Heavyweight Check In 7

Pushkin.

Hey everybody, it's Jonathan speaking sitting in my closet. I was sitting in this closet last night for a couple of hours, trying to figure out what to say, and then just scrapping everything because.

I don't know what to say.

And usually, you know, the way that we've been doing these check ins, Stevie Cleveland and I, we've been trying to talk from our own experience because that's all we could do. But right now, it just doesn't feel like what needs to be heard. I can't speak to the experience or the pain that the black community is going through right now.

But what I do feel like I could.

Say is that the murder of George Floyd is an outrage, that the system that props up this kind of behavior, these sorts of actions, is sick. And I don't know what's going to come next, but I know that what came before cannot stand. I live in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis, and I went out walking on the weekend

For their first grade teachers.

And I don't know what they have to say about this moment, if anything, but if you'd like, you could listen to them, and I hope they bring you some feeling of community, of comfort or just maybe a respite. And if you want to read some of the things that we've been reading right now, we're going to also include some links in our show notes to some thoughtful pieces that have spoken to us and might be worth

Hello Khalila, Hey, Hi.

This week we have two stories about two women who are both searching for their first grade teachers. So the first story is from my friend Hamber, who from day one was set apart from the other kids that you went to school with.

So I was raised a Jovah's witness.

I'm the third generation Jeovah's Witness and the religion's kind of changed over the years, but there's one common theme, and that is that the world is ending any minute, and in order to secure your own salvation, you have to preach and try to convert others and tell them, hey, you better convert to be a Jova's Witness before it's too late, because you're going to die.

And what happens if you convert then you don't die.

Yeah, And then what happens after armageddon is that paradise will come to earth.

We'll all be walking around in like.

Sacks, burlapsick like you know, and will be cuddling pandas and the tigers won't eat us and everyone's happy.

But you know, eternal life requires sacrifices. So while her classmates were attending birthday parties and watching cartoons and being kids, amber preaching door.

To door and as a kid sometimes you knocked on the door of someone you went to school with, and that was just the peak mortification. There were times where we fake knocked because we knew that the kid lived there. I didn't live in a very big area.

What does it mean to fake knock?

Some people called it the Bible knock.

So you hold the Bible up to the door and then you knock on the Bible. The thing is, it's a very complicated thing because as a Joe was an is I really believed in it, and so I knew that this is how we had to be.

You just accept that you were different.

But in spite of being different, Amber really loved school, which brings us to Missus Mosen.

My first grade teacher. Her name was Missus Mosen. I just think she was one of those people that's a very good teacher. I was really shy as a kid, and I think in a lot of classes I was in, teachers overlooked me. And I was not the type of kid that would you be really eager and put up my hand and such. And she seemed to believe in me. That was important. I mean that kind of stayed with me.

I don't know.

Maybe she was kind of like a mother figure. I don't know, because my relationship with my own mom was not very close. Yeah, and she had a son around my age, and she always used to say that she wanted her son to marry me when we grew up.

Amber did grow up. She graduated high school and one day. Soon after graduating, Amber and her mom were in the neighborhood of her old elementary school, so they decided to stop by to see missus Mosen.

She was still in the same classroom and still teaching, and she was so thrilled to see me. And then she asked me, what college are you going to go to now that you've graduated high school?

And I told her, oh, well, I'm not going to college.

Actually, you know, Joe's who says, we believe that we need to share the good news of what we know. So I'm going to be a full time preacher, you know, I'm going to be it's like a missionary of sorts. And I remember that her face just she looked stunned, and.

Because she thought she expected more.

Yeah, yeah, and then sadness, like and it just the look crossed her face just for a second.

Maybe she just said something in her eye.

I don't know, but I took when I saw that look, I was like, oh, it kind of struck me that, like she was really really sad. I think that there's these moments through my life where I there would be a second of lucidity about my religion, and I feel like that was one of those moments, there was a moment where I glimpsed the other side and the reality of who I was and the conflict with you know who I had to be met for a second, but then I turned away from it.

You know.

At the time, I'm like, she just doesn't understand that the world is ending. And then yeah, I laughed, and I didn't ever see her again.

So for the next fifteen years, Amber preached. But that moment of lucidity in the classroom with Missus Mosen led to more moments of lucidity, these little cracks in the things Amber had always believed to be true, And then it all came to a head in China. She'd move there to preach, even learning Mandarin.

When you're speaking another language, you can hear yourself in a different way. Yeah, And even as I started to teach the things that I believe to them, I would think this is weird, Like it just sounds weird.

This even sounds a little crazy.

So although Amber had gone to China to convert people, slowly she became the one to change her mind. And for a long time she just kept these doubts to herself.

Because I didn't want to give up eternal life.

And I really like my friends, especially so for a long time I hit it. But I'm not very good at hiding things. That's one problem with my personality. So it was more uncomfortable for me to try to keep going in it when I didn't believe in it anymore. And I don't have to pretend that I did, because being a jobs one is you cannot be like a Sunday Christian.

It involves your entire life.

And so eventually Amber admitted that she no longer believed, and in a nutshell, what ended up happening was that the church elders were called in and Amber was labeled an apostate and was stranded in China, without money, without friends or family.

Everyone that I knew just dropped me, like everyone in my life. So like my grandmother was someone I was very close to, and I wrote her.

A letter explaining, and she didn't write me back because people are terrified.

People are taught that an apostate like me, someone who doubts the faith is mentally diseased, is like a.

Dog that's returned to its vomit.

Like they use all this very like awful discs, and so people they think that it's about their loyalty to God, and so they just drop you. It doesn't matter who you are, but if you're your daughter, your son, your mother, your father, you just shun Immediately. I moved to New York City. I was trying to figure out what to do in my life. I didn't have an education past high school. I didn't have much job experience. I didn't know anyone here, I didn't have any friends, but I

Amber started going to night school and working towards a college degree, and as soon as she was back in.

School, Missus Molson popped back into my head, and I thought, oh, you know, I think she had such high hopes for me. I bet she would be happy to know that I made it out. Maybe there's some way I could be like I saw that look in your eye all those years ago, and just tell her that maybe I'm fulfilling the potential in some way that you saw in me.

Now, the question is how do we get in touch with Missus Moson. Amber couldn't even remember her first name.

You know, It's funny, It's like on the tip of my tongue. She had a very unusual first name. But I can't. I've googled and I have tried, and I can't. The sad thing is I could ask my mom, but my mom doesn't knock to me.

My mom would remember, so I'm not sure what to do without a full name. I try looking up Mosin in the phone book. Amazingly in the area where Amber grew up under Mosen there's just uh, there's only one listing.

Should we try calling it?

Let's try? We can try.

Is this exciting?

I feel nervous. I feel nervous.

Oh, oh, hello, is this missus Moson?

It is?

Oh?

Hi, I just want to I want to sure I have the right missus. Did you teach at Bellmead School?

Yes, I did, so.

Amber explains who she is.

So, I'm one of your former students.

I'm Amber Scora, and she explains why she's calling. That moment she still thinks about all these years later, just this.

Moment, there was a slight, like a subtle shift in your face. And for this very lucid moment, I sensed that you were sad, like that you felt that that was like I was.

It was like a shame.

So long story short, I ended up moving to New York because when you leave the jobs, Whnes says, they all shun you. So like, no one in my family speaks to me anymore because of that.

Yeah, not even your mom.

No, she doesn't either.

Actually, But the point of this whole story is that I was I've I thought back to you, and I felt like, now I would like to tell you that I escaped and that that moment when you looked at me that way, it actually it did something in me, and it's something that came back to me now that I, you know, had.

Left, sort of stayed with you, did it.

Yeah?

And I also just wanted to say, like, as a teacher, I think you were probably like the teacher I remember most for my whole childhood.

Oh thank you.

Yeah, I felt like you.

Really saw me. And I just wanted to tell you that, Like, I'm going to college now.

I take night.

School, So what are you what are you studying.

I'm actually getting a degree in psychology because when I finished, I wanted to become like a therapist that helps people sort of the same similar situation that I was in to escape cults or like mind control and help them to deprogram and.

Can I tell you how proud I am of you.

Oh that's so nice.

I mean, you were you were so bright. And when when you said that you weren't going to university, I mean I just I was shocked. I couldn't understand it, you know, I thought, my god, why doesn't that girl go to university? But I couldn't say too much with your mother being.

Oh that's funny. Yeah, I could see it in your face because.

You just stood out as far as academics was concerned. I surprised the road on my face.

That's funny.

Yeah, I don't know, I ticked it out, but it's really nice to hear you say that now.

I mean, I'm just so glad that you're doing it.

Now.

Don't ever let anybody deter you from whatever you want to become. You become. I'm so glad for you. Really, you're making an old woman very happy.

Oh I'm so glad I reached you.

Just absolutely amazing. It just made my day.

Amber has just been accepted into Harvard and she'll be beginning virtual classes in the fall. Stevie, Yes, Khalila, Yeah, you know this is probably before your day, But in nineteen seventy nine, Pink Floyd saying, hey, teacher, leave those kids alone. But here it is twenty twenty, and we don't want those kids left alone, not at all.

Sounds like you're like on all things considered, I feel like that's like a very like NPR, like hostant tro.

I'm Jonathan Goldstein. So this next story is about Ava, who also can't stop thinking about her first grade teacher, a woman named Miss Susie, who taught her thirty years ago in a small Connecticut town called Jewett City.

We lived in a house that didn't have heat or hot water. We didn't have a car, we didn't have a phone, we didn't.

Have a TV.

I went to this Catholic school when I was young, and I just we remember this woman named Missussie. She was the person that first told me about New York City and I live in New York City. Because she was very influential to me, I felt like she was radical. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe she just felt radical to me because she was kind and she felt different than the rest of the teachers. She never spoke to us like

To think about some of the lyrics to imagine, you know about how imagine there's no heaven.

Yeah, imagine there's no religion.

I mean that does seem kind of like in the context of a Catholic school with nuns walking around, that is kind of radical.

During this time period, my mom has been in recovery for twenty seven years now, but she didn't quit drinking until I was eight years old, so I spent a majority of my time caring for my mom. There were times, because I was really worried about her, that I would actually sneak out of school and I would try to go home and make sure she was okay because she had she fell down the stairs one time, and she

So Ava only had Miss Susie that one year for first grade, and then Miss Susie left the school. But then she actually came back seven years later to attend Ava's eighth grade graduation.

And she was standing off to the right, and we hadn't seen her since she left. Wow, And I remember I remember looking at her and I saw her and she said, she mouthed, I'm so proud of you, and for somebody that went through a lot at that time, it was really wonderful. I keep a series of photographs in my vanity area, and I still have the class photograph of everybody. It's next to a picture of my grandmother, and it says Miss Susie nineteen ninety like I.

Look at it every day. Huh.

I just look elated. I look so happy in that photo. I wonder if she still thinks about us, and I wonder if she's still teaching.

I would really like to talk to.

Her again and thank her for you know, inspiring me to letting me tell her that I'm really grateful for the strength to go someplace else besides Suett City.

So the only problem really was finding Miss Susie, this woman that Eva hadn't seen in decades. And added to that was, you know, the ever constant problem of someone in search of their first grade teacher, which was that Eva was not one hundred percent sure of Miss Susie's first name. And it was at this point, Khalila, that I turned to you, yes, to help in this search.

It was very hard.

Dozens of Miss Susie's across Connecticut were phoned.

And then finally called the right person. She still is a teacher, she's an upstate New York now.

So I connected Ava with Miss Susie, and you know, at the beginning, it was a little awkward, as these things can be, but Miss Susie was just very kind, just as she was all those years ago.

I don't know that you know, but the year that I taught you, that was my very very first year teaching.

Ever.

I was twenty two, So our first day of school together wasn't just your first day of first grade. It was my first day of first grade entirely. I was just out of college and I was younger than you are now.

I didn't know that. I mean, it seemed you were unlike any of the rest of the teachers that I remember from that area. But the other part was so I don't obviously I don't think that you would know this, but my mom got sober when I was eight, So when I was six, I was in your class and she was still drinking.

I did know that, I was told that by a else in the building, but I don't think that I realized how much you knew.

So after your class, sorry, oh no, that's okay.

The year that I had with you was really it was really wonderful because I was so engaged and I wasn't really worried about my mom. I didn't know if you knew, like of course, like my mom would show up sometimes to pick me up, and I know she would be drunk, and she would be drunk driving. From that time on, I always like I worried about her.

I worried about her a lot.

But I do remember like first grade, that class to me was very freeing because I wasn't really worried that much. It was important for me to let you know that. I thought of that time period as like the last time that I like, I didn't worry, I was allowed to be a kid.

I thank you so much for sharing that with me. You know, I I say that I knew, but it was it was kind of a just in passing. It wasn't a I feel all the more blessed to have been a part of that and to have made it a place, you know, where you didn't have to worry, where you got to be a child, because that's what you were. You, you know, you were just a sweet

I still actually have a pair of earrings that you made. At one point you were like making jewelry, and you were we would do those like church basement your sale things, and they don't have hooks on them anymore, but I've always kept.

Them absolutely just I have no words for that, that you still have them, that that really, Oh my gosh, oh you're you're You're making me speechless. That year was so special to me. I the very last day of school, we all walked out the one main door, and the bus came and picked everybody up, you know, all the

So it's sometimes overwhelming when you think that you're the only person that's thought of the other you know, I just assumed that I was carrying all this stuff with me for this many years without being considered, but being remembered.

That age also feels really nice.

It's really satisfying in a way that nothing has kind of felt before, to uh, to be able to talk with with uh, someone I knew when they were such a little girl and and I was such a young woman. I mean we were, we were both we were both just newbies, we were both fresh in a way.

Do you remember Julie Lordie and Paul Wisnowski?

I do, yes, I do absolutely remember those names.

So do you know they're married now?

Now?

I would past them around the schoolyard. She had a really good crush on them in the first grade, and we all knew it.

Thought, Hello, John, Hi, Hi, how are you?

I'm well worried and well, you know, how about yourself?

Worried and well, I guess yeah, it's a good way to put it.

Yeah, can I can I ask you to uh to play some in an empty room?

Sure? I'd be glad to.

Yeah. When's the when's the last time you played it?

Hm?

Hmm?

I think uh it would have been on that tour in the Midwest where I saw where we saw you, so I think it. Yeah, I think it would have been in Fargo. Actually it would have been the last time I played it. So I'll just put the phone down and then, uh, we'll see, uh, see how this works. Now that the furnitures returning to its goodwill home.

With dishes in last week's papers, roumors and elections, crosswords on unending war, blacken, our fingers smear their prints on every door pulled shut. Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage deposit, take this moment to decide if we meant it, if we try.

We felt around for far too much, from things that accidentally touched, the hands that we nearly hold with pennies for the gst, the shoulders we lean our shoulders into on the subway, mutter on apology, the shins that we kick beneath the table, that reflexive cry, the faces we meet one awkward beat too long and terriorfy know the things we need to say but said already any way. A parallelograms of light walls that we repainted white.

Sign in an.

Empty room, sign in an empty room, sign in an empty room, sign in an empty room.

Take eight minutes and divide but ninety million longly miles and watch a shadow cross the floor.

We don't live here anymore.