The Moth Presents All These Wonders

by Catherine Burns

  And I have just confessed to her that actually I’d gotten into the cupboard and eaten Red Hots. It was the only candy in our house, ever, and we used it once a year to put two eyeballs on a gingerbread man that we made. But I knew her reaction to me eating her asthma medicine would be better than her reaction to me eating refined sugar, so I let her just go with it.

  So she’s laughing about this, and she throws her head back.

  And my brain splits. And I start to take notes.

  I note the way that she laughs so big that I can see the fillings in the back of her mouth. And that when she brings her head down, she pulls her turtleneck up to her chin, and then rubs her hand over the ribs on her lavender sweater.

  And that her head is so small that she shops in the children’s section at LensCrafters. I can tell because the candlelight catches the arm of her glasses, and they say “Harry Potter.”

  We continue on like this until we’re both so tired, and we crawl into bed.

  For a while things are very good, and then things are bad, and then things are good.

  And then one day she’s visiting me in New York City. We’re in midtown, and we’re about to get on the subway. We’ve just seen a show.

  She stops me, and she says, “You know what, Marian McPartland”—who hosts this show that she loved on public radio, Piano Jazz—“Marian McPartland is having an eighty-fifth-birthday party at Birdland. And we should crash it.”

  This is my mom. She is the most elegant and gracious woman in the world. She wouldn’t go to a block party without putting me in a dress and making homemade tabbouleh and bringing a bottle of wine, but okay, we’ll crash this party.

  We walk up to Birdland, and we just charge past the bouncers. We go right up to the bar. I squeeze us into some chairs, and I order the fanciest drinks that I can think of, which at the time were vodka gimlets. Because I really liked those glasses.

  And we look around, and it’s like an Al Hirschfeld drawing of what’s happening in jazz at that time. I recognize Tony Bennett and Norah Jones. And there’s Ravi Coltrane. The energy in the room is amazing.

  We’re seeing the show live, but in between all of these amazing performances people are loving up the birthday girl. And you can just feel that it’s one of those nights that everyone in the room will remember, that could never be re-created.

  Karrin Allyson, who my mother and I both love, takes the stage, and she starts to sing “Twilight World.” I pick up my glass, and I turn to toast my mother, and I look—and she’s glowing.

  I take her in. My brain splits. And I think, This is good. I can use this.

  Four Januaries later I’m back in Pittsburgh. The doctors have told us that it’s time to come home.

  I’m in my mother’s bathroom. She’s leaning on the sink. She’s wearing these pink striped pajamas that my sister has given her for Christmas the month before. I see her look up and look at herself in the mirror. I see a change come over her face, and I can tell that she’s made up her mind.

  She tells me to call a nurse. She walks out of the bathroom, and she walks down the hallway, and she lays down in her bed.

  I know that this is the day that I have been afraid of for ten years.

  My sister and I had made a calendar and scheduled my mother’s friends and family to come visit her in these days, so that people could see her but that she would never be overwhelmed by too many guests.

  And now we’re calling everyone, and we’re telling them, “Come over now, for what will probably be one of the worst nights of your life.”

  But because I’m my mother’s daughter, I’m doing this as I’m pulling her plates off of the shelf and saying, “But also bring cheese.”

  And they do. People start coming. Aunts and uncles. My father. My mother’s boyfriend. My sister’s boyfriend. We all pile into her living room and sit on my mother’s red velvet couch. Someone puts in a Miles Davis CD, and we’re milling around. I’ve put food out, and I’m filling people’s glasses of wine. My Aunt Jamie makes a pot of chili.

  People start to go in to visit my mother.

  I hear her saying to them, as she’s laid out in her bed, “Can I get you anything? Can I get you a cup of tea?”

  And I’m like, “You’re dying. I am going to do this right now.”

  So I start handing people saucers and empty cups.

  I’m like, “Just carry this in so she knows that we’re okay out here.”

  In the living room, it feels very much like it does any other night that we’re at my mother’s house, except for I’m the one secretly refilling the wine and sneaking away the plates.

  When the hospice first came to visit us, they gave my sister and me this pamphlet, a little blue booklet called Gone From My Sight. There’s a line drawing of a ship on it. And it explains in somewhat poetic but also somewhat technical terms what happens to a body when a human being is starting to die. And I remember when they gave it to me, I was sort of furious. I thought, There’s no line drawing that can describe this very personal and very massive event in my life. This is my mom. But on this night it’s the only guide that we have. We’ve never done this before.

  So my sister is reading and taking notes on my mom, and my sister comes in, and she can tell from the way that my mother is breathing that we don’t have a lot of time.

  I go in to check on her, and she’s gotten out of her bed. She’s standing at her closet, and she’s reaching up for a sweater. I ask her what she’s doing.

  She looks at me and says, “I have to pack.”

  And I don’t know what to say to that.

  So finally I say, “Mommy, where you’re going, you don’t need a suitcase.”

  She pauses, and she scrunches up her face like she always does when she’s thinking. She nods. And she lays back into her bed, and she goes silent.

  People continue to go in, and they start to say their good-byes.

  Finally it’s my turn. I go into her room, and I sit down on her bed, and I start rubbing her calves.

  I know that I should say I love her, and that I’ll miss her.

  And that in twenty-eight years I can throw her the best eighty-fifth-birthday party.

  Then, after that, maybe sometime we’ll explode in one big fireball, so that neither of us would ever have to experience what it’d be like for one of us to have to live without the other.

  But she knows all of that.

  So I just tell her that the following November I’m going to be a bridesmaid in my friend from high school Jess’s wedding…so that she knows that I have plans. And that I’m really excited that the dresses are green, because they’ll bring out my eyes.

  And then that’s it. And I leave. And I’m on the phone with Jess in the hallway when I hear my sister. She’s a classically trained singer, and I hear this Wagnerian wail hit all of these notes.

  And I know that my mother is gone.

  We all gather in the living room, and we drink all of the wine, and we eat all of the cheese. I bring out this bottle of limoncello that my mother keeps for special occasions, because I figure that this one counts and I’m allowed. So we drink all of that. Everyone leaves, and I go to bed.

  The next morning I wake up. And it’s the day that I’ve been afraid of. I go into the kitchen, and I open up the front of the coffee machine, and I empty out the grounds.

  I realize that I still know how to make a pot of coffee.

  I go into the living room, and I sit in her big blue leather chair. I open my computer, and I check my e-mail. There’s an e-mail from my friend Nick, who I went to college with. We e-mail a couple of times a year, and he’s asking me how I am and telling me about his new job.

  I hit reply, and I type, “Nick, my mom died.”

  And it’s real.

  I wait for that big gut punch to hit me, for that big hole to open up. That emptiness. But instead I feel the strangest thing, the purest thing I’ve ever felt.

  I just feel sad.

  And it feels white. />
  And it feels hot.

  And it envelops me.

  And I feel full.

  Hailed as a “storytelling guru” by the Wall Street Journal, KATE TELLERS is a writer, performer, and teacher whose students range from fledgling eight-year-old stand-up comedians to Fortune 500 CEOs. In 2007 she discovered The Moth and has been a part of it ever since. She is currently working on a collection of essays about falling apart, tentatively titled, We Always Knew You Would Be OK, and lives in Brooklyn with her furry husband, baby, and dog.

  This story was told on August 27, 2014, at the Byham Theater in Pittsburgh. The theme of the evening was Don’t Look Back. Director: Catherine Burns.

  One of my happiest memories as a kid is staying up late to watch Saturday Night Live on this old black-and-white TV that I’d actually found in the trash area of my building and had convinced my parents to let me keep in my room.

  There was something so magical and exciting about when the show would start, and the theme music would play over that cool, New Yorky montage of the cast. It made me feel really hip and alive, like I was part of a cool club. And not, like, a nerdy girl who was watching a black-and-white TV that I found in the garbage.

  One of the highlights of my childhood was when I was ten years old, and my best friend’s dad took us to 30 Rock to see a taping of SNL.

  I remember that before the show started, I had to go to the bathroom. To get there I walked down the hallways of Studio 8H. And it was lined with photos of Gilda Radner and Bill Murray.

  I was like, Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. They were here. I’m here. Oh, my God.

  When I got to the bathroom, I took fifteen paper towels and I put them in my pocket, to bring home and put into this little wooden box I had, where I kept all of my mementos. It had a unicorn on it. The only other memento in the box at the time was an acorn I had picked up on a trip to Woodstock.

  On that visit to SNL, the host was Tom Hanks and the musical guest was Aerosmith. So it was awesome. And just when the night couldn’t get any more perfect, afterwards my friend’s dad took us to an incredible dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, the coolest restaurant in the world.

  I remember it so clearly. It was the first velvet rope I ever walked past, and as I was walking past it, I thought, I feel fucking famous. I feel like Justine Bateman must feel all the time (at the time she was the most famous woman in the world to me).

  So cut to 2009. I am a grown-up. And I have achieved—largely because of the influence of SNL—my dream of becoming a professional TV comedy writer and stand-up comedian. I’ve been working in L.A. for three years, and I’m finally moving back to New York, mainly because L.A. is sunny and perfect, and I hate it, and I can’t live there anymore.

  So I’m back in New York, and I need a job. And my agent calls me out of the blue.

  He’s like, “You know, SNL is actually looking for new writers right now. Do you want to submit some sketches?”

  I say, “Oh, my God. Yes, of course I do. I just have to find them on my computer.”

  And by “find them on my computer,” I meant I had to run to Starbucks and panic and write some sketches. It’s really hard to write comedy at Starbucks, because there’s no one around to tell you if your commercial-parody idea for a jockstrap for dogs is funny or not.

  And if you’re wondering, Did you really submit a sketch that was a commercial-parody for a jockstrap for dogs? The answer is yes. Yes, I did.

  I thought, All right. Well, I’m not gonna get this job.

  But then, a couple of days later, my agent calls me again. And he says, “SNL liked your packet. You need to meet with Lorne Michaels.”

  And I’m like, “Holy fucking shit.”

  I’ll just give you a representative tidbit from the interview I had with him.

  I’m a little nervous. But I go into his office, and it’s one of those setups where there’s a very large leather couch and then also a large leather chair. And I never know where to sit in that situation.

  So I decide I’m gonna be endearing and honest, and I say, “So, uh, where do you want me to sit?”

  And he says, “Well, why don’t you sit on the couch, and I’ll sit on the chair.”

  “Okay.”

  Then we have a minute of small talk. And after a minute, he says, “Um, you know what? Actually, I want to sit on the couch.”

  And I look to see if he’s joking, and he’s not. We got up, and we switched.

  I was like, This is fucking weird.

  And then fifteen minutes later, I left, and I thought, Not only am I not getting that job, I almost feel like I’ve been fired from the job.

  But then, a few days later, I am home and I am lying on my couch, watching Animal Planet, as is my wont. And I get another call from my agent.

  And he’s like, “Yeah, so you got the job. SNL wants you.”

  So I flip the fuck out. And I call my best friend, and he comes over. We order pizza. And I put Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” on repeat.

  I’m having one of those special moments in life—that window between when you get a cool job and you can tell everyone about it but before you’ve started the job and you realize what the job is going to entail.

  And I was not prepared for what working at SNL entailed.

  So I’ll give you a brief picture of how the week works. It starts on Tuesday. And the writers stay up all night to write the whole show. Literally all night. You get there at noon, and you go home at 9:00 a.m. Wednesday morning. Like, at best. And maybe you’ll go home and sleep for a couple of hours, but then you have to come back to prepare for Wednesday afternoon, which is this epic marathon affair in which Lorne and the whole cast, and all the writers, and everyone who works at the show, squishes into the writers’ room and they read every single sketch that’s been submitted.

  There’s about forty. It takes four hours. And afterwards Lorne goes off with his supervising writers, and they decide what’s gonna go in that week’s show, based on what got the most laughs.

  They have this weird tradition where, even though there’s e-mail now, the way they let you know what’s gonna be in the show is sort of high-school-play style, where the writers’ assistant comes out with one piece of paper. And everyone has to crowd around to see what’s been circled.

  When I’d asked people why do we do it this way, they’d say, “It’s just tradition.” As if SNL is an Afghani village, untouched by time.

  So my first Tuesday night—my first writers’ night—I’m excited, but a little nervous, because I am not a night person. I am a morning person. I usually go to bed at 10:30 p.m.

  But I think, All right. I’m just gonna power through. And I am powering through. And then, at about 10:35, I’m like, I’m so sleepy.

  But my work was not anywhere close to done, because the host for that week was Blake Lively, the lead from Gossip Girl. I have to say that in addition to having the biggest boobs on the skinniest body I’ve ever seen in my life, she seemed super cool and funny and really nice. And I was writing a sketch where I decided she would play a wacky volunteer at an animal-adoption center.

  So I was anal about making it perfect. I stayed up all night tweaking it. The hours were dragging on and on.

  And in a nutshell, my first table read at Saturday Night Live—it bombs so badly. The sketch bombs in front of a room of people who I happen to think are the funniest people in the world.

  I’m assuming that probably there are a few people here who have never bombed in front of the writers’ room at SNL. So just to give you a sense of what it’s like: imagine that you’re having sex with somebody that you really like but they’re not making any noise, no matter what you do to their body.

  And then imagine that there’s also a roomful of people watching it happen.

  And they’re not making any noise either.

  And it’s fucking terrifying.

  It’s so terrifying that I think, This will not stand. I’m determined that next week I’m gonna get
something at least onto the dress-rehearsal show.

  So a little background on that. Every Saturday, SNL actually does two shows. The first is in front of a studio audience, but it doesn’t air. Any sketch that doesn’t do well will not make it to the TV show.

  So I’m like, I’m gonna at least get that far.

  The host my second week is Taylor Lautner, who’s the teen heartthrob werewolf from the Twilight movies. Which I have not seen, (1) because I am thirty-five years old and (2) if I want to see pale people being angsty, I’ll look in the mirror. I don’t need to spend money.

  But he seems really nice. And he’s very young. So I think, I’ll write something where he plays someone really young.

  So I write a sketch where he’ll play Bristol Palin’s ex, Levi Johnston. And all he’s gonna have to do is wear a puffy vest and mumble like an idiot. Taylor Lautner nails this. And it gets laughs, and it goes to dress rehearsal.

  I’m like, Oh, this is a victory.

  Or so I think, until I realize what dress rehearsal means. Which is Mr. Lorne Michaels sits under the audience bleachers during dress, and he watches the show on a monitor. And when your sketch starts, you slide into a chair next to Lorne, and you watch your sketch with him.

  So my sketch starts, and then I watch Lorne watch my sketch bomb really badly. And I’m assuming there’s a few of you who’ve never watched your sketch bomb in front of Lorne, so just to give you a sense of what it’s like:

  Imagine that you’re having sex with Lorne Michaels. And he’s not making any noise.

  And I’m like, Oh, my God!

  So this becomes my life, right? Week after week I am struggling to come up with material that I think will work on the show. And it doesn’t always go terribly. But I can never get it to go great.

  And I start to spiral. Because my whole identity, personally and professionally, up to this point in my life is that I can be funny. And I can’t crack the code on this show. Before every table read, I am gripped with fear. Before every dress rehearsal, my stomach is in knots. I am walking around lost and confused, but in a foggy way. In a Keanu Reeves way.