Eye Opening Encounters: The Moth Radio Hour

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This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Michelle Jalaski.

In this hour, stories of eye-opening encounters.

I always feel like there's a special kind of magic that happens when a random encounter with a stranger or chance conversation has the power to shift my whole perspective.

It's so easy to live in an echo chamber, especially these days, and honestly, I love a reminder that I'm not not always right, or that things can be different than they initially seemed to me.

All the storytellers in this hour have the opportunity to shift their perspectives in ways big and small, and they take it.

Our first story comes from one of our Open Mic Story Slams in Asheville, where we partnered with Blue Ridge Public Radio. Live from the Gray Eagle in North Carolina, here's Mandy Gardner.

Good to see you, Mommy.

Peace with your heart.

So I'm walking through the cemetery, and I have been for quite some time.

I just assumed that there would be a sign that would point me to where she lay. She was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

But I found signs that pointed the way to

Eugene O'Neill, but no Anne Sexton.

And I'd been walking around the cemetery for quite some time when I finally found a little guard shack.

it was actually a little visitor center, but it was closed because it was Sunday and the cemetery was mostly shut down that day. But I walked around the outside of the building.

I had traveled all the way to Boston from my home in Atlanta, and I really wanted to pay my respects.

But

I just couldn't find her. So I came upon the office and I found a door that was propped open by a mop bucket.

And I am not the kind of person who just breaks into places.

I'd never done this before, but I'm staring at this mop bucket and I'm thinking about why I'm there. And why I'm there is because

when I was in high school in the early 1990s in South Carolina, they didn't have a law that was

about not talking about gay people or the existence of queer or trans people.

They just did it.

And

the school board in my town actually banned the book, The Grapes of Wrath, because

it took the name of the Lord in vain. So you can imagine there were no queer stories told at all.
So when I was 15 years old and starting to realize that this was my life,

I thought it meant that I was going to be lonely for the rest of my life. And then probably hell awaited me on the other side of that because I had no other stories that told me anything different.

So like many other queer and trans kids, I had to go looking for my own stories that would give me some sort of glimmer of what my future life might be like.

And Anne Sexton, who was not queer, she was a married lady,

but she wrote poems about

lesbian desire, about love. She wrote a poem called Song for a Lady and put it in a book

entitled Love Poems. And

that little poem, that little scratch of a poem

was so beautiful and it gave me a little glimpse of intimacy, of actual happiness that I could aspire to one day.

So yeah, in my early 20s when I had the opportunity and the money, I went to Boston and I went to go visit her grave, but I could not find her.

So yeah, I stepped over that mup bucket and I went inside that little office and I, luckily, no alarms went off and I found a guidebook and I stole it.

And I ran outside and there was a map in there and it told me how to get there.

So I get to the grave and I'm disappointed again because But she committed suicide in 1974, which was one year before I was born, and her husband had apparently, I mean she was a confessional poet.

She wrote about all kinds of taboo subjects. So,

you know, he had not put a line of her poetry on her grave. It's her name and her date of birth and death and that is it.

I recited some of her poetry and smoked a cigarette as a kind of burnt offering to her.

And then I was leaving. And just as I was leaving,

an old sedan pulled up with four teenage boys inside of it and I immediately got tense because I got bullied a lot by teenage boys and that's just a reaction that I still have.

But the driver he jumped out of the car which made me a little more alarmed. I thought I was about to get mugged or gay bashed.
I wasn't sure which.

But he just said, do you know the way to Sacco and Vanzetti's grave? We're here for a class project.

And I remembered that in this group, I was the thief. And I gave him the guidebook I had stolen in penance.

And

then he said, who are you here to see?

And anticipating a blank stare in response, I said, Ann Sexton.

And he said,

Ann Sexton, is she here?

He turns to the boys in the car. Hey guys, you remember those Anne Sexton poems we read in English class?

Ann Sexton, I fucking love her.

And I remembered one of my favorite lines of Anne Sexton's poetry is, live or die, just don't poison everything.

And I left there and I vowed to myself that I would always tell my story every opportunity that I got because you never know whose life you might save and you might even change the world.

Mandy Gardner lives with her wife Bailey in Asheville, North Carolina.

She's the associate director of marketing at an impact investment firm and she's proud to be a multi-story slam winning teller who has has competed in two moth grand slams in Asheville.

I asked Mandy if her relationship to teenage boys has changed in the intervening 24 years since this story took place. She told me she realized she wasn't afraid of teenage boys at all.

She was afraid of bullies. She said, and now I understand that bullies are not born.
They are cultivated.

Our next story comes from an open mic story slam in Chicago, where we partner with public radio station WBEAZ.

Here's Caroline Brennan live at the mall.

Growing up, my sisters and I would dare each other to run to the mailbox and maybe even raise the flag if we had the nerve to show we were there.

And I know it doesn't sound that thrilling, but this was a no-go zone. Our mailbox was off limits to anyone but our dad, who was a career military officer.

And I think growing up, we just thought that was the norm, that only soldiers got the mail

because our lives were dictated by rule and order and fear. And our dad was a very intimidating, towering figure, which is why it really came out of nowhere when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

And within three weeks, we were planning his funeral.

So, my four sisters and I were very fortunate enough to be able to go home to Austin, Texas, and be at his side and be able to say goodbye, which is a gift. And

everything was just really new and unexpected.

And so, too, was the revelation when our father told us from the hospice bed, all of his five girls around him, and all of us well into our 30s, that we had a brother.

And And he had a son in Germany. His son was German.
And he had had his son two years before he met my mom. And she knew about it before they got married.
Of course, we looked right at her.

And she knew, but she, like him, had always kept it a secret. And so, all I could think of, you know, we had always wanted a brother growing up.
And my dad would be made fun of by his army buddies.

And I would say, oh, Pat, you can only shoot pink. Look at all your girls.
And so all I could think of was, I just have to meet him. I have to meet this guy.
So

after the funeral, I learned that I was going to Germany for work.

And so I reached out to him, to Michael, and I wrote him and I said, I think I'm going to be in a town that's about three hours away by train from you.

Would you want to meet? And he wrote back right away and he said, yes, my wife and our son, who's an adult son, would love to meet you. Please stay the weekend with us.
So I was dying.

So we exchanged photos so we could find each other in the train station. And on the train ride, I was just looking at his photos.
My eyes were just locked because he looked so familiar.

It was just transfixing. And when I got to this train station, it was a huge, an industrial city.
It wasn't a cute, quaint, you know, European station. It was massive, but I saw him right away.

He was coming through the crowd. Really, I was seeing my dad coming through the crowd and towards me.
And he had this yellow rain parka.

And we hugged, and he said in a really thick German accent, Welcome home. He said, It's raining outside, but there is sunshine in my heart.
And I just felt this instant connection.

And he grabbed my bags, and he walked with the same heavy gait as my dad, and the same slope should as his dad, and the same sloped shoulders. And we went to his car and drove to his home.

And at some point on the drive, he turned to me. We were both in the front seat.
And he said,

I wrote you all those letters. All you girls.
He said, You never wrote back. Why?

And all I I could think about was that mailbox that we can never touch. And I just said, I am so sorry.
I said, I didn't know. We didn't know.
I am just so sorry.

And that whole weekend, I found myself apologizing for things I had no idea were happening and things I couldn't answer for.

And over dinner, the last night, he was telling me about when he learned who his real dad was. He grew up thinking his grandparents were his parents.
And he was 16.

And he said, you know, your dad, or dad, and I started writing at that time when he was 16. And he said, I've kept all of dad's letters.
He said, do you want to read them?

And I said, yes, of course I do. My dad was such a quiet man, a man of few words.
He was only quiet or he was yelling. I mean, there was no in between.

So the idea of my dad sitting down to handwrite letters to his secret son in Germany, he was like, I would love to see these letters.

And so at the end of the night, as we were going up to the guest room, he handed me these binders. You know, he was a proper German.
I mean, these things were so organized.

So they were in chronological order starting like in the late 60s early 70s each letter was in its own lamination or photos and i was it was like a this is your life it was like we're having twins talking about me and my sister we're moving to texas and there are all of these family photos i had never seen before you know at some point in your life you've seen every single childhood photo or family photo i didn't know i didn't even know these photos existed and at some point it was like the middle of the night three in the morning i started to feel that something was just off.

And I was, because I was reading my dad's letters, and then I would read Michael's reply, and I'd flip it, read my dad's letter, Michael's reply.

And at some point, I was thinking, well, how are Michael's letters here in this binder? They should be like in our garage in Austin, Texas. And so the next morning I asked Michael, I said,

How do you have your own letters? I mean, shouldn't they be in the U.S.? And he said, well, every time I wrote dad, he would always put my letter back in his envelope and send it back to me.

And he said, I just always figured he didn't want them to be found and I think he was right and Michael never met our dad my dad went to Germany at some point they set a time to meet Michael was ready my dad didn't show I don't know why I can't ask him and my father was a wonderful father to my sisters and I but I think in my gut he was just afraid and I thought a lot about fear since meeting Michael and how it can just get in the way of connecting and of living your life and when I left Michael's home, I had a couple of days in Berlin to walk around, and my head was just spinning.

And I just kept thinking, I never want fear to get in the way of living, especially in a city where people had torn down the walls to live.

I just thought, I can't let anything get in between having connection and relationships and the opportunity to just raise my flag and say, I am here.

Thank you so much.

Caroline Brennan grew up in a military family that eventually settled in Austin, Texas, and she has four sisters, including her twin.

Now, she works with an international humanitarian organization where she embeds with local communities as they recover from emergencies and tell their stories to the world.

After living in South Asia and East Africa and working across the Middle East, she is now based in America's Midwest.

Since recording this story, Caroline and her sisters had another reunion with Michael and his family in Germany, where they discovered how much they have in common, including a shared sense of humor that translates even through language barriers.

They're hoping to have a reunion with his extended family in the U.S. soon.

Do you have a story to tell us? You can pitch us your story by recording it right on our site or call 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-6684.

The best pitches are developed for moth shows all around the world.

Coming up next, a teacher wonders why he said yes to a student camping trip. And prom dress shopping takes a turn when the moth radio hour continues.

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. I'm your host, Michelle Jalowski.
In this hour, stories of eye-opening encounters.

Our next story comes from Brian Kett, who shared it at an Open Mic Story Slam in Denver, where we partner with public radio station KUNC.

Here's Brian, live at the mall.

Hi.

I used to teach high school science in Chicago, and at first I was really just energized and optimistic about everything. And after a few years, I just got so burnt out.

You know, I'm not really proud of that, but I was just, I never felt appreciated. No one ever thanked me for anything.
And I know that's at the point of education, but I was young.

I was just running very low. I would buy lab materials for my classes with my own money, and then they would refuse to participate.
They'd just say, this is dumb, we're not doing that. And

I would try to make the curriculum really engaging, only for them just to call nucleic acids nucleic acids, which is pretty clever. And

I would even host these after-school study sessions that they would ask for in preparation of a test. I would bring snacks, and then no one would show up.

And then during the test, kids would raise their hands to ask ridiculous questions. A kid once asked me, this is true, once asked me, how do you spell DNA?

And so

I was really just low, right? And I knew that I had to get away, I had to recharge, but I didn't have any money to take a trip anywhere. I spent it on lab supplies.

And I told this to my coworker Shelby. And Shelby said, why don't you come camping with us this weekend? We're going to a state park in western Wisconsin, free trip.
And I said, I'm in, right?

Time spent in the outdoors, nature, all that. This is going to rejuvenate me.
And Shelby said, great, we could use another chaperone.

And I thought, well, what does that mean Shelby and Shelby explained that she was taking the school's ecology club which she ran on a weekend-long camping trip a field trip and just for reference the ecology club was comprised of like a dozen very intense teenagers all of whom wore these you've seen them like the airbrushed animal t-shirts at all times the pandas and the jaguars and they did this unironically and

shelby could kind of sense that this wasn't what i had in mind and shelby gave me me a look. She gave me a look, it's a look that only Shelby can give.

It's a very all-knowing look, and she said, it'll really make a difference.

And I was about to tell her, I don't care.

But a free trip was too good to pass up, so I said, okay, I'll go. But I'm not going to help anyone.
I'm going to rejuvenate. This is my time.
And she said, that's fine.

And so Friday, I got on a bus with like a dozen kids, many of whom were growing these very thin, wispy mustaches they were just unaware of.

And about 10 10 minutes into the trip they just started peppering me with questions they would say do you camp a lot what kind of tent do you have do you like animals what's your favorite animal have you seen any interesting animals lately and it was just it was so much that I just said I'm sorry I have to work now and I just stared out the window for the next like

four or five hours because traffic was horrible so We arrived at the campsite. It's pitch black.
I said it's like 10 p.m. And I stick to my plan.

I sit in my seat and I watch all these kids gather up their gear to go off the bus and start setting up their tents. And they all put on headlamps because, of course, all these kids had headlamps.

And I sat on the bus and I just watched them as they were really struggling. And I was feeling really good about my decision

until a raindrop just hit the window. And I thought, okay, that's not the best, but this is going to be fine.
And a few minutes later, there were a few more raindrops.

And I thought, okay, still not going to do anything. They should hurry.

And shortly thereafter, there was a little bit more rain. And I looked out, and all these kids were just kind of floundering.
And I thought, like, what am I doing? Like, of course,

I should go help assist whoever I can.

So I got off the bus and I just started blindly sprinting from camper to camper, just helping them unfurl tent canvases and drive stakes into the ground and get the frames together.

And every time I got a kid's tent set up and they got inside to avoid the rain, to beat the rain, they did so without a thank you.

And I set up like a dozen tents.

And everyone got settled and everyone was cozy and warm.

And then I went to the bus and I got my gear and I went to the far corner of the campsite and right when I started setting up mine the skies just opened up and it was just torrential and I was in the dark I couldn't see a thing and I was just reeling okay because my hands were so wet and they were so cold and I couldn't even like get the tent frame together and I just had a bit of a meltdown there by myself I was so angry, I was angry at Shelby, I was angry at the kids, I was angry at the whole situation with myself for thinking that this would somehow like be restorative at all because I was cold and I was wet and I I was tired and I was like less appreciated than ever.

And as I was just like spinning out out there in the corner by myself in the dark, couldn't see a thing, suddenly everything around me became illuminated.

And I turned around to find a dozen kids standing in the rain, smiling with their headlamps on.

And I was just so taken aback and they all just moved forward and they all started working together to assemble my tent.

I just kind of watched this happen and I looked over at Shelby and Shelby said, This was all their idea.

And so instead of staying warm and dry and everything, they had come to help, just out of the kindness of their hearts. And that served as such a turning point for me.

It served as such an important reminder that

it's not important about getting the thank you. That's not what matters.

What matters is behaving in a way rooted in kindness and in service, regardless of the response, because you don't know how it's going to be received, right?

And so that weekend, as we hiked and we fished and we cooked and we laughed, we did all that, it was just so restorative. And I got a bit of my optimism back.

And as we were loading up the bus on Sunday, Shelby looked at me and she gave me this look. It's a look that only Shelby can give.
Maybe you've heard of it. It's an all-knowing look.

And she said, I told you so.

And I said, Told me what, Shelby. And she said, I told you it would make a difference.

And she was absolutely right.

Thanks.

Brian Kett. Brian is a screenwriter and storyteller who splits his time between living in Los Angeles and thinking about Chicago.

He likes mid-century design, fly fishing, crossword puzzles, and hearing from you. You can find out how to reach him at themoth.org.

I asked Brian if he ever went on another camping trip with students again, and he said that he actually ended up going on this trip a couple of times.

He said he still gets emails from former students who are now adults with families and careers of their own who want to reconnect and share fun memories.

And every time one of those emails shows up in his inbox, he is the one who is so very appreciative.

Our next storyteller, Shania Russell, comes from the Moths Education Program, which works with young people and educators to build community through storytelling.

We met Shania in 2016 when she was at Bronx Academy of Letters High School, and she joined a moth workshop.

We loved her story and asked if she'd like to tell it again with a little bit more direction and a few more minutes to expand it. Here's Shania, live at the Moth Ball.

I didn't always want to be an older sister.

I was a younger sister for a while. I have an older brother, and I really enjoyed the perks.

But I have this vivid memory of me lying on the floor of our apartment. I'm coloring in a picture.
It's vibrant. It's beautiful.
I'm in the lines. I'm doing my best five-year-old drawing.

I'm like Michelangelo. This is my Sistine Chapel.

And I stand up to show the picture to my grandmother and my older brother and just at that moment the door opens and my mother and my father walk in and they're holding this little bundle and everyone runs to the door to see the new baby, to see my baby sister and I'm standing there with my sistine chapel and no one's looking at me

and I'm like, oh my god, this is going to be the rest of my life.

But then this thing happens when your siblings get older and it turns out they have personalities and sometimes those personalities are pretty good and they grow on you.

And we spent summers together in Jamaica making up stories, going on adventures. We read the same books.

We didn't always watch the same movies but I realized that I could bring my sister to the movies I liked and make my sister like those movies if I tried.

And even though my artistic career peaked with my five-year-old coloring, my sister turned out to be this incredible artist who could paint and draw and weave baskets and crochet blankets.

And okay, it was a little annoying, but it was still really cool.

And just as I was realizing all this, I was graduating high school and I was moving a thousand miles away and I had this fear that I was losing my chance to be the older sister I knew I could be.

I had this ridiculous fear that my sister would forget me or worse, that I hadn't done anything worth remembering for my sister yet.

But luckily, around this time that I was graduating high school, my sister was graduating middle school.

So, middle school prom was coming up, and my mom was working, and my mom was like, Well, someone needs to go dress shopping with my sister. And I volunteered because I was like, This is my chance.

This is like our movie moment. I'm gonna find the perfect dress, the one that our mom would never pick because she doesn't have style, and I do.

And it's going to blow my sister's mind and this is going to be our big moment and she'll forever tell all her friends about this incredible moment with me.

So I make it a big affair. We're at Macy's.

We have like $100. We're in the mall

and I'm like, this is going to be it. And I'm running around and I'm grabbing dresses and I'm holding them up and I'm getting these like shrugs and these headshakes.

And I'm like, that's fine I will not be thrown off I'm not gonna buy the dress that gets a shrug or a headshake I need to blow my sister's mind so I'm running back and I'm grabbing more dresses I'm holding them up I'm getting shrugs I'm getting headshakes I'm running back I'm getting more dresses around dress number 15 I'm realizing this isn't going so well and I don't know what I'm doing wrong maybe I'm not as fashionable as I thought

But the Macy's isn't that big and we are running out of dresses. So

I'm looking at my sister, and I realize that my sister is looking across the aisle, not at the dresses, but at the suits and at the blazers. And I'm like, oh,

shit,

I have to, I'm doing the wrong thing.

So I put down the dress I'm holding, and I walk over and I'm like, do you want a suit? And finally, I see this little glimmer in my sister's eyes and I get a nod. A nod, finally.

So

I'm thinking about it and I'm having a little dilemma because I know that our mom gave us money for a dress and our mom's expecting a dress and our mom is very traditional.

And so if we don't go home with the dress, who knows what can of worms that'll open or what conversations we'll have to have. But this is still my big moment.
So I get to thinking.

And we run to the discount rack and we find this very simple plain dress that's like white at the top, black at the bottom. It kind of looks exactly like a suit, almost like it was put here for us.

And it costs like very little money. So I pick that up and I'm like, how's this? And I finally get a nod.

And so then we run across the aisle to the suits and the blazers and now we're having fun and we're trying on blazers and

I'm like brushing off the shoulders and I'm giving all this advice that's like based on nothing where I'm like, oh your shoulders can't look like that. They have to look like this.

And

I sound really smart even though I'm not.

And And we find the perfect suit.

We find the perfect blazer for, we find the perfect blazer. And then we aren't done yet because we need to accessorize.

And so we start looking at pocket squares, we start looking at bow ties, because my sister's really into bow ties, not regular ties.

I don't know how to tie a bow tie, but I figure we'll figure that part out.

So we find a bow tie that matches a handkerchief, and

they're like little blue dots. It's very decorative, it's very good, pop of color.

And we go to the register, and I've been doing the math, and we are a little over. But I'm in high school, and I have my first debit card, and I don't have a job, but I do have Christmas money.

And I'm really excited to use my Christmas money. So I'm really excited when I get to pull out my wallet, pull out my debit cards, slide it across, you know, like I'm in a movie.

And it's like $13. It's not that big a deal.

And so we leave, and we're so excited, and we go home, and we're prepping for the big day. I'm watching a YouTube video on how to tie a bow tie.
That is not how you tie a bow.

They make it look so easy, but I didn't really figure it out. But I figure, you know, close enough.
The big day comes. We have this plan where my sister goes in and then I'm like, oh no.

They forgot the purse. And so I go in and I have my backpack on with the blazer and the bow tie and handkerchief.

And so we're in the lobby of the like prom venue and we're putting the suit, we're putting the jacket over the dress that looks like a suit, and I'm buttoning it, and I'm tying the tie, and I'm putting the handkerchief in.

I'm not tying the tie super well.

This isn't like a perfect movie moment because the tie is crooked, and that's not what a bow tie is supposed to look like. But for whatever reason, we are still having the time of our lives.

And I'm like beaming, and he's flushed with joy, and he's ready to run in. And I'm like, wait, no, I have to take pictures.
So I step back, and I'm snapping pictures.

I'm kind of tearing up, but I'm still trying to be the cool sister, so I'm like, this is fine.

And I'm like, we have to get some pictures with your friends. And then I realize I'm actually being the lame mom, so I have to stop.

So I back up and I try not to cry, and I watch my brother walk in.

Thank you.

Shania is a Bronx-born writer who says her love of storytelling emerged somewhere between The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Twilight.

Since then, that passion has evolved from book reports and fan fiction to filmmaking and journalism. She's currently a newswriter for Entertainment Weekly.

I asked Shania what her relationship with her brother is like now, and she told me that her college fears didn't come true at all.

Now, her brother is one of her best friends in the world, but he's way too cool and stylish to go shopping with her these days.

She said, it's probably time for him to return the favor and improve my sense of fashion.

To see a photo of Shania and her brother, and find out more about Shania and the other storytellers you heard in this hour, you can visit our website themoth.org.

While you're there, have you ever felt like you have a story you'd like to share? That this hour of stories reminds you of an eye-opening encounter of your own?

If so, you can pitch us a story right on our site or call 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-MOTH.

You can share these stories or others from the Moth Archive and buy tickets to moth storytelling events in your area through our website, themoth.org. There are moth events year-round.

Find a show near you and come out to tell a story. You can find us on social media too.
Just search for TheMoth.

Coming up next, a young woman goes on a long walk in search of answers when the Moth Radio Hour continues.

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

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this new year with Shopify by your side. Hi, Moth listeners.
I'm Caledonia Cairns, Vice President of Development.

As an independent nonprofit organization, the Moth relies on support from listeners like you to keep our stories alive.

In order to share even more stories, fostering empathy and connection, we hope you will consider making a donation directly to the Moth.

Every dollar will support the production of the Moth's signature live events, podcasts, and radio hour, as well as community engagement and education programs.

We're proud to bring you inspiring stories from all over the globe. Please visit them.org or text GIVE25-78679 if you've been moved by a story you've heard this year.

And thank you for being a part of the moth.

You're listening to the moth radio hour from PRX. I'm Michelle Jalowski.

Our next storyteller came to us through our community program where we partner with local community organizations, cultural institutions, and nonprofits to teach storytelling.

We first met Connie Shin at a workshop with I'll Go First, a New York-based nonprofit that uses storytelling to help people access mental health care.

Over the past few years, she has told this story on moth stages from Massachusetts to Oregon. Live at the Moth in Chicago, where we partner with public radio station WBEZ, here's Connie.

It's 1991.

I'm living in Baltimore with my mom and my dad.

I'm this cute little kid with blunt bangs and I don't speak any English.

Most days I get dropped off at daycare or I get left with my grandma, my dad's mom, because my parents, they work full-time between a laundromat and this restaurant that my dad just opened.

The restaurant was called the Lunchbox. It was a cafeteria in downtown Baltimore right across the street from the courthouse.

I have vague memories of the lunchbox. I've seen a lot of photos.

There's this one photo of me and in it you can see that I'm running between the buffet stations and right off to the side you see my dad and he's wearing green sweatpants and he's grinning so big.

And you can tell from this one photograph that I, as a toddler,

very comfortable and at ease in this space.

And you can tell from this one photograph that my dad was so proud of his place.

On November 6th, 1991, just a month after I turned three, two of my dad's teenaged employees, along with two other people, robbed the lunchbox.

And in the process of the robbery, one of them killed my dad.

My dad's name name was Myungjin.

He chose to go by Mike when he immigrated to the States when he was 25 and Mike was only 32 years old when he died.

After my dad died, nobody talked about him.

We never went to the grave. We didn't celebrate birthdays.
We didn't note the passing of death anniversaries.

Because my family and our community acted as if he never existed, I didn't grow up having the words to describe his absence.

And it was weird growing up knowing that there was this big thing missing in my life, but not having any language for it.

I remember when I was a kid, my friends would eventually ask me, like, hey, where is your dad?

And I never knew what to say to them. So most times I just started to cry.

or other times I would get angry at them for even asking such a thing, and I would say, I don't have a dad.

And that felt like a true statement to me because I didn't have memories of my dad. I wanted to know things.

I wish people said, Wow, you look just like your dad, you smile like your dad, you run like your dad, but nobody ever said anything.

So I didn't say anything.

And the silence went on for decades.

But then in March of 2020, completely out of the blue, I received a phone call from the Baltimore City State Attorney's Office informing me that the man who killed my dad was appealing his sentence and that somebody in my family could write a victim impact statement and read it at his hearing.

Also in 2020, I was turning 32 and it was messing with my head big time.

I cannot wrap my head around the fact that I was turning the age my dad was when he died.

I became fixated on this idea of turning 32 but completely dreading it. I was so obsessed with the number 32 that I had a friend tattooed on me that year.

Turning 32 just felt so symbolic. I mean the same year I'm turning this age that my dad was when he died, I might meet the man who killed him.

I knew I needed to do something big to acknowledge this birthday.

So in October, on my actual birthday, I decided that I would walk the entire perimeter of Manhattan in one day because somebody told me it's actually 32 miles long.

I wrote this essay and I sent it to all my friends and family explaining the significance of this birthday. And I invited people to walk with me.

I was floored by people's responses. My mom immediately went out and bought a pair of hokas and said she would walk with me.

Some of my mom's siblings apologized to me for never talking about my dad.

I had friends who didn't live in New York who said, I'm going to go on a 32-minute walk in honor of you and your dad.

And I set up this tracker on Google Maps so that anyone anywhere could see my path throughout the day.

I started walking at 7 a.m. from the base of Manhattan from South Ferry Station and as I began to walk along the west side, various people from my life started to show up.

A roommate from grad school came and she walked with me for a few miles.

Some cousins on my mom's side of the family came and they brought their three kids and we kicked a soccer ball through Battery Park.

And as I continued to just cruise up the West Side Highway, more and more people started to show up.

Even this guy that I recently matched with on Hinge came and walked with me for a few miles.

And then my cousin Andrew showed up. Andrew is the son of my dad's younger brother.
He's just a year younger than me, so he was almost two when my dad was killed.

My uncle had told his kids that my dad had died in a car crash. And it wasn't until Andrew was in his 20s that he learned how my dad really died.

I invited my uncle to do the walk and I even finally asked him to tell me stories about my dad.

And when I told him about the hearing, because I was just curious what he thought about it, all he said in an email was, don't say any of this to your grandma and this guy needs to serve the remainder of his sentence.

I wasn't surprised by his response, but it was hard to sit with because I had started to feel differently that year.

You know, my mind, I was thinking, my dad's been dead for nearly three decades. Why should this guy remain in prison?

And there were moments of the walk that felt equally mentally fatiguing. I remember as we were coming down Harlem River Drive and I was thinking to myself like

What am I doing? Why did I tell all these people about my dad? Like, what am I trying to prove with this walk?

But even with moments of self-doubt, I couldn't stop walking.

One, I'm a pretty competitive person and too many people knew I was doing this walk, so I couldn't quit.

And two,

I was trying to make sense of my life through this walk. I had somehow linked in my mind that walking 32 miles would help me process my dad's death.

as if every mile I walked, it would give me a year back where nobody talked about him.

Doing this walk was my way of forcing the people in my life to acknowledge that he had existed.

And in my mind, turning 32 felt like something that I could share with just my dad.

I'd always wanted to do some sort of a legacy project in order to get to know my dad better, but I never knew what questions to ask. I didn't know what medium to use, so I chose to walk.

I walked because I wanted to talk about my dad. I walked because I didn't know how to talk about my dad.

And I walked because I had no idea how to write a victim impact statement. Like, what do you say about someone that you don't even know?

And in the lead-up to the hearing and in writing the statement, it was really important for me to be able to answer two questions:

Do I hate this person

who killed my dad?

Can I forgive the person who killed my dad?

Is it possible within one's own soul to hate and forgive at the same time?

And during this year, I had begun to learn just a little bit about transformative justice, and I realized that the answer to my dad's violent death is not more violence.

That there's this collective responsibility that we all have to practice the things that we want to see change in this world.

And this framework of transformative justice kind of aligned with a personal motto of mine, which is to ask myself,

what is a life well lived?

Like, what did it mean for me as I was turning 32 to live a life well lived?

What did it mean for my dad who died at 32 to have lived a life well lived?

And now I couldn't help but wonder, what does it mean for this person who killed my dad to also have a life well lived?

The end of the walk, it got very cold. It was very dark.
The people who were still walking with me, we were all kind of falling apart. One person sprained their ankle.
We had moleskin for blisters.

We're all hobbling towards that last mile. I'm so tired, I'm not even thinking about my dad.
And in the end, we actually walked 33.5 miles because of construction.

And at about 10 p.m., we reached the bottom of Manhattan, and some people were there to congratulate us, to celebrate my birthday.

And the next morning, when I woke up, I remember feeling disappointed.

I thought that by doing this big, bold, brave thing, I would know myself better. I would feel closer to my dad, and through that process, I would have the words for this victim impact statement.

But the walk didn't change anything.

But now I realize that it was the start of me thinking about my life beyond 32.

Like, I've obviously surpassed my dad's age, and I've realized that planning a future for myself is its own form of a legacy. Like, I am my dad's legacy.

My very aliveness is a testament to that legacy because every day I get to live the life that he never got to.

A couple of months after the walk, December 2020, I did attend the hearing and it was over Zoom.

And there was no amount of walking or talking or thinking that could have prepared me for that experience.

Nothing could have prepared me for the experience of being in my own home, logging onto Zoom and just waiting for his face to appear.

Nothing could have prepared me for the experience of hearing his voice and listening to him talk about the events that led him to kill my dad.

Nothing could have prepared me for the experience of learning he has a daughter and we are the same age and we've both worked in education.

And when his face finally did appear, I didn't didn't know where to look.

And I remember thinking, like, oh my god, can he see me?

And when it was my turn, I read my statement directly to his face in his square, and I explained what it was like growing up without a father because of something he did when he was 21, and yet still believing that he should be released from prison.

But the judge denied his appeal.

But about a year after that, I wrote a second statement, this time to a parole board, and I explained that my feelings had not changed since the hearing.

And I was still advocating that he be released from prison so that he can go home and explore what it is to live a life well lived for him.

And just last year, I received an online notification from the state of Maryland letting me know that he was released.

And

I think that

all of this,

this,

I think that this honors my dad and that is a legacy that I am very proud of. Thank you.

Connie Shin lives in Brooklyn with her husband, aka the guy she met on Hinge.

She loves to play euchre and do things that scare her, like telling a story at the moth.

I asked Connie how telling her story on stage has impacted her grieving process. She said, I've learned that there is no roadmap or timeline to processing grief.

I thought by doing this story that it would reach its conclusion and that the chapter would close, but I'm realizing the story keeps unfolding.

Thank you to all the storytellers in this hour for sharing their stories of revelations and to you for listening. 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 Michelle Jalowski, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show.

Co-producer is Vicki Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch.

The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Sarah Austin Janess, Jennifer Hickson, Kate Tellers, Marina Cluche, Leanne Gulley, Suzanne Rust, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Patricia Urenia.

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

Other music in this hour from Quincy Jones, The Westerlies, Wolfpeck, Duke Levine, and Keith Jarrett. 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 to learn all about the Moth, go to our website, themoth.org.

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