Tag Archives: memoir

It’s not quite spring, but the crocuses have bloomed, and the daffodils are starting to show their sunny faces. It always feels like a small miracle to me when winter recedes and the trees start to bud, and this year’s flowers that bloom in a predictable series have lifted my mood.

We are packing up our apartment so the walls can be painted and the floors refinished—this hasn’t been done since we moved in eighteen years ago. I’m in a chaos of boxes with walls sadly denuded of all paintings, photos, and posters, and we will be decamping to Los Angeles for two weeks while the work is done. James is on the Writers Guild negotiating committee—their contract expires on May 1—and while we are in L.A., he will be in a hotel conference room from 9 to 5 every day trying to hammer out a deal. I plan to be working on an essay entitled “His Driving Life” about my father’s relationship to motor vehicles, starting with the Lincoln Market delivery truck that he drove at the age of nine when he could barely see over the steering wheel.

Our daughter Djuna, who as a second-year law student at NYU is working with the Racial Justice Clinic, learned two weeks ago that her first client has been granted parole. Upon hearing this wonderful news, I sent Djuna this quotation from prison abolitionist, organizer, writer, and librarian Mariame Kaba:

“I’ve said this to younger organizers and will repeat it here. To be involved in helping to free someone from the clutches of death making institutions is a profound and life altering experience. It’s a miracle. Make sure you take that in and then continue to fight for others. People say ‘well look at all of the effort it took to get one person out.’ And my response is ‘YES and it’s worth all of the effort. Keep going.’”

Djuna and her friend Will visited David twice a month at Fishkill Prison to help him prepare for his parole hearing, and they are now raising funds for him in advance of his imminent release.

Another bright note is that the anthology WE ARE ALL ARMENIAN has just gone back for another print run because the sales of the first edition have been so strong. This week the anthology was included in a New York Times roundup of newly published books. Columbia’s Armenian Center is hosting a panel discussion on April 3—the anthology’s editor Aram Mrjoian will be in conversation with contributors Chris Bohjalian, Scout Tufankjian, Hrag Vartanian, and yours truly. If you’re in the New York area, it would be lovely to see you there.

Nancy Kricorian

My mother Irene Gelinas Kricorian was one of the youngest in a French-Canadian family with seventeen children living on a farm in Hooksett, New Hampshire. Her mother died when my mother was four years old, and when my mother was eight, her father was declared unfit by the state and she and her sisters Priscilla and Eleanor were removed from the family farm and sent to the Dover Children’s Home where they spent the next six years.

My mother has talked about the orphanage in Dover since I can remember. Her stories were sometimes comical and sometimes terrifying, and I grew up fascinated by the whole idea of orphans and orphanages. Intermittently since the late 1970’s she has been writing about that time, as well as interviewing family members, and collecting related documents. There are still many unanswered questions about her childhood experience and her family’s history.

On March first, my mother and I drove from Watertown to Durham to see the Dover Children’s Home Papers at the University of New Hampshire Library. In the special collections room, we opened the Gelinas Family file hoping for details about the court hearing that had resulted in the children’s removal. But the file was slim—there were five letters relating to the sisters’ arrival in November 1944 and later medical treatments for childhood ailments. We also looked over dining room menus, clothing requisition forms, and other administrative documents. There was a hand-written logbook with the names and photographs of each child and their date of arrival, but these entries ended a year before my mother and her sisters were brought to Dover.

After we finished at the library, we drove from Durham to Dover, parking the car outside the Children’s Home. It is no longer an orphanage, but functions as a non-residential treatment program for at-risk youth. We were told that therapy sessions were in progress so we couldn’t go inside. We walked around the yard, and my mother described the games they used to play as children and pointed at the windows of the dormitory rooms where she and her sisters had slept.

We then headed to our Airbnb rental, where I carried my mother’s suitcase up a steep flight of stairs to the bedroom. As I started down the steps holding onto the baluster I thought, “These stairs are going to be hard for my mother.” Just then my right foot slipped on a tread, and I landed with all my weight on my foot two treads below. The pain was searing, and I later found out that I had badly fractured my ankle in three places.

The continuing misadventure involved an ambulance trip to the emergency room, an overnight stay at a Portsmouth hotel, and a team effort by my devoted and capable spouse and two grown kids to get my mother back to Watertown, me back to New York City, and the car I could no longer drive from Dover to Manhattan. Once back in the city, I saw an orthopedist, who operated on my ankle the following Thursday. I’m currently getting around on crutches and a snazzy red knee scooter. The recovery is expected to take at least another two months.

Given my current mobility issues, we decided to hire a local genealogist to locate the court records for the 1944 hearing that resulted in my mother and her sisters’ years in Dover. This is information that my mother has wanted for at least thirty-five years.

Nancy Kricorian

New York City