Hey folks, this is Max Young Rice from the StoryCorps Podcast. Just want to remind you that you can tell us your personal stories by calling our voicemail at 702 -706 -talk.
This week we want you to tell us about a time where your roles were reversed with a parent or with a kid.
That's 702 -706 -T -A -L -K.
Hi, I'm Dave Iso, founder of StoryCorps.
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Who would you say is the most important person in your life?
Oh definitely, it would be my mother.
I think I had the greatest mom in the world.
It's the StoryCorps podcast from NPR, where we bring you stories from the largest collection of human voices ever recorded to find the wisdom hidden in ordinary lives.
And Mother knows best, right?
So this week, it's all about the moms. My mother was the glue to our family as I think mothers are.
If I was to have the choice to choose another mother I would never choose anybody else but you.
Mommy, I love you to the moon and back.
and I love you to the moon and all the galaxies beyond.
I'm Jasmine Morris, and on this week's episode, stories all about motherhood.
About moms and the difficult choices they face along the way to do what's best for their kids.
The decisions made, the actions taken, and the moments they had no power over.
First, the story of a baby, a dime, and a laundromat.
Growing up, Amy Marshall loved her adoptive parents, but she always wondered where she came from.
So when she was in her late 40s with a family of her own, Amy finally decided to find out.
She wrote to the state of Kansas where she was born to request her birth certificate.
At story core, Amy told her daughter about the moment the envelope arrived.
I opened it and the first thing I saw was mother's name, unknown.
And father's name, unknown.
And then the birthplace was the bungalow laundromat.
So I sent an email to the Lawrence World Journal and said, was there ever anything in 1964 about the bungalow laundromat?
And they sent back a clipping.
it said that there was baby was found abandoned and the people who found me were coming in to clean that morning at 6 a .m. and they heard a baby crying.
When they found me I was blue because it was 42 degrees and I was on a concrete floor and there was a dime on the phone and the policeman there said he thought that that was there so somebody could call for help immediately and they took me to the hospital and And the doctor that day, it was the only abandoned baby case he every worked.
And he said, you know, every year I think about that baby and there was just something so incredible about somebody thinking about you for nearly 50 years and you have no idea.
So the next day I called my mom and I said, well, I wanted to tell you, I got my real birth certificate.
It looks like I was born abandoned in a laundromat.
She got really quiet.
And she said, I didn't want to tell you because we never wanted you to feel unwanted.
We wanted you so badly.
And I've never felt unwanted.
Yeah. After 48 and a half years, I went to the laundromat and I did leave a note and I left a dime and I said to my birth mother, just call me any time.
I can't imagine how scared she was.
After having you and holding you, I don't care who you are, you gotta be pretty desperate to do something like that.
And I would really hate to think that she had any guilt, because in her way, that was the best decision.
I want her to know it's okay.
I have people who love me, and I've had an absolutely wonderful life.
That's Amy Marshall with her daughter Moira at StoryCorps in Craig, Alaska.
Since recording this conversation, Amy has yet to receive a call from her biological mother, but she has managed to locate her.
Amy plans to try contacting her when she's ready.
Next, we'll hear from Irene Montoya.
She runs her own business in Cheyenne, Wyoming, called Sunflower Trucking.
She drives dump trucks alongside construction and road crews.
She's also raising a teenage son, Gianni.
But a year before he was born, her life looked very different.
Irene was addicted to methamphetamines and had never held a steady job.
She came to StoryCorps with 14 -year -old Jionni to talk about those early days.
When I first had you, I was so scared that you deserved to be with, like, a better mom.
There was a time when you were little, and we ended up in a pretty bad apartment.
Like, we had cockroaches, mice, bedbugs.
And then the ceiling caved in.
It was terrible. I didn't know what to do.
So we were just driving around because I didn't have nowhere to go with you.
We slept that night in the car.
And when you woke up in the back in your car seat, I looked in the rear view mirror and you were the happiest little baby.
You just were with your mom.
That's all you needed.
I knew that I never wanted to live that way ever again.
I threw my meth pipe in the dumpster and it shattered.
The spell was broken.
I wanted you to just remember me going to work, you going to school, and then us going home, making dinner and that's how life was, so it was up to me to change.
What's something you wish you had known at that time in your life?
That everything was going to be all right, because sometimes people just need to hear that we ended up getting out of the bad apartment into a good one.
I just remembered pretty recently after we moved in, you made me SpaghettiOs and we watched Hunting Bigfoot on TV and I only really remember I felt loved, I felt safe.
That was my dream. I remember one time I worked 14 hours and I was covered in diesel and asphalt and I got home from work and you were tiny like five and you made a potato in the shape of a heart and put it on my hamburger patty because you knew when I got home from work I was just gonna go straight to bed, I wasn't gonna eat.
You're pretty amazing, son.
Thank you... for everything.
You know, I wanted to be that mom, own my own company, buy us a house, and to go camping.
Do you remember when we bought the camper and it was complete junk and the belt melted and flew off?
Arm that and then the air conditioner almost fell on me.
Yep. I'm thankful that even if it's not looking great you still work hard. You're welcome.
I'm proud of you. That's Irene Montoya with her son Gianni in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Irene celebrated 13 years sober last year.
Gianni's hoping to become a diesel mechanic someday to work on trucks like the one his mom drives.
After a short break, a conversation between a mom and her young son about the hardest lesson she's ever had to teach him.
It didn't matter how much I wanted to protect you, I couldn't.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
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As a mom, all you want to do is protect your kid.
but sometimes things happen that are out of your control, and there's only so much you can do.
That's what our next story's about.
It comes from Karina Borgia -Lecroix, who came to the StoryCorps mobile booth in Fort Myers, Florida, with her ten -year -old son, Levi.
What is your favorite memory of me?
There's one memory that makes me sad, but it is the memory that always comes up when I think about you and your kindness.
Do you remember when we were in that car accident?
It started raining so hard that I couldn't see anything.
And there was a guy, I was heading west, and he was going east, and same thing happened to him.
He couldn't see, and he loses control of his truck.
And then he's head -on to us when he finally sees us.
He crushed my car, and the car then went into the retention pond.
He started swimming towards the car.
I remember... You remember?
...our car had landed in the water, And then he goes to swimming and he gets me out.
Do you remember when we finally made it to the hospital?
Yeah. I had an orange monkey with me.
You did. They gave you an orange monkey.
Mm -hmm. I don't know if you remember this because you were just, what?
Two years old, almost three.
You were sitting on my lap.
I was in the hospital.
I remember that. and you were crying and you thought that I was bleeding.
But I wasn't. That was… My blood.
Yeah. And you grabbed a tissue and you started cleaning off my face and my neck and my chest. Yeah.
That was one of those memories that will always be here for me.
You know what was really tough out of that accident was realizing that I had very little control over some of those things, you know?
It didn't matter how much I wanted to protect you, I couldn't.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
Yeah. You really care about me and you really try and protect me and make sure that I'm safe at all times.
Yeah, it also let me know that there are good people out there.
If it wasn't for the guy that hit us, we wouldn't be here today.
Even the people that hurt us, they can still save us.
That's a big lesson out of that.
That was Corina Borgia LaCroix with her son Levi in Fort Myers, Florida.
Our last story comes from Marily Rodriguez -Garcia, who spent several years working as a doula in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
She was called to the profession because of her experience with her first child.
Her son, Adrian Jose, died just a few days after he was born in 2009.
Murili came to StoryCorps to remember.
you know. It's a kind of lesson.
You're never gonna forget that it hurts, but the thing is, what are you gonna do with that hurt?
Because when you lost a baby, you think that you're gonna die too, but you're not gonna die.
You have a lot of time to spend in this world.
So I started to do the work of edula because of my first birth.
And I think that, in a way, being a doula is the way that I was able to move on.
I remember that I helped a woman in labor and the baby dies inside her, so I told her that the baby that she's gonna see is gonna be a shocking image, but that is important if she wants that she hug her, to talk about the baby, to name the baby, and to think that they are parents, because they are.
And then many years after, I became a mom again.
It's a rainbow baby.
It's used to call the baby that came the pequeo primero muerre, the first one's death.
The second is a rainbow kid.
And now Emil is eight years old, and he dance.
He plays the flute.
And he knows that he has a brother.
So Emil Gustavo, and Adrian Jose.
Hey, they are my two kids.
MarBelli Rodriguez Garcia in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Every year, on the 14th of May, MarBelli and her family come together to mark Adrian Jose's birthday.
That's all for this episode of the StoryCorps podcast. We love hearing from our listeners, and our voicemail line is always open.
This week, we're wondering, whether you were the child or the parent, is there ever been a time where your roles were reversed?
Leave us your answer in a voicemail at 702 -706 -talk.
That's 702 -706 -TALK.
The stories on this episode were produced by Esther Hoenig, Allan Jinich, Zana McKay, Joe Corona, Sara Barcooli, and Von Diaz.
They were edited by Von Diaz, Annie Russell, and Amy Drozdowska.
Special thanks to WGCU Public Media, and also the StoryCorps facilitator, Carolina Escobar.
This podcast is produced by Max Youngreis.
Our senior producer is Judd Estee Kendall.
Amy Drozdowska is our executive producer.
Our technical director is Jared Floyd.
The artwork for our podcast is created by Liz McCarty.
I'm Jazmin Morris. Thanks for listening.
Support for this podcast comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
