There's nothing like home for the holidays unless it's being in other people's homes for the holidays.

On this selected shorts, Augustine Burroughs and Thomas Beller invite us in to meet their moms, sisters, and sweetheart. Join us.

I'm Meg Wallitzer and you're listening to Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us

through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. On this Selected Shorts, we're celebrating

the holidays with two charming and rueful stories

about how things don't always go as planned, but you can definitely count on your mother

to play a big part, to keep things on track or maybe even to complicate them.

We're sharing two stories with very different takes on how mothers and children interact

at the holidays.

These encounters are so intense when we're young, and then they become indelible parts of our memories later on.

Stories that you tell your friends. You know, you know, that thing that happened that night all those years ago.

Oh my God.

Our first story is Augustine Burroughs and two eyes made out of coal, which, in case

you needed reminding, is how the classical snowman is completed. In this sweet and funny

autobiographical sketch, Burroughs introduces two further tropes, that children are dangerously

ambitious in the kitchen, and that mothers, at least the good ones, serve up unconditional love.

Memoir is Burroughs' home turf,

and for him that includes the bestsellers running with scissors and dry.

Reading and Two Eyes Made Out of Coal is Tony Award-winning actor Michael Cerveris,

whose Broadway credits include Fun Home and Assassins.

Happily, we can also count him as among our regular and most inspired readers.

Here he is with Augustin Burroughs and Two Eyes Made Out of Coal. eyes made out of coal.

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