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.