This is one of my favourite poems…  by Yeghishe Charents –  Եղիշե Չարենց

Enjoy.

I love the sun-baked taste of Armenian words,
the lilt of ancient lutes in sweet laments,
our blood-red, fragrant roses bending
as in Nayiran dances, danced still by our girls.

I love the deep night sky, our lakes of light,
the winter winds that howl like dragons exhaling fire.
The meanest huts with blackened walls are dear to me;
each of the thousand year old city stones.

Wherever I go, I take our mournful music,
our steel forged letters turned to prayers.
However sharp my wounds or drained of blood
or orphaned, my yearning heart turns there with love.

There is no brow, no mind, like Narek’s, Koutchak’s,
No mountain peak like Ararat’s.
Search the world there is no crest so white, so holy.
So like an unreached road to glory, Massis mountain that I love.

1920 – 1921

Keghart... one my favourite churches in Armenia.

 translated by

Diana Der Hovanessian and Marzbed Margossian
Ardis Publishers, Ann Arbor, 1986

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I did it.

I asked my ever enthusiastic passionate emotions overflowing little one to “speak Armenian, please…”

As she experiments with English – she knows it quite well – and goes on and on telling us stories, I, with a feeling of panic, ask her gently to stick to her Mother tongue…

I did this.  I never thought I’d say those words…

I know she’ll be completely fluent in English in no time.  Everywhere around her, life is in English.  The books we read everyday are in English. Ninety-nine percent of our friends here speak only English… mastering this language is not going to be a problem.  Retaining her Armenian, however, this gives me a moment of panic.  We are a very small community of native speakers here in this hot city in the South.  There are only a couple of us.  I don’t want her to forget her Mother tongue.  Ever.  I meet people all the time who wish they had learned Armenian when they were young and now, years later, yearn to know how to communicate in the beautiful melodic language I love so much…

Ah, child.  I know you are growing. I know you love life.  I know that joy bubbles up inside you!   I know you love to learn…

I have to remember that when I was your age, I would speak Armenian “blbooli bes”  (like a lark) mama tells me, and then for a while, didn’t speak as much anymore during those awkward high school years when life was enveloped in English: friends, textbooks, essays, novels, songs, everything…  but that didn’t last long.  My passion for my language was reignited soon after and has only grown deeper through the years.  And no one ever forced me to speak the language; I just wanted to.

So I pray this for you, my child.

Sing. Dance. Listen well.  Learn.

And grow.

Blbooli bes.

And me, I have to learn to trust more. Trust the Sovereign One who has all these larks in His hands anyway…

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Hot tea is on my mind right now.  Piping hot tea for my very sore throat…

It is funny how now, though it still feels kind of odd, I automatically make the distinction between hot tea and iced tea.  I mean, tea used to just be tea for this West Coast girl.

I remember when I arrived here for a visit, my then fiance –  now husband – and I had driven to a small town and gone out to a cafe. I had ordered tea.  ”Sweetened or unsweetend, sweetie?” our waitress asked.   I was stunned for a moment.  Sweetened or un…?  That had never been presented to me as an option before…  I wasn’t sure how to respond.  I was stuck over something as simple as tea.  (this would happen over and over again as I slowly became more and more accustomed to living in an American city in the South…  so much to learn…so many moments of being stuck…)

I really wanted hot tea; I tried to explain what I meant… I didn’t think it would be so difficult, but honestly, she looked confused.   And off she went digging in the back to see “if we have any…”   and she emerged from the kitchen with one lone tattered old tea bag, hanging by an almost yellowed string.. she swung the tea bag in front of my eyes.

“Is this what you mean?” she asked.

“Yes.”  I replied.  I gulped.  My fiance tried not to laugh.

Well, a couple of years have passed since that day…  thankfully, each time I order hot tea now, folks know what I am talking about (not sure about that small town though…)   and since that day, I have tried iced tea for the first time, and some more times since that.  Sometimes sweetened, sometimes not.  In fact, just the other day, I made my own iced tea for the very first time…  I borrowed a recipe for sun tea from a friend.   Added some mint.

And it was pretty refreshing on such a hot, hot day….

And it was cold.

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They think I am Spanish.

Here is the South, that is what we are usually mistaken for.   As we talk and laugh and tell stories in our foreign tongue, passersby always ask, is that Spanish?  I smile.  No.  I reply.  No, not Spanish (though I wish I could speak Spanish!)   Back home in the West, we’d be mistaken for Italian, Greek, and yes, Spanish too…  There were days that I was so saddened by the fact that people had never heard of Armenians.   And then there were days when I was invigorated by this very fact.  I loved that I had this treasure of a language – this rare gem…

No, friends, I am Armenian.

Here in the South, only in the South, did someone mistake Armenian for Arminian…  oh, yes.  And they thought it odd that I sang Arminian folk songs.   “I didn’t realize Arminians had folk songs…”  was this man’s response to us.  Ah, me.  I still feel a little odd, a little out of place (often a lot out of place) in this land.   In this town with a certain centre of learning that I didn’t attend, didn’t even know about until I arrived here.  In this town where everyone seems (note I say seems) to have some connection to that place of learning.  There are deep networks here… this person knows that person who knew this person… and they all went to school together and…   I don’t have that.  I have never had that.  In my city in the West, people come and go.  We are a city of transients.  I was a rarity having actually been born there.   But it was home.  It is where I sang and danced and lived.

Until God moved me here.  And now I sing here, and I dance here, and I am learning to live here.

Armenian.  Born in the West.  Living in the South.  Trying to maintain my mother tongue with my little ones.  In this town, we are one of a handful of people who still speak the language…  as I listen to my little ones carry on conversations in Armenian with one another, I am thankful and wistful at the same time…   I long for others with which I can speak this language that I love.  I long for others with which I can share my life story and listen to their life story and learn.

I haven’t “blogged” in months.  There has been so much in my heart.  So much that I have wanted to write but could not.

Until today.

Here we are.

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Today is the day that I was born.

Being a mom myself now changes how I view this day so very much.   This day really isn’t about me anymore.

Since having babies of my own, when my own birth-day arrives, I tend to think about my mama and dad.  My thoughts instantly go to them.

I picture mama in the delivery room, holding me for the very first time.  What was she thinking when she first looked at me?   I think of my dad…  pacing back and forth in the waiting room, anticipating the news…  I had arrived 3 weeks early, so mom and dad weren’t as prepared as they could have been for me…  what were daddy’s first words to mama?   I want to know.   I think of how my birth affected my big brother, who at first wanted them to send me back… but then quickly became my biggest protector…

I think of my husband, my best friend, the man who holds my heart.

I think of my own babes…. these delightful little people who have changed my heart and soul forever.

I think, I was that little once?   I was as little as my own little ones?  My mom and dad with me…  raising me, training me, singing with me, dancing with me, teaching me, praying with me…

Mama and Dad have sacrificed so much for me; I understand that more now than ever before.   My love for them has only deepened…

And  today the best thing I know to do to be close to my selfless parents that have impacted my soul but who live so far away is to pull out Mama’s keftas from the freezer and make that my birthday dinner.   Everytime Mama comes to visit, she makes a bunch of food and freezes it for us.  And we savour each meal, eating them slowly…  I still have the keftas from a while ago….  they are still very, very good, I know.   So in an effort to feel close to the woman who gave birth to me, who has loved me passionately, to the man who is my Dad, my wise, loving Dad…  we will eat this meal today.  Mama’s hands gently shaping each kefta while sharing stories and laughing with me.  Dad watching on, smiling…   we will eat this meal together.

All I have to do is prepare the broth.

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