Letter to My Children: The Overflowing Privilege Bucket, Land Ownership, and Uncommodification

Dearest Beloveds,

Courtesy of cleaning chores Bean does weekly at school she now notices areas where cleaning can happen in our house (hooray the invisible/implicit becoming visible/explicit!). In addition to organizing her own room, the family has received her good energy wiping out crumb filled drawers, polishing copper pots, and sweeping pet hair off stairs.

One recent winter dark Saturday evening, your father and I sat and read on the couch by the fire.

Full of energy post dessert sugar, Bean decided she wanted to polish silver.

Dragon piped up, “I want to polish too!”

“There is plenty for both of you, just put on an apron to protect your clothing.”

It was lovely. I sat and reread Impossible Creatures in honor of Rundell’s latest installment in the series. Your father cycled between answering calls from the hospital and reading the news.

First Dragon brought over a tiny pitcher, maybe 4 cm tall, almost black with tarnish. “Momma, do you think we could use this for salt on the table? We could use it to pour the salt out?”

“Hmmm, sure, that could work, but that could be a lot of salt pouring down onto your food unless you are careful.”

Dragon looked at it again. “The sides are tall enough the salt spoon wouldn’t flip out and throw salt everywhere when it gets bumped. Maybe that could work?”

“Maybe.”

Bean brought over the newly polished salt spoon, scintillescent in the lamp light. The delicate spoon gleamed and glowed in the dark evening.

“Oh Bean, that is so beautiful. Look what you did.” She twirled back to the kitchen. I turned back to my book.

Appearing at my elbow, Dragon held several large serving spoons and forks. “Mom, should I do these?”

Bean came over holding a tall ornate candlestick. “Mom, should I do this?”

I dove back into dragon tales.

Wearing the red huge apron, Dragon materialized holding his latest efforts. The silverware is Art Nouveau. Freshly polished, the animate vines and flowers popped even more on the long stems.

“Momma, look at this!”

“Wow.”

As I reopened the book, Bean walked up with the candlestick. “Mom, this looks so so much better!”

“Wow, it really does. Make sure to wrap it in plastic wrap or put it in a plastic bag so all of your good work is safeguarded.”

Just as I flipped back to the book, Dragon walked up. “Mom, what is this?”

Dragon was holding in his hand an ornate foot long silver sideways dustpan, iris flowers and buds adorning the stem. “Oh wow, you found the crumber.”

Bean looked over from the kitchen. “What is a crumber?”

“In fancy restaurants with white tablecloths they clean off any bread crumbs or food debris between courses with a crumber. Once, Baba and I were in Germany at a very fancy restaurant. It was very formal and very quiet. I remember feeling as though we were the loudest people on the planet. The very solemn waiter came and used his crumber on our table. I had never seen anyone do that before. For the rest of the evening, Baba made a joke about whether you want to be someone who is de-crumbed in life, ie receiving the crumbing, or someone who is doing the de-crumbing. I remember he kept on repeating: a Crumber or a Crumbee.”

“Should I polish it?”

“Only if you want to.”

Just that morning, I was talking to the amazing folks at NEFOC Land Trust about what kind of legacy we want to leave to the two of you. Whether your father and I are willing to lease this land to a farmer who would have access to it in the long term, ie for always. Whether you two “deserve” to receive the generational wealth and abundance from our estate (oh that sentence makes me cringe, I am going to unpack that further). We spoke about uncommodifying land.

I am uncomfortable when asked by very kind humans, “How much land do you have?/Where is your pond?/How big is your field?” These are Earth’s Blessings. They do not belong to me. I am here for my span to feed the land with my love in life, my body in death, and be fed while I am here. The land is very clearly not ours. We just get to play on Her outer mantle for while.

The concept of land ownership is grotesque.

I didn’t feel this way when we lived in a house with a sidewalk - and curtains - and a walking postman. Cities pave over and distract us from the Earth’s Blessings. Without the asphalt and concrete, without the sirens and exhaust, without the neon and the noise the quiet whisper of the Earth and Her Blessings becomes a shout.

I grok Arkan Lushwala’s amazing phrase human supremacy as I read and reread his incredible books.

I learn about the role of adornment in animate human history from The Emerald podcast. Gold and silver were valued for their energetic capabilities, their utility in ceremony, not their scarcity/monetary value. Missionary Bernardino de Sahagún documented the confusion and dismay of the Aztecs at the Spaniards lust for gold in his Florentine Codex (which is digitized!). “Like monkeys they grabbed the gold. It was as though their hearts were put to rest, brightened, freshened. For gold was what they greatly thirsted for; they were gluttonous for it, starved for it, piggishly wanting it.”

This starvation from gold was apparently remarked upon by Cortes himself with his famous quote, “We Spaniards know of a sickness of the heart that only gold can cure.” This quote was recorded by Francisco Lopez de Gomara around 1552.

Nearly 500 years later, the same day I learned the word uncommodify, Dragon polished the sterling silver crumber - shining, glowing, tangible proof of this endemic human disease. 

A disease your father and I can choose to ignore. To say to ourselves, “this is just the culture we have inherited/everyone else is doing it/there is nothing we can do/it won’t make a difference anyway.”

Or not.

What fun it will be for you two to see how this unfolds.

Uncommodifying land, here we come!