Trading at Lunchtime in Newton Corner, Massachusetts

Marash Girl would carefully package lamejun and veggies every weekday for the kiddies' lunch only to learn that they had traded their lamejun lunch with the odar children for sandwiches of peanut butter and jelly on white bread. . . . . Go figure . . .

N.B. Odar=Non-Armenian

Martha and the Red Square

When sister Martha was a young girl, she loved to paint.  One day, she presented our family with a painting of which she was so proud.  It was a large red square on a sheet of white paper.  The family smiled politely and went on with their conversation, never dreaming that years later, not Martha, but a famous artist would have painted a red square, a painting featured at an exhibit at the University of Connecticut!

SITTING IN UNION STATION . . .

Sitting in Union Station awaiting the train heading for Boston, Marash
Girl noticed that the woman sitting opposite was knitting, but she was knitting in a way that
Marash Girl had never seen before.  At the beginning of each row, she would add two stitches, and at the end of each row, she would delete two stitches, thus creating a scarf that slanted its way all the way to what would soon be the end of the scarf.  Marash Girl approached the woman to ask where she was from  . . . as it turned out, the woman was from Germany, and often made scarves in that way, scarves that would slant their way to completion . . . Would that life could be so easy. . .

GRANDPA GARABED AND MARTA MAE

HERKES SEVSING MARTA MAE
MARTA HERKES SEVSINGLER.

AS MARTHA ROCKED IN HER LITTLE HANDWOVEN WICKER ROCKING CHAIR, GRANDPA GARABED VARTANIAN, HER GREAT GRANDFATHER, WOULD ALWAYS SING THE ABOVE DITTY TO HER.

MARTHA, DO YOU REMEMBER . . . .

You're pretty, too . . .

What a beautiful little girl, said Mrs. Boulghourjian, as she looked at the little three-year old blond, blue-eyed Marashtsi child. . . 

Oh, and you're pretty too, dear, she said as her gaze turned to five-year old brown-haired, brown-eyed Marash Girl.

Inch ga, chiga

What's up, buttercup

Inch ga, chiga

Ne var, ne yokh

All of the above require a question mark at the end of the sentence, but my computer is misbehaving . . . or sick, hopefully not permanently . . . and will not allow me to place a question mark at the end of the above sentences which are all questions and, respectively, in English, Armenian, and Turkish. The interesting thing about the Turkish and Armenian sentences is that they give the responder the option to reply in the negative . . . the sentences translating, 'WHAT IS THERE, WHAT ISN'T THERE'

LOCKED IN A SECOND FLOOR BATHROOM WITH A TWO YEAR OLD

When Lorig was three years old, Marash Girl was actively interviewing survivors of the Armenian Genocide, recording their stories of survival for posterity . . . [those interviews are available at the Armenian Museum of America in Watertown, Massachusetts, as well as at the Library of Congress] . On with the memory --

Marash Girl often took one of her children with her, well behaved as they were, on the venture.  While interviewing an elderly Armenian woman in her second floor apartment in Watertown, Massachusetts, little Lorig had to use the bathroom, which she did, with aplomb.  Independent as she was, she carefully locked the bathroom door upon entering the bathroom, but . . . you've probably guessed the next sentence from the title of this blog  . . . when she was ready to leave the bathroom, she could not unlock that door. Unbeknownst to us, the woman we were visiting never locked the bathroom door because it could never be unlocked. . . Vaht to do . . .

We called the Watertown Fire Department, hoping that they could help, and even though the bathroom windows in that apartment were tiny, the wonderful Watertown, Massachusetts, Fire Department made it through, unlocked that bathroom door, and the rest is history . . . as recorded here . . .Thank you, Watertown Fire Department, and all emergency services that are out there to save us from certain disaster.

N.B. Marash Girl checked with Lorig yesterday, just to be certain that this memory was not a nightmare but a reality; she confirmed that it was a reality AND a nightmare.

CAMP HAIASTAN

Just returned from dropping my granddaughter off at Camp Haiastan . . . her Christmas and birthday present from her 'Ama'.  https://www.camphaiastan.org/

Beautiful grounds, beautiful people, a dream keep alive1