love – Packing List for Immigration

Pack… the Scent of Lilacs

The park is in full bloom, smelling like flowers, fresh grass, and wet earth. Smelling of spring, and awakening, and hope. I’m squatting in the grass that’s already as tall as I am, pushing my flimsy paper boat with a stick down the narrow irrigation stream. The boat bobs and struggles against the rocks in the shallow stream, and I consider whether adding a sail would help the situation. I eye the leaves on the trees around me appraisingly, but it’s still early enough in the spring that the leaves aren’t quite sail-worthy yet. But the shock of purple lilac catches my eye, so I abandon the boat to its fate and head over to investigate. The flowers smell sweet and intoxicating. I bury by face in them to take it all in. And even at 7 years old the scent feels nostalgic of 7 previous springs. I examine the tiny purple flowers – finding a five-petaled bloom is good luck and makes you wishes come true. I look for one wishing for money for a lollipop – a wish that feels aspirational at the time, so when a find a flower with five tiny petals, I eat it for good measure, so as not to squander the good luck away. And the smell of the lilac is then forever imprinted in my memory, taking me back to that spring, and that park, and that paper boat in the stream.

Not quite lilacs, but spring flowers still fill my heart to bursting every year. And I still don’t know with what.

The trees around me seem immense. At 7 years old, the world is boundlessly large, and adulthood impossibly far away. I wish it would hurry up though, particularly since mom said I could eat ice cream whenever I please when I’m an adult, but until then I will have to wait until school gets out in June. And June feels just as far away as adulthood.

I pop my head out from behind the lilac buh and examine the group of older men on the benches. Two of them are hunched over a chess board, frowning, and a small group surrounds them: some watching intently and shaking their heads, some eating sunflower seeds and enjoying the first warm spring evening in a while, most of them giving advice. One of the men at the board is my father – he’s staring at the chess pieces fiercely, his thought process imprinting in the creases on his forehead. He makes a move with one of the pieces jerkily, presses the button on top of the clock, and looks at his opponent expectantly. Is he winning or losing? I try to read the weather. Is he happy or sad? Because on this depends the success of my mission of asking him for money for a lollipop. Will he bark no, or will his anticipation of a win result in magnanimity?

Pack… Fireworks

We are walking down Saryan Street in full view of the outdoor diners who I think are really only there to show themselves off – they don’t actually care about us. I feel less precarious and take your hand. It’s not something one does around here outside of established relationships because “what will people think?” But I take your hand anyway, and my skin tingles. This is the longest I’ve been home in ages, in more than ten years actually, and I have found myself falling in love. With the tender blush of the sunrises in my city and its empty streets in the early mornings that are just mine, with its smiling babies with enormous eyes, with the easy familiarity of needing haggle at the flower stall on my way to my mom’s house, even though the guy always gives me an extra bunch of flowers for free in the end. I don’t remember what loving these things is supposed to feel like, so when my heart feels full to bursting, I fall in love with people.

*Hiking in Vayots Dzor, Armenia, for New Years 2022 was its own kind of magic. Big thanks to the much talented Sipan Grig for the photo.*

We walk down the street with my hand in yours, despite the sweltering heat of August. It is as if your hand is what’s tethering me down to this city that is both familiar and foreign to me after so many years away. It will all blow away if I let go – the sunrises, the smiling children, the sense of belonging. Or maybe it will be me who is blown away. Either way, I don’t want to find out, so I hold on tightly despite both our palms sweating.

People stare at us. The simple answer is that between the tattoos and the piercings and the strange choices in hair color, my presence is nothing like subtle. Over the years, the more the society has pushed me to conform, the more I have pushed back. You get to have the real me only if you can see the real me, past what’s on the outside. To quote the Little Prince: “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential, is invisible to the eye.” “It’s like dating a firework,” you say. I think I’m supposed be flattered, but it makes me impossibly sad.

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… Donuts and Coffee

I ate a heck of a lot of donuts during my senior year of high school. Going out to eat wasn’t much of a thing when I was growing up. But by 1998 there was a change in the government, the nuclear power plant was back on, and there were early signs of development and Westernization, which brought businesses catering to developing and Westward-looking youth. My aggressive sweet tooth was happy because one such business was Yum-Yum Donuts (with an aesthetic rather reminiscent of Dunkin’ Donuts).

The pink and yellow lettering of the donut shop clashed with the moody image I was starting to cultivate, but unlike being all rock-n-roll and sitting on a cold park bench with a guitar, the donut shop promised warmth and coolness-by-association for the low low price of 25 cents: the price of a donut. The coolness was provided by other Yum-Yum patrons: boys wearing baseball hats, cargo pants, and Timberland boots, and girls with short hair, crop tops, and heavy eyeliner (it was 1999, people). So I would drag my best friend, Karine, to eat donuts and hate watch all the cool kids (we were certainly not cool enough). Until one day when Yum-Yum was full, and two of the really hip boys asked to sit with us.

The boys were Henry and Van (names altered to protect the innocent – y’all know who you are – love you both). I was 16 and moderately boy-crazy. The boys were funny (we’ve already covered how much I love people with whom I laugh), and I twirled my hair throughout the entire conversation. Karine was quickly over my hair twirling and these boys. But on my way out I did something that nice Armenian girls were absolutely not supposed to do – I wrote my number down on a piece of paper and left it for the boys.