And so it was that more often than anyone realized, Peter met Jennie after work and spirited her off to the Waldorf, or a movie, or a walk along the Charles. Soon the two had developed their secret signal . . . one ring and hang up, Peter, and I'll know it's you. When you call back I'll take the phone and you can tell me where to meet you . . . and so it went. [Yes, they had telephones in 1939!] I imagine Daddy sang to Mommy in those days. . . He loved to sing, 'I dream of Jennie with the light brown hair, Borne like a vapor on the sweet summer air. . .' and my mother would smile her quiet smile.
Back to Cambridge, 1939. Peter and Jennie knew that my grandmother Yester Vartanian was planning a very different future for my mother. . . my grandmother had grown up in Aintab with the popular Armenian song, 'Doktor Pastapan g'ouzem . . .' ('I want a doctor, a lawyer') and was determined to marry her pretty young daughter to an Aintabtsi doctor friend who lived in Winchester, so she could live happily ever after!
Parent's dreams yet again are not the same as the dreams of the child!
ReplyDeletethat was no dream, nay, it was a nightmare. peter was a paladin, and Jenny was the fair princess locked away in her tower. the very street she and her mother, father and sister lived on, Vassal Lane, is a signatory of the spirit of refracted light, bent to suit the medium, and the one doing the bending was no magician, but the medium of the queen behind the throne.
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