Latchkey 2024

Mariya turned the key in the loose lock of the weatherbeaten red front door, and entered the front hall cluttered with boxes, spying the backpack and big kid’s green and blue winter coat splayed out on the floor where they’d been flung as if in anger or a fit of passion. She thought about the child who had entered the house alone an hour and a half earlier, how he must have felt coming into an empty house again, silent after his day of chaotic and competing energies at school.

How he must have encountered himself in the mirror in the bathroom, and found his own image at once fascinating and intolerable and  deliriously enjoyable. She thought about his journey into the kitchen for a snack, and walked into the kitchen to see the detritus of his snack-making littered across dark green countertops, the empty large pudding container and spoon sitting inside it, the fruit snack wrapper on the floor beside the trashcan where he had missed his shot when he tossed it.

She knew he had consumed the snack hastily and gone upstairs to his bedroom, feeling the comfort of his sanctuary and at the same time the loneliness of any child at home without his family. She did not know for what entertainments or stimulants he retreated so quickly to his bedroom, usually bringing food items along with him in dishes that he would have to be hounded to gather and bring back, later.

She thought about how childhood loneliness could bleed over into many things, into a generative sort of boredom that could give rise to new inventions and new ideas, new awareness of the world beyond his immediate comprehension. Or it could bleed over like ink into depression, the sort of paralyzing numbness that leads so many tween and teenagers today into a world of Tiktok and online chatting with strangers and spending more and more time in bed under the covers, in an infinite feedback loop of nothingness signifying nothing.

Mariya looked up the staircase, wondering which pathway her younger child’s loneliness would take. What is the desire path of loneliness in a child? And can it be influenced? Should it be? The child rarely discusses his feelings, but when he does, she is encouraged. He spins questions out of the oceanic currents of his emotions, out of his encounters with adults, with kids his own age, out of his observations of kids and popular culture and television. 

She thought, one day, if all goes well, this twelve year old will be at the edge of a transition into college life that will quake through her being, through all of her days with its seeming finality. She looked back at the boxes in the front entryway, at the unused toys and partly-used children’s books and musical instruments set to be given away or sold, and thought about the change that was about to quake through the children’s lives — the moving out of their childhood home. They will never have another childhood home. This is the one. This is the house they may drive back to with their beloveds and besties one day, to show them, this is where I grew up. Until I was seventeen, until I was thirteen. The twelve year old will move with her, but he will not settle into the next home as much as this house where she gave birth to him.

Mariya considered leaving the backpack and coat on the floor, considered letting the boychild luxuriate in his long afternoon of doing god knows what in his bedroom, as recompense for her neglectful mothering. After all, she was not home when he had arrived from school. Again. Because of her job.

But, she thought, his muscles know only how to fling off his backpack and coat, not how to arrange them neatly in readiness for the next day. His muscles need to be taught to do that. Leaving them, too, is neglectful mothering. She placed a foot on the bottom step and called to him, up the stairs.

First Figs

A short essay about how the beginning of fig season coincides with so many endings

I wrote this essay all in one sitting, one week in August 2023. Names have been changed to protect the privacy of my loved ones. (Since our privacy, if we think about it, is one of the few things we are even capable of protecting. And even then, not always.)

—Mariya

First Figs

I can’t remember when figs became a minor obsession of mine in summer. I was definitely an adult, though. As a kid growing up in a colder climate, the only figs I’d ever encountered were in the dry, seedy paste inside a Fig Newton.

I think I learned when I first worked a shift at the farmers’ market in the Baltimore neighborhood of Waverly, sweat seeping into my eyes as the sun’s heat punched down through the pop-up tent, to discern which ones were ripe to bursting, from the tender bouncy way their skins give way to my touch. The unripe ones have firm skins, or a sensation of toughness when you press. But if there is a slight give under the fingertip, a slight bounce to suggest juiciness within, as you might imagine a goatskin bag filled with water would feel against your side in the desert in ancient times, then bite. When I follow this rule I am always rewarded with jammy fig fruit bursts in my mouth. I put my teeth around the entire thing in my greed, biting off the entire bulb of fig away from its stem rather than risk losing some of the flavor to a bite that could break the fig into multiple pieces, or create a messy shredding situation.  I guess you could say I’m connecting to my primate ancestry.

Getting the fresh ripe figs also requires effort; you must show up at the farmers’ market, and pay whatever the farmers are charging; you must find ripe figs in the neighborhood, growing over someone’s property line, and be prepared to either run or stand your ground and argue why this neighbor’s figs should be free, having hung so temptingly over the roadway from their yard; or you must befriend a fig grower. 

My friends, Ed and Kara, are growers of many food crops, including several perennial crops such as figs. Their urban backyard garden grew into a true farm when they purchased land from their neighbors some years ago and planted rows of sweet potatoes, tomatoes and corn on the extra quarter acre. They built eight high tunnels to extend their growing season, because Ed loved tending the greens and because they needed the extra money. They have a loyal cadre of former interns, fellow urban farmers, and neighbors who volunteer at the farm throughout the growing season, but in recent years —as Kara’s shoulder needed surgery, Ed needed various surgeries, Kara caught a bad case of Covid and fought her way from being on a ventilator back home to Ed and the farm—and they’ve begun caring for various elderly frail relatives, the farm has struggled. Ed mows the grass as often as he can, and he still (I think) weeds Kara’s pollinator garden boxes. But the kale and collards never got planted this year.

In two of the hoophouses, they have a crop of dye plants for the local artists, including indigo and marigolds climbing sunward inside the plastic roof. Those plants are doing real well. And there are a few small carrots, and herbs galore.

The herbs seem to do well in this garden no matter what -- Kara showed me comfrey leaves heavy and low to the ground in a bushy clump, and mullein growing their thin penile cones dotted with tiny yellow flowers standing five feet tall with gigantic furred, dark green leaves flopping messily outward from the stalk in a circular formation. Lots of holy basil (also known as tulsi, a medicinal form of basil cultivated in the Ayurvedic tradition of India), and three types of lemon balm. And European, fragrant basil in impressively healthy looking, four foot tall bushes. As Kara and I walked outside, I got a text from Ed, asking me to excuse the state of the garden. Ed prefers to express himself in texts. I can relate. 

But the apple trees are heavy with apples, and the fig trees are set with fruit that is slowly ripening. It’s hard to wait.

Inside the house, before this, Kara spoke to me about her mother and (recently deceased) sister, getting into a sharing mood and naming the ways that each family member have cared for her mother and sister, describing the various homes with their numbers of steps and dangers for a frail elder. In the middle of our conversation, she remembered a dish on the table, already piled high with figs. Kara whisked a paper towel into her palm, placed three ripe ones into it, and handed it to me with finality. I was to take them and no protesting. I did, and ate them one by one sitting on the sofa beside Kara as she remembered her sister, and the good times.

Our memories do gravitate to the good times, no matter how difficult a loved one has become.

I thought about the care that my parents are likely to need soon, as their health inevitably declines and diseases progress, and marveled at the natural way that Kara seems to have taken on this role of caregiver for herself and others. How she seems to have found her place in the world, as difficult as it is sometimes to be depended upon for the care and sustenance of others. It is weighing heavily now, as she mourns her sister. But I know she wouldn’t have it any other way.

I know that she relishes being a source of sweetness and relief in the lives of those she loves -- including her own. She showed me a scar on her left wrist, which she told me was a third degree burn that ought to have left her disfigured, by all doctors’ estimations. She had treated it herself using the comfrey leaves from her garden, which the doctor had said he’d never heard of. “I told him, ‘Okay’,” she said with a satisfied look. Clearly the skin had healed much better than that doctor had predicted it would. Since I’ve known her, Kara has said she uses herbs to treat her and Ed’s ailments, and uses them as a complement to the allopathic medical world’s treatments. She takes pride in offering healing plants from her garden; knowing that I love figs, she had had them on hand when I announced that I was coming over.

The taste of the figs was sweet, but she apologized that they were not as plump and juicy as they might be. And indeed, she wasn’t wrong; I know that the darker brown figs on her other tree will ripen to a bursting winebag juiciness that is unparalleled. Probably a couple of weeks from now, this will happen. But I won’t be at her house then. The honor of being her guest that day wasn’t in the perfection of the figs, or of the garden itself; it was in understanding that I was one of the beloved community members with whom she would share the first figs of the harvest—even in her time of mourning the end of her sister’s life. And for me, as well, these were the first figs of the season. They weren’t perfect, by any means. But there was sweetness there to be shared. And now I am sharing it with you.

Joy to Find

2023 was a year of seismic change for me. I had surgery at the end of 2022, and had one ovary and both fallopian tubes removed, putting a full stop at the end of my childbearing years. I changed jobs, leaving my beloved Farm Alliance of Baltimore in August and heading just around the corner to become a co-director of Impact Hub Baltimore, where we are building a base of support, refuge, and care for Baltimore’s small business owners. I got separated, and am getting divorced (amicably, in a peaceful manner) from my partner of 22 years. I turned fifty. All of these are facts. They happened, and I cannot alter them. I can only move forward in the new realities they’ve created in my life.

Since turning 50, I’ve been thinking about the ways my role in family and in the movements for peace and justice are changing along with my age. No longer am I the one to brainstorm how we build power, move in formation, change systems and worlds. No longer am I the sole executor of all the tasks needed to run a family home, or a nonprofit business, or an office. No longer do I set the meeting agenda and run the meeting. No longer do I help to organize a demonstration or write a petition or hand out leaflets in parking lots. I show up to the demonstrations others have organized. I set a course for strategic planning, and expect that others will fill in the specifics. I teach my children to cook using their own knives and ingredients that they’ve chosen for the family meal. I edit and review others’ agendas and whitepapers and newsletter writing. So many of the actions I once felt impelled to take in order to hold the center of the house, to hold the center of the job, to maintain order and keep things pushing forward — those actions are in large part now completed by others. Where do I fit?

Having accepted a position of leadership in my new job, and having little understanding or knowledge of the people there so far, I am back at the beginning. But the beginning now is still not “Mariya does all the things”. I’m incredibly thankful for the team of capable operations specialists, events planners, communications professionals, and business support techs who execute all the tasks that are needed to keep the place running. Where we are going, the roadmap to our movement-building, that part’s on me.

In my family, in its reshuffled new formation-that-is-still-forming, I play much the same role. I’m not shopping weekly or cooking every meal. I’m gently reminding the shoppers and cooks that meals must happen, and that they must be healthy and that I need to inherit a clean kitchen when it is my turn to cook or make the morning coffee. I don’t help kids with homework, I remind them that their grades are a priority as we steward their dreams toward adulthood. It’s a right-sizing of my role that has been a long time coming.

And it isn’t a moment too soon for me. My body has been sending signals that it needs more attention for some time. I will have to decide about selling this house and finding a place to live in the near-ish future. The family research and book project are not going to complete themselves. There are birds to watch, and friends to connect with, and joy to find.

Instead of New Years Resolutions, these are the guiding principles that I’m organizing my intentions around in 2024.

CARE

I’m excited to read Premilla Nadasen’s new book, Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, later this month. Caring for each other within our communities and within relationships does indeed feel like a radical act. And it’s one that all of us are called upon to perform, at various points throughout our lives. I’ve cared for my babies, my children, my spouse, my members, and I am learning to care for myself. Receiving care from others has felt like a last frontier, one that I was forced to cross when I had COVID in 2022, and again when I had my surgery. My sisters showed up and cleaned my house, a few people sent cards, people from my synagogue brought lovely food. I must remember that my role as caregiver can also contain care-receiver, and the reciprocal nature of it makes it more powerful.

GUARDIANSHIP

I’m still thinking actively about this, but I am feeling called to serve as a guardian of the dreams of others these days, rather than merely being a dreamer myself. Reader Betsy sent me this beautiful profile and interview with a Baltimore based Quaker who speaks eloquently of the importance of stewarding the heart-visions of children; I think of this with my kids, but also hold this question: How do I apply it broadly to the dreams of small business owners, and those building a world of justice and peace? What can I do to protect the work that is already happening? Not in a paternalistic or extractive way, but in a way that supports their work and allows it to continue unharmed and unimpeded by racist, patriarchal and oppressive structures?

NOTICING

I recently completed a writing exercise invented by the exceedingly generous and talented writer Alexander Chee, called Bibliomancy for the Living Autobiography in the Third Person, in which I mined the books on my shelves for quotes selected at random, and then made a list of the common themes in the quotes. One of the major themes I found was: There Is Power In Observation and Noticing. This is something I have been trying to focus on in my writing, as well as in my professional nonprofit work. Noticing things in and of itself can be a difficult thing to pin down, it is ephemeral and we always want some sort of trace or mark left by it. But in the best, flow-state kind of noticing practice, such as birding or music listening or geocaching, there is no trace except the improved and sharpened senses of the noticer. What is to be said about it, except that noticing is a form of learning, and one that feels accessible to me even as my ability to acquire new knowledge feels more tattered and faded with each passing year? Seeing things as they are, not as I wish them to be, is a discipline that I haven’t practiced nearly enough; and yet it feels to me to be the most critical one of my life.

QUERYING

Asking guiding questions that draw on my body of experience and whatever knowledge I’ve managed to gain over my five decades of life, THAT is a powerful tool. It feels like riding a tiger, sometimes, to present such questions in a group setting. I try to be judicious with the questions — i don’t need or want to shape every conversation! Maybe it will come in more handy at work than anywhere else. Deploying it with the kids is generally less successful.

DELIGHT/GRATITUDE

We who age have a choice: let the pleasures and delights of life pass unremarked and be swallowed by the impassive waters of time, or say THANK YOU, UNIVERSE for the friend or seeing a bunch of hopping frogs in a rainstorm or the orgasm or the perfect tomato or the ride home from work where you had no red lights. I am trying to choose the latter. One small thing from today that I am grateful for is the pleasure of getting to work from home and going to a pilates class at the gym, feeling the muscles in my abdomen and hamstrings shake and sweat from prolonged effort, and then hearing the instructor’s voice after class ring out in my direction: “I’m glad you came back!” 🥰 Indeed. Me too.

Love, Mariya