Snow Falling



My Grandfather Medzadur (photo not dated)

I  put my hands against the cold glass by my bed.  It wasn't a bed really, but a lezhanka under the window.  It was my lezhanka, to the left of my parents's bed, and under the window of our bedroom. The window had one of those huge sills, so if you wanted, you could even stand on the lezhanka and put your elbows on the sill and look out the window.  But on that day, I didn't put my elbows on the sill.  Instead, I stood on the lezhanka and put my hands right on the glass and blew on it.  On the glass.  My breath left a foggy mark on the glass, because it was so cold.  The glass, not my breath.  And the reason it was so cold was that it was winter.  And the reason, I was standing on the lezhanka and looking out, was that it was a really, really big day.  It was winter. And not just winter, but it was big day, because it was (are you sitting down!), because it was the first day of snow.  Snow was coming.  It was falling softly, so softly, that it seemed like the fog of my breath on the glass.  It came down so softly that it was like many little breaths having come together and suddenly covering everything. You could see through it, the fog, but it touched everything.  The snow came and came, and came.  And, I just stood there.  On the lezhanka, with my hands on the glass, with my mouth open.  Watching. 

 

Tereshkova, first woman in space

  

  "You know how you were born?", my mother asked. 
I knew I had been a quick delivery, but liked hearing the story anyway. My mother had a way of describing my birth as though it had been someone else's. My childhood, my cuteness, my curls were described as a matter of a past long gone and belonging to someone I didn't know, even while talking to me. It was always a fun story, though, so I smiled and nodded in return to her question.  She looked into the air in front of the couch where we were sitting  and continued.
     "I go to the hospital and they just call Herminka, and we were waiting for her". It had taken me years, literally decades to figure out who these people were and how they interconnected.  Since no one told me anything, I sort of had to do it all myself.  Herminka was my mom's OB/GYN and also a childhood friend from Bulgaria.  I saw her in Sofia as an adult and really liked her.  She'd left Armenia in the late 60's to go back to Bulgaria, something she was envied for as I remember. I grew up with her memory, along with the many other ghost members of my parents's community of friends.  Memories of these ghosts always accompanied events, conversations and all interactions in general.
    Remember, when so-and-so was in Varna or Cairo? Oh, they weren't stupid enough to come here.  No, they go to Lebanon or Canada or Australia. Such and such see them at airport in Paris, on way to New York or maybe Brazil, al chap chem kider... that much I don't know...  This is what I heard all the time, and so the confusion was overwhelming and it took me a couple of years to figure it out. To be honest, it's still a work in progress.
     "Herminka go to hospital, we start talk and then before we even have a room, PHOT, you were there, like gymnast!". My mother smiled at the image.  I smiled too.  I liked the onomatopoetic "PHOT", a short version of "PHOT DEI", to describe a sudden event. I liked the image of a baby catapulting into the world. Catapulting like a gymnast landing a summersault off a balance beam.
     "They call you Tereshkova," she said.  "You know who that is?", she turned to ask.
     "Yeah, the first woman in space," I nodded.
     I wanted to ask how she'd felt when first seeing me, but all I could do was smile. Tereshkova, hmmm.  So, that's what my name was.  Not bad.
     All these years, I had thought that I had had no name. Literally.  I hadn't been properly named when born and the issue of my name had been a point of contention.  The top contenders were Hripsemeh and Verjine, but these didn't work. Thus, I walked around for a year with no name. Finally, through no fault of my relatives, a name took.  This was my family's lore.  A tale told at parties and dinner, about how they couldn't think of a name and no one could agree.  There were other contenders as well.  Gayane was my brother's choice and Knarik was my uncle's.  In fact, there was even a gift sent from the guys at the factory where my father and uncle worked.
    "What's the child's name?" my uncle was asked.  Not being certain, he said, "Knarik". So they sent the gift to little Knarik.
    Eventually came a point when a decision had to be made.  I was beginning to respond and walk. They had to call me something. My uncle apparently started to call me "Anahit". This is one version of the story.  Other people had started calling  me by other names, but finally something took. As different names mutated and changed while completing the circuit, something took.  Anna.
    So, that's my name now.  Anna.  I like it, but to tell the truth, I have always found it odd that it was a process and not an act. For the longest time, I thought this was how it was for everyone.  Imagine my surprise upon seeing a name book and learning that for most people it worked out differently.
     When my mother told me the Tereshkova story, I somehow felt more complete. My name, the thing that came to people's mind when I sprang into this world -- literally, according to my mom-- was Tereshkova.  The first woman in space.  Not to shabby, I'd say. I was so excited, I could have burst.  Tereshkova. Wow. 

Photo Assignment

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                                                                      The Photo Assignment

 

 I decided to take a picture of my parents in our apartment in Hollywood.  Having set up black sweats as the non-reflective surface and a reading lamp as the source of light, I asked them to sit in the corner of the living room.  My father sat in the armchair and my mother on the little table next to it, and then I placed their hands together on the black sweats placed between them. Suddenly, their demeanor changed and they became a young couple in love.  It was funny at the time, because I had never seen that side of them before.  The picture took a moment or two, I took several shots and soon she ran to the kitchen, while he remained seated.

                “So, how did you meet?”  I asked.  It was the first time I’d asked this question.  My parents did not usually allow for such personal questions and having heard different versions, I decided to clarify the record.                      

                 “Arten Alicin mitchotsov  handibadz ei .  Well, I had already met her through Alice,” he said.  Alice, my godmother was a Ekiptahai—an Armenian from Egypt, like my father and his family. One of the vorps, orphans of the Genocide, she had grown up in an orphanage and after marrying had moved to Armenia and next door to my mother and her family.   

Yev, meg orm, trolleybus nsdat ei, yev inkn al ners mdav.  Yes getsa, iren ators dvi. Teghin hakust hakvatds er. Gortzen verch er.   “And one day, we were on the trolleybus and I was sitting and she came in, and I stood up and gave her my seat,” he said.  “She was wearing a yellow dress.  It was after work.”

            “It was a blue dress.  Light blue, and it was before work.  We were going to work,” my mother said, rushing in from the kitchen with her hands gesticulating and lips pursed. Gabuyt er.  Pats gabuyd, yev kordz en arach er.  Kordzi gertaink gor.   She said this and rushed back to the kitchen.

             Nei sene.  Nstadzeink , xosil sksank yev kino gar kaghakum,  gartsem Humphrey Bogar er…“Anyway”, my father continued,” We were in the train, and we started talking and there was  a movie playing in town.  I think it was a Humphrey Bogart movie…”

             My mother rushed in again again, “Johnny Weismuller!” she yelled in disbelief, shook her head, ran back to the kitchen.

                Ayo, Tarzan er.  Iren usi ki yegur ertank gortdzen verch  . “Yeah, Tarzan, was playing”, he agreed, “ I asked her if she wanted to go after work.”

                My mother was still in the kitchen, with her back to us but clearly listening.

                Yev ange verch, gertai tprods, iren g hantibei yev dun g kailenink. Misht kidei vor tasaranner, tsani varen gukar.   “So after that, I would go to school and pick her up.  I always knew which classroom she was teaching in, because you could hear from the street.”

                Mek, mek arajin hargn er, mek mek yergrort. “Sometimes she’d be on the first floor, sometimes on the second,” he continued.

                Misht yergrort! “Always second!" came from the kitchen.

                My father shook his head.

                Ink minag er an aden, yev iren het dun g kaileink. Gortzen verch gertai, g vertsunei yev g kaileink, mek mek al gerdaink hour duni kov eghadz bardez.   “She was alone then, so I would walk her home from the school.  I would go after work and pick her up and we would walk. Sometimes, we would go to the park by her father’s house.”

                Tbrotzink kovi. “By the school”, her voice came again.

                My father again shook his head, but this time kept looking at the kitchen, afraid he’d get more details wrong.

                “How come she was alone?” I asked though I already know the answer.

                Eh, an aden, Armennal yev haryrn pandn ein. “Well, this was when both Armen and her father were in prison,” he said.

                “Oh, I thought dedeh was already back when you met,”  I said.

                "No, her father came back a year after we met,” my father said. Che, hayrn mek dari verch veratartsav.

                Armenu ange verch yegav, nuyn isk iren pand katsink desnalu. “Armen came back a while after that, and we even went to see her prison.  That’s where we met.”

                My father met his future sister in law while she was in prison.  Maybe that’s why they didn’t get along. 

“Wait, you went to prison to see Armen, “ I asked.  In twenty years of living next to each other, he hardly ever went to see her.

                Ayo. Kides, an aden vdankavor er an aden adank martots hel xosil. Martik gvaxnain, payts imin vejs cher. Yergu ankam chi mdadzetsi.

.           “Yes”, he said and nodding toward the kitchen, added , “You know, it was dangerous then to talk to people like her, but me—I didn’t care. People were scared, but I never thought about it twice.”

               The kitchen was silent.

                “Wait, you met Armen in prison,” I asked again.

                Ayo, kani m ankam katsink. Ange verch, inku grnar dun kal mek mek.

                “Yeah, we went a couple of times,” he said.  “She was allowed to make home visits after a while.”

                 “Twice".  Yergu ankam katsink. “We went twice,” came from the kitchen.

                “Wow!”, I said.  “What a man! Everyone was afraid, but you weren’t!”

          They looked at each other conspiratorially and smiled. This was just between them.

                “Eh, Silva! Desar? Kone megu usav!”  he yelled, smiling at the kitchen. “Hay, Silva, you see that? At least, somebody is saying it!”.   

                He was smiling and shaking his head and she, still in the kitchen, was smiling as well.

 

     

These Materials Are Needed For The Book I Am Writing

      When you go to America send me, please, answers to the following questions.

1. Please write down 7 American last names and 5 names of  American streets.

2. Name, please, 8 small ports

3. Name, please, 3 large and 4 medium syndicates, concerns or other capitalist establishments
that own them.

4. Name, please all brands of cars, that there are in San Francisco and which factories they are
made in,what is their speed?

5. What is the brand of the ships that arrive there?

And please send a pack of chewing gum and interesting books--
--Debts will be repaid in full.

When You Go To America

          Inside my grandfather's journal I found this drawing and letter in Russian, written by my brother.  In the late 50's and early 60's, there were already discussions about going to America.  In the late 60's, my aunt Armen would come to LA to visit her cousin Sirarpi, whom she had never met.  At the start of WWI and during the Genocide, the Shishmanian siblings scattered all over the world, yet somehow kept in touch.  Sirarpi was the daughter of Thomas Shishmanian who lived in Romania.

The Brothers Shishmanian

Raphael Shishmanian, the artist, (on the left) was a cousin raised with my grandfather after losing his parents. 

The two brothers pictured on the right (photo taken in 1911) were Jeremiah and  Aleksan.  They ended up in Beirut and New York, respectively.  

"My Grandchildren"

Here my grandfather lists his grandchildren.  It's strange to see my name. The youngest daughter of the youngest daughter, I have inherited this journal.  There is a responsibility that's implied.

Hripsime, my grandmother.

 I never met my grandmother.  She died young and left a hole in her daughter's lives. "She was the patriotic one who wanted to go to Armenia", my mom said.

My Greatgrandparents.

Great grandfather Stephan, died in Romania

Great grandmother Mariam, died in 

Bulgaria. 

A 1911 picture of brothers Jeremiah and Aleksan.  Jeremiah would end up in Beirut and Aleksan in New York.  

My Grandfather's Journal

In the uppermost corner of the drawer where my mother kept her clothes and some some towels, I found this journal.  I'd heard about it and maybe had even seen it, but never looked at the contents.  It was hers and she guarded it.  She could not read Armenian, but knew the stories and would always tell me,

   "It is all in the book".  Amen inchu kirkin mechn e.

 

A Found Letter-- My Sudden Inheritance

SIRO YERK,  SONG OF LOVE

by Medzadur Shishmanian

Yerevan, Armenia  1958

(translated by Anna, Medzadur's granddaughter in 2014)

My heart is like a boiling pot where day by day love grows and grows and as though lit on fire, it wants to tell everyone that there is no pain, sadness, pride or beauty which can diminish the strength of the power that underlies my life and blood.  This well of love has renewed my understanding, thinking and entire existence.  I love without pretense those who are around me and with whom I have shared my life’s bitterness and joy. The sweetness of love has formed my life.  Nothing exists for me other than the world of love.  I have tried to love those who are kind and those who are not.  Love with a whole love. If you want happiness, then love with no exception.  This path has directed me to love persons who have been thought to be uncaring by those around them.  Love, forged inside a celestial pot with the millions of stars and the rays of sun’s light, has received God’s image, because God is love. I would want to see this heavenly pot and plunge inside. To be weaved into a part of the love that has no beginning or end and to then return to this troubled world and place love’s sweetness in people’s hearts. Love is never conquered or bowed. Love is for the ages.  It will continue to absorb the tired, abandoned and hopeless.  Love begets happiness, orders and nurtures people’s lives. It can give strength to the abandoned, wisdom to the weak, hope to the hopeless and breathe in happiness to the saddened.  Oh, I would want to see my beloved family and spend with them ageless years in the love of God’s pastoral presence.

Medzadur Shishmanian

1958, Yerevan, Armenia

A Letter From My Grandfather

Mulberry Tree

      

 

​    The sheet was over my head and for a minute I forgot everything.  There was only that smell, the smell of mulberry—“tut” we called it. White, small, well, not completely white, but very, very pale yellow.  Some were green, not yet ripe. Some were so ripe that they were mushy, about to fall apart.  Mushy to the point where after they fell from the tree and traveled through the air to hit the sheet over my head, and over the heads of the other kids on the street lucky enough to have made under the sheet that day, they would go splat. Splat, like bird droppings. Only, they weren’t bird droppings, they were instead mulberries dropping from a mulberry  tree onto a giant flat canvas sheet held on all sides by neighbors while somebody shook the tree above the sheet.

 

​     Generally, I didn’t find out about such things until were almost over, but that day I happened to be the first to get under the sheet.  This is what you did.  Just stand under it and feel the mulberries drop on your head.  The sound of the dissolution muffled by the canvas sheet over your head.  Generally, you couldn’t’ see the other kids next to you ‘cause your eyes were nearly blinded by the pale yellow light all around you.  You saw the light muffled by the sheet, just as you felt the sweet wetnessof the mulberry splatting on top of your head, muffled by the canvas sheet.  They rained down, down you your head and you were happy, so happy ‘cause all you had to do was just stand there, and all these sweetnesses just came splat on your head.  All these sweet things you’d desired for so long and couldn’t’get to, were raining down you you.  You stood there, with your head up, eyes open, unable to see anything but pale yellow, yet feeling the sticky soft sweetness all over you.  Anticipation.  

New Wine Old Skin

     A couple of days before my wedding, a friend gave me a book titled “On The Way To The Wedding”.  One salient point stood out, and it was that getting married would fundamentally change some relationships and invariably cost a friend or two.  This turned out to be correct.

     I think there also needs to be a book, “On The Way to the Funeral,” and after last year, I now have the expertise to write it.  Having gone through the deaths of my mother, father and aunt in a period of nine months, I am now friends with the staff at the mortuary—granted, they remembered me from the time of my brother’s funeral several years ago.  I threatened them with opening a funeral consulting service across the street.

     “We not allow you to come through the door anymore”, was Harry the funeral director’s response.  Turen ners chi bidi tsekenk kezi  aylevs.
             
     I heard Fr. Vazken talk about one of Christ’s parables.  “You cannot pour new wine into old wineskin,” because the new wine’s acid will eat through the old wineskin, he explained. This is it, I thought, this is me—I have become new wine in the burned out old skin.

     “Wow, you’re all alone now,” my friend Sue said. “I mean aside from everything else, it’s gotta feel weird.”  She has seven siblings, so I understand her bewilderment.  Yeah, I wanted to say but I’m still standing.  For a long time, I had feared this very moment.  I’d imagined how it would be and never considered that this time of loss would also have so much joy. My husband and son were a complete surprise for me.  I had hoped for a family but never counted on actually having one. The question now is how to live with joy in the face of loss. I feel cheated out of the time that my son would have had with his grandparents and that I would have with all of them.  “This is the life,” my mother would often say and so it is. I feel them around me all the time as real, three dimensional people.  I want to spend time with those who remember them, to keep the connection for my son Alek, but something seems off. The reality of last year has burned holes in my skin and a new one has not quite been found.

     I have keys on my keychain that no longer open any doors, phone numbers in my phone that a familiar voice no longer answers and boxes of old photos depicting happy times that no one else remembers.  Nothing is going to change this and there is also something else.  This past “death season” as I call it, has been like a magnifying glass through which I could see the flaws of others.  I cannot pretend that I saw nothing, for I felt the burn of the holes on my skin.  My mother would say, “No pay attention.  Everyone has something, nobody perfect.” I had been able to do this my entire life but now I cannot. Maybe there will be a time to mend relationships in the future, to reminisce with old friends, to laugh at old jokes and to tell stories.  Surrounded by my dead as I am, I know I don’t have the strength for it now no matter how much I may want to.  A voice inside is telling me that now is the time to just stand still and yet this is the hardest thing.  Evolution isn’t a choice and there are few ways to control it. Entropy has its own order and so I must learn to just stand still. Stand still and anticipate.  Anticipation.

Finding My Legitimate Faith

    “Do you believe in God?” I asked my mother.  She was at this point in kidney failure and on hospice at my house.  She had weeks to live. 
    Chem kider, axchigs, kichmu shat hekyatayin paner en, she responded. "I don’t know, my daughter, it is all a bit too much like a fairy tale."
     That she would say this, came as no surprise. The woman had avoided any form of organized religion her entire life.  Martun xijn e iren astvats, she’d say.  "Your conscience is your God."  Simply the most generous person I know, she never wanted anything and did not like gifts.  When she’d hear that someone was in need, she’d ask me for money to give to them. Yes, kezi verch gudam, she’d always say.  "I’ll give it back to you."  However, she never had any to give back. She grew up with her father, a Protestant preacher, travelling and proselytizing in Bulgaria and there are pictures of him with a group of newly baptized Gypsies. I don’t know for sure that they were Gypsies, but that’s what my brother told me. Maybe it was this childhood or maybe it was the fact that many proper, religious people turned away from her when she needed help, but my mom had a “go it alone” attitude to all things, including religion. She’d often say that after my grandfather and aunt were imprisoned in the USSR after repatriating from Bulgaria to Armenia, everything turned upside down. Yerpek ches kider ov e lav mart yev ov vad, she’d say. "You never know who is good or bad."  You cannot make that judgment because when the time comes, you will be rejected by most, but help will come from those you least expect. I’ve found this to be true.
    My father’s faith was never in doubt.  Yes kidem ki dghais bidi noren desnam, he said after my brother’s death. "I know I will see my son again." He’d been an altar boy in Alexandria, Egypt and never outgrew it. After repatriating to Soviet Armenia, he did not go to church. No one did. He did, however, make a point of taking me to be baptized at the age of eleven.  After we came to America in 1976, we would often go to St. Garabed on Alexandria Ave in Hollywood.  He never asked me to go with him.  It was I who asked.  On Easter—his name day, we had our ritual. We’d go to church as my mom would stay at home, making chorek.   We would sit side by side, he would sing along during Mass and afterwards, we would light candles together. When he went by himself, he always brought mas --communion-- with him. It was for me, indeed, for all of us.  I can’t say that he was taken seriously, because for a long time we all thought of his actions as relics of a past time. We did not see his faith’s relevance to us and to our lives.  I know I didn’t. It was ritual, something I shared with my father and loved, but didn’t understand how it related to our lives or the anchor it would become.
    It wasn’t until my brother’s illness, that faith became at all important. Both of my parents were dealt the toughest hand that could be dealt to anyone. I watched how their faith, so different and yet so similar, sustained them. My father went to church regularly and would light a candle for my brother and our family. My mom was angry with God and had no patience for any of it, but I believe that she needed for my father to believe the way that he did.
    Where did I come into all of this? I don’t think that I believe as solidly as my father but I also know that I cannot do it alone like my mother did. I need the community, the ritual, the language.  I need all of it. To be in church, to participate in rituals thousands of years old, to know that each step I take has been taken by so many before me  gives me a sense of peace and a  continuity that leads directly to my own vulnerability. I wish I believed as simply as my father. Mine is a belief system riddled with doubt—I overthink things, I know. I once asked Fr. Vazken about this.  Don’t worry about it, was his response. Connect the other dots, focus on action because that’s the hardest part. 
This is very much like the advice given by my grandfather to my aunt. At fifteen, she told him that she was an atheist and didn’t believe in God. Lav, aghjiks, tun miyayn naye lav mart ullas.  Ure inch pes kogin xighj gu badvire. Bayts Astvats ga. Tun naye lav mart ullas.   "It’s ok, daughter, try to be a good person and do as your conscience demands, but God does exist. You just be a good person."  In fact, when my own father was in the hospital, talking to my son Alek, he stressed the same words-- Dhags, lav mart ullas.  "My son,  may you be a good person."
     So, I suppose, for me that’s what is truly legitimate. Trying to be a good person, following my conscience and being in a place that provides a connection to my past, to my father’s faith and that has meant finding my home in the Armenian Apostolic church.  More specifically, it has meant committing to and being embraced by the community of St. Peter’s—the little church on the corner.