In 2023, I wrote and self-published an anthology of stories about latchkey kids. I felt profoundly less alone after reading the submissions, many of which were written by close friends. It is no wonder to me now that we all found each other across years, cross-country tours, art shows, summer camps, punk shows, and jobs, thanks to our shared latchkey past. The threads of our commonality have woven together a little ragtag community of partially parented kids who grew up to be quite extraordinary adults.
These stories woke me from a kind of catatonia I had been in for over a year, struggling to manage the solitariness that holds hands with a complex chronic illness. Here I was, on the edge of fifty, finding that I had become another variety of latchkey kid once again, as solitary hours stretched into months, and months made up a year of being sealed up in my house, seeking cures for a mystery illness. The words of these storytellers shook awake my memory bank, my nervous system, my sympathy response, my caring cord, as I was simultaneously figuring out the best course of action for healing from an immune disorder and brain surgery. These writers made me want to make, do, and write again after a particularly grueling sense that I might have lost my creativity to ailment incarceration.
I have taken to guessing which people I know grew up latchkey. My presumptions are generally accurate because of a particular set of “key” characteristics, many of which are laid out rather transparently in the pages of the book and subsequent Substack. Because of what one learns to do — first tentatively and sloppily, and then with great efficiency — when you are your own custodian and governess for stretches of time, you become a special kind of magisterial wizard of adaptation and inventive solution-finding. Latchkey kids are some of the most innovative and resourceful people I know, and I am now keenly aware that I have surrounded myself with grown latchkey kids. Magnetically drawn to one another, we are that scene in the apocalypse movie when all the remaining survivors slowly find one another after some planetary disaster — one by one, across place, time, scorched earth, parental deaths, scavenged sleeves of Saltines, lightning storms, heart attacks, and high winds.
My admirable latchkey friends: You are tender, rugged, and unequivocally resilient. You are all so beautiful. Also, I’m really proud of you. Join me at Substack which is a great accompaniment to the book about growing up as latchkey kids. Both the newsletter and book feature the writings of Neko Case, Julie Novak, Christina Hunt Wood, Zia Lawrence, Jon Wurster, Michael Wilcock, Matto La Que, and more.
xo,
Jacinta
