independence – Packing List for Immigration

Pack… Memories of Your First Love

Second grade was the first time I fell head over heels in love. Or so I told my mother when she asked me if I had liked someone. “I don’t just like him, mom,” I’d said “I’m in love.” Mom took the situation with all the gravity it deserved (this had been my first love after all) and took me out for ice cream.

The subject of my ardent affection was Murad, a boy who sat behind me in first grade. He used to torment me mercilessly: I was a huge bow head, and he’d yank on my pigtails throughout the class, until I got fed up, turned around, smacked him over the head, and proceeded to get in trouble with our teacher. As soon as the bell rang I’d chase him down the corridors to seek revenge. Not for the pigtails: I could have lived with that, but I was an uber nerd even then, so getting me in trouble with the teacher was what I deemed revenge worthy.

My 1st grade class photo: I’m the one with a giant bow on my head standing next to the teacher, with “can we get this over with” expression on my face (that tells you everything you need to know about 7 year old me), Murad is the boy standing to my left.

Murad wasn’t all bad though; he would bring me Mamba fruit chews, share his lunch with me, and draw me when he got bored in class (I can’t imagine his drawings were very good, but I remember being rather pleased I was his muse). At the end of second grade we were in our class play together: Alice in Wonderland. I was Alice, of course, in my favorite checkered red dress, and Murad was the Cheshire Cat, and every time we had to rehearse our scene together, we’d both blush to the tips of our ears. But I figured this was method acting at its best: Alice had got to have been flustered by a big talking cat! (Though all this blushing during the play was what had given me away to my mom – I’ve been working on my poker face ever since.)

Pack… Your Patience

I feel very cosmopolitan flying to see my aunt in Amsterdam, hopping on the phone with cousins in Moscow, and writing postcards for extended family in Nantes. But the part of the story that’s less suitable for glossy pages of travel magazines is how folks ended up so scattered all over the world and what they had to leave behind.

At the ripe old age of 4, my interests included bunny rabbits, chocolates (particularly from the russian candy factory called “Red October ” – I was a proper Soviet child), listening to my second cousin Levon play the accordion, and watching the children’s evening program on TV (here’s the YouTube link to the opening and closing themes for all my Soviet folks – try not to cry).

On this particular evening in the winter of 1988 we were visiting Levon’s family, and with him being older, he was put in charge of watching me. This made it easy for me to nag him into playing his accordion for me again and again. After dinner the adults had stayed behind in the kitchen, which meant that the living room TV and candy dish were now my domain (try and stop me, Levon). The sugary sweets would surely keep me up past my bedtime – but the adults seemed to be none the wiser.

Left to right: Grandma Emma, cousin Sveta, 4 year old me, and cousin Lena at the Children’s Railroad park in Yerevan in the summer of 1988.

In the kitchen they huddled around the radio. Every now and then I’d hear one of them exclaim in incredulity and what sounded like maybe anger or fear. But cartoons were on – what did I care about a bunch of adults and their boring radio? When suddenly the phone rang: long rings of a long distance phone calls – back then you could always tell.

Pack… Your Ability to Celebrate

This story begins 30 years ago or so, in Soviet Armenia. I’m 6, and I’m working on an assignment for kindergarten. We have to make the country’s flag. I keep it high level, skip the sickle and the hammer, primarily due to the lack of skill. But I do the colors: red, blue, and red. And that’s how I find out that the country is breaking apart. My mom takes one look at this flag that I made and says “oh, honey…” And so I have to make a new flag. It’s not red, blue, and orange. And if your markers came from the Soviet Union, that orange still looks an awful lot like red. But still, it’s a new flag… And it’s a new country.

If you’re an extroverted 6 year old, the new country thing is rather exciting. I go to political rallies and demonstrations with my dad, I sit on his shoulders, I pound my fist in the air, I shout slogans like “something-something-independence” and “this is my country,” I sing nationalistic songs (that are still firmly stuck in my brain 30+ years later). The adults eat it up: I get so much attention, high fives, and, if I’m lucky, candy.

I start shamelessly pandering to my demographic. I have this children’s craft book. One of the projects they have is a “make your own candy jar from cardboard.” Theirs is beautiful. It’s made to look like a nutcracker: the mouth opens, candy comes out. I make mine short, bald, with a large birthmark on its head. If you remember what Mikhail Gorbachev looked like then you get it. If you don’t remember it, then you should look it up. My mom is still serving candy from this bad boy on holidays.