Fruit Flies

Memoir

Standing in the fully restored kitchen on the morning of his janaza, or funeral, with its floor tiles warm against my feet, I decided that what nature taught me about fruit flies.

01 May 2024 | M’Shai S. Dash | Issue 159 (May - Jun 2024)

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My father, the first person who told me that the simplest way to learn about the cycles of life and death was to observe it all around me in nature, was finally nearing the end of his own path.
Nature, albeit a fraction of it that I accidentally cultivated in my own kitchen, was about to teach me about ephemerality, grief, and death.
The spider-dangling child who had merrily let all things live was buried in her grief, and I called the pest company the day the infestation began.

The large windows in the kitchen of my new home let in the perfect amount of sun for plant-rearing. So, after some meandering in the garden section of a big-chain hardware store, I bought a yucca and placed it next to one of the kitchen's bay windows. After a few days I added a lily on the windowsill next to it and the two were fast friends, both leaning toward the glass to catch the brunt of the light when the kitchen was at its brightest. Soon I found myself preoccupied with watering them and watching them flourish, even as I accepted that I did so to distract myself from the news cycle at the time, which mainly featured a few benign fluff stories, the weather, and the national and worldwide death toll from the pandemic. In this way, the plants served their unwitting purpose. Then, the watering schedule I'd set for them shifted from a pleasant distraction to a full-blown mania that resulted in overwatering.