A Mother's Secret

Modern Love

The New York Times

Love, New York Times, Nytimes, Essay, Loss, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Redemption, Nyt

4.3 • 9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2022

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ayad Akhtar’s parents met in Pakistan in the early ’60s, when they were both medical students and “ridiculously attractive” — or so their friends say. Despite having a love marriage (against the wishes of their parents), theirs was rocky from the start. “By the time I was 4, I already knew my father had ‘other women,’ as my mother used to call them,” Ayad wrote in his Modern Love essay. But it wasn’t until years later, when Ayad was an adult, that his mother shared her own confession with him. Today, Ayad tells his story about seeing his mother in a new light. Then, we listen to a Tiny Love Story about a child who recognizes their parent for the very first time. Ayad Akhtar, who received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is the author of the novel “Homeland Elegies” and the president of PEN America.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Love now and...
0:05.0	Do you fall in love?
0:06.0	Yes, now I love love.
0:07.0	I'm stronger than anything.
0:09.0	I feel the love.
0:10.0	And I love you more than anything.
0:13.0	I'm just in love.
0:15.0	From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
0:19.0	This is Modern Love.
0:22.0	So a few years ago, I found my mom's childhood diary.
0:27.0	On the front page in these really big bubble letters, she'd written,
0:31.0	Keep Out.
0:33.0	So I thought it would be juicy.
0:35.0	But the wildest she got was talking about like her crush on this guy named Tony.
0:40.0	And whenever she wrote his name, she drew this little heart around it.
0:44.0	Most of the entries were just pure teen girl.
0:48.0	How excited she was to wear the plaid bell bottoms she saved up for.
0:52.0	It was the 70s.
0:54.0	Or when her friend said my mom's house smelled like weird Chinese food.
0:59.0	So my mom said her friend's house smelled like wet dog.
1:04.0	These little peaks into my mom's life, I felt like they were revelatory.
1:09.0	Because I got to see how my mom told her own story.
	...

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