This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin-Geness. This is our annual December holiday episode.

We have stories of feasts, traditions, celebrating, not celebrating, connecting with family and friends,

and just wanting to be alone. Six stories that explore the mixed emotions that come with this last

month in the year. Our first storyteller is Moth Veteran Peter Aguero. Peter calls this story

me and mama versus Christmas. Lots of people go overboard at Christmas. It's a time of excess.

The decorations and the gifts and the food, but what if money is tight? Peter told this story

at a Moth Night we produced in partnership with West Virginia Public Radio. Here's Peter Aguero.

So I just finished my first semester of college and I have a big bag of laundry and I come through

the door of the house and things aren't looking too good for me and my mom. The first thing I noticed

is that the piano is gone. She had that ever since. She was a little girl on top piano lessons. We

always put the nativity on top of it around Christmas time. I took piano lessons for two weeks, but I

still took piano lessons on that piano and that's gone. I go through the living room and the only

thing that's left is just one couch that's with broken springs that can out of it. There are two

televisions, one on top of the other, one has picture of the works and one has sound that works.

Over in the corner are the impressions still from my dad's lazy boy that has been gone for four

years now. That's the only furniture in the room. I go upstairs, the dining room's empty. There

used to be this big beautiful dining room set with carved chairs and a glass break front, a buffet

table and that's gone. In the kitchen, there's the kitchen set. There's two chairs. There used to

be four, but I broke one of them and the other chair, I also broke and there's only two left.

I go upstairs to the bedrooms. In my mom's room, there's nothing left but her mattress on the floor.

There's nothing quite as damning as a bedroom without furniture because you see all the dings and

the scratches in the wallpaper, all the mistakes that can usually be covered up, but you see them all

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