Dean Moheet and Laura Robinson

00:04 Hey, my name is Laura Robinson. I am 30 years old today's date is Sunday, May 5th, and we are in Silver Spring, Maryland. And the person with me is my beilstein.

00:18 My name is Dean. Moheet. I'm 37 years old. Today's date is Sunday May 5th. We're in Silver Spring, Maryland. And Laura is my spouse.

00:32 So

00:35 We want to talk about our grandparents Lord. Tell me who are your grandparents and tell me a little bit about them Bill Murphy and Martha Murphy and they lived in Columbus Georgia for most of their life a little so pretty big town now, but it was pretty small the time but we actually called them big Bill and Polly and I think that kind of a good intro into how special they were and so we we didn't call them like Grandma and Grandpa or anything like that, but we called Big Bill Big Bill because he

01:20 He was 6 feet tall and super muscular and had this crazy long wingspan and just had this big presents. And so we called him big bill because he didn't seem grandfatherly, I guess and in the physical sense and then poly never wanted to be Grandma. So we always called her just poly even though her that was her nickname her first name is Martha.

01:54 But they weren't they were really unique couple and so they lived in this small Southern Georgia town, but they were they seemed more like they should be some Chic couple in New York City or something like that because Big Bill my grandfather was this amazing architect and Polly was very much into the Arts and fashion. So they're kind of ahead of their time and and the small house that they bought for themselves my grandfather or wanted This Magnificent mid-century modern almost like a museum essentially, so

02:39 This home really reflected their personalities and who they were.

02:47 And and it became almost like this magical place and it was almost like the home that they created that mirrored their identities was almost like this house was like another member of our family almost.

03:05 And and it's probably where I have some of my most Vivid and positive childhood memories, even though I grew up living in other homes, and I never actually lived in their home.

03:20 But it's where I have these kind of like a magical fuzzy memories that have this like special Sheen to them because they were in the special place that was full of, you know, and I didn't realize it at the time but it was full of mid-century modern furniture like Jen threesome and Eero Saarinen and things like that which you know, like you don't realize that the kid that have special at womb chair. Is there a right but but I think that really I think that added to the the uniqueness of their home that has modern and and cool as it was it never felt cold or anything. So it was almost like being in this cozy art gallery or cozy mid-century modern store.

04:10 And I can vividly remember like the specific like sensory feelings from there like the for some reason the the pantry always had this very specific smell.

04:26 And I can never I couldn't describe to you like what spices it is, but I was it's so vivid in my mind that I was able to smell it one time and Chelsea Market. I'm a few years ago and it would like hit me. I was like, holy crap. I'm in I'm in my grandparents Pantry right now, but it's it's those like in Surrey like smell and and touch memories that I have but they're also positive and they're more elevated than memories. I have and other places in my childhood, I guess because you spent a lot of time moving around. So this was like the right answer for you exactly right cuz my my dad was in the military, so

05:14 Even though we were stationed in some places for a decent amount of time.

05:18 Did I like this they're my grandparents house is really this constant for me that became is really special place in my memory. I want specifically owner. Remember a silly one or I guess it is kind of insignificant. But there's one time we were playing with bubbles out in the backyard. We were running around the pool and and blowing bubbles in each other's faces. My brother and I are my cousins and I and somehow I had gotten the the bubble liquid in my mouth and I was crying and cuz it was so awful at the time and my grandmother told me that she had the Cure that there's a specific here for it and she made me a sandwich out of angel food cake with butter in it and put like colored sprinkles.

06:18 And I thought it was this magic cure to like solve this bubble liquid problem. But I think that was kind of what was special about her.

06:31 I think I like I didn't really necessarily think of them in this like grandmotherly are grandfatherly way. They just kind of wear them and knew what they were doing. Even if they probably didn't actually know what they were doing, which actually kind of sideways into my grandfather who he used to always say rules are for people that don't know what they're doing. And I think he always kind of

07:01 He did like he was always very sure and in that kind of gets back to his like big presents that he had.

07:09 I think that was always very confident and and I at least always thought that he knew what he was doing and he was always very secure and it always felt very safe with him. Like I know he at home I guess into the hole like breaking rules thing. He let me drive when I was 13. He let me drive his like 64 relaxed around town like my mom didn't know and I was the first time I ever got to drive a car and didn't even have power steering. It's on this tiny little thirteen-year-old driving this car around town, but I felt perfectly safe because he was completely calm and

07:51 Kia

07:53 Yeah, he he didn't he didn't have a doubt in his mind that it would be an Okie thing. So like I obviously felt at ease.

08:01 But I think that kind of how do you think there is sort of attitudes in and their views cuz it's very different than I think a lot of what you've described a lot of people that maybe they were their contemporaries in that town in Georgia. If you think it's had a lasting effect on your mom and you guys so I mean he was he was this amazing creative person. He he was a carpenter Builder. He was obviously a trained architect and he would paint and draw and one thing that he would always do is you just create things out of found objects, and he could see things that other people couldn't see

08:50 And I think that creativity definitely imprinted on us and some way and my mom is a graphic designer and an artist and she's just as creative as he he is and I'd like to think that I got a little bit of that as well now that I'm a landscape designer. So whether or not it's the this design characteristic runs through our blood or if that was just because you loved him and that was what made him special or I don't know but but it definitely has has impacted me in and I mean, I I love you know, this I love mid-century modern design.

09:42 And I I like quirky fashion. Just like my grandmother was always very very stylized and and probably ahead of her time and what other grandfather's were wearing.

09:59 So yeah, I think the

10:02 Like the design and the art and architecture definitely has been a huge impact on me because I maybe maybe in a positive and negative way on it because it is like I kind of feel these really big shoes that these big Bill shoes that he he left for us. The really do seem larger than life of me. I hear you guys her sister talk about them. They're not just you guys seem like a real sense of them as people and not just grandparents seems like they were they really were never necessarily just grandparents, even though they were amazing grandparents. They were these

10:47 Two almost god-like people that you know that we're are role models that we all wanted to to be like into 2.

11:01 Yeah, I don't know.

11:03 I think they'd be proud of you and your mom.

11:13 Any other memories you want to talk about? I guess one funny thing is

11:18 My grandmother was very into fashion and

11:23 So when when she passed I got I inherited a lot of her these beautiful neck scarves one that I'm wearing right now and a few weeks ago. I had a neck injury so I had to wear one of those really ugly collars. And so to make it look not quite so bad. I put one of her scarves around it to the kind of trying to hide it and so I called my mom and told her that I was putting police cars to use and she laughed and said that the reason that Polly had bought so many of these cars is because she had had neck surgery and she used to cover her own collar. So I thought that was just kind of a weird sweet moment.

12:07 Yeah weird connection on some level of Connection to the Past.

12:18 So maybe we'll talk about you and your grandparents aren't grandparents. So so tell me like their names and where they lived a little bit of soul.

12:35 Both of the sets of grandparents. So my mom's side they lived in Glen Lyon Pennsylvania small coal-mining town grandfather's name was Peter klym and grandmother's name was Lottie Clem on my dad's side. They were the last generation that kind of stayed in the Old Country. My dad was an immigrant from Bangladesh and his parents lived in villages Bangladesh invention moved to Pakistan, which is where I first was introduced them and their names were Abdul Mohit and Marine Mohit. I think I'll talk about my mom's side.

13:16 First love, you know, cuz they're there people that it's a

13:23 You have a very strong sense of of the the people your grandparents were and I think my relationship was a bit different only knowing them as grandparents as as a little kid and so I don't have no there's so much. I don't know about my grandparents and that that kind of makes me sad on some level but I have so many distinct memories and I always got the sense of my grandparents love being grandparents. And so I think that remembering them through that lens of being a kid I think is something I think they would appreciate think.

14:00 I'm sure it was a very important role for them. So write a memory of my grandfather did that I always did have all the things. He sounded stuck with me, I think.

14:12 He

14:15 Love nature and then in solitude to some extent and they lived on the edge of this this small town with a mountain literally small white Pennsylvania mountain in their backyard, and he used to just kind of part of his daily routine is going up this very Steep Hill in and taking these walks and I remember when I was old enough to be able to actually go up the hill at that must have been eight or nine. He he finally had took me up there and it was just this time work my grandfather and I would you know, I remember him distinctly being behind me and helping me up this super steep kind of Mossy wet Hill and getting to the very top of it and you know, he was kind of like cradling me from behind any of the top and there's a sold path and then he worked in Coal Mines when he was younger and so he would always tell me kind of explain why the land was the way it was there. There was this old path on the top which was an old coal Railway and we would take these long walks along the Skol Railway path and he would point it all these

15:14 What look like kind of like just indentions in the land around us, but they were places where they were mine collapses and he would tell me about you know, what mine he worked in and then why the when this one collapse and just kind of I think it was therapeutic for him because you know, he enjoys nature. He was almost always up there himself and I think he had a lot of good and bad memories tied up in mining in that town. And then I think him sharing that with me I think was something special for him. And you know, I was a kid, I love root beer and he used to always take his little pocket knife out and go up to like birch trees and shave a little bark off and let me like smell that the birchbark and it was it smelled just like the glass eyeglasses like the best root beer you could ever possibly have and I just I couldn't have the kid I couldn't get enough of it until he always had this he seem to get

16:11 Can I like I kicked the artists like a strange kick out of it and you know, it security was all about me. You know, you you wanted I want to go on a cycle. When is Father's Root Beer? But it seemed like he was it was it was a good way from get to know me and I am overweight always kind of walk along this path and come to the other end of town walk back in along this kind of Old Main Street, and we would pop into this little store and he always buy me a Birch Beer. It's a little like local soda Birch Beer thing and I get to walk down the street and had a drink the slaver. I've been smelling in there and I didn't just for some reason that that smell and that taste is so tied with like childhood memories now roaming the city and having your solo time. So I feel like that's kind of its way in me somewhere, you know, that was his influence even though I didn't really know how much as

17:11 I'm so human adult. He kind of had that influence to me. And what about your grandmother? Grandmother Vlade? You know she was

17:22 She loved to bake and spoil us grandkids. And I think one of my attic most grandmother's do but in her own way, she

17:34 I think she started baking probably a week before we arrived and she would have not even kidding probably a dozen types of of cookies and random things, you know, just to spoil his kids rotten in at some point. She found out I liked.

17:48 I done to face right like lemons and limes and so she made a lemon sponge cake in it. And is it like an 8 or 9 year old kid lemon sponges is you know, it's a very it's a weird name in and I we had this kind of

18:02 Little back-and-forth report that we would repeat, you know a little bit a little bit and I didn't realize it was a bit at the time but she like indulge me with it. I always feel like she but he want some lemon sponge pie and I and I like lemon sponge. Is there a sponge in it and she would kind of have this little chances this funny voice. It's like a cross between like Marge Simpson in the Yoda and see what kind of go to Chicago and she wouldn't you like you taste the sponge the end and it was just like a silly little interaction in like 5 minutes later and ask her. Can you answer a sponge in this may be like if you see it you date and we just kind of go back and forth in this has had

18:41 This would drive any normal human being crazy, but you know, she just she just love this little bit we did for some reason.

18:54 And you know lemon sponge pie something we still need to this day and it and it's such a small little memory and it doesn't capture even

19:04 Play it captures. So little of my who my grandmother was a personal thing she went through but you know as a kid this was kind of how I dislike sweet playful woman who wanted to like nurturing in German and it's in such a beautiful sight of her and you know, I think that's what I think she would appreciate us remembering, you know.

19:26 What about your grandparents on your other side that one so they are people we didn't get to know nearly as much and that that makes me a little bit sad to say they lived in Pakistan. We were going up in Texas and so just to Logistics of being able to get to know them were challenging but I remember traveling there we did and probably twice as when I was a kid and you know to culture shock for for a kid who's grown up in Texas and thinks of themselves as texting their told your Bengali and so sudden sudden that you end up in Pakistan and that's hard enough to reconcile on your meeting all these cousins that you you didn't know you had and there's a kids and it's high the family and they all those kids had kids and you know that it is

20:12 Family grows fast. So it's this overwhelming.

20:16 Experience and I remember there wasn't much time to really spend with with your grandparents one-on-one. But there was one moment that I really thought was that stands out to me. It's probably my primary memory of my grandfather who is I would always was told in the family in the family lawyer. He's the disciplinarian. He's the tough guy. He's a little bit aloof. He's not affectionate toward a guy so a tough person to get to know but he used kind of like the rock of the family and I remember one afternoon in between crazy family visits. Yeah. I've been had kind of upset stomach in 2 weeks and take me out to get some ice cream. And I remember we walk outside the Gate of his house and this like gold metal gate swings open and just like the sound of Karachi Pakistan like explodes at me. Right? Like it's it's dusty as a kid. I remember into such a reduction of it. But as a little kid, I just remember everything was beige and Dusty looking.

21:16 The only color I really remember Asian Dusty and there were donkeys and carts drawn by donkeys and rickshaws and buses and just who's chaos and Madness and there were no lines in the road and everything was going every direction. I remember just being completely overwhelmed and feeling completely foreign. I'm ever you know, distinctly my grandfather take my hand and lead me down this like chaotic Street and you know, he didn't speak a lot of it. He spoke enough English to communicate.

21:45 But he wasn't a talkative guy in so we're kind of waughtown Street in silence, and he just was kind of

21:50 Leading me down the street and we stopped at this card. I swear the cart was beige and Dusty and the guy was wearing a beige in Dusty Michelle war and he like it's got some money and he opens up this little tiny contain handmade wooden spoon for us and opens up this little container and it was bright green ice cream is the only thing of color I honestly think I can remember that whole trip is bright green. You didn't tell me the time it is pistachio ice cream, and I remember he gave it to me and I asked him what what flavor is this? You don't can't tell a kid pistachio. You tell me if it's good and then kind of his accent and I remember, you know, tasting it and thinking it tasted amazing and having the taste of The Wooden Spoon in your mouth and standing there on the street corner, you know surrounded by this chaos eating ice cream with my grandfather on the streets of Karachi. It's just this

22:48 This memory that really sticks with me a sweet that I feel like even though your grandfather's were so different in your relationships with them are so different that these two stories of taking walks with your grandfather's are very much mirrored and they're both just protecting you and you know, bringing you this positive experience. Maybe that's why they stuck out of my head. You know, I it's it's hard to know why

23:16 Brain decides certain things are important. You know, I can't remember so many things about so many different things but that I remember every detail of those experiences. It's your memory of your grandmother on that side. So she marine or Daddy Mom Dad about so we called them actually had to confirm that their names were Marina in school today because no one called about those names how they were done by and Daddy and Mom and I having this is also in Pakistan the same trip, you know, I was not used to the food in the water or any of these things and you know, it kind of got a little sick and

24:00 They were trying to give me some medicine and without telling me to drink the water and I couldn't take the pills. I remember thinking the pills were like bigger than my thumb. They're just impossible and none of the food. I was a chicken fingers guy or chicken fingers kid, you know, if so, what am I going to eat in in Karachi in at that time? I don't think there wasn't even a McDonald's or anything and so my my grandma you don't

24:24 I realize now that she went through some effort to try and give me a meal I can I could eat it cuz I wasn't able to keep food down and she went and found a bun that sort of look like a hamburger cuz right that's American Kids Eat Right hamburgers shirt. She couldn't find ground beef cuz that just really wasn't a thing. Yeah, that's not part of like they're tied ground beef isn't really I think it's so she decided. Well, what can I do to approximate a burger bun or a hamburger patty? And so she kind of scramble some eggs and made it into rough shape of a hamburger patty found some ketchup or something like ketchup. And so she made me a ketchup egg burger sort of as and she I remember being in the kitchen.

25:06 With her and she didn't really speak English, but you could just tell that she

25:11 She she just kind of like communicated with you without talking and I I knew that she was trying to make me happy right and she was trying to

25:22 Make me feel at home in kind of feed me into when I was sick and died in and help me out and it just was such a

25:29 I learned so much I think about her just in this little interaction without even exchanging. I don't think a word, you know, and I remembered taking this so, you know, I had my elbows on the plastic cover on their dinner table because they know plastic covers on everything and Lil Wyte thou so they like to do and I were taking a bite of this this egg burger or half-a-dozen tasting this weird ketchup that was strangely sweet and this egg that wasn't unusual texture and not being super thrilled, but then realizing that how hard she was trying to to make me feel better and I didn't want to disappoint her until I remember borderline choking down my egg burger then I think I got halfway through and I took a bite there something hard that found the giant pill they were trying to make me swallow in my food. So she was also trying to like sneaky sneaky. Give me that medicine and I just

26:25 I was actually like I just kind of bit the medicine into didn't took it down with some egg and and and Bun because I don't know I didn't want to.

26:34 Do you want to hurt her feelings, you know, and I just remember.

26:38 Dislike simple interaction we had at the table that day and in her kitchen where she spent so much time and I think

26:47 I don't know. That's just a memory. I kind of weirdly cherishable of all these things despite not knowing them really an all they've been through and your grandparents all of them would feel it like that. These are some of those memories in this is how you view them.

27:07 I think they'd be happy with it.

27:11 Because

27:13 Even though it doesn't you know, I said this a few times but I know it doesn't begin to capture everything the complexity of them is people and having not known them as adult never had the chance to know that but I think

27:28 Whether they said it or not, let me think all of them in their own way through their actions or whatever. I think they all loved.

27:35 Being grandparents right in bed being around us kids and at the end trying to make his happy and just I think there was such.

27:42 Are you could just tell with such a

27:46 I think they valued you know, I think they was something they really like.

27:53 It was an honor and a pleasure for I think I found so cocky to say I was a pleasure for you to be my grandparent wasn't it? But I think they really loved being grandparents of us kids. And I think if they would if this is what we remember them as I think that would be really important to them and not necessarily what they did for work and Mia went on all these sort of things.

28:16 Howa

28:18 How do you think your grandparents would feel you know, if they they get here these memories that you do? You still hold dear about them if it's a little different for me too, because both Polly and Bill suffered from dementia. So poly got Alzheimer's when I was in Middle School and and eventually passed from it when I was a senior in high school and Big Bill while he lived much longer. He had to mention his last in his last years and an especially for big Bill. I know that that was a struggle because you know, like what I said earlier how he was this confident man in and it was definitely there some stubbornness in the end when he couldn't necessarily take care of himself.

29:16 But I

29:21 It's not those memories of him, you know in his last few years that I that stand out to me. It's it's those of Big Bill, you know, so I think he would he would be happy to know that.

29:35 Is his a larger-than-life presence is what I remember and I know it's what my brother and my cousins remember and and my mom and my aunt cuz he was such a big person and

29:50 And same with Paul even though I think her her Alzheimer's wasn't I mean I was younger so I can't know what her struggle was like.

30:02 But I don't think hers was quite as much of a

30:08 I guess struggle with herself in her confidence the way that it was with my grandfather, but I think I think they'd be happy to know that we have all these.

30:22 Very Vivid wonderful memories of the home that they created and really hard childhood and and how are characteristics now are shaped by who they were and in the home that they had made.

30:40 I think it's really special to be able to.

30:44 Put some of that down and in history since

30:50 You know, who knows if I'll have enough time or not be able to remember this. So yeah.

31:00 I think they'd be happy to have that down. You know, you can look up the stuff that has your that big girls names on the movie theaters in their child's all that stuff it in in Columbus City that he made but

31:14 I think it would be.

31:16 Having met him I think he'd be very happy that the Impressions he made on you guys didn't slip through any crack, you know that they're they're preserved and if they impacted you with that would be really important to him.

31:32 Me too.

31:40 I love you. I love you too. Will we be there?