing tonight to Jimmy that I never said,

it would be thank you.

Thank you for letting me go.

That was Graham Shelby.

After he told this story, Graham contacted his director, Jennifer Hickson, and shared this.

I don't think good stepfathers get enough credit.

You know, we tend to tell stories about reunions with long-lost birth fathers.

You know, that's what my story is.

But we don't talk enough about the men who step in and do the hard, daily, often thankless work of raising children who were sired by other men.

Good stepfathers are incredibly important, and so are good stepmothers, too.

Graham's a writer and documentary filmmaker in Louisville, Kentucky.

His debut film was City of Ali.

We first met Graham at a Story Slam in Louisville, where Graham now serves as one of our regular slam hosts.

To see the original video of Jimmy's appearance on CBS News in 1983, visit our website, themoth.org.

While you're there, you can share these stories, maybe with your own family.

That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour.

We hope you'll join us next time, and that's the story from the Moth.

This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Catherine Burns with help from Meg Bowles and Emily Couch.

Co-producer is Vicki Merrick.

The stories were directed by Jennifer Hickson, Michelle Jalowski, and Jodi Powell.

The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin-Janess, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Cluche, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Gladowski, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Casa.

Special thanks to the Kate Spade New York Foundation, which provided sponsorship for the women and girls showcase Moxie and Might for which Okeoma told her story.

Most stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.

Our theme music is By the Drift, other music in this hour from Rai Couder and V.M.

Bott, Yasmine Williams, The Westerlies, and Brettat.

We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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

Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Rhys Dennis.

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