Lisa Find Love

There’s nothing more refreshing than iced coffee when you need a caffeine fix in the summer, but recent news might have you thinking twice before ordering your next cold brew. A BBC Watchdog investigation found something gross in the ice of U.K. coffee chains, including Starbucks.

BBC small samples of ice from Starbucks, Costa, and Caffe Nero in the United Kingdom. Three out of ten samples from both Starbucks and Costa and a whopping seven out of ten at Caffe Nero contained fecal coliforms. That’s right: bacteria from poop.

The idea of little poo pieces swimming in your coffee just plain gross, but don’t give up iced coffee just yet. The group of bacteria called “fecal coliform” can indeed be found in poop, but you can also find them in fruits and veggies, food safety specialist Ben Chapman tells Live Science.

Fecal coliform is an indicator that there could be disease-causing organisms in the water. “The level of contamination of fecal bacteria [in the coffee shops’ ice] concerns me a great deal,” says Tony Lewis, spokesperson for The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, according to The Telegraph. “The bacteria found are opportunistic pathogens—the source of human disease.”

Sounds scary, but the mere presence of fecal bacteria isn’t a sure sign you’ll get sick. Even most strains of E. coli—a specific of fecal coliform health experts say is a better indicator of pathogens than the group as a whole—are totally harmless, according to the EPA. The BBC didn’t specify which bacteria it found, so it’s unclear whether any could actually make customers sick.

In light of the gross-out reports, all three chains have taken action. Starbucks and Caffe Nero are doing their own investigations, and Costa is updating its employee guidelines for handling ice and will bring in new ice storage equipment, according to BBC.

If you don’t trust your local coffee shop with a cold brew anymore, use this iced coffee hack to make your own at home—without watering it down.

As we crossed the Triborough Bridge into Queens, I’m suddenly gripped with this terror that I’m going to die one day. I’m going to see my grandma Ruthy.

Growing up, I would spend weekends with my grandparents. They’d pick me up on Friday nights, and I’d have these long, adventurous days with Grandma Ruthy that felt like she was trying to pack all of the world’s knowledge into one 12-hour period.

We’d wake up early, drink coffee with lots of sugar, and then she’d give me a trillion vitamins, and then we’d head into the city. We’d start at the Central Park Zoo. She’d teach me about marsupials and pandas. Then we’d go to the MOMA, and it was Monet and impressionism. Then we’d walk downtown past all the shops to Sweet Basil in the West Village, where we’d see Doc Cheatham play trumpet. Then Chinatown, where she taught me how to use chopsticks.

Finally we’d go back to her place. And she’d teach me how to lose at rummy. She’d wait for me to reach for one more card, and then she’d slap my hand and say, “Rummy, kiddo!” She’d throw her cards down and laugh. She wanted me to know that it’s not enough to beat your grandson at cards; you have to squeeze every last little drop of joy out of beating him.

But I’m not thinking about that as we cross the bridge. We pull up outside of their apartment building, and I walk in to see my grandmother sitting on the couch. Where once she would have been, like, the loudest person in the room, now she can barely move. And where once she would have wrapped me in this huge bear hug, now it seems like the couch is going to swallow her alive.

And I know that I’m supposed to go and sit at her feet and hug her and kiss her and hold her hand and say goodbye. But I want to run. I don’t want to see her like this. I don’t want to even make eye contact with this woman that I loved so dearly, because if I do, maybe death will reach out from over her shoulder and touch me too.

She says, “So where are we going for dinner?” I look at my mom with horror because I don’t know what food goes with dying. And my mom says, “What are you in the mood for, Aaron?”

I say, “Well, we could just call the local Chinese restaurant and I’ll go over and pick it up.”

And my grandmother, dying of ovarian cancer, pulls herself to the edge of the couch and straightens herself up and says, “My grandson doesn’t eat take-out food with me.”

And that’s how we end up carrying her off the couch, down the steps, into the car, and driving 30 minutes to the closest Japanese restaurant. And we sit in a booth by the window.

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When it comes her time to order, we all kind of hold our breath. She hasn’t managed solid food in weeks, and she can barely do a sip of water because of the pain. But she looks at the waitress and she says, “I’ll have a Sapporo. In a mug, please.”

And we eat and she drinks half of her beer. And she tells us about the time that she and my grandfather went to China, and how they traveled through Siberia on the railroad and all these incredible stories—and for a moment, there’s no death. There’s no cancer. There’s “We’re all immortal. Time stretches out forever.” There’s a moment like that in every meal, if you pay attention. It’s there, where oblivion is replaced with infinity.

And then we go home. And it’s time to do that thing that I’ve been dreading. Saying goodbye. We do it outside her building. And she hugs me and she kisses me and she cries a little bit. And then we do it—we say goodbye. And I’m waiting for the dread, the icy cold hand of death on my heart, but I don’t feel it, because she’s built this shield around me. The meal has been this shield.

A few days later, she’s sitting on the couch next to her son and her husband, and she says, “It’s time.”

And they help her to the bed, and she says, “Do you think there’s a heaven?”

My grandfather says, “I don’t know. Are you scared?”

And she says, “No.” And then she closes her eyes and dies.

When it gets too much for me, my therapist, Karl, told me I’m supposed to look over my shoulder and say, “Hello, Death. Nice to see you again.” My therapist is a genius samurai warrior poet with an MSW, but he’s wrong.

The last lesson my grandma Ruthy taught me is that when I stand on the edge of infinity, it’s that it’s not enough to say, “Hello, Death. Nice to see you again.”

You have to say, “Hello, Death. Nice to see you again. Listen, before we go, I’m going to have one more beer.”

Aaron Wolfe, 40, is a filmmaker and a writer. He lives in Belmont, Massachusetts.

Told live at a Moth show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in New York, NY

The week of April Fools’ Day of 1981 began badly. That Sunday night, my husband told me he was leaving me. He had fallen in love with one of his graduate students, and they were headed to the tropics the next day.

I was completely devastated. It was totally unexpected.

He gave me a new vacuum cleaner to soften the blow.

It was the middle of spring quarter at Berkeley, so the next morning I had my class as usual. It was far easier to teach it than to explain why not, so I dropped off our daughter, Emily—who was five and three quarters years old—at kindergarten. I headed to school and taught my class.

I made it through the day and around three thirty headed back to pick up Emily from school.

We got home, walked up the stairs, opened the house … and it was absolute chaos.

Someone had broken in. Everything was completely trashed.

I called 911, and a young police officer went through the house. I had no idea what had been taken and what hadn’t, because my husband had taken many things with him the night before.

I explained that to Officer Rodriguez, and he said, “As you figure it out, make a list.”

Then he went upstairs with Emily. They opened the door of her room, and it was 18 inches deep of just chaos. The bed had been pulled apart, curtains pulled down, drawers all dumped out. ­

Emily—five and three quarters—looked at Officer Rodriguez and said, “I can’t tell if the burglars were in here or not.”

And Officer Rodriguez, to his eternal credit, did not crack a smile. He handed her his card and said, “Young lady, if you discover that anything is missing, please give me a call.”

So now it was Monday night. I was scheduled later that week to give a presentation in Washington, DC, to the National Institutes of Health. It was terribly important. I had not done this before. It was my interview for my first large grant on my own.

The plan had been for Emily to stay with her dad and for my mom to come out, arriving the next day to help out.

My mom, who was living in Chicago, didn’t know anything about the events of the previous 24 hours, so I thought, I’ll just wait and explain it to her when she gets here.

So the next day we picked up my mom at San Francisco Airport, and driving back to Berkeley, I explained to her what happened on Sunday.

She was very, very upset. She said, “I can’t believe you’ve let this family come apart. I can’t believe this child will grow up without a father.” (Which was never true and has never been true since.)

By the time we got home, she was extremely agitated. After a couple of hours, she said, “I’m going home. I just can’t imagine that this has happened. How can you even think of running off to the East Coast at a time like this?”

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My father had died not long before. Just two months after this visit, my mother was diagnosed with epilepsy. So, in context, her reaction was not as irrational as it seemed in that moment, but at the time, of course, it was devastating.

So I said, “OK. You’re right. I’ll arrange for you to go home tomorrow, and I’ll cancel the trip.”

I called my mentor, who had been my postdoc adviser at UC San Francisco. He was already in Washington, DC, and I said, “I’m not going to be able to come.” I explained briefly what had happened.

He just listened. He had grown daughters and said, “Look, come. Bring Emily. Emily and I know each other. I’ll sit with her while you’re giving your presentation.” He had grandchildren of his own.

I said, “She doesn’t have a ticket.”

He said, “As soon as we hang up, I’m going to call the airline and get her a ticket. It’ll be on the same flight as yours. Everything will be fine.”

I arranged for my mother to go back to Chicago.

Her flight from San Francisco was at ten o’clock in the morning. We left in plenty of time, but it was one of those days when the Bay Bridge was just totally jammed up. What should have been a drive of 45 minutes took an hour and 45 minutes.

When we finally arrived, my mom’s flight was about to leave in 15 minutes, Emily’s and my flight was going to leave in 45 minutes, and in front of the counter to pick up tickets was a long, long line.

And, of course, we had our suitcases. My mom was carrying hers, and she was already fairly frail.

I said, “Mom, can you make it to your plane on your own?”

She said, “No.”

So I said to Emily, “I’m going to need to go with Grandmom down to her plane.”

My mother looked at me, completely shocked, and said, “You can’t leave that child here alone!”

Fair enough.

Suddenly this unmistakable voice above and behind me said, “Emily and I will be fine.”

I turned around to the man standing behind us, and I said, “Thank you.”

My mother said, “You can’t leave Emily with a total stranger.”

And I said, “Mom, if you can’t trust Joe DiMaggio, who can you trust?”

Joe DiMaggio, who just like us was standing there, waiting in line, looked at me, looked at my mother, and gave Emily a huge grin. And then he put out his hand and said, “Hi, Emily. I’m Joe.”

Emily shook his hand, and she said, “Hello, Joe. I’m Emily.”

And I said, “Mom, let’s go.”

We got to the plane, and my mother got on fine. By the time I got back, Emily and Joe were all the way up at the front, chatting with each other.

Joe DiMaggio had wrangled Emily’s ticket for her. He was clearly waiting to go to his plane until I got back.

I looked at him, and I said, “Thank you very much.”

And he said, “My pleasure.”

He headed off down the hall. He gave me this huge salute and wave and a tremendous grin and went off to his own plane.

Emily and I went to Washington, DC. I got the grant, and that was the beginning of the work that has become the story of inherited breast cancer and of BRCA1.

Dr. Mary-Claire King, 71, is American Cancer Society Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. She was the first to show that breast cancer is inherited in some families as the result of mutations in the gene that she named BRCA1. In 2016, she was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Barack Obama.

Told live at a Moth show at the Players in New York, NY

This story also appears in the book All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown.

My older brother, older sister, and I are in grade school. One day I come home, and I’m frustrated. I sheepishly ask my mom to no longer put Middle Eastern food in my lunch.

She and my father become quiet. He drops his crossword puzzle, they lock eyes, and my mother, through questioning, gets me to reveal that the other students give me a very difficult time when I pull out food that doesn’t look like everybody else’s. So I ask, “From now on, could we do peanut butter and jelly on Wonder Bread and an apple?”

And then my brother and sister pipe in and say they’d like the same because they were going through it as well. There were no African Americans in my school; there were no Asians. I don’t think there was anybody from India, nobody from Latin America; not as students, not as teachers, not as administrators. It was primarily a homogenous Protestant/Catholic community.

In the midst of that, our family was slightly exotic. My father’s family was from Syria; my mom’s from Palestine. We had looks that weren’t exactly conforming to what I went to school with. We had food that was different; we had holiday customs that were not the same as everybody else. Sometimes we could stick out.

My mother didn’t say too much when I brought up the lunch issue. But about a week later the teacher announces that we should not bring school lunches the following day, nor should we bring lunch money for the cafeteria, that we were going to have some sort of a special food event.

The next day at lunch, unbeknownst to me, in comes my mother with boxes and trays of Middle Eastern food. The teacher introduces her. “This is Mrs. Nimen. This is Tom’s mom.”

She pulls out the food. She starts serving the kids kibbe. This is a baked dish. You’ll find it in the homes of kings and queens; you’ll find it in the homes of the most humble people. “Try this,” she said. “Here’s some ­fataya—these are little triangular bread pies and they have meat in them, or spinach, and pine nuts and onions.” And she pulled out tabbouleh, hummus, baba ghanoush, and her homemade bread. She had baked bread for the entire class to take home.

Let me tell you about my mother: She was an artist. She dressed like an artist; she spoke like an artist; she had the attitude of an artist. She’s being charming and funny, and she’s riling up the students, and they’re laughing, and I’m blowing a gasket because a week earlier these snarky kids were making fun of everything that I’m eating, and here they are sucking down my mom’s food!

My mother did the same thing the next day in my brother’s class and the day after that in my sister’s class. Now, I would like to tell you that this ended some of the low-grade racial issues that my brother and sister and I faced. It did not. But it took a significant edge off, and she, if I think about it now, was a very early pioneer of diversity, in a very crafty way, using Middle Eastern hospitality.

Thomas Royal Nimen, 61, works as a brand developer, graphic designer, painter, and blogger. He writes about Middle Eastern culture at ilikum.org.

Told live at a Moth show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in New York, NY

I grew up an hour south of Louis­ville, Kentucky, in a town of a thousand people where nobody locks their doors, you get questions like whether you go to the Methodist church or the Baptist church, and everyone smiles and waves at everyone, whether they know you or not, whether they like you or not.

I came to New York straight out of college with no money. A friend suggested I move to Newark because it was an up-and-coming area just a short train ride from the city.

Yeah, he lied. Newark is the first place I ever heard gunshots. But I figured it’s just a place to sleep. I came to New York for theater, and I did it. I worked every day in a French theater as a receptionist for next to nothing, and at night I was a playwright and a director in a small theater for exactly no money. And so I really only saw Newark early in the morning and late, late at night, and I did my best to keep my head down.

The problem was I had to go to the bus stop every day, and it was basically an HBO miniseries about urban decay. I tried to be a jaded New Yorker, but I was terrified. And so I would hide in an empty train station by myself when I had to wait for my bus to get there and run across the street when it did. And for a long time this was all right, until this one night.

I was sitting on a bench, and a homeless man sat right next to me and said, “I want some money.”

I knew the drill: Don’t make eye contact, don’t engage in conversation; just pull out some change and hand it to him.

But he wouldn’t take it. He said, “I want money, not change.”

My heart started to pound. This isn’t how this is supposed to go. I looked into his face for the first time, and I said, “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t have any cash,” and because I’m just a naturally helpful person, I showed him my empty wallet.

He saw my bank card, and he said, “There’s an ATM down the street. Let’s go get some money.”

I didn’t like the idea. And the truth was, I didn’t have enough money for the $20 minimum withdrawal. When I told him that, he became enraged. He said, “You’re gonna get me some money. You wouldn’t be the first person I killed.”

I considered running, but I’m slow, so I did what I do best when I am nervous: I started talking.

I said, “I know you think I have money. I really don’t. I don’t have it as bad as you do, but I’m sleeping on my floor right now because I can’t afford furniture, and most days I have ramen noodles and a banana, not that I’ve lost any weight since I moved here.”

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He didn’t laugh.

I said, “No offense, but if I did have money, I wouldn’t live in Newark.”

He didn’t really look all that offended by that.

And then I figured these were my last words, so I said something I’d been holding in since I moved to New York. “You know, people from home call and they say, ‘Oh my God, New York City, that’s so exciting!’ And I don’t have the heart to tell them, ‘No, it’s actually Newark,’ and I also don’t know how to say that I really hate it up here. I think it’s loud and dirty and expensive, and everybody’s always in a bad mood, and I feel like a really stupid cliché, the country girl who comes to New York to change the world with her theater.

“I’m not gonna change the world with my theater. It sucks, actually, and I’m probably gonna die here tonight because I’m too proud to admit that I don’t belong here.”

And then I got really sappy, and I said, “I really miss my mom! I miss sweet tea and porch swings and people smiling at me, so could you please not kill me so I can see those things again, please?”

I hadn’t looked at him in a while, afraid of what I would see, but I had to look. And his face had completely transformed, and he moved toward me and pulled me into a bear hug. You know, it was my first human contact in months. He said, “You’re gonna be something great one day. Don’t you leave New York City.” And he got up and walked away.

The next day, I went out and I bought pepper spray, but I also started dropping my guard a little bit, because I couldn’t stop thinking, What made this guy go from wanting to kill me to wanting to comfort me? My theory was we were both sick and tired of our bubbles, you know? I was tired of not looking at the people and the things around me because I was so afraid of how different they were from what I knew. And I bet he was probably tired of people never looking at him.

Randi Skaggs, 41, is a middle school language arts teacher, writer, storyteller, and mother. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Told live at a Moth show at Headliners Music Hall in Louisville, KY

One hot day I was playing with the kids next door, and I found out that in other people’s houses older kids had later bedtimes. I was five years old, and my sister Lisa was two years younger.

I go to my mother with my newfound information, and I advocate for policy change. I am denied.

This big-sister thing is not what it’s cracked up to be. Every time we do something that we’re not supposed to do, I get in more trouble. Everybody’s always paying attention to her—she’s little, she’s cute. And we have to go to bed at the same time. I’ve had it!

So I go to my room, and I take my white vinyl Partridge Family sleepover suitcase, and I put it on the bed, and I start to pack. Into the suitcase goes Nancy Drew and Amelia Bedelia and some Barbies, and by the time I’m done, there is no room left for clothes.

But I’m leaving forever, so I know I’m gonna need a wardrobe. And I put on two pair of underwear first, because you gotta change, right? Pair of pants, pair of shorts, a T-shirt, a hoodie, a raincoat, and over it all a crocheted poncho with fringe. And I go downstairs. My mother is in the kitchen. She looks up and asks if I’m running away. I told her yes.

She’s not nearly as upset by this as I feel she should be.

She goes, “Are you going to Grandma Sylvia’s?” Which is the only other place I know. It’s not even a mile away. I can’t believe she can figure this out. She’s like some kind of witch!

I don’t answer her. I go out the front door and down the driveway. Now, remember, it’s the ’70s, and they have not yet invented suitcases with wheels, and mine’s full of books.

So with every step, I’m dragging my suitcase. I go down the driveway, left on Redwood, left on Red Oak. With every step, I’m sweating and dragging and sweating and dragging. I’m so intent on my mission that I don’t realize my mother is, like, 20 yards behind me, following and waving concerned citizens away.

Finally I get to number 73, Grandma’s apartment building. I go up the stairs, and before I even knock, the door opens.

My grandma tells me she’s very happy to see me, but I’m certainly not living there forever. And I realize my mother has called ahead and I have been betrayed.

My grandma says, “Do you want a drink as long as you’re here?”

She goes to get me some juice, and I’m taking off my layers, and my mother comes sweeping in. And she sits down in my grandfather’s wing-back chair, and she pats her lap. She goes, “Come here.” I don’t want to, because I am righteously pissed, but I’m hot and I’m five, and I get on my mother’s lap. She pushes my hair back behind my ear, and she says, “Sweetheart, what is it? Why have you left?”

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And it all comes tumbling out: “It’s not fair and all the time with Lisa I get into trouble and she doesn’t … and we should not have the same bedtime!”

And my mother, who has always known me better than I’ve known myself, takes my hot, red little face in her hands, and she says to me, “Sweetheart, I don’t want you to be so miserable.” She says, “You came first. If it’s that hard for you living with Lisa, tomorrow morning I’ll call the orphanage and we’ll send her away.”

I can read. I know what an orphanage is. I start to cry, and I beg her, “Don’t send my sister to an orphanage!” My mother reluctantly agrees that we’ll all go home and give it another try.

That night my mother feeds us scrambled eggs and SpaghettiOs for dinner, and she gives us a bath and puts us to bed at the same time, as she will for many years to come.

And Lisa and I will grow to be two halves of the same whole, through adventures and concerts and boyfriends and divorces and death and everything. But every once in a while, we’ll have a fight. And to this day, if I turn over my shoulder and say, “Mom, Lisa’s being mean to me!” my mother always answers in the same way. She says, “You had your chance.”

Terry Wolfisch Cole, 52, is a writer and storyteller living in West Simsbury, Connecticut.

Told live at a Moth show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in New York, NY

A healthy relationship with ourselves is multi-layered. It’s complicated. It consists of many, many parts—just like any relationship with anyone. And just like any relationship, there are important ingredients to cultivating a loving, compassionate partnership.

A healthy relationship with ourselves includes having a connected relationship with our bodies, according to Karin Lawson, Psy.D, a psychologist in private practice in Miami, Fla., who works with adults using a mind-body approach.

What does this look like?

We tune into our body’s cues and respond to them. For instance, we might notice that our jaw clenches and our stomach hurts every time we talk to a certain person. Responding to these cues might mean setting stricter, stronger boundaries or no longer spending time with them.

Stephanie Kang believes that a healthy relationship consists of making room for all of you—including your insecurities and imperfections. You have a “sense of wholeness and the feeling that you’re free to be your true self…” said Kang, a coach and counselor who guides her clients toward greater self-acceptance and personal transformation.

A healthy relationship also is based on curiosity and knowledge about our motives, intentions, needs, said Terina Lopez, a mental health counselor who specializes in eating disorders, anxiety, depression and identity development. It involves examining our actions and our whys—why do I feel the way I feel? —and making appropriate adjustments or changes.

A healthy relationship with ourselves is an ongoing process—again, just like any relationship. Below, you’ll find a list of ways to cultivate a kind, meaningful, fulfilling relationship with yourself every day.

Notice your inner chatter. Pay attention to what you regularly tell yourself. Pay attention to what you say when you’re facing a challenge or a stressful situation. “Starting to notice this is a great first step because it is often so unconscious,” Kang said. “Once we become more aware of how we relate to ourselves, we can reflect on what effect it’s having, and how we want to change.”

Use relaxation techniques to connect to your body. Lawson practices diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation and yoga to better hear her body. These techniques help us pay attention to subtle cues that we gloss over every day as we focus more on our tasks and to-dos. Over time, through engaging in these types of practices and taking the time to tune into your body, you’ll develop a familiar knowing.

She shared these examples: “Oh, there’s that annoying pain starting in my neck, maybe I need to go for a 5-minute walk and get some fresh air,” or “I’m feeling so numb and disconnected, I probably need to get stimulated with some aromatherapy or a call to my best friend.”

“Recognizing what’s going on physically can instigate our own care and responsiveness to our emotions, great qualities in any friendship,” Lawson said.

Check in with yourself regularly. According to Lopez, in general, “people have become so preoccupied with doing, we hardly examine how we are feeling.” However, connecting to ourselves helps us make informed decisions and actually ensure that our priorities are priorities, she said.

Lopez suggested regularly asking ourselves these questions:

• How am I taking care of myself?
• What can I do to improve my self-care practices?
• How can I make time for these practices?
• How satisfied do I feel in my personal and professional relationships?
• What changes can I make to improve the quality of these relationships?
• What is taking the most time out of my day? Am I content with the activities I’m spending the most time on? If the answer is no, what changes can I make?
• Do I feel connected to something I think is important and valuable?

Practice self-acceptance. See the parts of yourself that you dislike as part of being human, Kang said. She suggested sharing your flaws and insecurities with a close friend, or a coach or counselor. “[O]ften this leads to a sense of relief, and even the realization that the things we are most afraid to show are often super common and relatable experiences.”

Also, imagine how you’d respond to a loved one’s flaws and insecurities, and try to apply this to yourself, she said. Finally, practice self-compassion, which is a skill you can learn.

Surround yourself with loving people. “Though building a healthy relationship with yourself is ultimately something you have to go through on your own, it can help tremendously to have a positive community,” Kang said. It’s also helpful to spend time with people who have healthy relationships with themselves, she said.

Limit negative media. According to Kang, “anything that leaves you feeling less good about yourself is something you can live without.” Think about the different things you are consuming right now, and how they influence your relationship with yourself. Be intentional about what you expose yourself to. For instance, you might decide to stop buying magazines that feature articles about losing weight and getting a “bikini body.”

Explore the obstacles. “Look at what’s getting in the way of having the relationship that you want with yourself,” Kang said. She also suggested exploring past moments and situations that have hurt your relationship with yourself. How might you heal them? How might you move on? How can you navigate these obstacles today?

Our relationship with ourselves is the foundation for everything. It is “the foundation for all other relationships in our lives,” Kang said. “And you are the only person who will be with you for your entire life.” So, it’s not an exaggeration to say that building a healthy relationship with ourselves is vital and worthwhile. Maybe even urgent.