697: Alone Together

Ira Glass

Hey there, everybody. Ira here. So if you heard our show last week, you know that I had just learned hours before we broadcast that episode that I needed to go into quarantine because a guy who I had shaken hands with five days before that developed symptoms and then tested positive for coronavirus. It is now 12 days since I shook hands with that guy, and I've not developed symptoms. CDC guidelines say that it can happen for up to 14 days, so I am nearly in the clear. A reminder to everybody that people who don't have symptoms can still be carrying the virus and give it to others. Anyway, the world has changed so much, right?

One of the striking things about this coronavirus is how differently it affects different people. So some people who get it have no symptoms, or they get mild symptoms, or they experience something like a bad flu. That's particularly young and healthy people, though young, healthy adults are not immune. The CDC put out a report this week-- maybe you saw this-- saying 20% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients are between 20 and 44 years old.

But it's older people, as we all know, who are living in a completely different world these days. If they leave their homes, they're walking around in a world that's suddenly filled with this invisible thing that can kill them with no idea of who around them might have it or what doorknob it might be on. One of our producers, David Kestenbaum, talked to this woman, Tova Rothman, who's 71. Her husband's 74 and has a compromised immune system, so he is in special danger if he comes into contact with the virus. Here's David.

David Kestenbaum

I talked to Tova last weekend, which feels like so long ago. I don't think I would do this now, but we met in person to talk. She lives in my town, in this apartment across from the pizza place, the little movie theater, the Kings supermarket. Her daughter told me she was eager to talk to someone.

For her safety, I checked my temperature before I left the house, washed my hands twice, and wiped down my microphone, though even that is no guarantee. Again, I wouldn't do this now. She came down from her apartment carrying her cell phone and a canister of Clorox wipes.

We did the interview on a park bench. If she's a little off-mic sometimes, it's because I'm sitting as far away from her as possible, holding my arms straight out with the microphone. Every move she makes right now requires some impossible calculation. She has to avoid anything that might get her or her husband sick.

David Kestenbaum

Her husband, because of his immune system, is stuck in the apartment.

David Kestenbaum

There's TV, of course, but annoyingly, no sports to watch because everything's been canceled. The other night, he had Gunsmoke on, which is really not Tova's thing.

David Kestenbaum

Tova says her grandfather died from the Spanish flu in 1918.

David Kestenbaum

He was 26. I keep thinking about how differently everyone might view this thing, how different our country's response might have been if the virus were as dangerous for younger people.

David Kestenbaum

Tova stood up to go back to her husband. And as she did, this guy walked really close to her to throw a tissue in the trash can, as if it was two weeks ago or something. Tova was not happy.

David Kestenbaum

I called Tova four days later to see how she was doing. She's still going out for walks-- no supermarkets anymore.

Ira Glass

That was actually the very last interview that anybody on our staff did with somebody in person, David Kestenbaum's story. We have all been holed up in our own homes, everybody on the staff. We are one of the many businesses that have decided that it's safer for everybody if we're working from home. So everybody's doing interviews over the phone. We're all preparing stories for next week's show about what's happening in the country and in the world.

But in the meantime, until then, thinking about what might be nice to hear on the radio in a moment like this one. I think so much of what is happening now, as we're being told to stay home, and so many of us are either cooped up with our families or reaching out to family members more than usual, and reaching out to the other people we love to see how they're doing, and to worry together about what's going to happen next, we thought, with that in mind, today we would prepare a show of stories that we've made over the years about families and about people trying to find comfort or find answers by turning to their families, including-- we have this one story from 25 years ago of me and my mom back when she was still alive. And I saw her quoted in a national magazine as a sexpert. I had some questions for her, and I called her. We get to that in Act Three.

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, "Hey, Dad. Dad!" So school was cut off in so many places, and kids are home. And we have this story of a parent trying to go about his day and his daughter coming to him over and over with some things on her mind. Stephanie Foo tells what happened.

Stephanie Foo

My friend Matt's older daughter went through one of those hardcore phases, where she got really into asking her dad a lot of questions. She was nine.

Stephanie Foo

So one night, Matt was working from home, and Rosie was bugging him with her questions.

Stephanie Foo

There are about three pages, single-spaced, of handwritten questions, about 50 questions total. But a promise was a promise, so Matt got to work. He's a professor at West Point, teaches writing. And so he took a professorial approach to it and started researching answers for her, looking up quotes on each topic, spending weeks, sometimes months, writing each answer.

Stephanie Foo

I got him to read me one of the answers he worked hardest on. The answer to time-- why? Explain.

Stephanie Foo

He quotes Camus, then brings in the Millennium Falcon, then St. Augustine, then Kierkegaard. Rosie was nine. All his answers are like this.

Stephanie Foo

What his answers do have going for them is sincerity. The time one ends like this.

Stephanie Foo

Rosie has a pixie cut and a cheeky grin. She gave her dad the 50 questions three years ago. She's 12 now. He's been working on getting her answers, but he's only gone through 2/3 of them because it takes him so long to cobble together a response. What I found out talking to Rosie is she didn't even really care about the answers to these questions.

Stephanie Foo

It all started when she first moved to New York City. Before then, she'd been living with her mom and grandparents most of the week. But then her grandpa, who she was really close to, died, and she had to move in with her dad during the week instead. At the same time, she started at a new school where the kids either ignored or bullied her, and she felt lost. One day, she came home from school and decided she needed to do something about it.

Stephanie Foo

Maybe you're noticing the purely logistical nature of everything he mentioned. It certainly didn't get past Rosie.

Stephanie Foo

Rosie's a smart kid, yeah, but this is the thing I really admire about her. Matt was a single dad with two kids, going to school and trying to make the rent at the same time. Telling him to pay attention to her didn't cut it, so she figured out something else. I read this short story recently about a successful con man whose motto was, make them want to give you the thing you want to take. Rosie made her dad want to give her attention by making an opportunity to do what he loved, ponder over life's big questions.

Stephanie Foo

Rosie never knew that her dad spent months and months writing down each answer. Matt only told her when I started working on this story. And she said she felt like, what? Are you kidding me?

Stephanie Foo

Rosie said this to her dad when she found out, and it really threw him for a loop.

Stephanie Foo

Rosie really started asking the questions because she wanted to know that she wasn't alone and that everything was going to be OK. Now she enjoys hearing the answers because they remind her that that's true. That's why one of her favorite answers is the ending of time-- why? Explain-- the part about all of the planets turning around themselves and in the middle of it Matt turning towards Rosie.

Stephanie Foo

Matt does still want to keep answering Rosie's questions for her, but as for the hardest question, what is love, I don't think Rosie needs her dad to explain that to her anymore. She gets it.

Ira Glass

Stephanie Foo. She's currently writing a book about complex PTSD. These days, Rosie is a freshman in high school, and she goes by Rory now. We checked in with her. She says she's using her time cooped up at home with her family right now to draw and listen to music. She says everybody is getting along.

Ira Glass

Act Two, "Call Me Maybe." So many of us are concerned right now about our older relatives, especially our parents and grandparents. And this story, in the most literal way, is about reaching out over the phone. Sean Cole put it together.

[DIAL TONE]

Sean Cole

About four or five years ago, I started saving all my mom's voicemails, thinking, she's not going to be around forever. I'm going to want to hear her voice when she's gone, though somehow I didn't extend that thought to I could hear her voice right now if I picked up the phone. She had a talent for the form. With some of them, it almost feels like I'm talking to her, except she's playing both parts.

Sean Cole

C'est moi. That's "it's me" in French. Sometimes there's not much more than that.

Sean Cole

This one's even shorter.

Sean Cole

But of course, all the messages boil down to her saying, in one creative way or another, please call me back. Sometimes she was a lot more direct about it.

Sean Cole

Actually, here's the one that I always tell people about when I'm talking about her messages. It's like she sort of circles and then goes in for the kill.

Sean Cole

My mom-- her name was Pat-- she died on September 28, 2015 at 4:22 in the morning. It was relatively sudden and totally unexpected. And as much as I thought I was preparing myself for that moment, I wasn't prepared. It's true I didn't call enough, but she was still the first person I thought to call when something huge happened, good or bad.

I loved talking to her. She was funny, as you can tell, and smart. She wrote technical manuals in the early days of personal computing. Later in life, she lugged a lot of pro-grade camera equipment around the world, taking pictures. And yet, she had a hard time figuring out her smartphone. The last recording I have from her saved on my phone was a pocket dial.

[SCUFFLING]

This goes on for three minutes.

[SCUFFLING CONTINUES]

Sean Cole

After Mom died, I started calling home a lot more to talk to my stepdad, Ed Hacker. He and I never really had a phone relationship when my mother was alive. It was more the classic thing of, you want to say hi to Ed? And then we'd verbally clap each other on the back and then back to Mom. These days, it's not weird for us to spend almost two hours on the phone together.

Sean Cole

I think of how annoyed my mom would be if she knew this, but I'm now performing the exact telephone behavior she wanted from me when she was around, except now with Ed. I call about once a week on average, and it's always me initiating the calls now. At first, of course, it was mainly to make sure he was holding up OK and to make sure I was holding up OK.

But even now, when I miss a week, it eats at me. I'm thinking, got to call Ed, got to call Ed. It's like an injustice that he's getting this treatment and not her, and I keep trying to square it somehow. But when I put this to Ed, he basically said it's really not that big a mystery.

Sean Cole

I never thought of this in economic terms before.

Sean Cole

Ed's 87. He taught philosophy and logic at a university in Boston for a lot of years, which is fitting because Ed is very logical and philosophical. He's always quoting one or another great thinker. For fun, he does math. He and my mom got together when I was six. He moved in when I was 11.

And I think he's right that I call because I'm more aware than ever that one day he won't be on the other end of the phone, but it's more than that too. Even though we have all of these other people in our family whom we love, it got to feeling like Ed's the other one Mom's death happened to, like he and I were the ones who mutually needed to talk about Mom and to hear about her.

Sean Cole

For a long time, my mom was a third invisible person in all of these conversations, but we've both noticed we're talking about mom less and less. People told me this would happen, but I didn't really believe them, or I didn't want to. Time slouches on. You wake up to different thoughts in the morning. And when you call home, the first thing you say isn't, how are you holding up?

Sean Cole

But the truth is I already have the ritual I need. I don't do it every day, but I do it just about every week. I call Ed. We talk. For this specific need I have, it turns out he's the perfect person to call. Maybe you've got somebody like that, a personal Ghostbuster when there's something strange in the neighborhood, when things are looking their worst, that person who will know what you're talking about, even if they can't understand what you're saying. And all you got to do is call.

Ira Glass

Sean Cole. When he checked in with Ed this week, Ed was the same as always and doing well. He turns 90 in April.

Ira Glass

Act Three, "Mom." OK, so this is a story we first put on the air in 1996. And yes, our program has been on the air for a long time.

Diane, who's putting together this part of the show with me, producer Diane Wu, she listened to this recording, and she told me that I sound exactly the same in it as I sound today, which-- I don't know. Is that a good thing? Is that not a good thing? Shouldn't a person grow? I think I should sound at least a little different.

Anyway, here is how I introduced this story back then in 1996. Quick warning, before the story starts, that this story acknowledges the existence of sex. OK, here we go.

Our parents can surprise us with what they don't tell us, with what they don't talk about, especially when it comes to sex. Recently I had this experience. An ex-girlfriend was in the gym, looking through a copy of Marie Claire magazine, women's magazine. And there was an article in it on women's fantasies, their sexual fantasies-- what do your man's dirty daydreams reveal about what he wants from you?

In the article, six sexperts-- that was the word they used, "sexperts"-- reveal the six most common male sex fantasy scenarios. So my ex-girlfriend is reading. And there, in the third paragraph, one of the sexperts turns out to be my mother.

[DIAL TONE]

Ira Glass

My mom, Dr. Shirley Glass, back in 1996. In that recording, she is a year younger than I am today. Coming up, when a dad you know so well does something very, very uncharacteristic, what does it mean? That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass, speaking to you today not from a studio, but from home because our staff is working from home. And also, I am on quarantine. I'm actually talking to you from inside a closet. It's an old recording trick, with the idea that the clothes absorb sound. I will just say, it's very cramped.

Today on our program, with kids out of school all over the country and businesses closed, and people hunkered down at home with family, and also lots of people far from family and the ones they love, reaching out and worried for them, we have put together a show of family stories that we've made over the years. Both the stories in this next part of our show are people turning to their dads over the telephone with a question. This first one, Act Four, "It Takes a Villa," comes from Neil Drumming.

Neil Drumming

In the summer of 1982, my dad did something unexpected, something that seemed unbelievably indulgent. He took me, my mom, my brother, and the youngest of my three sisters on the most epic road trip any of us could have possibly imagined at the time. We piled into my dad's Buick Skylark and drove from Queens, New York to the World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee, where a robot danced for us, and then down into Orlando, Florida.

This was a big deal. Before this, going away meant visiting relatives in South Carolina and sitting uncomfortably among aunts and second cousins whose names I would forget before we'd even pulled out of their dusty driveways. This trip was not country heat and sipping sugar water on some rickety porch while listening to the inscrutable conversation of grown folk. It was what going 1,000 miles from home should feel like.

We cruised down a brightly-lit street called International Drive. We stayed at a Holiday Inn taller and more grand than any I'd ever seen. Sunlight streamed in through a hole in the ceiling, a hole that was supposed to be there.

Our parents took us to a building that looked like a pile of poached eggs, but was actually Xanadu, House of the Future. And everywhere, along every roadside, billboards promised that the most magical scene still awaited us, this place, Disney World. By all accounts, it was paradise for kids. But between the gas, and the hotels, and the eating out, my dad quickly discovered how expensive taking even 60% of his brood on a Disney vacation could be. He was resigned to do it, but he wasn't above working the angles.

He found out that you could get cheap tickets to the Magic Kingdom if you just signed up to sit through an hour or so spiel from someone pitching timeshares. He was in. The hard sell went down at the Disney Village, a branded mini mall near the famous theme park. My mom, dad, and a handful of other determined parents stowed their kids in a room full of toys that had been conveniently provided by the salespeople. The parents set about the business of listening, or not, waiting patiently for the moment when the closers would stop shilling and start handing out the Disney discounts.

But while we kids were in another room throwing LEGOs at one another, something surprising happened. My dad bit. He went into a closed room to get three-day passes just so that I could eventually lose my glasses on Space Mountain, and he came out with a deed, the deed to something he and my mom were now calling our villa.

My father was a bold man, but in retrospect this is the most impetuous action that I have ever seen him take. It cost him about $5,000, which he paid in installments. In 1982, for a guy with five kids, who never made more than $33,000 a year at his day job, it was a considerable investment.

For those unfamiliar with timeshares, it may be hard to wrap your head around buying a vacation home that you never really own. You pay upfront for it. There's an annual maintenance fee, but you only get to stay in it once a year or so, usually for a week at a time. It almost sounds like some sort of scam, and sometimes it is. But it didn't turn out that way for us. Instead, it became a fixture in my family.

My father had chosen, as our week, the first week in July. And so every year, during one of the hottest months of the year, we would head down I-95 as always. But now when we pulled into South Carolina to see relatives, that was only a pit stop on the way to our true destination. We had transformed from people who went away to a family who went on vacation.

Our villa was number 317, a two-bedroom apartment with an enclosed back porch that looked out onto a small man-made lake complete with fish, ducks, and another summer word that I learned, "gazebo." My brother chased cicadas and lizards. For my sister, the only swimmer among my siblings, there was a pool. There were tennis courts and bikes to rent. The general store even offered a collection of the latest movies on laser disk.

That first trip, I was eight. As I got older, I moved from the gazebo to the game room and then the gym, trying to meet other kids my age. My mom busied herself in the kitchen, making lunches, or sat by the lake and watched the ducks. My dad shepherded us through It's a Small World and Epcot Center.

Our summers went on like this, pretty much exactly like this, probably until I finished high school. I honestly loved it. I looked forward to this trip every year. And even though it was only a week, it was almost always the highlight of my entire summer.

But when I think about it now, it occurs to me my dad pretty much orchestrated this thing that became so important to our lives, and I have no idea whether or not he ever enjoyed it himself. In fact, it didn't seem like he did. I can't recall actually seeing him happy.

Neither does my brother. He says Dad was pretty much the same at the timeshare as he was at home. Sometimes he'd go for walks alone, but often he just sat on the couch and watched TV. I asked my sister. She said he must have been happy, but she doesn't remember witnessing it either. It seems like such a simple question, but I just wanted to know, did he enjoy himself?

At the risk of embodying the most tired trope in all of modern masculinity, I will say my father and I never really got along. He was strict, his house had a lot of rules, and he believed in corporal punishment. And the sting of that conflict stayed with me as an adult. But since my mom passed away last year, I've been trying to connect with him more. I gave him a call.

[DIAL TONE]

Neil Drumming

My dad is 83 years old now and living alone in Florida. Talking to him can be awkward and not just because his hearing is going. I asked him point blank if he liked going to the villa. He told me that when he was growing up, he barely ever left South Carolina.

My dad grew up poor on a farm, one of 12 children. He says he only finished high school because by the time he was old enough, he was the one driving the bus. Sometimes when there were athletic events at other schools, he'd get to drive the teams and learn what the nearby towns were like.

In 1953, he was drafted into the Army, which had only recently been integrated. They sent him to Colorado and Indiana, and it wasn't great. He says the Army was really not into black people back then. So those were his travel experiences when he was young. I was hearing a lot of this for the first time, and as it turns out, that's at least partially my own fault.

Neil Drumming

Yeah, I probably wasn't so interested back then, back when the two of us were constantly challenging each other. I was always either afraid of him or angry at him, hiding from him, or planting my feet to confront him. It never crossed my mind to try to understand him. But nowadays, my dad feels to me like some kind of living cold case, a million-page brief that is no longer redacted. Maybe it's because I'm now at the age he was when I was born, but I retroactively find his every decision fascinating, even the ones that aren't so surprising on the surface.

We talked for over an hour. It was one of the longest conversations that I can remember us ever having. Every now and then, I'd try to steer him back to the question I wanted him to answer.

Neil Drumming

That's a kind of enjoyment I hadn't considered. I live more selfishly. Also, his answer was hard to take in, to reconcile with the distance I felt between us at the time, back when he would retire to the couch to watch TV or we went off to play on our own. Maybe he was watching me play in the bushes and getting a kick out of it, but I didn't know that. Still, I was happy at the villa, and my dad says he was too. I'm glad I know that.

Ira Glass

Neil Drumming. He says his dad, who's 87, is emphatically not freaked out over COVID-19.

Ira Glass

Act Five, "Let's Talk Radio."

Ira Glass

OK. So this is my father in 1956, three years before I was born. He's 23 years old in this recording. And it's amazing, to me, anyway, hearing him so young, doing something I know so well, trying to sound like you're just talking, totally relaxed, when, in fact, you're reading.

Ira Glass

My father started in radio when he was 19, the same age I was when I started. He began at the college station at the University of Maryland, then after graduation he got a job spinning records at a commercial station in Baltimore. He loved it. He continued doing this on Sunday mornings while he was in the Army, stationed in Virginia. That's where this recording is from.

And at some point my mom got pregnant a second time with me, and he decided to quit radio. It just didn't pay enough. The most he ever made at a radio job was $90 a week, which wasn't much money even then. And at that point he became the person that I knew him as, a certified public accountant. Years ago, I called him for a story for our show to ask about that decision to leave radio, and it was interesting. There was no sentimentality at all, like nothing.

Ira Glass

I don't know if he wants to take me out of the equation, so I don't feel bad for him quitting radio, but I don't believe him. I do believe that, even in his private moments, today he doesn't regret the decision. His hearing is so bad these days, even with hearing aids, I doubt that he'll hear this story on the radio or online.

I talked to him a couple times this week. He turns 87 on Monday, so part of the population in greatest danger right now. He said he and my stepmom aren't going out. They just figured out how to get groceries delivered. And I'm worried for them.

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Diane Wu. Our staff includes Emanuele Berry, Susan Burton, Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Noor Gill, Lina Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Nadia Reiman, Alissa Shipp, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Julie Whitaker. Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Tony [? Lynn, ?] John [? Elgin, ?] Danielle Elliott, and Chris Crawford.

Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. Trying to be civic-minded and conserve on toilet paper, he tried out a bidet for the first time this week.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.