I confess that writing these letters to you was a trifle easier before you could carry on an entire conversation (sometimes singlehandedly). It was easier for me to share with you your history in these letters when you cried and cooed, knowing that you did not yet have the words with which to ask questions for which I would need to come up with loving but honest answers.
But now sweet girl, my monologues are replaced with dialogue. You’ve begun asking me about
the Big Stuff—things like death and loss and feeling sad for who and what we’ve lost—and I know that I’m on the clock now. We’re getting closer to the days when I won’t just be telling you about your family in these letters—I’ll be telling you about your family face to face, heart to heart, soul to soul.
I wasn’t sure I had that in me a year ago. I know you didn’t have the words for it then, but you knew that Dad wasn’t feeling well in his head. I was burned out beyond recognition, and sometimes, that is what trauma does to us—it warps our minds in ways that we don’t recognize, or even recognize ourselves, without the help of others.
Like most any loving dad there’s that part of me that wishes like hell that I could protect you from ever feeling like that. But I know better, both because my family has taught me better and because you’ve taught me better. You’re already asking me to tell you about the soul-sized stuff, like you already know I can’t protect you from it. And I’m so proud of you for that.
I’ll understand if that sounds weird to you for your old man to say. But we didn’t have any say-so in how our people were violently taken from this world. That adds even sadder, more painful questions to the ones you’re already asking. And I so wish the world cared enough to offer you better answers.
Don’t get me wrong, the needle has definitely moved. The arguments I used to have to make just for what happened to our family to be acknowledged and recognized as real rather than some infernal fairy tale, those arguments at least for now are more settled than they once were. But it has taken us this long just to be offered that baseline of humanity and decency, and that is part of what I wish I could shield you from—that the world is so uncaring and unchanging that it takes so long just to achieve acknowledgement, never mind subsequent steps like education and amends.
That also means I will see you begin to learn about how hard others have had to work to get their stories told—whether it’ll one day be your LGBTQ classmates and how their existence continues to be policed, or your Jewish and Muslim peers and the popularity of antisemitism and Islamophobia, or your Black and Indigenous friends and, well, the entire foundation of our country. And as you do, I hope that you will remember how long it took for this one part of your existence to be seen as fully human and worthy of regard, and then be the sort of person who can be trusted with their stories and their humanity. I hope you will be the sort of person who would have been there for our family when their humanity and dignity were stripped away and the rest of the world did nothing.
That truth is at the heart of your father’s fire, but centering yourself around it need not bitter, because truth by itself is not bitter. Truth is clarity, truth is liberation, truth is refining. It sets expectations and responsibilities, yes, and it requires much labor from us, but so too does the lie. The lie necessitates our contortions and justifications and demands our dissembling and fabricating. That is ignoble and demeaning work, and while the truth is not bitter, the lie is irredeemably corrosive. I want to see you in the employ of truth, and your curiosity can be how you get there.
So keep asking your questions my little love, and in return I promise to figure out how to best answer them in truth and love. I owe you that much and far more as your father, and I owe our ancestors that much and far more as their embodiment. They survived so that we could live, and I love you for me and for us, but I also love you for them.
I hope that through me, you will feel their love for you.
All my love,
Dad
Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day 2023