Aubrianna Piton
Appearances
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
And I think that it's really important to take that into every new experience, every old experience that you have. And those life lessons that the women of my family have taught me is something that I'm going to carry forever. Thank you.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
So my mother was very passionate about raising a very passionate and socially conscious child. And so while the other kids were watching cartoons and kid shows, she had me watching Rachel Maddow. And I remember as a little kid, much too little really, she would tell me the story of how the city buzzed with excitement after Obama was elected the first time.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
For context, Obama was elected in 2008, and I was born in 2006. So naturally, I did not understand what the word black president or first meant when I first heard this story. But it was important, and what I took from it is that passion, political action, and change comes from a community.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
And with those sentiments, I thought to myself a couple of summers ago, what can I do with my time this summer? And I stumbled across this environmental nonprofit called Earth Matter, which is an urban farm located on Governor's Island. And so I go to my mom, very, very excited, saying, mom, I'm going to volunteer on an urban farm this summer. And my mom said, what? Why?
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
She said, you don't even like walking on the concrete on the Brooklyn street. Aubriana, you cannot volunteer on a farm. And fair enough, I'm not a very outdoorsy child, it's true. But I just thought that my passion would outweigh my fear of trying new things. And my mom said, don't be mad when I say I told you so. And in true teenager fashion, I was like, mom, let me do what I want to do.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
So I go off to my first day on the farm. And it's 90 degrees because it's August, yuck. And they unfold this gigantic folding table, and there's this big crane that dumps off this load of garbage off the back of it. And they give me these elbow-length yellow rubber gloves. And I'm thinking, who is this garbage for? Please. Save me. Like, where am I?
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
And they tell me, your job today is to take this very, very smelly garbage and sort it into compostables, what belongs in the landfill, and recyclables. And some examples of things that are compostable are things that come from the earth, like paper and food waste and plant matter. And some example of things that are not compostable are soil tampons, dirty baby diapers.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
Yeah, really a new experience, a life-changing experience, and one that will stay with me forever in horror. And there was a lot of restaurants relocated on Governor's Island, and they essentially give all of their food scraps to us. And I'm sorting through this garbage, and I feel this little wiggle in my glove. I'm like, a little ticklish today. I don't know what's going on.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
I take off the glove, and it's a live maggot. I'm like, that's not, where am I? So I come home after my first day, and naturally, I bought this gigantic floppy hat to work on the farm. And I wanted to be cute, so it was pink. And I walk through the door, and then my mom says, how was your day, Farmer Barbie? And I'm like, mom, my day was horrible. There was a maggot in my glove.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
What's going on here? And she goes, I told you so. And I'm like, damn, she did tell me so. She literally said, don't let me say I told you so. And so I go to sleep. And I wake up the next day and I'm thinking to myself, I'm going back to sort garbage. Like, no. But you know what?
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
I'm going to bring myself to do this because I made a commitment that I would spend 100 hours working with Earth Matter and it's wrong to go back on my commitment. And at the end of the day, it's not just garbage. They insisted that the garbage was, quote unquote, resources. So I thought, you know what? I can sort through some garbage for what I believe in.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
So I go to the next day on the ferry to Governor's Island. And I don't know if you've ever been on the ferry to Governor's Island, but it's absolutely beautiful. It's this lush green space of the island in juxtaposition with the cityscape lower Manhattan. And it would be very beautiful and cinematic if I wasn't going to sort garbage for another day. Wish I could have enjoyed that.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
And I'm sitting there in my misery. And there's another group of high schoolers today who are not very excited to go sort garbage either. And their instructor is telling them, guys, what we're doing today is so important. Now there's a culture of food waste in this country and we don't think about where our garbage goes and who has to deal with it and how it impacts our community.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
And I think that's deeply true. I mean, when you throw your banana peel in the garbage, when you're done eating your banana, do you think about the methane gas that it emits once it hits the landfill? Probably not, which fair enough. And that got me thinking of the story that I experienced spending summers with my grandmother. And I wasn't a big eater as a child, and I was a picky, picky eater.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
And we're Haitian Americans, so food waste is a big no-no. And so my mom, my grandmother would serve me rice and peas, for example, and I'm sitting at the kitchen table and I didn't want to finish it. And my grandma would be like, what are you doing? We don't do that here. Like, eat that.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Growing Up
And I think about the way that she approached the resources that we've been given and the gratefulness that she had for being in that present moment and the understanding of that, that every single piece of food or not just food, but every single opportunity that you've been given matters. That's the kind of rhetoric that I try to take into every aspect of my life.