Marian Mesrobian Mac Curdy
For the first six years of my life, my parents, brother and I lived
in my maternal grandparents’ house in Syracuse, N.Y. The six of us were
crammed into a small early 20th-century frame house, with a
front porch and tiny back study that served as my bedroom; an enticingly
flat roof outside its window overlooked our grape arbor, fruit trees,
and strawberry patch where my grandmother caught the thieving bunny she
spanked and sent on its way. Our home welcomed many a visiting
dignitary. As a small child I sat on the lap of family friend, Hamo
Paraghamian, a huge man with a heart to match. My small hands carried a
bowl of yogurt and garlic for General Dro sitting in the blue chair in
the corner of our living room, who thanked me by intoning in his gruff
voice, “This is food for the gods.”
Aaron Sachaklian (in Armenian, Aharon), my grandfather, spent most of
his days in the red leather chair near the wooden radio he listened to
every day, silently smoking his Camels with shaking fingers, perhaps
from undiagnosed Parkinson’s that would, years later, steal my mother’s
smile and cause her shuffling gait. But when I was three, four, five,
this quiet man who wore a three-piece suit nearly every day of his life,
who had private sessions with visiting community leaders and battle
heroes, bounced me on his foreleg, carried me through the doorways on
his shoulders like a queen, and took me outside at dusk to survey the
peach, pear, and apple trees beyond our back door. When my grandmother
Eliza and I made our weekly trip to Abajian Cleaners three blocks down
on South Avenue, I was the one to carry his wool coat, hugging it to my
chest, saying, “I love my medz-hairig [grandfather]. I wish he would live forever.”
