2025 Update: Dina

Summary

Heavyweight: 2025 Update – Dina

Hosted by Pushkin Industries

In the poignant episode titled "2025 Update: Dina," hosted by Jonathan Goldstein, listeners are taken on an emotional journey back to Jonathan's childhood home in Montreal. This update revisits his relationship with his mother, Dina, exploring unresolved tensions, heartfelt apologies, and the intricate dynamics of family bonds.

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Introduction: Returning Home

Jonathan Goldstein opens the episode by recounting his return to Montreal for his mother Dina's 80th birthday. Accompanied by his wife, Emily, and their five-month-old son, Augie, Jonathan anticipates confronting the lingering anxieties rooted in his upbringing.

Notable Quote:

[00:13] Jonathan Goldstein: "Even I have a mother."

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Day 1: Reacquainting with the Past

Upon arrival, Jonathan faces the emotional undercurrents of his family's dynamic. His parents, Dina (72) and Buzz (83), greet them warmly, but the household's atmosphere quickly brings back memories of his childhood filled with constant worry and yelling.

Notable Quote:

[05:20] Dina Goldstein: "His ears are exposed."

Jonathan humorously navigates his father's and mother's habitual behaviors, setting the tone for a visit laden with both nostalgia and underlying tension.

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Day 2: Unraveling Anxieties

As the visit progresses, Jonathan begins to juxtapose his mother's anxious nature with his own fears as a new father. The episode delves into his struggles with overprotectiveness and the fear of passing down his mother's anxiety to Augie.

Notable Quote:

[13:20] Jonathan Goldstein: "And I wasn't even in the parking lot of the ballpark of Idina Goldstein."

Jonathan candidly shares his experiences of seeking therapy to cope with his fears, only to be confronted with the realization of possibly inheriting his mother's anxious traits.

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Day 3: Seeking Understanding

Determined to uncover the root of his mother's newfound desire for redemption, Jonathan initiates deeper conversations. However, Dina remains reticent, revealing only fragmented memories of her own childhood traumas and fears.

Notable Quote:

[20:08] Dina Goldstein: "I worry."

This reluctance leaves Jonathan grappling with unanswered questions about his mother's past and her current quest for self-improvement.

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Day 4: Confronting Secrets

With no progress made in previous discussions, Jonathan turns to his father Buzz for insights. Buzz, embodying his lifelong strategy of avoiding drama, offers little information, intensifying Jonathan's sense of isolation in his quest for understanding.

Notable Quote:

[22:50] Dina Goldstein: "Guilt."

The episode highlights the generational silence surrounding Dina's burdens, emphasizing the challenges in bridging communication gaps within the family.

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Day 5: Breakthrough and Reconciliation

On the final day, a transformative moment occurs. Amidst playful interactions at the park, Dina finally opens up, revealing the core of her past regrets. She apologizes for the ways she might have hurt Jonathan, expressing a deep desire to redeem herself and improve her relationship with him.

Notable Quote:

[30:11] Jonathan Goldstein: "I love you, too, Mom."

This heartfelt exchange serves as a cathartic resolution, allowing both father and son to forgive and understand each other better.

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Conclusion: Embracing Forgiveness and Growth

Jonathan reflects on the profound lessons learned during his visit. He acknowledges the importance of addressing past wounds to foster healthier relationships and the role of forgiveness in personal growth. The episode underscores the cyclical nature of familial patterns and the potential for change through empathy and understanding.

Notable Quote:

[33:05] Jonathan Goldstein: "Parenthood is like a redo of your own childhood."

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Final Reflections: Moving Forward Together

The episode concludes with a celebratory atmosphere as Dina enjoys her birthday festivities, signifying a newfound harmony within the family. Jonathan's journey underscores the significance of confronting and healing from past traumas to build a more compassionate and connected future.

Notable Quote:

[41:05] Dina Goldstein: "In my heart? Some days I feel I'm 16."

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Key Takeaways:

• Intergenerational Trauma: The episode poignantly explores how anxiety and fear can be passed down through generations, impacting relationships and personal well-being.
• The Power of Apology: Dina's heartfelt apologies illustrate the healing potential of owning one's mistakes and seeking forgiveness.
• Breaking the Silence: Jonathan's persistent yet empathetic approach highlights the importance of addressing unspoken family issues for genuine reconciliation.
• Personal Growth Through Parenthood: The narrative emphasizes how becoming a parent can inspire introspection and efforts to break free from inherited emotional patterns.

Overall, "2025 Update: Dina" offers a deeply moving exploration of family dynamics, personal fears, and the transformative power of forgiveness. Through Jonathan Goldstein's candid storytelling and emotional interactions with his mother, listeners are invited to reflect on their own familial relationships and the paths to healing and understanding.

Transcript

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Pushkin. Kahlilah Holt. Welcome to the studio.

[Kahlilah Holt]

Thanks.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Today's encore presentation is an episode called Dina. Spoiler alert. You know who Dina is?

[Kahlilah Holt]

Your mom.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

She's my mother. Yeah, that's right. Even I have a mother. Kahlilah Holt, you know when you, like, call me, like, what is it you call me? A motherless cuss. I've never called up when you get upset. No, this episode is about my mother. What do you remember about the production?

[Kahlilah Holt]

I remember it, and I hope I'm not speaking out of turn.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

No, please.

[Kahlilah Holt]

But I remember it being, like, an emotional one for you to work on. Like, there was a lot you had to delve into.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yeah, that's true. My wife Emily was like, you know, you're doing all these episodes about other people and intimate moments from their lives. You have to have a little skin in the game. And, yeah, it was kind of scary. But I came out the other end stronger and jollier and balder than ever.

[Kahlilah Holt]

And if our listeners come out the other end of this episode, they'll get to hear an update from Dina herself on her birthday.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

That's right. Yeah. I talked to my mother to catch up with her on her various projects. So let's get ready to listen voraciously.

[Kahlilah Holt]

I'm ready.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

But before we do, let's hear a word from our sponsors.

[Kahlilah Holt]

Thanks. Sponsors.

[Dina Goldstein]

This is an iHeart podcast. Yellow.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Why, hello. Now, what kind of greeting is that?

[Dina Goldstein]

You've got your radio voice on.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Could you elaborate on what you mean by that?

[Dina Goldstein]

I know in the first second if.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I'm being recorded or not on the way on your inflections. Well, I always talk like this. Jackie, back to you. The way you're speaking with me now is never the way you would normally speak. Okay, wait, hang on a second. I'm just talking normal.

[Dina Goldstein]

You're not talking normal.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

This is your radio voice. Hey. What? What's going on? It's still not.

[Dina Goldstein]

It's still not.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

It's still not. Hey.

[Dina Goldstein]

No.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Hey, Jackie.

[Dina Goldstein]

Try again.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Jackie. No, you wouldn't say my name like that. How's it going?

[Dina Goldstein]

Too much energy.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Hi.

[Dina Goldstein]

I can tell.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Anyway, it can't be a radio voice because I do a podcast. It's a podcast voice. All right. And welcome to the show from Gimlet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight Today's episode. Dina. Hello. Hello. Okay, so we just got to Montreal.

[Kahlilah Holt]

Oui, oui.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

What's that?

[Kahlilah Holt]

Isn't that how you say us in French?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yeah, but you just say it once. You just say Oui, Oui. My folks are about to meet us, pick us up at the airport to take us back to their place where we will be staying for the next five days. Five days. Five days in my childhood home, in the childhood bed I've not slept in in decades. My wife, Emily and I are here for Passover to sup upon the bread of affliction. Growing up, though, it's. It was everything of affliction, Candy corn of affliction, road trips of affliction, Bedtime stories of affliction. I moved out when I was 19, but from age 1 to 18, what I remember most is the vague feeling of worry permeating the household. Worry that manifested as yelling. Yelling through closed doors, yelling across the kitchen table. My father yelling into a junk drawer, desperately trying to find a working pen. My mother yelling into a clogged toilet, desperately trying to make it go down. But more often than not, the yelling wasn't over anything at all. We were just a naturally loud, anxious family, a race of nervous giants shrunk into the bodies of little Jews. Man, when I move out of here, I'd say in my teens, I'm going to live like Sting. Peace and quiet, meditation, tea and tantric sex. And now, after years of oolong rooibos and lemon rooibos, I'm home again for my first trip back with Emily and our five month old son, Augie. Day one. There they are, my parents. Toyota pulls up to the airport pickup and passes us. Try to catch their eye. They don't see us here. We're right here. My mother jumps out. She runs back towards us, pointing at Auggie's ears.

[Dina Goldstein]

His ears are exposed.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Hi.

[Dina Goldstein]

Hi, Emily. My ears are exposed. My poison.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Both my mother and father wear their woolen caps pulled down well past their ears. In younger, stronger days, they might have stretched those caps right down over their feet. But they're old now. My mother, Dina, 72, and my father, Buzz, 83. I want to drive slow, not too fast. I want to go carefully here, okay? While Buzz is high strung, Dina's intensity is capable of raising the emotional temperature of any space she occupies. In elevators, walk in pantries and Toyotas. Her powers are especially acute.

[Dina Goldstein]

Like a funny feeling in my throat. Like it's like really emotional. It's like a dream, you know? It's like a dream.

[Kahlilah Holt]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

It's like such a weird feeling, I think. The weird, elusive feeling. My mother is trying to describ his happiness.

[Dina Goldstein]

It's just wonderful to see him. I hope he's gonna be Warm enough? Did you bring him a little something? Home sweet home.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Being ever so humble walking through the door. I'm a 12 year old again, home from school and looking forward to zoning out with Petticoat junction. I'm a 16 year old rushing to the bathroom to gargle out the smell of cigarettes. I'm a 48 year old, a grown ass man with a grown ass ass. Parenting a newborn leaves a person with no time for squats. So don't judge. Alex. So nice in here.

[Dina Goldstein]

Wait. Wait.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I can't believe it. Welcome. Normally the house, a modest semi detached bungalow, has a certain storage unit bomb shelter vibe, walls of toilet paper, a cold room full of canned fruit cocktail, needle points of biblical scenes and toreadors all leaned up against the walls for fear of pounding in a nail and regretting it forever. But today the place looks positively sparse.

[Dina Goldstein]

Johnny, just don't open a closet or a drawer. Everything will tumble on your head. Because when we heard you guys are coming, I threw everything into the closets and hid them.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

My mother grabs Auggie and heads upstairs for a diaper change. Emily and I trail behind.

[Dina Goldstein]

I want him to be fresh and clean. Oh, he's so sweet. You're so sweet, my angel. Where the frig is the bag?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

The friggin bag contains the friggin diapers that my mother bought for our visit. It turns out it's on her lap.

[Dina Goldstein]

I kept the bill because I wasn't sure if you want me to return them or not.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Would you be able to return used diapers?

[Dina Goldstein]

Yeah. You know me. I could return anything. I could return anything. You know that, Johnny.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I do know that returning stuff is what my mother lives for. She sees it as a staring contest, a game of chess, but with yelling. I remember once going along with her as she returned a shirt she'd bought for my father two years earlier. It's missing a sleeve, she told the cashier, holding up the article of clothing. The cashier turned it around and around. It's not supposed to have sleeves, the cashier finally said. It's a poncho. A poncho, my mother repeated as though it were a foreign word, which in her defense, I suppose it sort of is. I don't care what it is. It's factory defective and my husband can't wear it. Whenever she'd get this way, I'd adopt a stance meant to convey filial loyalty, peppered with a touch of what Vietnam vets call the thousand yard stare. I've stood next to my mother through countless exchanges, arguments Spectacles and stinks. But this is the first time I've stood by your side as she diapers my son.

[Dina Goldstein]

Oh, look how much pee pee he has. Oh, you made a lot of pee pee, baby. See, that's how I knew you were sick when you were a baby. Johnny. You weren't pee peeing.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

What? What was wrong with me? As a kid, it was easy to be embarrassed by my mother. One time, a popular boy named Jordie showed up at our house. I wasn't home, but my mother answered the door with her hair on fire. My hair's on fire. She screamed. The next day in school, Jordi showed the whole class how she screamed it. He wiggled his fingers in the air, looking as though he was about to fall to his knees. That night, I asked my mother what had happened. It was the barbecue, she said. Your father wasn't home. And I was so in the mood for barbecued lamb chops. It seems that while examining the chops for signs of spoilage, she leaned her hair sprayed bouffant too close to the grill. While this explained the fire atop her head, it did not explain why she answered the door while nursing a fire atop her head. Growing up, this kind of stuff happened all the time, so I was always on high alert for humiliating emergencies. Being back home again, I feel the old muscle memory kick back in. What's that smell?

[Dina Goldstein]

Something's burning.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Did you turn on the heater?

[Dina Goldstein]

Did you touch the heat? No.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

It turns out that one of the rag dolls my mother had been hoarding somehow landed onto one of the old lamps she'd been hoarding and had begun to burn.

[Dina Goldstein]

I could have had a fire because I was so careless.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

The day plays out as a series of minor disasters averted. In the morning, my mother loses her cell phone. We find it in the night table. In the afternoon, a screw to my father's glasses falls out. We replace it with a twist tie. At dinner, a waiter charges my mother for a potato she claims she didn't order. But after 10 minutes of camp David style negotiations, it's dropped from the bill. Before bed, my father can't find his passport. Why do you need a passport? I ask. You always need a passport, he says. We find it in the night table. In the past, having someone witness all of this would have made me feel anxious. But now, having Emily here makes me feel like I have an ally. Turning to her in the midst of some crisis is like looking directly into the TV camera and winking at the audience.

[Dina Goldstein]

Good night, Augie.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Day two. After we Put Auggie to sleep. Emily and I lie in bed. I ask for her thoughts and reflections on the trip so far.

[Kahlilah Holt]

No comment.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Oh, come on. This? Come on. No comment. How could she resist? Look at how my mother acts with Auggie, I say, trying to get Emily going. I saw her put a pocket mirror under his nose while he was sleeping to see if he was still breathing. After every spoonful she feeds him, she asks if he's choking.

[Kahlilah Holt]

You realize, though, that you say all that about Augie now, too, like just a tiny little cough, and you are doing a. Is he breathing? Can he sit like that? Can he touch that thing? Can he eat that? Can he do that? Is he supposed to be doing that? What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? What's he doing? What's he doing? Is he choking? What's wrong? You do a lot of that kind of thing.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I concede to Emily that maybe I do just a little of that kind of thing. But I wasn't even in the parking lot of the ballpark of Idina Goldstein.

[Dina Goldstein]

You.

[Kahlilah Holt]

One day you dropped. You dropped Auggie off, and you called me right afterward because you were so worried. Do you remember this?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I do remember this. It was Auggie's first week of daycare. He shares a babysitter with two little sisters. But on that particular morning, when the babysitter opened the door, she was alone. She told me the girls were napping in another room.

[Kahlilah Holt]

You called me and said she was there alone. She said they were in bed. I don't know. Maybe she killed the whole family. And now she's going to kill Auggie. And you weren't joking. Like you knew it was a crazy thought, but you needed me to tell you. She didn't kill their family. She's not going to kill Auggie.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I did not need you to tell me that.

[Kahlilah Holt]

And in you're misremembering. You were freaked out. You were freaked out.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I thought I was very stoic.

[Kahlilah Holt]

You called me and said, I think the nanny is gonna murder our child and that she murdered the whole family that we do daycare with. I don't consider that stoic, all right?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I mean, I'm just imaginative.

[Kahlilah Holt]

That's one way to look at it.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yet another way to look at it is that I am also crazy. Just like my mom. Well, set my hair on fire and open the front door. In the days after Auggie was born, I couldn't stop thinking terrible thoughts, things I couldn't speak, not even to Emily. With this new, overwhelming love for My son came new, overwhelming fears for his safety, his heartbreaks to come, for his old age, his loneliness. So I started seeing a therapist. I explained how worry was the lingua franca of my childhood. I wasn't allowed a paper route because it was a good way to get abducted. No barefooting because of rusty nails. And I didn't even learn to swim until junior high because water, that's where people go to drown. Worry and fear were how my mother communicated love. I said to my therapist with a shrug, but love is love. The important thing is that we feel it. But my therapist's response troubled me. She said that love was the transcendence of fear. That you might even say fear was the opposite of love. Sitting at my childhood desk with Auggie's toys scattered at my feet, my therapist's words returned to me. If I was becoming my mother, would Auggie someday become me? Someone weighed down by fear and worry? Was our genetic line nothing more than an inglorious chain of Russian dolls? Should my therapist save the notes from our sessions so I can send Auggie to her at a discounted rate? I didn't want my son becoming me. And there were only two people who could help me understand how I became me. One who charged New York therapy rates that might leave me bankrupted before I'm cured. And the other, my mother. Day three. As a child, I felt trapped and embarrassed by my mother. As an adult, I came to be amused by her. It's only as a freshly minted father visiting home for the first time that I'm beginning to see that I am her. How much you pay for apples?

[Dina Goldstein]

79 a pound. But I'm desperate.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

This is what we normally talk about. Where to get the best price on paper plates, where to get the best price on honeydew melon. Dina, what do you pay for a bottle of water?

[Dina Goldstein]

24 for $1.88. Bottled water. Coke's 24 for $6.49.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

What do you pay for a loaf of bread? But after dinner, after Augie's gone to sleep, my mom and I sit down at the kitchen table to have a different conversation. Emily's reading in bed and my father's watching TV in the basement. It's just us. Hello. Hello. Go ahead and talk.

[Dina Goldstein]

Here I am.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Why do you say here I am?

[Dina Goldstein]

Well, where should I say there I am?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Tonight I want to talk about the fear. That thing my family lives inside, like a snowsuit with a broken zipper that can no more be removed than our own flesh. I want to talk about the nameless thing that binds all Goldsteins, that ignites us, propels us, and ultimately paralyzes us. Well, I think about this stuff now because, you know, I have a son, and I think.

[Dina Goldstein]

Or Hashem. Or Hashem. But I think he's so beautiful. And I saw those blue eyes, like soling the shot.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

My mother's not talking crazy talk. She's talking Yiddish.

[Dina Goldstein]

So Beze eggs will seem to shorten.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yeah. What does that mean?

[Dina Goldstein]

The bad eye shouldn't hurt them.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

The bad eye? The evil eye. The belief that merely saying something positive is enough to invite evil forces to snuff the good thing out. So even bringing up a normal son to mom question about good parenting is enough to attract the eye. On the day of my bar mitzvah, my mother carefully sewed a red ribbon into my underwear. In this way, she reasoned, should the evil eye turn its gaze upon me, I'd be protected by my underwear. Why do you think you do that evil eye stuff?

[Dina Goldstein]

I know you're only me. It's the Moroccan circumstances.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

But you say it's cuckoo.

[Dina Goldstein]

I know it's cuckoo, but I can't help it.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

But then that's a superstition.

[Dina Goldstein]

I don't know. Everybody does it.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Well, I've never met anybody who puts red ribbons in their underwear. I'm saying I personally have never met anyone who does that. So you can't say everybody puts red ribbons in their underwear. But what is it supposed to be? Warding off the evil eye. But what is the evil eye? I don't know. This is how conversations with Dina often go. They derail, hit dead ends. So when I ask her, why was our home the way it was? I expect more of the same. But instead, my mother grows quiet.

[Dina Goldstein]

I worry.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yeah, I do, too. I. I do, too.

[Dina Goldstein]

I was afraid of this, afraid of that. I was irrational. I wasn't thinking right. And I have a chance to redo mine a little bit. Not with you, but with Auggie.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

She stops talking and stares into her lap. For a while. We just sit there.

[Dina Goldstein]

I look upon this as a second chance. I want to correct my mistakes, Joni. I want to redeem myself. That's it.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

My mother doesn't usually talk this way. If something's causing her grief, she returns it to the store, sends it back to the kitchen. And so, talk of second chances and redemption. The words sound weird coming out of her mouth, and I don't know how to respond. Where's all this coming from? I ask. Are you thinking of something specific?

[Dina Goldstein]

It's Too painful. I don't wanna.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Maybe if you talk about it, you won't have to do it.

[Dina Goldstein]

No, I don't talk about it. I can't.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I don't think it could be anything that I can't.

[Dina Goldstein]

I can't talk about it. Don't. Don't press me, please.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Well, I don't wanna force you. I don't wanna make you feel bad.

[Dina Goldstein]

I'm ashamed of myself. Let's change the subject.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

And with that, the conversation ends. I'd gone to my mother for answers about my childhood, but instead she's left me with questions I didn't even know I had. What had happened that was so bad she couldn't even talk about it? What was she so afraid to tell me? After the break, I find out. Hello? Hello. So Mom's upstairs with Emily. Do you have any insight? Day four. I sit down with my father to see if he has any idea what this second chance is that my mother's talking about. He's hesitant to talk because that goes against his strategy of staying out of the drama. In fact, most of my childhood memories of him are of a man in bed napping with a large volume of World War II history splayed open on his chest. This retiring nature might be the secret to having stayed married to my mother for more than 50 years. What is the thing that she is carrying around with her? She's a very private person, and she feels she doesn't want to be intruded upon. Don't take it the wrong way. So you have no inkling? You don't know what's going on? She doesn't even discuss it with me. I don't know what.

[Dina Goldstein]

Guilt.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I don't know what she's told. You don't find it odd or intriguing? In a way, it's a touchy subject for her and she's very reluctant to talk about it. Talk about it? What's the it? I don't know. You have to ask her. And she's gonna shut down. She's gonna shut down. This means she'll try to change the subject or start to yell. But today I don't care. I just want to know what the big secret is. I wonder what it is, I say to Emily. Who knows? She says while brushing her hair. So many things about your mom are a mystery to me. Like why is the kitchen faucet always running full blast? And why does she keep offering me paper towels? I think she says you should just let it go. But of course, I can't. What had my mother done that she wanted a second chance at? Was it for the time she bought me a shirt for my birthday that she later admitted was actually a dress? Did she want to redo the time she dropped me off at a birthday party and hollered out the car window. Have fun. But if you get diarrhea and someone's on the toilet, just make in the bathtub. Diarrhea is not a time for pride. Of course I now see the wisdom. But as a child, her words were a source of shame. I need to know. So I invite my mother out for a Sunday stroll with Augie and me. Maybe if she can just relax, it'll come out like diarrhea talk.

[Dina Goldstein]

What should I say?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Let me just take you a level. So tell me. So do you find walking with Augie relaxing?

[Dina Goldstein]

Very relaxing. So nice. It's a pleasure to walk with my little friend.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

To start things off, I lobber an easy question. Cocktail party stuff. What's your first memory?

[Dina Goldstein]

Kindergarten. And we lived on Colonial. 4039 Colonial. And I remember my father used to play pinochle. And he had a thumb that was the nail. Like the thumbnail was very cut off. And all of a sudden I thought of it and I started screaming and crying and carrying on and worrying. I remember.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

How old were you?

[Dina Goldstein]

Must have been four or five.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

So an early memory is being at kindergarten and remembering your father's thumbnail and starting to cry.

[Dina Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

What was it that that upset you about it?

[Dina Goldstein]

I was worried about it because it wasn't like a regular thumb. I was worried crazy.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I try to guide her towards happy reminiscences, but all her memories are awful. Rheumatic fever. Scarlet fever. Her mother slapping her in Woolworths for whining about a balloon. She wanted waking up in the middle of the night to find a wall in the kitchen covered in moths.

[Dina Goldstein]

Then I remember my mother's pressure cooker in that house hit the ceiling and pea soup was splattered everywhere.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

All your memories. Let's hear another memory with the small talk. Exhausted, I trepidatiously bring the subject back around to the do over.

[Dina Goldstein]

I don't know, Johnny. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to remind myself the way I feel felt doesn't conjure up good memories. Please. And that's the end of it. I don't want to go in to details.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Nonetheless, for the rest of the day I can't stop myself from asking for details.

[Dina Goldstein]

Here we go.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I ask as she puts away the breakfast Dishes.

[Dina Goldstein]

I don't want to think about things. I have nothing more to say. Johnny, leave me be.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Wait. So I ask as she cuts coupons while watching Judge Judy with Emily. In broad strokes.

[Dina Goldstein]

Leave me alone, Please. Emily, take him off.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

And while she peels boiled eggs for lunch.

[Dina Goldstein]

Mom, leave me alone.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Later, we all sit down for dinner, and with it, some wine.

[Dina Goldstein]

What's wrong with me? I think I'm off my rocker.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

My mother rarely drinks wine.

[Dina Goldstein]

Oh, my God. How did I get like this?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Mom, you just had a glass of wine.

[Dina Goldstein]

It'll be okay.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

As she drifts off into an inebriated slumber, I give it one last try. Mom. Good night. Is there anything you need to tell me?

[Dina Goldstein]

No.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Any secrets to reveal?

[Dina Goldstein]

No.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I was getting nowhere. Day 5 All right. You want to change him?

[Dina Goldstein]

What?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Honey, it's our last day, and I've decided to give it a rest. I stop asking weird questions, and we all just hang out. We talk about the price of things, we yell from room to room. We search for lost cell phones and grow pleasantly bored with each other's company. Overall, it's pretty nice. But while putting Augie down for a nap, my mother has a question for me.

[Dina Goldstein]

Johnny, what was it that you were hoping to get from me?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Oh, I. I really just want to be able to have a conversation, that's all. I'm not. I don't want to. I don't want to cause you distress.

[Dina Goldstein]

You're not causing me stress. It's. It's what it was. And I don't even want to talk.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

About old painful stuff. I I.

[Dina Goldstein]

What, sweetheart? What?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

She lays Augie down. She stands over the crib. She starts to say something, but then trails away. What were you saying?

[Dina Goldstein]

Not when the thing is on.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Why? Why? All right, I'm going to turn it off then. I was not adopted. I had no secret twin, and my mother had no secret family. There were no murders, no affairs. It turns out that my mother's big secret, the thing that was so hard for her to say, was that she was sorry for a lot of things. Some small, some not so small. Some I remember, some I don't. Calling me names, screaming at me a lot. How she could have been nicer to my girlfriends. How she used to pull my hair, hit me. Hitting kids was like the Hula Hoop back then. I say, a fad everyone did wasn't right. She says, back then, people didn't know better. I say, I should have known better. She says, I forgive you. I say, I don't forgive myself. So I forgive her again. And I mean it. And then I turn the recorder back on.

[Dina Goldstein]

I love you, honey. You made it a little easier for me. Thank you.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I love you, too, Mom. When you become a parent, your whole life changes, but you forget that some things stay the same. I'd been so focused on becoming a better father that I forgot I was still a son. And maybe learning to be a better son is how you become a better dad. Anyway.

[Dina Goldstein]

I want him to be safe.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

On the last morning of our visit, my mother and I head to the park. As a kid, the park was someplace I usually went with my grandfather or father. One of the only times I remember going with my mother, two collies appeared out of nowhere and began chasing us. I remember we separated and the dogs chased her while I hid behind a tree. I look around the playground. From my own childhood with her, I knew most things were out sandbox because someone could have peed in there. Same for the swings, monkey bars, teeter totters and merry go rounds. But then something surprising happens. Picking Augie up out of the stroller.

[Dina Goldstein]

My mother says, I'll take him down the slide.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

He's never. He's never gone down the slide.

[Dina Goldstein]

Come with Bobby, honey. We'll go down the slide together.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Okay, Honey, you're going to go with him down the slide?

[Dina Goldstein]

Well, what do you think? I'll put himself.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I didn't. I can't. You're not afraid to go down the slide?

[Dina Goldstein]

Why would I be afraid?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I don't know. Okay. Be careful. You want me to carry him, too?

[Dina Goldstein]

Yeah. Now you got me nervous. I wasn't afraid.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Be careful.

[Dina Goldstein]

But what's going on?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I don't know. My mother hands me back Auggie, and holding onto the railing, she carefully climbs the steps to the top of the slide. When she gets there, I climb up, too and hand Auggie back to her. With hesitation, she positions him onto her lap, and I run around to the bottom of the slide to await their arrival.

[Dina Goldstein]

And you stand there and catch us in case.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

And then Dina lets go.

[Dina Goldstein]

He's gonna go down.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

He's having fun, huh? So much fun, in fact, that my mother decides to do it again. And so again, she climbs up the steps, all three of them, to the top of the ladder. And from the grand height of three and a half feet, my mother and son descend the toddler slide once more.

[Dina Goldstein]

Sliding, sliding down the slide.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Oggy loves it. So they do it again. A third chance, a fourth and even a fifth. Then we move on to the bouncy caterpillar the rope bridge and the swings.

[Dina Goldstein]

Swingy, swingy. Auggie's going swingy. The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Parenthood is like a redo of your own childhood. And grandparenthood is like a redo of that. That's all life is. Learning and relearning the same lessons over and over. All of us. Like those itsy bitsy spiders crawling up endless waterspouts, trying to make just a little more progress each time we set out. There's comfort in knowing that no one ever gets it right, no matter how many chances we get. But hopefully at least a few things go right. A few purely kind gestures somehow get through. And for everything else, we ask for forgiveness. And if we're lucky, we'll receive it. And if we're luckier, we'll forgive ourselves, too.

[Dina Goldstein]

Sam. Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home, now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damaged deposit, take this moment to decide.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

If we.

[Dina Goldstein]

Meant it, if we tried.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Or felt.

[Dina Goldstein]

Around for far too much.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

It's been nearly a decade since I recorded that episode with my mother. Recently, I flew home to Montreal to see her again. Same airport, same Toyota, same parents nearly leaving me on the curb. Oh, I didn't.

[Dina Goldstein]

I thought he got in.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I thought he got in.

[Dina Goldstein]

Sorry.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I've come to visit this weekend because it's my mother's 80th birthday. She's planned a big dinner as well as a visit to the senior center, where I'm told there will be music and dancing.

[Dina Goldstein]

You don't want to come with me to the club?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Hey, do you want me to?

[Dina Goldstein]

No. Only if you feel like it.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I can come for a little bit.

[Dina Goldstein]

No, if you're going to come, you have to stay for, like, an hour and a half, two hours.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

So why can't I just drop in and say hi? Hey, how much do you have to pay?

[Dina Goldstein]

Well, $10.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I could pay that.

[Dina Goldstein]

No, I know, but for five seconds it doesn't pay.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

One day they had the salsa.

[Dina Goldstein]

Salsa group. And I got up to dance then.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Oh, you like that? I loved it.

[Dina Goldstein]

And they all applauded. Nobody was there, Just your mom and me. Because they. They know I'm always begging him to come dance in the arch. I couldn't stop dancing.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Hi. A guy from Minnesota. Hello.

[Dina Goldstein]

He has to pay $10.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Dina Goldstein]

$10. He has to pay.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dina Goldstein]

Because he's not a man.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

No, no, Johnny, no. No.

[Dina Goldstein]

Oh. Because some people watch on Zoom, they don't come.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Okay.

[Dina Goldstein]

Because they don't want to pay the 5 grams.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

You think that's why? Or you think maybe they just have trouble?

[Dina Goldstein]

No, they don't want to pay.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Maybe they can't afford it. They can afford it.

[Dina Goldstein]

They're rich. Just shut up and kiss me. Let's clap our hands. Yeah, there we go. And how about some feet? We can tap our feet at the same time.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Oh, my gosh.

[Dina Goldstein]

You're almost dancing. Watch out.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Nice.

[Dina Goldstein]

Sending birthday wishes to our march celebrants. Dina Goldstein, March 6th. Her birthday today. Thank you. Thank you.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Happy birthday to you Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you Happy birthday.

[Dina Goldstein]

Thank you, Johnny. Thank you, sweetheart. You made it special.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

So I wanted to talk with you about the Dina episode. You were 72 in that.

[Dina Goldstein]

In that I was a young girl at 72.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

What is different now that you're 80? That's different than when you were in your 70s?

[Dina Goldstein]

I changed. I don't know. I'm trying to change even more.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

In what way?

[Dina Goldstein]

Well, I'm trying not to get so crazy over things.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

So when you listen to yourself as a young girl of 72, worried about Augie, that he's going to get cold, that he's not wearing a hat, how does that make you feel?

[Dina Goldstein]

Well, I still worry, like, when the children go naked, like I call it naked, they don't button up their coats.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

What, are there things that you can think of that. That have changed?

[Dina Goldstein]

Well, I got sick. That changed a lot.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

This is when you had your heart attack?

[Dina Goldstein]

Yeah. I mean, I still get anxious sometimes.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

What do you do to try to cope with the anxiousness?

[Dina Goldstein]

I don't think so much.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

What else changed, though, when you. Because I remember, you know, before you went into the surgery, the heart surgery, you had sort of made your peace. Yeah. You don't remember any of that?

[Dina Goldstein]

No. I didn't know I was that brave. I didn't realize that. The doctor told me that. He told you I wasn't going to make it. Somebody told me when they sent me into the basement of the Sante Hospital for tests. And the technician and the doctor there told me that I wasn't going to make it. And I remember crying, and I was all by myself in that horrible, dark basement. And then I said, stop it. I talked to myself and I said, stop it already. It's enough. And I was okay after that. You know, I stopped crying, and I went up and I did what I had to do.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Going through something the way that you did with having the heart attack, the heart surgery, did it make you more philosophical.

[Dina Goldstein]

I don't know. I'm still not a terrific person. I'm still not a saint, even though I'd like to be. I still gossip and I still say bad things about people, and I still yell and I still get mean. So I can't say I'm better. I want to be better, but I'm not. Not as good as I should be. I'm far from an angel.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Do you ever think that maybe you're a little harsh with yourself?

[Dina Goldstein]

No.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

So how's your 80th birthday today? How's it feeling?

[Dina Goldstein]

Lovely. Because you're here. I don't feel like I'm old.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

How old do you feel?

[Dina Goldstein]

In my heart? Some days I feel I'm 16.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Thank you for talking to me.

[Dina Goldstein]

You're welcome.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I love you.

[Dina Goldstein]

I love you more, Johnny. You're my Precious Boy.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Thanks to everyone who helped put the episode together. This is the last of our summer encores. But fear not. Dina Goldstein's Precious Boy will be back with a new season of heavyweight on September 18th.

[Dina Goldstein]

This is an I Heart podcast.