GLENDALE — GEGHAM MUGHNETSYAN
/Our first trip was to the Social Security Office. We wore what we had brought in our suitcases earlier in the week, still dressed for a snowstorm instead of tropical winter. America had not yet clothed us with the hoodies, graphic tees and khaki pants from Mervyn’s Department Store on Brand Boulevard which croaked during the recession that landed two years after our arrival.
A single orange tree in front of our green-colored house, really a two-bedroom backhouse with a single bathroom and parking space for five people, testified true to the address of our new residence on Orange Grove Avenue and although I didn’t yet know what “grove” meant, oranges in January sounded outlandish to me.
I had seen oranges in January before, but the context had been radically different.
Oranges were a staple on New Year’s Eve holiday tables and in gift bags given to children and this tradition had survived when everything else was in a perpetual collapse.
Oranges don’t grow in Armenia. If people managed to buy a few imported Georgian or Turkish ones, they would be wrapped carefully in old newspapers, placed in a box and stored somewhere in the closet to later decorate the fruit basket that included golden delicious apples, persimmon and a solitary banana, then to be sliced in circles and unrolled to be eaten one sweet, tangy triangle at a time.
In abundance, those orange orbs that possessed globe-sized value transformed into fruit grabbable with a stretched hand, at times fallen and rotting on the ground, unnoticed.
My first abundance was the Jons Marketplace on Colorado Street, our second trip. And as we picked the biggest size of Lays potato chips, a 12-pack of 7 Up and ketchup because salsa was yet a thing to be discovered, the mid-sized market appeared movie-like with a truly gargantuan amount of food. During the following years it has never again matched the grandiosity of that initial impression.
The storefronts with “fresh bread”, “cold water” and “meat” in Armenian lettering along Broadway were billboards confirming that the wave that brought us here had been to this shore before.
You are newcomers here, we heard as the initial gasp mellowed in the weeks and the months that in sum will soon amount to fifteen years. The neighboring house with a pool has yet to be a dream fulfilled in this hilly, evergreen semi-desert.
Gegham Mughnetsyan is an archivist, translator, and an occasional writer. He lives in Glendale, California. His writing has appeared in the Armenian Weekly and can be found at www.districtofgegham.com.
