Category Archives: 02. The Prodigy
The Aqueduct
When the word got round that the California aqueduct had been completed and would soon be carrying water from the Sacramento Delta to Los Angeles, the Adroushans drove out to see this great feat of engineering. They took a picnic basket along, and ate lunch from the tailgate of their family wagon. Armen and Cindy [...]
Pyrophobia
Some—if not all—fears appear to be acquired tastes. Oftentimes a child will first appear to be blissfully aloof to a danger, only to slowly mature into one paralyzed by irrational fear. Not to imply that the hazard is as a rule unreal, but that the fear itself is out of proportion with the risk. It [...]
The Hawk
Cindy was generally regarded as something of a tomboy, but I think that was more by virtue than by inclination. I don’t think she could help being seen as a tomboy given the strength in her arms and her hawk-like eye. It is true enough that she didn’t seem to yearn to be included by [...]
The white cones of Mount Ararat and Little Ararat cut into a blue Armenian sky, suspended on the wall above Cindy Adroushan’s bed. There she lay silent and warm under her grandmother’s coverlet of Armenian lace. Her mother’s shadow lay across her, with the ambient light from the hallway drawn out in a folded and [...]
Daughter of Tenedos
Cindy Adroushan was a neighbor of mine in Slough City when I was a boy. She wasn’t born in Slough City. The Adroushans adopted her when I was too young to remember. They were an Armenian-American couple with one son who were hoping to adopt an Armenian orphan from Turkey. The Armenians of Turkey had [...]