My father was a good man and a generous provider. At a time when an education was a luxury, he had training barely equivalent to high school achievement. Yet, he insisted that all his children, sons and daughters alike, have more.

Together, my mother, Elmas, and my father, Nazareth, lived in a house made of stone over a timber frame. The limestone mixture, plastered on the outside, was later whitewashed. The floor consisted of dry packed earth. Together, they built a marriage and prayerfully raised their seven children.

My mother did not help my father in the store, as many wives did, but kept a large garden and raised chickens. The fresh eggs she sold were in great demand by the neighborhood homemakers. A very good salesperson, she not only earned money, but she knew how to save it. That is really the secret of success.

The family conducted most of the activities in a central room that served as a sitting, sleeping, and dining room. In one corner we stored our jugs, some filled with water and others filled with grain. In this room we prepared our food. In another corner we stored wooden chests, housing dowries of the single women of the family.

Though this may seem strange to the modern person, our homes were very comfortable. Oriental rugs with vibrant colors covered and warmed our floors. My sisters had woven originally designed fabrics that covered the cushions placed on the few chairs we had. More often we sat on cushions on the floor. Pieces of art and needlework, carefully wrought by Tootoosh, my older sister, decorated the walls. My mother spun her own yarn. Using vegetable juices, she would soon create beautiful, subtle colors.

We made our own bedding from the wool of our sheep. The shepherd would shear the animals. Mother would wash and dry the wool in the hot sun, usually on our flat roof. All the women of the household gathered to comb and fluff the wool. From this we would make heavy, warm quilts for each member of the family for the cold winters.

We folded our bedding, yorgans, each morning and stored them in nearby cupboards, freeing the great room for other family activities.
At dinner, we sat around a large copper bowl that our mother placed in the center of the floor. We ate together from this common container, a custom quite similar to most of the middle eastern cultures. Sometimes, we used eating utensils. More often, we scooped the food from the bowl with cups of lettuce, cabbage or a crisp bread we called lavosh.

The little meat we ate was almost always lamb. By tradition, we were not allowed to eat any pork. I never ever saw a pig, come to think of it, but had read about the animal in some of our literature.

On the side of our house was a shelter, an akhor, for the horse and other animals we did own. The stable, made of stone, was connected to the house and had a stone floor. Chickens had a special place at one end. We kept one cow for milk. We had forty sheep. The town shepherd, a Turk, would come each morning and take from all the neighborhood the sheep with their lambs to the nearby hills where they grazed. In the evening, he would bring them back to the city. What always amazed me was how the sheep knew the household to which they belonged. Our sheep would leave the flock and enter their own individual sheepfolds.

However, each year, my parents bought a different cow, slaughtered her and made abught from the loin of beef. The loin that they cut into pieces, they heavily spiced and hung in a cold place to dry. In the winter, our mother would slice this dried beef paper thin and serve it on bread. She took the bones and scraped the small pieces of meat to dry. These served as meal stretchers when she added them throughout the year to beans, vegetables, and bulgur. The bones she boiled in water to make a delicious rich soup. There were no refrigerators or electrical appliances. We cooked over a wood fire in the center of the room and ate dried vegetables and fruits when fresh ones were unavailable.

My mother never complained and, like all women of her time, prepared meals with what she had and kept her large family fed. Minimal baking was done in the house. Often, she took cheorags and pagaches, swollen rounds of dough, to the village square, where she baked them in the large ovens available to the women of the town. Each homemaker took turns using the village ovens. Often, they would reminisce and share news of family and friends. Baking the bread usually became a social event where each waited her turn and waited for the bread to turn into loaves that had doubled in size with a thin crisp crust from the egg wash that gave the bread a rosy golden color.

Preparing meals for her family was a very important part of her day's work. How carefully she would rock the fresh cream into butter! In her small kitchen garden she grew fresh vegetables during the short summer season. Drying beans, herbs, and other vegetables added to her tasks.

Although the cold, arid climate of Sivas did not lend itself to growing much fruit, our father had planted an apricot tree and a sour cherry tree in our back yard. As we harvested the cherries, we enjoyed them most when they were fresh from the tree. After we had eaten as much as we wanted, Tootoosh, my older sister, would make a concentrated, burgundy colored syrup that she stored in a crock to be converted into juice in the winter time. The apricots, we dried and kept cool in a crock to eat in the winter as we sat around the fire.

Our neighbor who had a vineyard gathered grapes and made a juice that she boiled down to a heavy syrupy paste. She often threaded walnuts on a string and dipped them in the heavy grape syrup several times to make a delicious candy, called rogig.
A man would come to our street with his cart full of many varieties of fruits and vegetables from warmer countries, just as street vendors used to come when we first lived in America.

Every year, my father purchased a load of grain. First the tsoren (the raw, hard seeds) were boiled, and then spread on a clean sheet to dry. Mother took the grain, when it was ready, to the village mill to have the bulgur ground in three sizes: large, medium and small. This work my mother carefully supervised herself. Then, returning home, she poured the bulgur into crocks according to size. Whoever did the cooking selected the size she wanted depending on whether she was making salad, kufte, or pilaf.

We had a small, pretty flower garden. Irises, roses, and many wild flowers grew in profusion. The fragrance of the flowers Mother gathered in the morning added to the comfort of our house.

We went to the Turkish baths one day a week. Certain days were reserved for Armenians; other days were reserved for Turkish citizens. My father paid extra to have a place reserved for us. In those times this privilege reflected status. We were so happy to go.

The women went on one side, the men on the other. Small boys went with their mothers. The bath, a large room with tiled floors, was full of steam and we soon became sweaty and hot. To remove any dead skin, my older sister rubbed us with a kesse, a black scrubbing cloth made from horsehair; soon our bodies would be red and shiny. At four o'clock we went to a cooling room where we thoroughly rinsed each other with basins of clean water. We dressed in clean clothes mother had packed for us.

Tootoosh always prepared a light lunch of paghach, cheese, and olives. Sometimes, she packed a treat, such as fruit from our trees. There would always be more than enough so we shared with others. They, in turn, shared their garden's produce. After the day's outing happily spent among friends, we came home laden with news and stories about other members of the community.

On Sundays the entire family, dressed in more formal clothing than the usual smocks we wore during the week, attended the Holy Virgin Armenian Church in the city square. We had a big, beautiful church. After the devastation of one of the earlier massacres, the Armenian women of Sivas gathered all their precious jewelry and sold it to earn money to build this church.

By Christian custom, we did not need to wear veils as did our Turkish neighbors. But, in the presence of Turkish men, we did pull a scarf over our faces to protect us from their stares. My mother, Elmas, loved her God, and enjoyed her church family . . . . Little did her faith help her in the end.

There were many traditions we observed on special occasions. A bride always covered her face until the wedding ceremony. At that time the groom lifted the veil from her face. Another custom was observed when the bride and groom crossed their threshold. For good luck, they would kill a rooster and send the bird to provide food for the poor.

When someone died, certain ladies would wash the body and wrap it in a soft cloth. Four relatives or friends would take the wrapped body on a stretcher to the graveyard outside the town. This was a long walk. Others would come and take their turn carrying the body. We children always followed the procession of family and friends. The senior family member of the deceased passed raisins wrapped in bread to the guests. How we enjoyed our portion! Often, if the people were rich, they would kill a lamb and give it for the orphans. Later, when I was in the orphanage, I remember how happy we were when someone died. On that day, we would have meat for dinner.

Cemeteries were more like parks. Members of the family cared for the trees and family grave sites, just as they do here. Each grave had a stone telling the birth and death of the deceased. Almost always there was a poem or a proverb etched on the stone of the person who had died. We loved to go there. Often my friends and I would walk through the cemetery, enjoy the beautiful landscape and read the sensitive tributes.

After the war, the cemeteries were leveled into fields so that no one would remember anything of the Armenians. The Turks took our beautiful gravestones and built houses for themselves with them.

Easter was a special feast day in our home. Traditionally, we would go to church and whisper in each other's ear,

"Christ is risen."

The other would answer,"Blessed be the resurrection of Christ."

After church we would knock eggs. Most families enjoyed this tradition. The mother wrapped eggs in onion skins and hard boiled them until they reached a luminous, reddish-brown color. Each person held his egg in his fist, revealing only the tip between the thumb and first fingers. One had to crack the opponent's egg without injuring his own. Our Mother divided up the hard-boiled eggs. We took turns striking. The person who cracked the other's egg received, as his reward, the egg. The loser lost all. One did not enjoy losing in this game.

I enjoyed my childhood in Sivas. Each morning I would walk to school, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. The school, a two-story adobe building, was airy and light with many windows. The boys' classes were held upstairs; the girls' classes were held downstairs. Attending school was always a pleasure for me. Lessons came easily, especially arithmetic. In the spring when I graduated, I planned to attend Sivas Normal School or Robert College, an American college on the shores of the strait of Bosphorus. Now that I look back, normal school was the only education available to young, capable women students.

The sun shone through the school windows that April morning. We were studying our English nouns. Professor Michael Franguelian came downstairs. Having knocked quietly on the door, he entered our classroom. He pulled Oriort (Miss) Aghavni, his betrothed, into a corner. He said a few words, kissed her gently, and hurried to the gendarme who was waiting at the door. Because of his American education and position in the community, he was among the first to be conscripted. All this excitement seemed romantic to us. Little did we realize that the sorrow that brought tears to our young teacher's eyes would soon be ours.

I ran home to share the news. Mother frowned. From that day on she locked the doors and windows more securely than usual.