One Christmas Story

Our blended family with other relatives

Since Christmas is only a few days away I've been reminiscing on the past and how our large family often suffered during those days.

My husband and I are a blended family and ended up with 11 children between us.  Some weren't always with us but at any given time we often had 8 children in our crowded home.  My husband had to return to college to study for a career to support all of us.  During this time we had very little money.

In spite of our lack of money, we always welcomed those around us who were in an even worse plight.  And for those who were lonely, which can be so devastating during such festive holidays, we gave them a special place at our table.

Most of the time we were able to have a nice Christmas due to the compassion of strangers and such organizations as the Salvation Army and our local schools and churches.

There was one Christmas, however, where nothing like that happened, my hubby was interning as a student teacher and had no income.  When Christmas came, we had very little in the way of presents.  We told the children we should just be happy with whatever God gave us and we should be thankful and think of all those who have even less.

About mid morning we saw a strange sight.  One of my daughter's friends had adopted us as her family.  Her father had been quite young when she was born and her mother had addiction problems.  She spent a lot of time at our home.  His name was Barry and we got to know him through his daughter.  Imagine our surprise when we saw him walking up our pathway with presents tucked under his arms.  He was a trucker and had just returned from the road.  At one of the truck stops he thought of us and bought presents for the kids,  We dubbed him our new Santa Claus.

What a great day that was.  Probably one of my happiest memories.  We spent the day eating turkey with Barry and watching the kids play with their new remote controlled cars out on the street.

I hope that all those who are lonely or needy this Christmas will find those who exhibit such a Christian message to give to those in need.  I pray no one feels alone. I know this is an impossible prayer, but even if a few more lives are touched, that would be the good news we all want to hear on Christmas.  Merry Christmas.

Happy Thanksgiving 2016

Here's something I wrote about Armenians and holidays back in 2010:

While flipping through my families’ photo albums, I was struck with the enormous amount of pictures we have from our holiday gatherings.  Armenians are an emotional, gregarious race and nothing was spared for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.

The holidays were a time for our family to get together with all our relatives.  Not only were the meals huge and plentiful, but out came the best Armenian food ever.  We had cheese boreg with just the right amount of cheese, butter and a flaky crust – yum; green beans and lamb stew; yalanchi and sarma created with the loving and experienced skill of grandmas, aunties and cousins; Armenian string cheese; barstarma; and paklava for desert.

I swear my grandma made the best kufta and yoghurt soup ever.  Each kufta (a ball of cracked wheat and meat) was filled with pieces of nuts.  Out of the whole pot, there was one kufta that had a walnut in the middle.  Anyone who had that kufta in their bowl was the lucky one.  She also made choreg; a wonderful twisted, sometimes cheesy sometimes sweet bread.

My mother and grandmother cooked mostly with lamb. My grandmother owned a bakery and would personally go to the butcher and pick out the best lamb for her lahmajoon.  In those days there was always a butcher behind the counter at the supermarket and my grandmother and my mother would pick out the nicest piece of lamb and have the butcher grind it up for her.

Believe it or not but we ate a raw meat dish called khema (similar to steak tartare).   Well, that’s what we called it though I see on the net that other Armenians call it chee kufta or kebabs.  It’s in the shape of kebabs, but it’s raw so we called it khema and I loved it.  My mother made this so carefully with only the best ground lamb selected and carefully handled in order to be able to eat it raw.

It is on these memories that I say my Thanksgiving prayer for 2010.  Thank you God for all the blessings we have in our lives; that we can enjoy our meals freely without hindrance or strife; that our children can grow up educated, smart and pursue their talents and desires; that we can visit each other from across the country or across the world; that we can invite new friends and acquaintances to our tables and share with them in our abundance; that our ancestors can look down on us and smile because it is due to their sacrifice and stalwartness that we are able to enjoy these blessings. 

At the same time that I am rejoicing in my gratefulness, I am also sad hearted to think about the many people in our world who are not enjoying the same things.  Instead they are hurting and suffering great perils and strife.  I pray for those suffering in the world today.  

Living in an RV full-time and other stories: A Tale of Two Families

Living in an RV full-time and other stories: A Tale of Two Families: A Tale of Two Families The Okoomian family in Turkey When I was a little girl, around 1956 (I was about 5 years old), an event happ...

A Tale of Two Families

A Tale of Two Families

The Okoomian family in Turkey

When I was a little girl, around 1956 (I was about 5 years old), an event happened that has come full circle in my life (I am now 65).  Sixty years ago my grandmother found her sister who had been torn away from the family after the parents were killed during the war.  The war I am talking about was WWI.  The land I am talking about is Turkey - my parents’ and grandparents’ birthplace.

We are Armenians; we are displaced Armenians.  Both sets of my parents and grandparents escaped the atrocities of that war and found themselves settling into a far away land that promised them peace and prosperity.  They went about putting the pieces of their lives back together.  Meanwhile, those left behind did not fare so well.  Most were killed or died on the death marches.  Forced to leave their homes, they were marched into the desert and left to die.  Including two sets of my great grandparents and numerous aunts and uncles I was to never meet.

My grandmother along with her brother and sister were sent away before the death march that was to be the end of the Armenian presence in Eastern Turkey.  Too young to travel to the new land, their younger siblings were left behind.  My grandmother kept in touch with her sisters until the parents were killed and her sisters were taken by Turkish soldiers.  One sister, Markrid, was able to keep in touch through clandestine methods until that source dried up.  Markrid, was given by the Turkish soldier to a Turkish family.  She was married to one of the sons, a court reporter.  She was only nine years old.

Forty nine years later after her husband died, Markrit felt free enough to look for her sisters and brother in America.  She put an ad in an Armenian-language newspaper.  My grandmother, Mary, saw the ad and promptly had her sister flown to the United States for a tearful and emotional reunion.  Markrit spent 6 months in California getting to know her other family.

Markrid arrives California 1956

Three sisters meet - 49 years later

After Markrid returned to Turkey, my mother made two trips to visit her and her family.  Also, in 1967, Markird’s grandson, Namik and his brand new wife, Sevinc, came to visit us in California.  I was just a teenager then and Sevinc was even younger than me.  Because we were both teenagers, we were given the task of entertaining each other.  This was difficult because I did not speak Turkish and she did not speak English.  We had fun walking around the yard and stroking each other’s cheeks.  Sevinc did nothing but smile and say sweet things to me in Turkish. I never forgot that day.

Namik and Sevinc 1967 in front of my house

Ozzie visits Markrid in 1967

Fast forward to life in the 60s, getting married, divorced, travelling the world and nearly forgetting those teenage days.

  I returned to help my mother in the last 10 years of her life.  She passed away in 1999.  The task was given to me to go through her garage full of boxes of things.  My mother was a known pack rat.  Some opined that it was her days of growing up in France with nothing but her family to hold on to.  And then her father left for the Promised Land only to be reunited 4 years later rather than the 4 months as promised.  Worse, she was made to travel all the way over the ocean leaving her baby brother behind due to visa problems.   Hripsema (my maternal grandmother) remembers little Ozzie (Azadohi) crying all the way to Ellis Island.  It was a long 6 months before her adored baby brother, George, joined them in Philadelphia.

My mother kept every memento possible.  While going through her boxes of pictures, letters, notes, etc., I ran across the story of Markrid, Mary, Elizabeth and brother John as well as all the pictures of Markrid’s visit and letters back and forth between families.  I decided I was going to reunite the families again so I wrote letters to every address I found in my mother’s address book.  I even had a friend translate the letter into Turkish so there would be no confusion.  Every single letter came back.  It appears that all the addresses I had were no longer viable.  Frustrated, I put them away.  Meanwhile, I put the story up on a blog that I had at the time called Armenian Eyes.  I used Markrid’s Turkish name as well as my grandmother’s.  Imagine my surprise when one of the great grandchildren of Markrid (named Burcin) contacted me on my blog.  Their family was so excited to find our family once again.

I struck up a great relationship with Burcin and she helped me fill in some of the blanks on the family tree that I was doing.  I was supposed to go to Turkey and meet everyone but it just never happened.  Sadly, my friendship with Burcin was cut short when she passed away at an early age.  I knew something was wrong as I had not heard from her in awhile.  I contacted a professor friend of mine in Turkey who looked her up in the directory of the college where she had received her schooling.  And there he found her obituary.  I was devastated.   I felt bad for not trying harder to visit and letting that opportunity pass.  Worse, I had no other address or email contact and had once again lost touch with our Turkish cousins.

So, a couple of years ago I started this current new blog and put the story up once again.  Plus, I used my maiden name on social media in case other family history enthusiasts might want to get in touch.  I was surprised again when the same college students found me on both FB and my blog.  Wow.  I was so touched and it brought me to tears.

Fast forward to last month.  The same couple who had visited our family in 1967 decided to make a trip all the way to Fresno and meet our family again.  So Namik and Sevinc and I revisited our 1967 meeting.  We had a whirlwind visit that lasted only a few days but will be a lifetime worth remembering.

Namik and Sevinc
 in front of  my old house 2016

My cousins and I had a wonderful time getting to know our Turkish cousins.  My cousin, Verjene, who was named after the younger sister who, apparently, was taken by a gypsy band and died young, told her story to Namik and Sevinc.  

Verjene
with Markrid 1957

Verjene
with Namik and Sevinc 2016

With my cousin, Pam,
tearfully saying goodbye at the Fresno Airport

This time I will make every effort to meet my long lost cousins and visit my parents’ homeland.

RV Fairy Garden

An RV Fairy Garden.  You read that right.  I miss my garden and my whimsical stuff that I laid out here and there in the yard.  To satisfy my creative juices, I made a fairy garden but with a twist.  I used an old miner's pan, various rocks I have collected, miniature forest animals, a few items from the craft store related to BBQing and/or camping.

It's only a prototype.  I'm still looking for an RV to add to it.

This has a forest and camping theme because that's where we are parked until October, in the Sierra National Forest.

Can you see the animals?

Independence Day 2016

kids in the back of the pick up

How many people can claim that they get to work in the place where they love to live.  That is how we view our work now that we have retired and live where we actually like living.

The RV park where we work celebrated Independence Day a day early because it was Sunday.  So last night we got to drive around the park with the kids and the old folks together under a canopy of pine and Cedar trees and the night sky.

With the smell of campfires and smores, we wound around the RV park while waving at all the campers lined up along the little parade route.

Kids on decorated bikes, dogs and various family members made the trek behind the lead truck and the park's old military Jeep.

We were honored to be serenaded along the way by a military band member and Vietnam vet who played the fight songs of all the branches of the military on his trumpet.

Today, Independence Day 2016, we got the chance to tool around the lake in a little motorboat and Bob tried to figure out his new fishing pole.  The weather was perfect and the lake was up after a devastating drought  last year that saw the water level down lower than anyone could remember.

The Lake - at a higher level

Bob - Lakeside, enjoying the view

Picnic and soaking up the view

Tree formed by the winds coming off the lake

That's our celebration this year and thank you to all military members who sacrifice so much for their fellow country men and women.  Off we go to a potluck hosted by fellow RVers.

And Let the Summer Begin

Our new digs and my instant mini patio

Today is the first day of summer, officially. Our typical central California valley heat started off with a bang as usual.  In other words, it became really hot, really fast.

 Fortunately, we also started off with a bang by moving our digs up into the cool atmosphere of the Sierra National Forest.  We have completely moved our RV and all our gear and will be "up in the pines" for about 6 months  while we work at Wishon Village RV resort for the season.

I made a little garden patio next to our motor home.  I sit out here in my lawn chair and read or relax.

Bob relaxing by the campfire

The first part of June was actually quite cold, as you can see Bob is wrapped up in his Mexican serape.

Shopping requires us to go 1 1/2 hrs. to town, but last trip I took the opportunity on my way back to stop at the newly renovated Vista Point in the Pineridge area .  I was curious to see how the 6 months of work had turned out.  I was impressed with the stone work and the Indian grinding holes that had  been preserved and placed neatly where everyone could see and reminisce on that part of the area's history.

Indian Grinding Holes

Well done rock wall and promenade

rock work and promenade to view the scenery

Yesterday, Father's Day and our first day off together, we decided to take a little drive around Lake Wishon.  Last year the lake was at its lowest point in anyone's memory.  The drought had really taken a toll.  This year with a better rainfall, not quite to normal, but  what seemed like a 100 percent improvement, the lake was up and beautiful.  Boats and fishermen were everywhere.

Wishon Lake - higher level this year

Wildflowers

Pentsemon and Indian paintbrush

Some wildflowers we saw along the way as well as an interesting rock formation.

"Here we are" - Bob checks out the map

Geological wonders-metamorphic rocks

Woodchuck Country

We went to the other side of the lake to check out "Woodchuck Country" which is part of the John Muir Wilderness.  We hiked a little bit to get an idea of the trail.  The higher elevation still has us in its cross hairs.  But we got a few nice pictures and enjoyed the views.

Hopefully, in a few more weeks we can get serious about doing some hiking.

I climbed up enough to get a good view, see Bob?

Proof, I was here

Can you hear the babbling brook?

Bob looking for fish

After woodchuck country, we ventured to the bottom of the dam where the Kings River flows.  There we found out the forest service and PG&E have made some real nice fishing platforms, parking, and bathroom facilities for avid fisherman.  The sound of the river is always enchanting.


We came across a rock slide with a boulder in the road.  Almost as big as our car.  That is the end of today's journey.

Bob pushing a rock

Americans, Indians, Pow-Wows

Like a butterfly as her decorations suggest

Today we enjoyed the annual American-Indian Pow-Wow at Big Sandy Rancheria of Auberry.  It was my second time to go and it was a  lot of fun.  I really enjoy the regalia (their beautiful attire that the American-Indians wear) and the dancing.

It was a beautiful setting, the day was gorgeous with a cool breeze and the Indian Tacos were awesome.

Grass Dance

One dance, we were told, was called the grass dance.  This one was to get the ground ready for planting.  The yellow color of the regalia represents the dry earth that is being readied for planting.

Color guard and flag ceremony

I love their flag ceremony that they always have.  What struck me today was the poem that was read and the explanation that was told of how American-Indians (their word) defend this land to the utmost, this is their homeland and that is why you see so much reverence given to their Veterans and their elders.  Something the rest of us could learn from.

There were flags from several branches of the military, including the Coast Guard and the Marines.



I cannot include all the pictures I took.  There were too many to chose from.  I tried to pick the best to get a glimpse of the beauty in these pow-wows.

The young girls dance

My friend, Erica, the original Indian princess, and her twin daughters

And of course, I had to get a pair of earrings made by local tribe members.  How could I not?

The Musings of a Mother for Mother's Day

1974 My first child

“If you bungle raising children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.”  Jacqueline Kennedy

When I had my first child I suddenly knew that life as I knew it was over.  I wondered why no one had told me this and why I wasn’t prepared.  Nor was I prepared for the immense outpouring of love that I felt for this new life and that it couldn’t compare with any other feelings I had experienced.

Being a mother is not easy, even in the best of households, or the richest.  There is no playbook yet there is an overabundance of directions and/or suggestions from well meaning sources that often contradict each other and add to the mix of confusion.

 When my world was full of little people that I had to protect, provide for and ensure their safety at all costs, my modus operandi was control all situations in every aspect.  When it became clear I could not in all honesty control every situation, my motto became “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”  I felt ill prepared and definitely out of control.  I bemoaned that I was the worst mother in the world.  I would lament little things like:  “How could I buy a pair of shoes too big for my small child to save money only to watch him fall as soon as he got into the parking lot, tripping over those cost saving shoes and getting a nasty bump on his head?”  Certainly that was not the only mistake I made.

There were way too many bumps in the road for my liking, too many pitfalls, too many roller coaster rides. It became clear eventually that the best I could do was make good citizens out of my children, teach them right from wrong and, again, hope for the best.  

For my nuclear family, things were not easy, in fact, we would joke that our family fit the description of dysfunctional when that became a new word in the dictionary.  I could only hope that when I came to the end of this road my children had survived me and were happy and still loved me. 

People would ask me how I did it and my answer was always the same.  “I really don’t know, I just do it.”  But that’s our job, God gave us a task and we must complete that task.  

When I came across this Jacqueline Kennedy quote, it hit home.  As a mother, we have one job, one job to do and that job is to raise our children.  That is our first and foremost responsibility above all other responsibilities.  Most of us just know that.

My children are all on their own now and I am proud of them.  I hope they know how much I love them and that I wouldn’t be without a one of them.  

I think of my own mother and how she treated me.  I was a hopeless wanderer who may or may not have been the black sheep of the family.  I was passionate about the wrong things and I cared for the wrong people.  After 20 years I waltzed back home with all sorts of troubling issues.  My mother had never given up on me and she took me in without question or judgment.  For the next 10 years we talked on the phone daily and were never far from each other.  I now cherish those memories.

I took pages from her playbook and used them for my own.  I wonder sometimes if she knew how much I appreciated her.  I hope so.

Mother's Day Memories

Our family 1955 - my mom on the right

 Soon we will be celebrating Mothers around the world.  I'm pretty sure the event started to give mothers a day off from working in the kitchen, hence, all the restaurants packed out with families giving mom a day off.  Flowers were a peace offering for all those times we made her cry.

Growing up I loved surprising my mom with a few flowers I picked for her or a card I made in school.  I would leave them on the back porch, ring the doorbell and then run out of sight, certain I had fooled her,  and more importantly, made her smile.  I would run around the side of the house huffing and puffing, and then calmly walk in the front door as if I had no clue what little girl had left those flowers on the back porch.

My mom left to go beyond the stars before I was done appreciating her.  I'm sure I could have done more. I'm sure I could have hurt her less.  But one thing I know for sure, she always loved me no matter what.

Here's to you, Mom, and all the moms in the world.

Fresno Remembers - 101 years unrecognized

The theme of the Sermon at First Armenian Presbyterian Church

I spent the last couple of days attending events here with the Armenian Community in Fresno remembering the Armenian Genocide.

 As someone so aptly put - how can 1.5 million people be starved, beaten, robbed, pillaged, burned, raped to death, their villages plundered and their wealth given over to their victors and then they call it an unsolved mystery? 

No, our ancestors knew the truth and they told us and this week we marched, we observed, we prayed, we laid down flowers at memorials and we sang.

 Because, we said, we will not forget.  We will not forget our grandmother's tears, our parents' anguish, our lost and missing relatives, our villages gone and destroyed.  We have been misplaced, we have been scattered, but we are strong and we will not forget.

Near East Relief Display

I cried my grandmother's tears when I listened to the speakers at Fresno State where the Armenian Studies program has placed a monument to the people who perished. 

At the church service, all members of the different clergy came together to perform a service in honor of our ancestors.

The Armenian school brought their students to present the Armenian and American flags and sing the national anthems of both countries.

In spite of hurts and betrayals, we are still fiercely loyal.

Armenian School and Homenetmen Scouts

 














An arm of the memorial that depicts the region my paternal ancestors came from.

Kharpert - Genocide Memorial, CSUF

A small clip of a moving song played beautifully by some of the students.  I love the wood flute, a Shvi

April 24th - the Day a Nation Died

Art by Rosanne Haddad

In commemoration of the Armenian Genocide which is observed on April 24th, I am posting an excellent summary of the genocide by http://silencethelies.com/history/

Summary of the Armenian Genocide of 1915

The Genocide of the Armenians by the Turkish government during World War I represents a major tragedy of the modern age. In this the first Genocide of the 20th century, almost an entire nation was destroyed. The Armenian people were effectively eliminated from the homeland they had occupied for nearly three thousand years. This annihilation was premeditated and planned to be carried out under the cover of war.

During the night of April 23-24, 1915, Armenian political, religious, educational, and intellectual leaders in Istanbul were arrested, deported to the interior, and mercilessly put to death. Next, the Turkish government ordered the deportation of the Armenian people to “relocation centers” – actually to the barren deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia. The Armenians were driven out brutally from the length and breadth of the empire. Secrecy, surprise, deception, torture, dehumanization, rape and pillage were all a part of the process. The whole of Asia Minor was put in motion.

The greatest torment was reserved for the women and children, who were driven for months over mountains and deserts [see map], often dehumanized by being stripped naked and repeatedly preyed upon and abused. Intentionally deprived of food and water, they fell by the hundreds of thousands along the routes to the desert.

There were some survivors scattered throughout the Middle East and Transcaucasia. Thousands of them, refugees here and there, were to die of starvation, epidemics, and exposure. Even the memory of the nation was intended for obliteration. The former existence of Armenians in Turkey was denied. Maps and history were rewritten. Churches, schools, and cultural monuments were desecrated and misnamed. Small children, snatched from their parents, were renamed and farmed out to be raised as Turks. The Turks “annexed” ancestors of the area in ancient times to claim falsely, by such deception, that they inhabited this region from ancient days. A small remnant of the Armenian homeland remained devastated by war and populated largely by starving refugees, only to be subsequently overrun by the Bolshevik Red Army and incorporated into the Soviet Union for seven decades, until its breakup in 1990. The word ” genocide” had not yet been coined. Nonetheless, at the time, many governmental spokesmen and statesmen decried the mass murder of the Armenians as crimes against humanity, and murder of a nation.

Reports of the atrocities gradually came out and were eventually disseminated the world over by newspapers, journals, and eyewitness accounts. In the United States a number of prominent leaders and organizations established fundraising drives for the remnants of the “Starving Armenians”. In Europe the Allied Powers gave public notice that they would hold personally responsible all members of the Turkish government and others who had planned or participated in the massacres. Yet, within a few years, these same governments and statesmen turned away from the Armenians in total disregard of their pledges. Soon the Armenian genocide had become the “Forgotten Genocide”.

In effect, the Turkish government had succeeded in its diabolical plan to exterminate the Armenian population from what is now Turkey. The failure of the international community to remember, or to honor their promises to punish the perpetrators, or to cause Turkey to indemnify the survivors helped convince Adolph Hitler some 20 years later to carry out a similar policy of extermination against the Jews and certain other non-Aryan populations of Europe.

http://silencethelies.com/history/

EASTER EGGS AND THE EASTER CHICKEN

With my brother and sister, I'm the one in the middle

 Growing up, I didn’t understand a lot about Easter.  I knew, at least, that it had to do with the death of Christ and his rising from the grave.  What chickens and eggs had to do with it was beyond me.  But I remember hunting for Easter eggs after church.  For us Armenians, Easter eggs were tinted a reddish brown color using onion skins or yellow using turmeric.  For orthodox Armenians, this tied into lent and abstaining from meat products.

As Armenian children, we grew up playing a traditional egg cracking game at Easter. Apparently, the onion skin dye helped fortify the egg for this game.

One person would try and crack the other person’s egg and the last egg standing would win a prize.  We had all sorts of tricks we would come up with believing they would ensure us to be the one to win.  First you had to pick the best egg, if you picked wrong, you were the first to go, we were sure.  Then there was the angle of hitting the other person’s egg.  Everyone was sure they had the best trick to last until the end.  It was always a lot of fun.

On one particular year, we were given baby chicks from our parents.  We enjoyed our baby chicks until they grew to be chickens.  Then one day, my grandfather announced that his American born grandchildren needed to learn about the ways of the Old Country.  Into our house he marched and proceeded to appropriate one of my mother’s kitchen knives.  We were going to learn how to butcher, feather, and eat our pet chickens!

This was quite unusual and even somewhat horrifying, but worse was the reaction of both my grandmother and my mother. I was only about 5 years old, but I will forever remember the two of them carrying on and berating my grandfather.  My mother was absolutely incensed that he was using her kitchen knife which wasn’t very sharp and she was convinced he was going to ruin it.  My grandmother was furious and was scolding him in Turkish.  I have no idea what she said but it sure didn’t sound good and she was definitely angry.  My grandmother was a feisty thing and she could really let my grandfather have it.  No doubt she was trying to stop him and was telling him he was not doing this thing properly.  Yet, as feisty as my grandmother was, my grandfather was equally as stubborn and the procedure of cutting off the chicken’s head began.  Or, I should say, the “sawing” of the chicken’s head began.

My grandfather suffered from an illness that made his hands shake.  The combination of the shaky hands and the dull knife meant for a rather long, arduous and pitiful ending for our poor chicken.  Nevertheless, we dutifully paid as much attention as we could for our lesson about “the old country” in spite of the distraction created by my mother and my grandmother’s tirades.

Later on as we sat down for dinner, I remember eating most everything except this strange chicken wing with a few pieces of feather still stuck to it.  I seemed to have forgotten about the horror show of the morning, so when I told my sister I didn’t want the chicken she reminded me that it was the very chicken that grandpa had crucified earlier.  I told my sister, “I’m so glad I didn’t eat it then!”  I’m not sure that I learned anything about the Old Country from this experience, but I think I may have gained some interesting life experiences from my grandparents.