Thursday, November 26, 2020
Remembering Thanksgiving at 84 Bowers Street, Newtonville
Every year, Great Uncle (Rev.) Vartan and Great Auntie Elmast would invite little Marash Girl and her family and extended family over (to their home on the second floor in the brick building across from the train station on Bowers Street in Newtonville) for Thanksgiving dinner, the adults (Uncle Vartan, Auntie Elmast, Uncle Paul, Auntie Zabelle, Uncle Kay, Auntie Bea, Uncle Setrag, Auntie Gulenia, Daddy Peter, Mommy Jennie . . .) all eating in the dining room while the kids (little Marash Girl, Martha, James, Pauline, John, Carol, Nancy, Charlie, Ruthie, Herald, David . . .) all eating in the kitchen (which gave the kids all the space they needed to have fun and make a racket!!) Traditional roast turkey with Auntie Elmast's delicious rice pilaf, freshly cut up celery and carrots, cranberry relish (which Marash Girl believes that her family brought to add to the table), and Auntie Elmast's homemade paklava for dessert. So many people eating, and talking in English, Armenian and Turkish, and after dinner, all the kids singing hymns accompanied by Auntie Zabelle playing the upright piano in Uncle Vartan's living room . . . so much fun . . . "but those days are gone," as Marash Girl's father would have said, were he living today, "forever!"
Although this Thanksgiving is different from any Thanksgiving that Marash Girl has ever experienced,
"May your Thanksgiving be happy and healthy . . .
Albeit, so lonely . . .
May you have loving hugs from caring family . . .
Distant hugs only!"
N.B. Uncle Vartan was the son of the minister of the first Armenian Protestant in Marash, Turkey; Uncle Vartan, or "Uncle", as we all called him, established the United Armenian Brethren Church in Watertown, Massachusetts, becoming its first minister. In the beginning, he conducted services in his second floor apartment on Bowers Street in Newtonville, Massachusetts. And in all the years that he served as a minister, he never accepted money from his parishioners for the religious services he performed.
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The days are gone, but the love lives on. May we all feel it surrounding us, even if the hugs are distant.
ReplyDeleteThat's the wonder of love . . . it lives on!!!!
DeleteUncle Vartan was son of the first Protestant Minister in Marash, Ottoman Empire.
ReplyDeleteEven though I obviously wasn’t present -- I was simultaneously enjoying my own holiday festivities on a parallel street at the end of the same block -- this paragraph conjures up nostalgia for me as well. I accompanied my father on some of the many visits he made to Uncle Vartan, both before and after Elmast’s passing. (My grandmother Agavnie -- who was critical of those in the medical profession even at the best of times -- lamented the foolishness, or more likely [as she interpreted it], the monetary greed of the doctors who performed two amputations on her. A side note: when any one of the 3 Harutunian kids experienced a malady or an injury of any kind, she would insist on having a say in the treatment, as she would proclaim “I am half doctor!” And if she saw any problems in the sartorial department -- be it a missing button, a tear, etc. -- the proclamation would be “I am half tailor!”)
ReplyDeleteI distinctly remember a few of the conversations which I myself had with Uncle Vartan. (We always called him "Badveli B.”) Around 1962, I received a recording of Handel’s “Messiah" as a Christmas present. I showed him the libretto --a lengthy compilation of Biblical texts which was made by Rev. Charles Jennens. And as Uncle Vartan looked it over, he promptly named the book in the Bible from which every number was taken!
One other memory. Growing up in the Watertown church, before the Sunday worship service would commence, I would see, year after year, Setrag S. walking up to his seat in a front pew, with Gulenia trailing a few steps behind him. The scene became embedded in my memory.
Many years passed. During those years, I experienced Wheaton, Harvard, the U.S. Army, Penn, and finally UCLA. I found myself strongly disliking the superficiality of Southern California. But I eventually found a church home at a large Armenian Congregational Church (somewhere in greater LA). My first Sunday there, I took a seat in a pew. And after a few minutes, what did I see? Setrag walking up to a front pew with Gulenia trailing a few steps behind him!
It was a nice reminder that some things never change.