Jennifer McCarthy and Teriyana Morton

[00:07] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: I am Jennifer McCarthy. I'm a 52 year old woman. Today's date is Wednesday, July 27, 2022. And we're here in Moses Lake, Washington. I am speaking to Teriyana Morton, who is a fellow first born child and as such, an immediate family member kind of in a broader sense, I would think. And she is the facilitator at StoryCorps.

[00:41] TERIYANA MORTON: Hi, my name is Teriyana Morton. I am 28 years old. Today's date is Wednesday, July 27, 2022. We're here in Moses Lake, Washington. I'm here with Jennifer McCarthy, and she is also a fellow firstborn and Storycorps partner, and probably by the end of this, a new friend. So, Jennifer, I'm really excited to hear your story today and just hear different things about you and your perspective. So I want to start with, where were you born?

[01:10] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Thank you, Teriyana I was born in 1970 in Massachusetts at the Quincy City hospital in Quincy, Massachusetts, although my parents at the time were living in south Weymouth. So that is where my birth certificate is located. It's in Weymouth.

[01:31] TERIYANA MORTON: So where did you grow up?

[01:33] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: So I grew up a little bit south of there on the coast south of Boston, in a town called Marshfield. Marshfield was founded in the 17th century by Puritans and used to be a shipbuilding town. I mean, it's a beautiful, beautiful place on the coast.

[01:52] TERIYANA MORTON: What was your experience like as a child growing up there, especially as a firstborn? I'm curious about that.

[01:57] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Well, my father was a fellow, was also, my father, Paul McCarthy. He was also a firstborn of three, and he was a baby boomer. He was born north of Boston, or where was he born? I think he was born in east Boston. I don't know. He was born somewhere in Boston, and my mother was a last born. So anyway, as far as birth order goes, I'm not sure how much that had to do with anything. However, my dad. Well, my parents were just very loving. I was the oldest of three children, and I was always the one to, you know, direct play when we would play school or things like that. And that's how I think I figured out from a very young age that I wanted to be a teacher. And we always would play school, and I'd always be the teacher. We'd have neighbors over, and I would be the teacher.

[02:50] TERIYANA MORTON: That's so interesting. Did your parents, like, encourage that side of you?

[02:54] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Very much so. My mother had gone to college at University of New Hampshire, and at that point, when she was in college in the sixties, a woman was only expected to either be a teacher or a nurse. So she became a teacher and only did it until she and my dad got married in 1968, and then they started the family in 1970. So she. My dad, however, is a very good teacher. He's a labor union consultant and organizer. And anyway, I think that both of them recognized that I had something going with the teaching thing.

[03:37] TERIYANA MORTON: It sounds like you really got into the. The art somewhere along the way as well, like, with your interest in music and languages. So, like, did that sprout from teaching or.

[03:48] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: No, that really sprouted from my parents. They're very musical. My mother sang and played banjo in a little group that still meets there, a group of women, and many of them were teachers. And they would meet and play their instruments, guitar. My mom played banjo, and they'd sing songs. They would go out to nursing homes. They'd go to schools. I remember being in elementary, maybe fourth grade, and my mother and the rest of the group, which were called the apron strings. The apron strings were all on the stage of my middle school class, my middle school auditorium, and they were singing. And I just remember being so embarrassed. I don't know why, but when I was in fourth grade, I was. My dad, on the other hand, plays guitars, very talented. He and my mom would sing at events in town where I grew up. You know, it just was something that we did. And then I had a lot of interest in music. So when I was six, my dad gave me a banjo ukulele that I believe he built. And my mom took me with her to her banjo lesson, and I got. I started ukulele lessons at that point, when I was six years old. So my parents always promoted music, and I just really always loved it. And my grandmother had a piano. I would always play that piano when I'd be at her house. We eventually got a piano, and that just became a real fun hobby for me. And then when I was in fourth grade, I started violin lessons and continued playing violin, getting pretty good, you know, in a regional competition. I was rated pretty well, and that was fun. Played it through middle school and then in high school, when I was a freshman, I was in the orchestra. But unfortunately, I was in a car accident in December of that year, my freshman year, and fractured my skull and was put in a medically induced coma. When I woke up after three weeks, I was paralyzed on the left side of my body. So I had to give up the violin because I had a lot more things I had to worry about at the time. You know, I had to relearn how to walk, how to do everything. And I didn't take up the violin again until recently, actually, about five years ago, when we had a new music instructor move into town at the college where my husband and I both teach. He started a community orchestra, and I borrowed a violin from the. From the college and started practicing. And, oh, my gosh, I could play. I remembered. So I was able to play again, and it was amazing.

[07:00] TERIYANA MORTON: That's really incredible. I'm really curious, jennifer, we can go back to the brain injury.

[07:05] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Sure.

[07:06] TERIYANA MORTON: Can you tell me what that experience was like for you? I know that, like, it kind of, like, went into something happier with you, got to play again. But, like, can you tell me more about what was that experience like?

[07:15] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Okay, so I was a freshman in high school. I was in my first play because I was also a theater geek musician, you know, loved music, loved theater. So I was in the drama club, and it was my first play. And we were doing the bad seed, which is a play about a is the question of, is it nurture or nature? And it became a movie back in the fifties or sixties, but this was the play it was based on. And so there's this little. This kid of the family, and he's actually just a really evil character. And I played that kid, that kid's mother, who was an alcoholic, so I didn't have many lines, and I had never drunk in my life, so I didn't know how to pretend to be drunk. But anyway, that was my role. I played it twice. And then on the last night of. Or the. Yeah, after the show ended, that last night, I was in the backseat of a car driven by a senior in high school. The first time my parents had ever let me go on my own in someone else's car. And unfortunately, within sight of the school, she ran into a telephone pole, and I was in the back seat. It was a vw bug. And I didn't have seatbelts because there were no seat belts. And I was the only one who got hurt. But I was really badly hurt, and I had fractured my skull. And according to my friend Jason, who was also in the play and was on scene when the police, when the firemen came to get me out, they had to use the jaws of life to open up the car like a smushed can. And then they got me out, and he said that I had blood coming out of both ears. And so then my parents, my poor parents, they got that call late at night. This is, again the first time that they had ever let me go on a drive by themselves or by myself or on, you know, with another teenager. And. Yeah. And so I. They went to the hospital to see me. My brother was at a friend's house that night and heard about it the next day. My mom said he just collapsed in tears, and it was a rough time. And so I was in a medically induced coma for three and a half weeks. And I vaguely remember waking up from that. I remember having my hands on these braces, these plastic braces, to kind of keep them open, because when someone's in a coma, they tend to, like to your extremities, your digits tend to curl up. So these were to keep my digits open. But I remember brushing my face with that plastic thing. I remember that. I also remember pulling my nose tube out, pulling my catheter out. So this was when I was waking up from the coma. And they must have let me wake up because during the coma, it was my mother would come. I hear my mother would come, and my parents would talk to me, and the pressure in my cranium would go down when I'd hear my parents voices and they would play music.

[10:48] TERIYANA MORTON: Wow.

[10:49] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Yeah. And so once I woke up from that coma, I was paralyzed on the left side of my body. And I still remember, I mean, really remember not having any feeling on the left side of my face and the left side of my tongue. You know, I wasn't looking my left. So anyway, my mom would come give me a popsicle, which was something I liked when I was waking up. And she would. I think she would stand on the side, on my left side just to get me to turn to the left, you know? Anyway, then after the main hospital, I remember getting very car sick in the ambulance that took me to the rehabilitation hospital. Then I was in the rehabilitation hospital for about three months, and I learned how to do everything again there. I had speech therapy, I had occupational therapy and physical therapy.

[11:48] TERIYANA MORTON: It sounds like you were meant to be incredible from birth. Like nothing could stop you to relearn all of those skills at a crucial time in your development and still go on to learn languages and study abroad.

[12:04] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Well, luckily, I had started French in 7th grade.

[12:08] TERIYANA MORTON: Oh, wow.

[12:08] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: So I think I had already built up a lot of really strong neural pathways in my brain, because when I started French in 7th grade, I was absolutely over the moon. I loved it. My 7th grade teacher did not like me. That I remember, and I will not even mention her name because you never know. But my 7th grade teacher of French really didn't like me. And I think it might have been because I just was so good in it, you know, it just came so easily, maybe, but, yeah, so I had started taking it 7th and 8th grade. Then the accident happened in 9th grade. The summer after I got out of the hospital, my soon to be sophomore french teacher, Madame Darlene Cullen, who I adore still. Darlene would come over and I would sit out on the porch with her that summer, and I just did french exercises in a workbook and basically to finish out the first year of French and did very well. And it was really fun. So I got, you know, I finished that. I finished some of the other classes, and then I started in the. At high school again as a sophomore, but I started on crutches because my balance was off and back in 1984, or at this point, it would have been 85. People didn't. I mean, the understanding about people with different abilities and stuff was not there. And our high school had stairs. I had to climb stairs. And I remember wearing flip flops, and I, like, stepped right out of a flip flop going up the stairs with my crutches. And it was just so embarrassing as a 15 year old, you know? But anyway, I. Yeah, I was. I mean, all I could do was keep on being awesome because that was just who I was. And I guess I. My parents did. Told me that you can be just like you were, Jen. You're okay. You're all right. I mean, because really, at the time, they didn't really understand how much of an effect a traumatic brain injury would have. But at the same time, they also. Their belief in me really helped sustain me, and I didn't know there was any other option, so I just kept pushing ahead.

[14:41] TERIYANA MORTON: That is so beautiful. Your parents sound like rock stars.

[14:45] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Yeah, they are. It was not an easy thing. That could not have been an easy thing.

[14:50] TERIYANA MORTON: So with all the love you had and the cultural awareness and, like, just witness to, like, all this. These different creative things going on around you, how did you take that with you outside of college? Outside of high school, I mean.

[15:04] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Okay, well, I embraced the idea that I could do anything I wanted, and it didn't matter that I had a brain injury. And I got involved. Involved in the AFS club, the American Field Service Club. That was my french teacher's baby at the high school. And so I became part of that. And we did, like, we supported, excuse me, exchange students. And that turned me on to the fact that there was such a thing as an exchange student. And so my involvement in that group led to my applying for. To be an exchange student my senior year of high school. And I ended up going to Sweden and spending my senior year of high school in Sweden. And could you remind me what the question was? Because I kind of came off how.

[16:02] TERIYANA MORTON: You expanded all those interests. So you're basically answering, so you went to Sweden.

[16:06] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: So I went to Sweden, and when I was in Sweden, I joined a extracurricular, extracurricular group called Platens Pipare. And it was an early music group. It was really fun. And so some people would sing and we'd all. We'd do all this early music. And then I played guitar and, you know, in the group. That's what I did. And we ended up. That was a wonderful opportunity because we ended up taking our. Our show on the road. And we went to Carnevale in Copenhagen, Denmark. And we marked. We paraded and played music and in Carnival, you know, for Mardi Gras. Oh, it was great. It was really neat.

[16:50] TERIYANA MORTON: Is Sweden the only country you've been to?

[16:52] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: No, I started off in Sweden in high school. And while I was in Sweden, I turned 18 in Rome, Italy, because, yes, I was on. I went. I got to go to Rome. We took a bus. We drove to Rome. It was really something else. And I was with the group ahead of me a year at the Yamnaziat, which is what the high school was called. But as an exchange student, I was allowed to do that. So that was really fun. I got to go to Rome, Italy. While I was there, we went to Leningrad. It was still the Soviet Union. That was a different trip. And that was actually in October. It was with the organization. I was there as an exchange student with. And we all went. We took this trip. We took a ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki, Finland. We took a bus from Helsinki, Finland, to Leningrad, USSR. We stayed in a hotel. But it was the weekend before the 70th anniversary of the russian revolution. And so there were banners up, and we saw soldiers practicing marching and goose stepping. It was just something else, you know, we saw the Leningrad circus. I saw people standing in line at bread lines. Well, this is what I thought. Bread lines. It was very interesting. So let's think. I went to Italy, and I went to the Soviet Union when I was in Sweden. I also in Denmark when I was in Sweden. And did we go to Norway? I don't think so. I also went, though, at the very end of my stay, my host mother took me and my host sister north of the arctic circle. And we saw the midnight sun.

[18:49] TERIYANA MORTON: Oh, my word, yes.

[18:51] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: And we marched up to. We hiked up a ski slope at like 11:00 at night. And we were up there by the midnight. By the midnight sun. And I remember so well, there were these chinese diplomats had come, and they were from Stockholm. You know, they were chinese diplomats. They were so excited to see the midnight sun as well. I just remember that they're, oh, this is a happy day. This is a happy day. We get to see the midnight sun.

[19:23] TERIYANA MORTON: This is super funny.

[19:25] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: This is cool.

[19:26] TERIYANA MORTON: You did all this, like, before the age of 21?

[19:29] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Oh, yeah.

[19:30] TERIYANA MORTON: I'm like, wow.

[19:31] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Yeah. And, yeah. Thanks. And so. And then I come home. I came home. Oh, while I was in college. I mean, while I was in Sweden. It was my senior year, so I had to apply to college. And I my, I had kind of off, off, offloaded my decision as to where to go to my parents. I asked my dad, dad, where do you think I should go to college? Mount Holyoke College. This was his dream for me because it's just such a good school. And in Massachusetts, that's such a storied history, such a good place. He. My dad got his master's degree at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which was within the five college system in western Massachusetts. Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. So that's where I was applying. And I was applying early decision because I was in Sweden. I wanted to just make it quick, you know, I wanted to get it all taken care of. Well, my father. This is a funny long story, but it all makes sense. My father had written me a letter that year. We both had cassette tapes of Paul Simon's Graceland album. We both loved it. Loved it. Just loved it. My dad wrote me a letter while he was listening to the song Graceland, and he interspersed his paragraphs with lines from the song. And I just really liked the way that worked. So when it came time for me to write my essay, to get an early decision at Mount Holyoke, the question I was supposed to respond to was, a friend has asked you to recommend a piece of music or a work of art. What would you recommend and why? Well, I recommended Graceland, and I did it exactly like my dad's letter. You know, I just kind of interspersed lyrics and things like that. I was so excited, so I called my father and I was like, dad, I wrote my essay from Mount Holyoke. Oh, good. What did you recommend? I. I said, graceland. Oh, Jennifer. He said, jennifer, this is Mount Holyoke College. You know, you should be, you know, classical music, or I was like, dad. No, this is what I'm doing. Well, needless to say, I got in early decision on the basis, I think, that. I'm sure my essay helped. But. So anyway, I got into Mount Holyoke. I came home, I worked that summer in McDonald's, which is kind of funny, because I would. At the beginning, I would speak Swedish to friends, and then I'd be like, oh, wait, wait. No, no, no. We're back. And then I went to college, and, oh, you know, I studied French, and then I also studied German. I thought, oh, major in French, minor in Germane. But by the time. And then I went to France. My junior year of college, I spent in Paris with a program and also studied at the Universite de Paris Quatre, which is La Sorbonne or the Sorbonne, where I studied french literature and swedish literature. And then with this program I was with, I studied french art history. Anyway, and then I came back. So senior year, I decided to double major, because I was so close to a double major, I just decided to take the extra german classes. I ended up double majoring and graduating with honors. In 1992, my senior year of high school, though, I decided I needed to go back to Europe. So I thought, because during college, I had worked two summers teaching English to non native speakers at a Boston school of modern languages. In Boston, I decided I could take that skill of teaching English abroad, and I ended up getting a job at the Visoka Skola Economitska, athenae namnias di vin stona Churcila, which is on Winston Churchill place in Prague. And so I taught English there for a year. And while I was there, I also got to travel. I mean, I'm almost embarrassed to say how many places I travel. When I was there, it was so awesome. I went back to Sweden. I went to Berlin. I went to. I went to different places within Prague. I went to Croatia to visit. No, I went to Slovenia to visit a couple of former students that I met in Boston. They took me into Croatia one. One day, which had been in a war, so. Oh, that was very interesting. Yeah, just.

[24:43] TERIYANA MORTON: It does sound like.

[24:44] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Yeah, I mean, the journey of a lifetime. It was awesome.

[24:47] TERIYANA MORTON: Where does your husband come into play with that?

[24:49] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Like, funny. Once I met my husband, it was time to. Well, he allowed. My husband has given me what I need to kind of round out my. My life, and that would be like starting a family, having a family, having a career, and having him just as a real support. And I also have been performing music with his support. I mean, I feel the two of us are very much best friends and partners. Life partners. But. And we went. We spent a nice honeymoon in Europe. We. We spent three weeks. We spent two weeks in northern Italy and one week in Sweden visiting my host family. But unfortunately, we haven't been back since then because then, you know, we moved here to Moses Lake, Washington, and he started his career at the community college, where he is a full time senior tenured philosophy and religious studies instructor. I have been teaching French and German in alternate years since 2007. And we have two kids who have. We've seen go through high school, and, you know, we're just. My husband and I are definitely ready to do some more traveling.

[26:18] TERIYANA MORTON: That is so interesting. What do you think your next chapters will take you? Like, where are the next steps for you?

[26:25] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Well, we are looking to make some improvements on our little house, because we're just really glad not to be renting right now because the market is so horrible, and we're. You know, we're. I'm playing music out in public more. I'm singing. I have my first professional gig in August. I was hired. I'm being hired to perform 2 hours of music at a. At a healthcare facility for their luau, which will be really fun. So I'm just. And then I'm also playing ukulele for the city and for different events, kind of leading ukulele jams and sing alongs. So I feel like just doing that, increasing that, and I definitely am looking to get back to Europe, hopefully in the summer of 2024. I'd really. I'm really looking to find a good program in Germany where I can just work on my German language because my French is much better than my German because I lived in France. German is good, and I do teach that to my students, and it's good enough, but I feel like I could be better. So that's what I'm looking at is my husband was like, can I come with you? And I said, no, you can't, because I need to be there and be able to just speak Germane so I don't have to, like, translate everything. I need to just be there, you know? So for now, he's not coming, but who knows? Maybe he'll come at the end for a little visit or something. I don't know.

[28:12] TERIYANA MORTON: And you have. You have children, right?

[28:14] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Yes, I have two children.

[28:16] TERIYANA MORTON: How have they adapted in this world? How do you see yourself in them?

[28:22] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Like, I feel like I see myself and both kids in different areas, but they're both very much their own kids, and they're both very much their father's children. They're much more introverted than I am, and that has been a challenge, because when my daughter was young, I would accept play dates because I wanted to talk to the mother, and my daughter would be like, oh, we have to go. And I'd be like, yeah. And then I felt bad about making her go when she wasn't having fun. So that that has been a challenge. And I think I wrote in my introductory essay that one of my greatest accomplishments in life really has been to allow my children to just be who they are and not who I wanted them to be or who I thought they should be. Because if that had been the case, I would have been like, no, no, no. You should be much more outgoing or whatever, but they're not, you know, so that's been challenging. But I see myself in them, in that they're both extremely kind, loving people. Of course, it's also my husband, because the two of us are very kind and loving and very smart. My daughter, I must say, my daughter takes after me linguistically. She is going to be a junior at Western Washington University, double majoring in chinese language and culture and linguistics. So it's funny, she is a real combination of her father, who's much more linear minded and mathematically stuff, and her mom, who's languages and stuff. And our son is into computers and coding and whatnot, which I don't understand. Neither does my husband. He is his own kid, but he. Again, great kid.

[30:26] TERIYANA MORTON: It still seems like they did pull that creative side. Like, they're just doing it in their own way.

[30:33] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Exactly.

[30:34] TERIYANA MORTON: So cool.

[30:35] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: It is.

[30:35] TERIYANA MORTON: Speaking of challenges, like, you were talking about, like, introverts and everything, I'm curious, like, how did you navigate the pandemic with your creative self?

[30:46] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Oh, God, it was hard. It was hard. My. It was. We laughed that. It was like my. Our son had been training for this his whole life, just being alone, you know, because that's. He loves that. That's. That's where he gets his energy. Me, on the other hand. Oh, gosh, it was rough. That's why I started my family zooms. I would call my parents, my brother, my sister, and we do a zoom every month. And then I really poured myself into virtual meetings and stuff. I played dungeons and dragons for a year with my husband and his friends or our friends from work, just so I'd have a social life, so I'd see people during the week because we were locked down in a very small house. It was. It was tough, but I'd go out shopping. That would be my big. You know, and I'd talk to people out in the stores, and that would just kind of give me some energy. It was rough. It was definitely rough. And there were times when all four of us would be in our separate classes online at the same time behind closed doors or me out in the living room. It was. It was. I'm just so glad we survived it. And we did. We got closer as a family. So there you go.

[32:15] TERIYANA MORTON: That's extraordinarily beautiful. Thank you. Jennifer, I feel like I've learned so much about you in this short amount of time, just from your family background to your I. Your travels to your interests, to just everything. Is there anything that you would like to highlight in yourself or about any topic that will make you feel complete in this conversation?

[32:39] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: I met Jimmy Carter when I was living in Prague. I had. My friend was the. He was a security officer at the embassy and invited me to meet Jimmy Carter at the ambassador's residence. So I got to meet and shake hands with Jimmy Carter and Rosalind Carter when I was about 22 years old. And he's one of my idols, so that was really cool. What else can I say that I haven't said? I don't know. I just. I really have. I'm just glad to be alive and healthy, and I'm glad my family stayed healthy. None of us four have caught the virus, which is great because our son has type one diabetes. And so we were isolating big time during. During COVID but I'm just glad that's kind of over. And I'm looking forward to being in front of my french students for the first time since 2019. Because I taught a year of French. It was 100% online, and I'd meet with them on Zoom, but it's not the same. So I'm really excited for that. Can you ask me a question? Yes. How would you like for people to remember you? I would like people to remember me as a friendly person who tried to help her fellow man, her fellow woman, her fellow child, her fellow. You know, because that's what I'm about. I got. When I turned 50, I got my first tattoo, and it's a heart and an infinity sign, because I'm all about that, you know, love. I feel like love is God. Love is what connects us all, because even if we don't think we love each other, I mean, we're all humans and we're all of the same stuff, you know, as Carl Sagan would say, we're all part we're all stardust.

[35:15] TERIYANA MORTON: Jennifer, that was an extraordinarily beautiful conversation. I'm so grateful to have been a part of it. I wish you so much. Great. So many great things to continue to pour into you. Whatever the universe has in store with you. And I hope you get to Europe in 2024. Thank you. We talk again.

[35:34] JENNIFER MCCARTHY: Thank you, Teriyana for things.