Tsavt Danim

      My parents lived in the same old Spanish style duplex in Hollywood, where I grew up and when visiting I would sometimes park in my old spot in the back. This meant driving up the narrow driveway and then backing out, which was no small feat, because it involved driving backwards between a wall and an iron fence, while keeping an eye out for people walking by and then making it safely onto a street with oncoming traffic.


     This backward driving maneuver was something around which my father and I had, over the years, worked out a ritual. As I would reach the critical juncture of driveway and sidewalk, he would rush out, putting himself between my moving car and the street. If he saw a car a block away, he would pound on my car and raise his arm straight up in the air in alarm.



     Getsir!, Getsir!. "Stop!, Stop!", he would yell as he blocked my path, his arm suspended in midair, bent at the elbow like a broken turnstile. With his head moving from side to side to look out for oncoming cars, we remained thus until the arm went down, clearing the pathway.

     Hima grnas, hima kna nayim ur bidi yertas ne. Haide nayim, kna. Shoot, shoot ure!.  "Now you can, now go where you are going. Let me see where you go. Fast, fast!" he would say.
     
     Though the turnstile would  go down, my father would continue pounding on my car while it moved, this time purely as a speed control measure.  He needed to reinforce what I already knew-- "fast" actually meant a slow, deliberate and practical rate. 

    
        As he became progressively more frail and legally blind in the left eye, I'd worry about running him over during this ritual of ours. As my father shrank through the years, his clothes remained the same. His usual attire at home consisted of a large, white Tshirt  with a V-neck, carefully tucked into  extra large jeans. T-shirt and jeans were both held together by a wide leather belt on its very last hole. With a special hole puncher, my father had punched holes on the same old belt, chronicling the years until the time when the end of the belt was by his spine.  He didn't use a cane during our driving maneuvers and would lean on the car for support.


     When his arm would go up to signal safe passage, followed by the pounding on the car, I'd worry that  the backward motion of the car would tip him over. This never happened however, because he  always managed to get out of the way on time.  My mom's role in all this was to make sure that he  came out to help at all times and that I never left without completing the ritual. Until the day she died, she made sure that each of us completed our role.



       "Haroutioun, come on, go help the child, come on," she'd say while sitting on the couch with her leg lifted on the couch to prevent the ankle on her twice broken right leg from swelling.  Haide, Haroutioun, haide, chojuxin turs ellalu naye. Naye ki, turs ella.  Haide.
 
      Like a blind person in old familiar room, I now stumble across old memories and textures and one story leads to another.  I wish I'd known then what a treasure they all were, for we'd fought the big fight together.  They buried their firstborn, after watching him suffer, but never lost their sense of humor. Ours were rituals of storytelling.  I would sit on the couch between my parents, my brother on his armchair to the left of the couch and Armen, my mom's sister, on the armchair in the front of the couch.  The TV was a distraction, a punctuation point between all the stories.

      From Armenia, to Bulgaria, to Egypt and then to LA, they told stories of people and events long past.  "Remember when?"   Hishum Es?   Annan yerevi chi hishum.   Anna probably doesn't remember.   One or the other would then start and one story would lead into another.

    Armen viewed herself as editor at large, "Voch, ayd pes cher!"   No, it wasn't like that.  Her silence meant, that it really was like that.  

     I never understood why my brother, first with Kristi and then by himself, would spend hours and hours at my parents going over these old stories.  Every single weekend, any day off he had and until the very end, this is what he did.  

      There were times when I avoided these sessions, deeming them to be to fruitless walks down memory lane.   I often seem to encounter this familiar incomprehension now that it is my turn to tell these same stories.  I wish that I had valued these times more then, because my mother was right.  

      Minak hishadaknern gmnan verchu, janportutyunner yev urax order.  "Only memories remain at the end, travels and happy times," she would say.


      When Mark and I were getting married, the only place available seemed to be, not the Art Deco City Hall of Beverly Hills  as I'd hoped but a recreational center in Boyle Heights.   

     "Pan chi ga", my mother said, "Badmutynu aveli lav glla".  "It is nothing, the story will be better".


       Every person and every act, big or small, became a story to be told  and retold in our living room.  In retrospect, it is when the stories stopped that I knew they were going, that something had changed fundamentally.  It took their absence for me to realize that not everybody does this-- tell stories and see their life as one. I had thought it was commonplace, that it was a way for people to cope because this was what sustained us during the long years of my brother's illness and the hardships that had come before.  My parents, aunt and brother made sure we clung to our rituals of telling stories, as long as they could and these times became islands of respite and solace.   

      However, instead of this constant retelling of old stores, what I had wanted were the ritualized holiday making, formal dinners and family gatherings that I saw on TV.  In fact, I used to joke that my family were like a bunch of Jehovas Witnesses, without the benefit of  actual commitment to doctrine because after coming to America, as a family we had entered holiday limbo.  

      New Year's was the most anticipated day of the year in Armenia and in the US, it is Christmas.  We ended up not doing much for either day.  My parents recoiled at the idea of forced gift giving and the constant advertising on TV.
     
     Abush paner.  Tratsiin het yergu xosk chen user, verch mek hat abush never gudan.  Himarutiun..

     "Stupid things.  Two words they don't say to a neighbor, but then give one  present. Stupidity," they both would say.



      Easter and Thanksgiving were the two days that were recognized in our household.  Easter, because it was my father's name day and Thanksgiving, because my parents liked the idea. So, as a preteen growing up in LA, I had these two days  in common with the people on TV.


      Armenian Easter coincided with the American one, so at least on that level there was some continuity with the population at large, though what we did seemed completely different. My mom would make chorek, Easter bread, and people would call from all over the world to congratulate my father on his name day and friends would come over for visiting.


     My experience of Easter had nothing to do with the pastels and bunnies on TV, but it was better than no holiday.  The one American holiday my parents seemed open to was Thanksgiving and I think it was largely because there wasn't much advertising associated with it, especially in the mid-seventies.  It seemed less compulsory and more of a choice, so they liked it.



     It wasn't until after my brother got sick, however,  that we started go out of our way to mark holidays.  This was always a contentious point for me, since once again I took it as a sign of them coming around for him and not me. I can honestly say, that sibling rivalry,  jealousy, resentment and all the other good stuff were always present, even as I drove to the hospital at a moment's notice and did so for years.



   "He was worried about you, always said that  you need to have a family of your own," his friend Pete, an old trumpet player from Woody Herman days, quoted my brother as saying.


    My brother always seemed to have an older friend who regarded him as a son, but somehow found discord with our own father. His friends were generally old musicians, oft married, with kids from various marriages, easy-going and bohemian. 


    Our father was definitely not bohemian. He was a tough, hard working, exacting and honest man who'd gone to work at fourteen and was married to our mom for sixty two years until her death.  I could see potential for rebellion, but I was eleven years younger than my brother and by the time I was old enough, we were already in America and he was just too old to rebel against.  I saw him struggle and sacrifice to pay for my college.  Making sure not to disappoint him was always more of a concern for me than rebellion and like a lot of immigrant kids, I just wanted to grow up and buy my parents a house. 



    "I loved your brother like a son", my brother's friend, Pete, told me , "He was wonderful and was always worried about you."



    "Well, he sure as hell didn't act like it was a concern, " I thought, but didn't say anything.



    " I want to live, not just survive", my brother once told me once.



    "I'm not even sure what that's supposed to mean", I had answered. 



      I didn't understand that and I guess I still don't.  He owed it us to take care of himself, and he wasn't doing that. After he died, we were at a loss as to what to do with our time.  My mom once asked me to take my father out.


      Dar, kichmu btdsur.  "Take him, take him around a little bit," she'd said.  I took my father to the Farmer's Marker and we had started to talk.  I told him, there is a play about Hamlet where the side people are talking about the prince who'd just died.  I was talking about  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" by Tom Stoppard.

     Gites inchi masin a?  Vor Hamletu merav, irank el koxkits, hasarak martik en, u asum en, lav bayts inch eghav, hima inch enk anelu?. 


     "You know what it's about?  It's after Hamlet died, and these side people, regular people say, ok, what happened? What do we do now?", I told my father.



    Ayo, ayo, hima inch bidi unenk? Jisht adang e.   "Yes, yes, it is just like that.  What we do now?", he answered.


     We sat together in the car and it was close to sunset, the stores were closing at the old Farmer's Marker.  This was before it  became the much more posh The Grove.  We sat for a while and then we went home.


      This is what I never got my brother to understand.  We were all dependent on him and his well being, and it just seemed like he didn't care.  Or maybe, he understood and didn't want that responsibility.  Maybe he hated the fact that he was dependent on us.  I don't know.  Our conversations never got that deep, despite numerous attempts by all parties.  We just did what we thought we needed to do.


      It was after he got sick, that we started to celebrate holidays.  We even marked the Oscars in the hospital once. Eventually, it became technically difficult to celebrate, because it seemed like no holiday went by without a trip to the hospital.  I took him out for dinner for his birthday and we all went. Kristi, his wife, was there too. My brother and father had osso buco.  We were all basking in the moment. I still remember this--it was at a restaurant called Vermont on Vermont Blvd in Hollywood.  I'd just read about them and their special dish osso buco, but my brother, of course, already knew all about it and this drove me nuts, as it always did.  We were so happy.  The next day, Kristi called to say that he'd been rushed to the hospital. 


     There was once, closer to the end, a New Year's in the ER and as the clock's hands came to twelve:
    
      "Happy New Year!",  my brother said sarcastically but with a smile.



       "Yeah, Happy New Year!", I responded, looking to make sure he wasn't getting cold.


        All they gave you in the ER were and still are, by the way, flimsy white blankets kept in a warming booth on the floor.



       I had at one point, the crazy idea to personalize the hospital experience and so after a while, he had a blue quilt type blanket that I'd always take and which one of the nurses had found and returned to Kristi. They knew us all after a while, especially Kristi.



        On my 40th birthday, I was in the hospital sitting and sleeping on the porto-potty.  He woke up suddently.



        "It's your birthday.", he said.  This was near the end. 



         "Yeah," I said.  "You fucker," I thought.  But I wouldn't have been anywhere else. 



        I have always felt bad about not being more generous or kind in gesture.  I wish it'd be different, but it wasn't.  We all did the best we could. 



        It was around this time, on an Easter Sunday, that I had picked him at the hospital and was dropping him off at my parents. As I was leaving, my father came outside and motioned for me to stop.  He rushed over  to my car in the driveway as though he had forgotten something. 


         "I just want to go home", I thought.  "I'm tired".  With the car still running, I rolled down the window.
        
        "Incha Papa jan? What is it, Papa?", I asked.


        He looked at he and catching his breath, placed his hand in the car door.


       "As al Zadig e, jisht Christmasin yev Nor Darvan bes. So, this is Easter, just like Christmas and New Year's",  he said, his voice somewhat hoarse as he was still trying to catch his breath.


       "Thanksgivingi ch moranas," I answered, rolling my eyes. "Don't forget Thanksgiving".


       "I am sorry, honey, " he said. 


       He liked to say "honey", emphasizing the last syllable.  It sounded kind of funny and he knew it, and would play it up every chance he got.


       "Merci, axchigs," he added.  "Thank you, daughter".


       "Tun al hoknetsar. You are tired." he said quietly, leaning inside the window of the car.


       I didn't know what to say and just stayed quiet in the car.


       "This is how it is now. Hima asang e. Merin jagadakirn en.  It is written on our foreheads.  Ingerenk, bidi kashenk.  We are in it and we take it", he added.


        He was still catching his breath, though he was now standing still, with his T-shirt neatly tucked in.


       "Anunovt après, Papa jan," I said.  "May you live with your name".


         Because it was Easter and his name was Resurrection, Haroutiun, today was his name day. This is what you did on Easter--you said these words.  I don't know what it means or why you say it, but you do.  Suddenly, it seemed so formal and so beautiful and so perfect.


       "Tsavt danim, " my father answered. "I wish I could take our pain away."


          This is another on those old sayings that are repeated so casually, until the day one realizes their meaning. I nodded in response to my father.  There was nothing I could answer.  This one expression has no answer.  I knew he meant it literally.  If he could have assumed the pain of the people he loved on his own shoulders, he would have done so with no hesitation. It took his passing for  me to know how rare that is.
 
       "Lav, ushatir kshes.  Drive safely," my father said as he lightly tapped on my car and headed back home.


      I waved good-buy and rolled backwards out of the driveway.  I wished there were something I could say, to make it easier for him but I knew there was nothing I could say or do.  As I slowly backed out, I watched him rush back home and disappear behind the screen door. 


     Mart iren bardaganutyun bedke gadare, iren xoskin der ulla.  A man's got to fulfill his obligation and own his word. This is what he always said and my eighty year old father knew what he needed to do. He went home so that together his wife they could take care of their son.