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- [00:00]
Rosetta Stone Advertiser
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- [01:08]
Dan Kennedy
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy and on this episode, two stories of unexpected gifts. Because tis the season as they say. They still say it that way. Tis the season. These stories are not about traditional gifts. In fact, our first story is more about a hard won lesson. Zannella Chisholm crafted the story you're about to hear in one of the Moth's high school workshops. This one was done at Beacon High School here in New York City. Here's Zanala live at the Moth.
- [01:48]
Zanella Chisholm
I was living in northern Canada in this small suburban town called Oshawa. I remember sitting in my first grade classroom next to my best friend, Brooklyn. She had these huge Goldilocks curls and she had the most amazing smile and I just remember hugging her so tight and it was like we were transferring the memories from summer into each other so that it was like we had never missed a beat and I had never felt so happy. It was like the way that the sun feels on your skin. And it was like my whole world existed right in that moment, right in that room with these people. With Brooklyn in Oshawa. This is where I belonged. And so my teacher, my first grade teacher, she comes in and she introduces herself. It's the first day of first grade and she's like, hi, my name is Mrs. Neals. And we're all like, hi Mrs. Neals. And she picks up the roll call. She and she begins to go through Our names. So she starts with Aliyah, who is the only other black girl in my class, goes past Brooklyn, and gets all the way down to me, Zanele. And she kind of hesitates for a little bit, takes her time, and that's something I'm used to because my name is spelled Z, A, N, E, L, E. And so there's always complications. So I wait a bit. And then Mrs. Neal, she kind of begins to sound out the names, like syllables as she's speaking it. So she's like, zenow. And I look at Brooklyn. I'm like, this girl just said my name wrong. But Brooklyn doesn't really have a reaction. So I'm like, okay. So I look back at Mrs. Neal's, and I'm like, oh, actually, it's pronounced Zannala. You pronounce my name Zanele. And then in that moment, all of the students fall over each other, laughing. Everybody's hysterically laughing, giggling to each other. And I'm looking at Brooklyn like, what's going on? And then they start to kind of chant one by one, and then all together, no, her name is Zanael. Zanal. Her name is Zanael. And I'm looking at them like, what are you talking about? And so I look back at Mrs. Neals, and I'm like, no, my name is Zannale. Zanele. That's how you pronounce my name. And they're calling me a liar, and they're saying, no, it's Zanelle. Zanelle. And so I look at Brooklyn kind of for, like, some sort of validation or some reassurance. But she looks at me like, what are you doing? And Mrs. Neals looks at me like, oh, I found the problem child this year. So I look back at her, and I tell her, I'm not lying. My name is Zanele. But she leaves the room, and she goes and finds my kindergarten teacher from the previous year. She brings her back into the room, she points at me, and she says, what's that little girl's name? And I'm looking at my teacher like, you're my last chance. You know who I am. Tell her my name is Zanalel. I've lived here for a year, which feels like forever. When you're six years old and you guys are my home, you know me, My name is Zanele. And she looks at me and she says, no, her name is Zanelle. And so I'm looking around, and I'm feeling like I've just been abandoned by, like, the entire life that I've known My whole life, this idea of belonging has quickly disappeared. And I'm just left completely isolated. And I realized that, like, these people had never even said my name all of kindergarten. I thought that we were so close, that we were beyond titles, that it was just like, you just know me that well that you don't even have to say my name. But they didn't know me at all. And so I went on for the rest of first grade being Zanelle and the rest of second grade being Zanelle, until I moved out of Oshawa and out of Canada and to America. And I realized that that moment in Ashra was not just a moment. It became the next 10 years of my life. Zanelle always being seen before. Zanele always being heard, always being noticed. And Zanele just seemed to kind of disappear. And so a couple weeks ago, I was feeling like I couldn't do it anymore. Like this girl, Zanela, who's supposed to mean so much, who was given to me by my grandparents. And Zanale means to be sufficient, to be enough. It comes from the language Xhosa, which is also my native tribe in South Africa. And this person who's supposed to be enough, I don't fulfill that because look what I've done to her. She doesn't even exist anymore. And so I go to my mother and I tell her that I don't feel deserving of my definition, that Zanella doesn't belong to me. And I'm crying, and I'm hoping that she can say something to reconcile this lostness, because it feels like I'm just kind of sinking, floating away. And she looks at me. And my mother, she's also sort of kind of a nomad in her own existence. And she tells me that your name isn't something that you have to live up to. It's not something you earn or something that you have to try to be a part of. Your name is. You are constantly manifesting your name simply by existing. And your name will always belong to you, no matter what. And I look at my mother and kind of look within myself, and I. I agree with her, you know, Zanele, she is who I am. I am Zanele. And I may not always know what that means to me, but I do know that it means home, that it means belonging, that it means Xhosa, and that. That's enough. Thank Zanella Chisholm, everyone. Woo. On three. I want you to all say her name is Zanala, and she's an amazing storyteller. Can we do that?
- [08:25]
Isabel Debris
Yes.
- [08:26]
Zanella Chisholm
I want those first graders to hear us. All right, so it's 1, 2, 3. Her name is Zanella, and she's gonna make these storyteller.
- [08:36]
Isabel Debris
Yes.
- [08:37]
Zanella Chisholm
Give it up for Sanila Chisholm, everyone.
- [08:41]
Dan Kennedy
Zanella Chisholm just finish first semester as an English major at Ryerson University in Toronto. She writes for her campus, an online global community for college women, and recently had her poetry published in New Wave. She says every encounter with someone new provides her with the opportunity to introduce herself. And she's been pushing herself to always begin with Zanella before allowing any nickname to be introduced. She says it's a form of respect to her name, not to allow it to be replaced by ease or comfortability. Our next story comes to us from a college story slam we produced with the students at Brown University. The theme was transformation. Here's Isabel Debris live at the moth.
- [09:26]
Isabel Debris
If I had to describe my family in one word, I think it would be petless. We not only didn't own pets, but we were actively vocal about not owning pets. And that was our collective identity. That's like how we identified and made sense of everything. We had family, friends that had pets. We would like, go over to their houses and they would have their dogs as pictures on their mantelpieces and they would scroll through their phone and show us pictures of their dogs. And we would just look at each other and be like, I would rather hear about your dream for an hour and a half. I don't want your dog's pooping patterns. We just did not understand, but we tried. Like, when I was in fifth grade, I had a hamster named Jessie. And one day I came back from school and it just like had disappeared. And I, like, still to this day don't know where it went. And I wake up in the middle of the night and I think I feel it in my sheets. And it's like very traumatic. So that happened. But so after that, a few pet less years, and my sister came home one day and was just like, guys, like, there's escaping hole in my life. She was like in third grade and she was like, I need a pet. Like, all my friends are talking about their pets. Like, we really, we lack something. And my parents are like, are you kidding me? Like, we've been over this. And I was just like, no. Like, she was really persistent. She went on these like sad shelter websites and she found like dogs and cats that were like, really cute but also like emaciated. And she would like email them to my parents and like, would like make us like, an email subject of, like, urgent. And my dad would open it, like, in the middle of, like, a board meeting, and he would, like, see, like, urgent be like, what? And it would just, like, this hungry cat would, like, pop up. And he was just like, okay, like, you're right. We have to give you a pet. We have to do something. So we, like, sat down and we're like, okay. After Jesse, like, no furry animals. Like, obviously no cats or dogs. Like, that really narrowed down our options. And so we decided on reptile. And my sister did some research. She was deciding what reptile to get, and she discovered a bearded dragon. And bearded dragons start out, like, kind of small and green, but then, like, after a year, they're supposed to get, like, a beautiful and, like, orange and, like, grow beards, whatever that means. I don't know. But, like, get, like, super thorny and cool and neon. So we're, like, really psyched about that. So we're like, okay, we're going to get the spirit of dragons. Be really cool. So we got it, and we got this huge cage for it. And then we realized, okay, it's actually alive. We have to feed it. And so that literally required feeding it, which was, like, crickets and worms, which is not something my family does. And my dad would come home from Petco with bags of crickets. One time, they exploded all over our house, and we had to chase them and collect them. For some reason, we stored them, like, next to my bed. I don't know why that was a thing, but, like, I could never go to sleep. I had, like, perpetual insomnia because, like, crickets would be chirping my ear. The crickets also ate this, like, cricket jam. This is, like, a little tangent that doesn't do anything, but, like, it looked like real jam. So we kept thinking it was jam. Okay, Anyway, so this was the thing that occupied, like, the majority of our thoughts and lives. And we would start to talk about our lizard at the dinner table, and we would talk to our lizard about with our friends. And it was named Opal, and it was really cute. And we, like, literally, I would come home from school, and my sister would, like, drop her backpack and run upstairs and just stroke it for the rest of the afternoon. This was, like, 2007. I didn't have an iPhone. I didn't have anything to stare at, so I just stared at my lizard. It actually wasn't a lizard. It was a bearded dragon. If anyone called it a lizard, we'd be very offended. We were like, no, it's A bearded dragon. So my dad was like, okay, we need to get an exercise. We need to make sure he's healthy. So we bought him a leash, and every Sunday, we would walk it around the neighborhood on a leash and as a family. And became known as that family that had a bearded dragon that walked it, not a lizard with a leash, every Sunday. So our neighborhood knew us. They knew Opal. It was really cute. We were obsessed, obsessed with him, loved him. Then one day we noticed, like, okay, wait a second. He's a bearded dragon, but he's, like, still green. It's been, like, literally three and a half years. Like, where is this orange? That's literally the whole point that we got him, because he was gonna be orange. So, like, opal, like, what's going on? And we noticed, like, every day it would just get, like, slower and slower, and we were like, oh, no. Something wrong, Opal? And then one day, it just, like, its eyes didn't open, and my sister was, like. Like, crying. Like, I've never seen my sister cry this much. My dad, like, literally did not cry through all of Schindler's List was, like, sobbing, and, like, I was crying, and we were like, okay, like, literally, we need to. We need to do something. Like, we need to get. Like, get a funeral together. We need to invite the neighborhood. So we invited the whole neighborhood to the funeral. We made it a little coffin. It was, like, made out of tissue paper. And we went to our backyard. Everyone was like, opal, like, we saw you in the leash. You're so cute. And so they all gather around. My dad said a speech. My sister wrote a speech, but was too choked up to say it. And we're lowering it into the dirt. I'm, like, literally putting dirt on its head. And we're going into the ground. We're all crying, and then all of a sudden, it jumps up and starts running around our backyard. And, like, we're all screaming. We're all like, oh, no, you're alive. Like, what is happening? And my sister is like, oh, my God. Like, we're about to bury you alive. I'm so sorry. And, like, we're just dying. Like, we don't know what to do. And then two days later, it died. We have yet to get another pet. Okay, thank you.
- [15:26]
Dan Kennedy
That was Isabel Debris. Isabel graduated from Brown University earlier this year, and she's now a reporter for Associated Press, based in Jerusalem. The events in this story happened almost a decade ago, and Isabel says that a few years after Opal, she bought a vacuum packed frog for her high school science experiment, but she thinks that probably doesn't count as a pet. Isabella I would like to say that I think you're free as a pet owner to decide what constitutes a pet. Although it'd be pretty weird if you were walking a vacuum packed frog around town. So hopefully you'll try being a pet owner again in 2019. Isabelle because pets are so important. That is it for this week on the Moth Podcast. We hope you'll join us next time, and we hope you have a story worthy week.
- [16:18]
Rosetta Stone Advertiser
Dan Kennedy is the author of Loser Goes First, Rock on and American Spirit. He's also a regular host and storyteller.
- [16:25]
Dan Kennedy
With the Moth Podcast production by Emily Couch, Ivan Kureyev, Vicki Marek, and Paul Ru West. The Moth Podcast is presented by prx, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public@prx.org.