Tuesday, January 18, 2011

I DREAM OF JENNIE WITH THE LIGHT BROWN HAIR . . .

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!

2 comments:

  1. Parent's dreams yet again are not the same as the dreams of the child!

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  2. that 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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