Autumnesque

Last year Gail and I went to the Czech Republic and Ireland for our big ole European vacation.  Gail is Bohemian on her father’s side and Irish on her mother’s side which made the trip a great opportunity for her to explore certain aspects of her roots.  People always ask me if I am interested in going to Armenia… visiting the homeland.  I have to admit, at this point in my life, the answer is no.

It’s always a bit uncomfortable to admit this truth.  As an immigrant’s granddaughter, shouldn’t I have that natural curiousity to walk in their footsteps and see the culture, people, land of my forefathers?  Don’t I want to sample the cuisine of the region?   Visit the ancient churches… ?  Look for distant family ties?  Relish the fact that my ancestors paved a pathway for me to now work in entertainment marketing in Southern California from a quaint village in the hills?!!!   How can I possibly not want to fulfill these very poetic ideals??

As anything, the answer, “no” is filled with convoluted truths and poignant facts about my family, and their own brand of tradition.

An easy beginning, would be to start by telling you that I don’t speak Armenian.  Neither does my mother.  Her parents didn’t continue the tradition of the language to their children.  When I lived in Los Feliz (aka Little Armenia), the fact that I was 1.) only half Armenian, and 2.) did not speak a word of the language (besides counting from 1-29) made the more conservative Armenian’s shudder with disdain.  The sons and/or nephews they were selling to me earlier in the conversations evaporated as a topic and their atittudes became slightly chilly.   But there is a logic to this seemingly heartless  decision.   That reason is that both of my grandparents had just survived a mass murder of their kind in the middle east.  My grandmother’s family had been stripped of all belongings and forced to hide with gypsies.  Grandfather and his brother worked as hometown spies – tunneling families out of the city when they could, fighting the tyranny and looking for ways to come to America.  Once they arrived on these shore, in Boston, there was much that they wanted to forget, and much that they feared, even in a new country with promises of freedom and prosperity.   Out of fear or out of determination, they chose to make sure that their children were dominantly American – with perfect English.  They kept certain cultural aspects – like religion, community, food.   Language was not a part of that.

The other factor in my nonchalance towards Armenia is that by the time my grandparents were born, their families had left Armenia for the middle east.   This was in great part to avoid communism and to carve out a larger fortune for their families.  My grandmother spent time in Lebanon and Iran, my grandfather was in Turkey.   I don’t even know if their parents had been in Armenia or if it was the generation before them.  So there were no stories about Armenia, and it was given little to no credit in terms of family history.

Finally, the history of the Armenians is somewhat grim.  Armenia is characterized by many as beautiful, as being  the mythological site of Noah’s Ark’s final plunge onto a mountaintop.  It is known for its churches and hills and cities.  But adjectives like joyful or warm or welcoming are never used.  I find, even in Los Angeles, that the Armenian community (although far more of a soviet Armenian group) is very closed to outsiders.  I have noticed that my relatives have never visited the homeland.  My grandparents, though wealthy, never tried to go back.  My uncles and aunt, the world travelers, will spend time with relatives in Argentina -  but have never even hypothetically discussed the idea of seeing Armenia.

So I suppose I am left without a real Pilgrimage  to my ancestors homeland.  I suppose I am luck that my father is a European mutt… I can backpack Europe in search of tenuous roots.

One last reason I will probably never go to Armenia… I would be seen as a hell-bound sinner, and Gail and I would stand out like sore thumbs.  It is a very religious culture.  I fear that rejection would make me feel estranged in some way to being Armenian.  I identify as Armenian in all things.  My aesthetics, my cooking, my taste in colors even.  But my definition of Armenian is narrow, and was built on impressions of my grandparents, extended family and the shopkeepers and restaurateurs of Little Armenia. 

 Now that I’ve written this, and processed the idea of pilgrimage, I can see how maybe I am wrong, after all.  Maybe the contrast of what Armenia is, at the root, would be the ultimate lesson in the profound journey of my ancestors, what they left behind and what they built.  Maybe it would give me a larger context in which to operate.  Maybe my perspective would never be the same.

Maybe.  But I still think the next trip is going to be Greece.

As a marketer, the term organic usually means “evolves from or is a natural continuation or result of the original.”  Campaigns strain to find ways to marry themes that seem totally unrelated.  Brands sponsor sports teams and have to find the overlapping values of the game and their product so that their association makes sense.  Organic ideas have to be made, primarily, of the key components of the parent(s).  Larger themes have to be utilized so that both the product and the sponsorship can live under the same heading.  Sometimes you think about those themes  in advance and strategize a platform that works for every medium.  Sometimes you find out that your client wants to work with hockey, so you spend a few weeks doing research and brainstorming the key attributes of both entities to find that common thread.  Like most branding, the best organic marketing ideas just “feel right” to the consumer… they innately make sense because there the brain processes the information and sees the equation of A=X and B=X therefore A+B together makes all the sense in the word.   The irony of course is that finding something organic and communicating it without hitting people over the head is most deftly achieved through… you guessed it… artifice! 

Watching Ann Coulter on her press tour is torture.  Her newest book is a diatribe against the evil, greedy, bad parent single mother (who counts her welfare checks with an evil laugh) and the criminal spawn she creates.  On one hand, Ann Coulter has some valid points.  Children who grow up to be criminals have a higher probability of growing up in a home that has problems – an absent father, drug or alcohol abuse, poverty among others…  Ann has taken the statistics and made a fun little thesis out of them – preaching the evils of the single mom and how the “left” has deified them or made them the innocent victim in pop culture and beyond.   

Everything she says has a motive, and that motive is to frame liberals as liars who are bringing down the wrath of god and out to destroy the traditional family.  The other side to her argument (which incidentally agrees with the outcomes she discusses) is in Freakonomics, the economist’s book that takes a look at social issues.  In freakonomics, the author tracks the heavy reduction in young criminal activity in the mid 90’s to Roe vs Wade, and the generation of unwanted/born to poverty children that did not exist.  Regardless of your personal stance on abortion, you have to admit that this finding is incredibly interesting.  Abortion reduces crime by eliminating a high risk portion of the population.   The other  thing that strikes me is that the African American population, certainly a segment of the population with high numbers of single mothers, is also demographically very religious.  So one could pose the idea that because they may not believe in abortion, there is a disproportionate amount of unwanted/born to poverty/single mother black youth growing up in this country…   

I know that this is all opinion – just food for thought…  I grew up in the most wonderful single mother home you can imagine – so I take all of this very personally.  There are too many exceptions to ignore – so the single parent argument that Coulter is selling, to me, ignore many other factors that contribute to bad results.  She is also trying to make a case against any alternative form of parenting – i.e. gay parents.  To me, the things that are necessary for a happy childhood are enough time and money to make the relationship of the family relatively stable.   The financial/time strain on a single parent is formidable unless they are in a unique situation.  The lack of those resources are what, to me, make the children suffer.

here’s that horrible interview with Ann Coulter on the View:  http://perezhilton.com/2009-01-12-mann-coulter-vs-the-ladies-of-the-view-today

((this is a writing assignment from Sunday Scribblings))

I grew up on a dead end street in a small Northern California town.  It was a great place to grow up.  My single-mother was a day care provider in our home as well as an artist, and our little duplex apartment and messy backyard meant that my early childhood was a collage of paint, mud pies, dress up days and roller skates.  It was a neighborhood with a lot of children my age, and our street was less of a thoroughfare for cars than a paved playground for whatever games we decided to play. 

In hindsight I know that I lived on the wrong side of the tracks, in many ways.  But the economy in a logging town in the 80’s was such that I didn’t really feel like my lifestyle was anything other than a neverending opportunity to compete and/or imagine.

Two things changed this innocent perception. 

The first one, easily explained, was television.  We didn’t have a television until I was maybe 5 or 6, and it was an eleven inch black and white beater that took about 3 minutes to warm up.  TV told me what I had been missing – new toys and brightly colored cereal. 

The second one was my growing awareness that my extended family in Boston lived a life that was nothing at all like the life my mother and I were leading.  Every summer we would go back and visit them at their townhouse and then at the lake cottage.  The townhouse was essentially a museum of antiques and what we now call kitsch.  Crystal grape lamps, velvet down couches, brass lamps, chandeliers, crystal doorknobs, oriental carpets – even fancy holders for the extra roll of toilet paper! 

My grandfather was a diamond jeweler in Boston and my grandmother had a thriving wedding gown shop.  The two of them were cosmopolitan, wealthy and very attracted to shiny things.  So was I.   They drove Cadillacs that seemed 30 feet long and smelled of leather.   To me, there was no place as beautiful as their home in Boston (although it also held the title for most frightening, as their basement and a life size and somehow menacing self-portrait of my mother hung in the sun parlor remain the 2 most terrifying icons of my childhood).

Each summer we would spend up to a month with them.  These visits usually overlapped with my birthday, allowing for me to be showered with attention and gifts.  I accepted these as my birthright since it had been happening since I could remember. 

One year – maybe around 5 years old, I started to gain an awareness that my family in Boston weren’t completely approving of the situation my mom and I were living in.  A few comments went back and forth that told me that my mom was getting a lot of pressure to move back east to be with the family.  I wasn’t really into the idea.  To me, California meant fun and chaos and Boston meant summertime with family. I realized, maybe from my mother’s obstinate and perhaps slightly defensive tones, that there were people who didn’t think our little life on Eva Claire St. was paradise.  

Now back in California, THINGS were quickly becoming what gave you status as a kid, not the money behind them.  Toys and cereal!   I was very lucky in several ways that masked the tiny income my mother and I lived on.  One way was that as a day care provider, my mom invested in a lot of toys – and those toys technically (in my eyes) were ultimately mine.  So in day care, I felt the status of being the real owner of every toy.  I also happened to have a never-ending stream of gorgeous dresses that my grandmother would buy or make for me.  Velvet, lace, silk, ruffles, princess sleeves… you name it.  I also happened to have a lot of jewelry, because every Christmas, my grandfather would send me a new piece of finery.  Most of the time, I received ruby and gold bracelets, rings, etc.  To a young imaginative girl who believed in princesses, these riches played perfectly into my self-image as a girl who on a daily basis lived a simple life of a pauper, but who secretly was part of a royal family. 

But the realities of our financial situation were sometimes obvious.  Our toilet would always freeze in winter.   I know my mom had to borrow money off and on for just about anything that came up.  We didn’t have health insurance.   If the car brokedown it might be a while before we fixed it.  We weren’t total strangers to the food bank.

One Christmas in particular, things were tight.  I tell this story through the eyes of my mother in some ways, as I was about 4 years old.  She had saved money for months to buy me a purplish blue wool lined jacket that I had seen and wanted.  The week before Christmas someone put us on a “poor list” to receive gifts from the City.  They brought nearly 20 presents – all toys, all flash and color.  You can imagine how my mother felt when I looked at the coat and threw it aside in a frenzied leap towards a new cylinder of Tinker Toys. 

My perception of our financial situation rarely lined up with the realities my mother had to deal with.  I was left with an understanding of poverty that included an appreciation of the improvisation and creative fun it inspires.   My perception of wealth was one of older age, a bit of stuffiness, travel, big homes and sparkly things.

I am leaving out many chapters, including my experience of attending a private University filled with trust funds – but the experiences of early childhood are the ones that have stayed with me.  As we delve into this recession, I think about the “things” that I now have as a hardworking, slightly stuffier, older traveler who rents a home near the beach and has a slight addiction to sparkly necklaces.  I also think about the moments that continue to mean the most, the ones removed from money – scrabble by candlelight, laughing in bed, catching a nap on the weekends, swimming, helping a friend…   

My childhood held a wonderful recipe for balance: 10 months of low income laughter, delirium and playtime mixed with 2 months of privilege, manners, travel and beauty. 

Rich or poor, the invaluables remain the same.

I’ve never had a real blog besides MySpace.  Since I’ve defected to Facebook, now is the time to start a real blog.  My goal for this space is two-fold:  1) to chronicle moments from my life and 2) to challenge myself to write/journal about various topics.  While writing and communicating in general is a huge part of my personality, too often I rely on spoken word, exercising the easy muscle of the tongue.  That’s fine – but as someone who feels great satisfaction when she completes a task that is tangible, I know getting back into a regular pattern of writing will enhance and add meaning to life.  To that end, I will be challenging myself to write something that is not current and/or autobiographical once a week. 

Now that my mission has been stated, here’s a brief introduction. 

My name is Autumn.  My stats are:  33 years old, 50% Armenian, child of Hippies (Born Again Christian & Zen Buddhist), grandaughter of immigrants from the Middle East, lesbian, leo carnivore.  I work in Entertainment & Sports marketing.  I live in Belmont Shore, California.  I have an amazing girlfriend, a wondrous dog named Woody and an imperious kitty named Punky.

When I look back on my life I see a lot of contrary factors that came together to shape and mold who I haver become – the obvious one being my parent’s religious beliefs, but others arise as well.  I grew up poor in California but rich in Boston in the summers.  I was a small town girl who always felt like a fish out of water, even though I had never been in the big city.   In high school and soon after I operated on a convoluted mixture of sweetness and yearning alongside tar-like manipulation.  One constant for me is that I am always looking for contentment and love while simultaneously always feeling restless for new experience.

I was a late bloomer in terms of recognizing my own sexuality.  Now that I know, i KNOW.  I am moderately politically active.  I am a socially progressive and fiscally moderately-conservative democrat. 

At 33, I am watching all of my close friends go through tremendous growth phases where they have children, get married, finish schooling, choose destinations to live, etc.  As someone who likes where I live and work, is passionately in love and committed and is not interested in being a parent, I am in awe of these changes, and oftentimes feel left behind. 

Life is incredible though.  I know that I am lucky and blessed in millions of ways.  I never could have predicted the kind of happiness I’ve found with my partner.  She is an incredible woman, and our life together is filled with sweetness, partnership, excitement, laughter, joy, passion and comfort.  I never imagined I would find someone who could, at 5 years!! still give me butterflies of excitement but also challenge me to a worthy debate on just about any subject.  She is my best friend and my love.  Who knows what the future holds, but I can easily foresee a beautiful life together.

On that happy note, I will say adieu for now.  I am excited to have this space to vent, create, comment and boast. 

xoxo A