"Where is Home?" Angie Competes at The Moth Story Slam

December 18, 2023. Angie Bird performs at The Moth at the Theatrical Outfit in Atlanta, GA. The night’s theme was “Home”.

If you aren't familiar with The Moth Story Slams, they are a live event in front of an audience. There is a theme for the night and anyone in the audience can put their name in the hat to tell a true 5 minute story on the night's theme. 10 names are drawn from the hat and then each story is judged to select the best story of the night.

Here's a video and transcript of my first time performing.

Transcript

Where is home? Where am I from? I've heard this question a lot. 

When I was seven years old, I came home from school one day. I was so excited to be home. I ran into the house. I had my backpack on. I ran up the stairs and I was going to my room. 

I was going to play Strawberry Shortcake, everything. I had every Strawberry Shortcake doll there ever was. I opened my bedroom door and I took off my backpack and I threw it on my bed. I heard a “THUD”. It was not the sound I normally heard. Normally, my backpack just kind of landed on my bed with a soft woosh. I turned around and looked in my bedroom and the reason that my backpack made this thud is because it didn't actually land on the bed. It landed on the ground. 

The reason that it landed on the ground was because there was no more bed in the bedroom. There was nothing in my bedroom. Everything was gone. Everything. I went and I opened up the closet door, empty.  Nothing in my bedroom. I started looking around and I was really confused. 

I decided to go back out and see what I can figure out. I turned around and I looked at the light switch by my door and there were stickers on the light switch, stickers that I had put there. I remember touching the stickers and thinking, “that's all I have left now is my stickers”. My stickers are still here. I walked down the stairs and I started noticing that there's nothing in the house. Everything's gone. 

I get into the living room and my dad was standing in the living room and he's just staring. There's one blue couch left in the living room and my dad is standing there and I look at my dad and I say, “where's all our stuff?” 

He just stands there and he says, “your mother took it”. 

That was no longer my home. 

Fast forward through a lot of moves. I lived in a lot of different places. I lived in several places in Utah. Then we made a big move to Connecticut. When I was nine, I entered fourth grade in Connecticut in my ninth elementary school. 

Later on I ended up moving to Memphis. I lived in Utah again. I moved back to Memphis. Then I fell in love. I got married. We made our own home. We're fast forwarding through the years. We lived in another home and another home. Then we got divorced. Then I moved into my own home. 

Then I fell in love again to the man that I would now spend the rest of my life with. I just knew. 

And then here we are. Come 40 years forward. So now not seven years old, now almost 47 and I have another day where I come home. This time I came home from my father's funeral. 

I'd spent a week dealing with where his home was. He passed away in Arizona. He had a home in Florida. He was from Utah.  He'd lived in Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas. Where did I bury him? I figured it out. 

Then I came home from his funeral and I walked in the house to find out that the man that I thought that I would be with for the rest of my life had moved out, while I was at my dad's funeral. 

So I asked God, “where is my home?” And I thought, maybe it's this body, this vessel that's with me every day through every step of this life. This is my home that's with me every moment of everywhere I go. 

But then I thought, you know, I'm actually a soul. I'm a soul in this body and I'm here in a journey on this earth. So really, am I an alien too on this planet? Not really my home. Where is my home? 

I've decided that my home is the essence of my true being, the essence of love, the essence of forgiveness, the creation of what I'm here and my purpose in life to do, standing in my authentic truth, speaking my truth, sharing my creation and my love with the world, an expression of my true spirit and of my home. 

And as I stand here in front of you and share these truths… I am home.