♪ JOE CHARNITSKI: I woke up on December 21 with a renewed determination.

My slump ends today.

Why?

I have no idea.

(laughter) JAMIE BRICKHOUSE: My Texas tornado of a mother loved Christmas, and she loved having all of her boys home for the holidays.

CORA WARING: You see, right up until that moment in the bathroom stall, I believed I had found the ultimate Halloween costume.

WES HAZARD: Tonight's theme is "Holidays: Cheers, Tears, and Fears."

ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you-- thank you.

We can all agree that during the season, no matter who you are, no matter what you personally believe in, there tends to be a lot going on.

Maybe you have a lot of time off from work.

Maybe you're working harder than you do all year.

Maybe you're excited to be spending time with your family and loved ones, and maybe you're mourning the people that you've lost over the last year.

Whatever the case, you will walk away from it with stories to tell that you'll share for the rest of your life, perhaps.

And that is what this evening is all about.

CHARNITSKI: My name is Joe Charnitski.

I currently live in Ossining, New York, which is just outside of New York City.

I work for a software company.

I'm not technical in any way.

But I spend a lot of time, not coincidentally, talking to customers, talking to internal teams.

And storytelling helps.

And so, I'm really curious, how did you become a storyteller?

So, I have some friends who are performers, writers, comedians, have encouraged me, "You should, you should do that."

I'm the guy at the party telling anecdotes, the whole thing.

So I was introduced to someone who teaches a class in New York City on storytelling as performance.

In that class, you work on one story, kind of polish it up.

I took that story to a place where I could... an open mic, and about five seconds into telling that story, I thought, "This is for me."

It was square peg, square hole.

And I've been doing it ever since.

How have you changed as a storyteller in that time?

Yeah, so, this story I'm telling tonight is the story I worked on in that class five years ago.

And the funny thing about it is, it's the story I've told my whole life.

It's one of the most important-- if not the most important-- stories of my life.

It can become easy to just repeat the words, but at the heart of it is something incredibly personal and moving to me.

And it is performance in that way, I do have to sort of remind myself what's at the core of this story, and try and summon that and remind the audience of what this really meant to me back when it took place.

This is the first time they're hearing it, no matter how many times I've told it.

It was December 21, four days before Christmas.

I was 15 years old, and living through difficult times.

Maybe every 15-year-old thinks they're living through difficult times.

But I was so sure that I named it.

I branded it.

I was living through my "slump."

(laughter) Up to that point, I got pretty good grades without trying particularly hard.

But at 15, letters were being sent home from teachers to my parents warning about a lack of effort on my part.

I was on the high school basketball team... technically.

I spent so much time on the bench those days, I didn't bother learning the plays.

I didn't even have a date to the annual Christmas dance.

And I felt low every day.

Except that day.

I woke up on December 21 with a renewed determination.

My slump ends today.

Why?

I have no idea.

(laughter) It was the last day of school before Christmas break, I'm sure I was excited about that.

I don't know what it was, but I got dressed, went downstairs for a delicious bowl of Fruity Pebbles, and off I went to live the first day of the rest of my life.

A couple of hours later, I'm in the vice principal's office.

I'm not sure why I've been called there.

I'm replaying the past couple of weeks of my life.

Did I insult a teacher?

Did I get into it with another student?

And then I remember: my slump is over.

This is going to be good news.

Like, maybe I won an award or something.

There could be a cash prize.

Like, I'm getting excited.

(laughter) After a few minutes, the door to the office opens, and in comes Sister Catherine.

She is the vice principal of my small Catholic high school.

And with her is Father Paul.

Father Paul is the pastor of my family church.

And my family church has no connection to my high school.

There's no reason for Father Paul to be here.

One of the more serious reasons that I was feeling low every day was that my mom had just had delicate surgery to relieve a chronic pain condition in her face.

The surgeons had to go in through the back of her head, and past her brain, to address the issue.

It was precarious and scary surgery.

And she was home now, and recovering, but her recovery was also delicate and precarious and scary for me.

So when Father Paul came into that room, I no longer thought I won a cash prize.

So Sister Catherine comes over to my left, and Father Paul kneels to my right, and he looks at me and he says, "Joe, your mom and your dad are okay.

But your house is on fire."

And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, is it?"

And Sister Catherine says, "Joe, you've gone pale, do you want a glass of water?

What do you want, what do you need, what do you want?"

I said, "I want to go home.

Can I go home?"

So Father Paul drove me home.

When we arrived, I remember seeing the news crews and the fire trucks and the neighbors who had gathered.

And the house was still standing, so I thought, you know, maybe it's not so bad.

And then I went inside, and it was so bad.

The dining room, where we were supposed to have Christmas dinner in a couple of days, well, that was destroyed.

The front room, where the decorated Christmas tree had been standing, and the wrapped presents had been set, well, the fire started in there, so you can imagine what it looked like.

The kitchen, where I'd just had that brightly colored bowl of Fruity Pebbles, now looked like someone had taken a black marker and scraped it all over the place.

My mom was at the next-door neighbor's, she was fine.

A little shaken up, of course.

I asked Father Paul if the church was unlocked, he said it was.

I walked the block up the street to my family church.

Inside, it was dark, the lights were out.

And I walked to the altar.

This was not going to be a pew conversation, this had to go right to the altar.

I didn't shake my fist at God, I didn't scream or yell.

I cried.

And I said, "I woke up knowing "this was the end of my slump, "and you burned my house down?

"Like, what's the message you're trying to send me here?

"'Don't get your hopes up, kid'?

"'Things aren't going to get any better'?

'It's not your slump, it's your life.'"

Now I feel the lowest I have felt the whole time, but that's because I didn't know.

Back at school, Sister Catherine made an announcement over the intercom, letting everyone know about the fire.

And spontaneously, every class and club and organization took up donations, for me.

I didn't know the lead story on the news that night would be about the Charnitski fund.

See, my grade school and the town bank joined forces to give folks a place to help, to donate, for my family.

My grade school principal was on TV talking about what a great kid I am, and what a great family I have.

I didn't know strangers would track us down, offering food and money and toiletries and gifts and decorated trees, and anything they thought we might need to have some kind of Christmas.

Now, look, maybe you're not that impressed.

Maybe you think this is exactly what would happen in a small town a few days before Christmas when tragedy strikes.

But I had just been crying in a dark church, thinking my life was never going to get any better.

This outpouring of love and support, to me, was a big deal.

It was a win.

December 21 was the final day of my slump.

Thanks.

(cheers and applause) ♪ BRICKHOUSE: My name is Jamie Brickhouse, and I live in New York City, where I have been for a long time, but I grew up in a medium-sized town, Beaumont, Texas.

And I'm a comedic storyteller, and I'm a writer.

And I have published a memoir a couple of years ago, and I'm working on my second memoir.

Has storytelling always been a part of your life?

Is this something that you just did naturally in conversation, family events, that sort of thing?

BRICKHOUSE: My parents, whenever they came home from work, they'd seem to have always had a great story, you know.

And my mother, you know, she'd get home and say, "Oh, wait till you hear this, Earl," she would tell my father, and then she'd launch into the story, and then he'd share his, and I was always riveted.

Tonight's theme deals with the holidays.

BRICKHOUSE: Mm-hmm.

HAZARD: What do the holidays mean to you?

I could never get out of going home for the holidays.

My mother, Mama Jean, loved the holidays and having the family home.

And even though there were some years where I resented having to go home-- I live in New York, and so it was always a big trip, and, you know, traveling at the holidays isn't fun.

But now, my parents are gone, and I'm so glad for all those years that I did go home and that I had, even if the holidays meant a lot of fighting and a lot of bickering because, you know, you didn't get the right present or the food wasn't served on time.

But in the end, it was-- it really was the point of the holidays, which was being together as a family.

My Texas tornado of a mother, Mama Jean, loved Christmas and picking out just the right gift for everybody.

And she loved having all of her boys home for the holidays.

So it kind of sucks that she died a week before Christmas 2009.

And on the day that she died, I stood next to my older brother Ronnie.

He was in his roofer overalls and his Yamaha Motorcycle baseball cap.

And we looked at her giant king-size bed-- empty, of course, and Ronnie turned to me and he said, "Well, what are they going to do with her body?"

I said, "Well, they're going to put it in a coffin and bury her."

"Well, can't they just stuff her and leave her on the bed so we can look at her and then she won't yell at us anymore?"

(laughter) Ronnie!

Now, Mama Jean liked to say that Ronnie marches to the beat of a different drummer.

He processes the world with a with a combination of childlike wonder and the brutal honesty of a drunk.

(laughter) Now, I'm gay, a writer, have lived in New York City most of my life, and I listen to showtunes.

Ronnie is a proud redneck, a roofer, has lived down in Beaumont, Texas, where we both grew up, his entire life.

And worships Neil Diamond.

(laughter) How we came out of the same womb, I'll never know.

But, of course, the one thing we have in common is the domineering, all-consuming love of Mama Jean.

She ruled that house from that king-sized bed, usually lying down in a caftan.

And one minute, she would look up at us and smile, and say, "Oh, God, I love you so much, you'll never know!"

And the next, she would yell at us and tell us what we were doing wrong in our lives.

But Ronnie was ever devoted to her.

She was his best friend, and at least once a day, a week, he would genuflect at the altar of that king-sized bed, and he would tell her everything that was going on in his life.

Anywhere from how his roofing business was doing, to the talented "dancers" at the girlie bars in nearby Houston.

So, the next day, we're at the funeral home and we're viewing the body.

When I'm alone with her body, I look down.

And you know how people say at funerals, "Oh, your mother looks so natural, so at peace," and it's a lie?

Well, in her case, she did look that way.

I mean, first of all, she was supine, so I was used to seeing her in that position.

But she was wearing a red full-length evening gown-- good gay son that I am, I picked out her outfit.

She loved wearing that dress at her Christmas parties.

Her hair was coiffed into a perfect raven mane, just like she had it in real life, her makeup camera-ready.

But it was the look on her face.

She had this slight smile.

As if she had just dozed off, and any second she would open up her eyes and say, "Oh, God, I love you so much!"

Or yell at me for waking her.

Instinctively, I pulled out my digital camera-- this was before I had an iPhone.

And I took photos.

I felt kind of weird and creepy about it, like I shouldn't be doing this.

And I'm not sure what I was going to do with those photos.

But I needed to possess that last image of her.

Well, a week later, I left the camera in a rental car.

I got the camera back, but the photos had been erased.

It was like another loss.

So the next year, I'm back down in Beaumont for the Christmas holidays, and the family has decided we're going to keep it low-key, no gifts.

Which is too bad, because I always knew what to get Ronnie-- anything Neil Diamond-related.

He never knew what to get me, so he would just give his money to Mama Jean and she would pick out something she knew I liked.

But I was kind of worried about Ronnie.

Everyone in town was, they kept asking, "How is your brother doing, without your mother?"

So I take him out to La Cantina Mexican restaurant, to check in with him.

And we're eating chips and salsa.

And I look out the window at the parking lot, and there is Ronnie's ruby red truck-- and there's Mama Jean.

He has taken her obit photo, blown it up, and laminated it, and slapped it on the door of his truck.

There she is with her 1,000-watt smile and her bubble of brunette hair-- wow.

And then I thought about my own photographic homage to Mama Jean-- I have taken her 1965 wedding photo in which she's sporting a 19... a giant bouffant flip, and I have placed it in an antique art deco vitrine in my apartment.

Same concept, different execution.

(laughter) So I say to Ronnie, (exhales) "I think I'm going to go out to the cemetery.

Have you been out there?"

He said, "Yeah, I go all the time, once a week, and I talk to her."

I guess in his mind, he had just moved that king-sized bed from the house to the graveyard.

"And I know what she looks like when I'm talking to her."

Well, of course you know what she looks like.

He said, "No!"

He tells me, he saw her in the coffin, before they put her in the ground.

And he said, "I know the look on her face."

Oh, that look.

It brought back those photos I had lost.

And then I tell Ronnie what I had not told another living soul.

I told him about taking those photos and losing them.

And he says he did the same thing!

He took photos of her in the coffin.

"Really?"

"Yeah!"

I was always stunned on the rare occasions that we had the same instincts, but none more than this time.

"Yeah, I've got them in my glove compartment, "out in my truck.

"I'll have copies made for you at Walgreens if you want."

He said this as casually as if he was going to offer me a pair of jumper cables.

So after dinner, he pulls the photos out of the glove compartment, and I look at them, and it's just as I remembered her.

The hair, the makeup, the dress.

The look on her face.

She looked like my mother.

I give them back to Ronnie, and he gets into his truck and shuts the door, and... there's Mama Jean's photographic ghost smiling back at me.

And as he drives away, I think, he doesn't realize, he just gave me the best Christmas gift neither he nor I could have ever imagined.

And it was as if Mama Jean picked it out for him, one last time.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪ WARING: My name is Cora Waring, I'm a mom to three grade-schoolers.

I have two girls and a boy.

I teach indoor cycling classes around Boston, and I'm doing my MFA in creative writing.

So I understand that you wrote as a child, and then gave it up.

What caused you to stop writing initially, and what caused you to pick it up again?

In a way, I sort of got scared.

Or I got worried about putting my words out there and having, I guess, people react to them in a way that was negative.

And then, a couple years ago, I went to the Women's March in Boston, and I was just reading all of the signs, and feeling all of the energy.

And it just kind of hit me over the head, like, everyone who was there, you know, wasn't looking over at me, saying, "Hey lady," like, "what do you think about what I wrote on my sign?"

You know?

Like, no one was waiting for me to say, like, "Well, this is my reaction to what you think."

And I sort of stepped back and thought, "Why am I letting all of these people, "most of whom I don't even know, "make me feel like if I put my words out there I could get some sort of negative reaction."

Like, why am I worried about that?

And so I just gave myself permission to not worry about it anymore.

And I said I'm going to try to write and I'm going to see what happens.

And, so far, you know, I haven't gotten that many negative reactions, and I've got a lot of positive ones, and so I'm going to keep going.

One day last spring, my son Will, who's eight, came bursting through the door.

And he said, "Mom, I want gold sneakers."

And I said, "I'm sorry, buddy, they don't make gold sneakers for boys."

So he got on the computer and he found a pair of obnoxiously shiny gold high-tops that cost $16 and would ship from China in anywhere in four days to four weeks.

And I remember him looking at the shoes on the screen and looking back at me.

And he said, "Please, Mom, I really want these shoes."

I'll use my own money."

And I said no.

I said he didn't need any more tennis shoes in his closet.

I said he couldn't wear golden sneakers for sports.

But the real reason?

The reason I didn't want to say to him out loud?

Was I was afraid if my son went around wearing shiny golden sneakers, that someone might make fun of him.

So, a few weeks later, Will got sick, and I had to take him to the doctor for a strep test.

And I don't know about the rest of you, but Will and I are both terrified of strep tests.

So we're at the doctor's office, we're in the room, it's the doctor, the nurse, me, Will, and the room is hot, and everyone is sweating because the doctor keeps trying to give Will this test.

And he keeps kind of worming his way back, so she can't do it.

And I finally crouch down, and I say, "Buddy, what is it going to take to get you to do this test?"

And he looks at me... (laughter) and he says, "The gold sneakers."

(laughter) So I said yes.

And even though he was sick, he came running through the door when we got back home, and he climbed up to the computer and he loaded everything up.

And I could see the excitement in his eyes.

He was just waiting for me to come over and click "order."

And right then, in that moment, in my head, I was back in the bathroom stall in middle school putting on my Halloween costume.

You see, right up until that moment in the bathroom stall, I believed I had found the ultimate Halloween costume: a Glo Worm costume.

I'm serious.

It was lime green spandex, a body suit that went from shoulders to ankles, and it had these amazing slits cut out of the legs and they had, like, dropped mesh in the slits.

And it had these sparkly googly antennae.

And I remember I went running to my mom in the store and I said, "Please, I have to have this costume."

And I knew that it cost a lot of money, and we really didn't have a lot of money, but miraculously she said yes, and I got to bring it home with me.

And in the weeks leading up to Halloween, I would put it on every chance I got and I would prance around my house in this Glo Worm costume, because I felt so amazing in it.

And I couldn't wait to wear this costume and show it to all of my friends on Halloween.

Those feelings lasted right up until that moment in the bathroom when I was putting my costume on.

I had one leg through the spandex.

And it dawned on me that all of the whispers that I had been hearing of "Cora's gonna be a Glo Worm!"

"Cora's gonna be a Glo Worm!"

weren't actually because my classmates thought that my costume was going to be amazing.

My classmates were whispering because they thought my costume was going to be stupid.

And I realized in the bathroom stall that I was about to walk out and be humiliated.

And I wish I could tell you that that's not what happened, but it is.

And I remember at the end of the day, I went home and I balled that costume up and I chucked it in the closet, and I didn't want to wear it out for Halloween that night.

And my mother was furious, with reason, because I didn't want to tell her why.

So now my son is sitting at the computer and he's waiting for me to hit order and get him these shoes, and I can't help myself.

I say, "Buddy, I'm just afraid if I get you these shoes, "someone might tease you about them, and then you're not going to want to wear them anymore."

And he looked at me and he said, "Mom, I want the shoes."

So I clicked order.

And then I prayed that they wouldn't get here for four weeks and that when they did, that they wouldn't fit.

But of course, four days later, they were on the doorstep and they fit perfectly.

They were worse in person than in the photo.

And what I hadn't realized from the photo is, in addition to being obnoxiously shiny gold, they had little lights in the soles and they blinked through the entire rainbow.

So the next day, my son goes in, the shoes are just blinking on and off, and a crowd gathers around, and I hear everyone "ooh"ing and "ahh"ing.

And I breathe this huge sigh of relief that the worst thing that I had feared had not actually come true.

But the next day, Will doesn't reach for his gold sneakers.

He reaches for his plain blue ones.

And I look at him and I say, "Why aren't you wearing your new shoes to school?"

And he starts to cry, and he tells me that the kids called him a showoff.

And he doesn't want to be a showoff, so he's not wearing those shoes to school any more.

So I did what any parent would do.

I called the teacher, and the teacher rallied all the second graders, and they had a talk about being allowed to feel pride with your footwear selection.

And it's second grade, right?

So that fixed it.

Now, Will wears his golden sneakers sometimes, and other times he wears his blue sneakers, and everything should be right with the world.

But the trouble was, I couldn't get that Glo Worm costume out of my head, and it took me a few days to realize why.

Then one day I went into my closet, and I saw that I am still repeating the same pattern over and over again.

An item calls to me in the store, I have to have it, I bring it home, I put it in my closet, and I don't wear it out in public because for whatever reason, it stirs up all those same emotions that I had the day I wore the Glo Worm costume.

One of those items is a blue-flowered kimono that kind of makes me feel like I'm wearing a bathrobe in public.

(laughter) And I decided that I could take a lesson from my son, and be a tiny bit braver, and stand up in front of an audience and tell a story wearing something that makes me feel amazing, and also a little bit vulnerable.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you-- thank you.

♪ ♪