Thursday, October 25, 2012

Dust particles dancing in the light

Reading a blog post by a friend on a shard of light reminded Marash Girl of her early fascination with dust particles dancing in a shaft of light on a late afternoon . . . the room darkened and that shaft the only light . . . and remembering further, perhaps her earliest memory . . . a darkened living room (in Winchester, Massachusetts?), a large shiny grand piano on the left,  dust particles dancing in that shaft of light, and walking toward toddling Marash Girl through that light was a very old woman hunched over, all dressed in black with a black "shush" on her head, carrying a walking stick, an old woman all dressed in black walking towards little Marash Girl, shaking that walking stick at little Marash Girl, frightening little Marash Girl who remembers that moment to this day.  Trying to explore that memory, Marash Girl found in a pile of very early black and white photographs, a snapshot of 4 generations:  her mother (Lucille Mae (Jennie) Vartanian Bilezikian), her grandmother (Yester Bosnian Vartanian) and her grandmother's mother, name unknown.  Little Marash Girl, probably 9 months old when that photograph was taken, was sitting in her mother's lap staring tearfully and fearfully at her great grandmother, as the group of women posed for the camera, sitting on the front steps of that home in Winchester, Massachusetts.  Great-Grandmother, as it turns out, hated girls, and was very upset that Jennie's first child, her own great grand-child, had to be a girl.  One wonders whether this great grandmother hated herself as well.

1 comment:

  1. Light is a powerful force. And here a source for emotion/memory.

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