Writer

Tag: Armenian Genocide

Nobody Cares About Your Dead Relatives

In the writing world the saying goes, nobody cares about your dead relatives. Or the living ones, for that matter. The fact that my Armenian grandmother was dear to me isn’t enough to endear her to readers. Saying my uncle gave me the best books for Christmas doesn’t keep a reader turning the pages. A reader doesn’t care that I got my interest in astrology from my great-aunt.

And yet I am writing a family memoir about some of my dead relatives, including my Armenian grandmother.

My grandmother and I shared a conviction that education helps form the foundation of a well-rounded, interesting, and fulfilled person. She urged me to marry a person who was college-educated because if not, what would we talk about? My grandmother was annoyed when my uncle gave me science fiction books Christmas after Christmas. Tsk-tsk, her tongue would click. Those aren’t the right kind of books for a young mind. I was thrilled with the sci-fi books and I don’t know whose reaction my uncle enjoyed more, a smile wide on his face. The books my grandmother gifted me? A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson when I was eight, and, when I was seventeen, The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.

My grandmother and I shared an idealism that the world could, and should, be a better place for all. She wrote letters to world leaders, including one in 1986 to Col. Muammar Ghaddafi, the Libyan dictator. She implored Ghaddafi to be an honest, strong, responsible leader, to make his nation prosper, and work for the PEACE OF THE WORLD.

My grandmother survived the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923 which took one and a half million Armenian lives, men, women, and children. She was ten years old when the other Armenians in her village in Turkey were sent on a death march. She huddled with her family waiting for the knock on the door that would summon them to join the others. The knock never came.

When she was alive, my grandmother waved away my questions about her life in Turkey. Before I die, I hope to discover some answers, and turn those answers into a compelling story.

Nobody cares about my dead relatives? That is the challenge before me.

 

Haigazn Family circa 1914
Matilda, my grandmother, is the youngest

JUNE, A MONTH OF GLOOM AND BLOOM

I’ve been mentioning flowers in almost every blog this year, not just in the Windows section but in the opening paragraphs. Bits of color holding my attention, lightening my mood, and lifting my energy. June is no different—purple and white lupine, wild daisies, yellow buttercup. June has been alternating between sunny summery weather and dark gray rainy days. Tee shirt or shirt, fleece, and vest. Flip flops or wool socks and boots. But this is not a surprise; this is the nature of June in the Pacific Northwest.

Last month I wrote about a health issue, AFib, which took me by surprise. After having a sleep study confirm I have a moderate case of sleep apnea, the beginning of this month I started using a CPAP machine, and for the last seventeen days I’ve had no episodes of AFib. Seems a bit too easy. Well it’s not that easy—I’m still getting used to wearing the lovely nasal mask which can disrupt my sleep while also helping me sleep better. The no-AFib episodes is a big motivator to keep at it.

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APRIL, A MONTH WITH TWO ANNIVERSARIES

April showers bring May flowers, so the saying goes. In other words, endure April for the reward of May. Yet April offers its own bounty: cherry blossoms, swaths of tulips, and the unfurling of maple leaves, to name a few. April also brings those showers, tree pollen, and temperatures often more like winter than spring. April is an energetic month.

Work: I’m drawn to quotes that reframe the challenges of writing and alter my mindset in an expansive and helpful way. For example, here is a recent newsletter quote from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits:

“If you feel resistance before you begin, it’s usually procrastination and you need to get started.

If you feel resistance after you begin, it’s usually feedback and you need to make adjustments.”

These days I do sit down and get started, because I’m eager to write this book about my Armenian family, to watch the shape emerge, morph, fall flat, and rise again. But it’s taken me a while to implement the second part of the quote. I’ll stare at paragraphs that aren’t working, as if time alone will somehow solve the problem. I’ll make line level edits as if tiny alterations can fix larger issues. (Sometimes they can.) But now I’ve realized a larger adjustment is often what is needed.

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March, A Month To Spring Forward, Still

The harbingers of spring continue this month, with azaleas, daffodils, and forsythia in full bloom, and maples, alders, and dogwood trees beginning to bud out. We have a mallard couple visiting our pond and a blush of robins spreads over the front field bobbing for worms.

Work: This month I’m poring over a ship manifest & port of arrival form, carbon copies of one great-aunt’s letters from the 1930s, and research on Battle Creek College, Michigan and the Montefiori Hospital in the Bronx, NYC. All that to help me reconstruct the story of how another great-aunt, Silvia (Sirvart) Haigazn, came to America in 1928, after surviving the Armenian Genocide, and subsequently established a new life for herself here. My struggles with this particular section are threefold.

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