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Glendale News Press, CA
Jan 4 2012
Intersections: Breaking bread with two identities
January 04, 2012|By Liana Aghajanian
Every Saturday morning for most of my life, it has been the sweet,
lingering smell of fresh-baked bread, rather than an alarm clock, that
has lulled me out of a drowsy haze and brought me gently back to
reality.
In a ritual initiated by my dad, the piping-hot baked dough wrapped in
a simple paper bag and delicately decorated with sesame seeds found a
way home with him before ending up on the kitchen table, where its
aroma swirled around the house until it found and awakened me.
It was devoured almost immediately, while the loaf of toast routinely
used during the week for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that ended
up in lunch boxes remained untouched. It wasn't just any kind of
bread. It was barbari, an Iranian flatbread whose origins began many
hundreds of years ago in a part of the world that I was born in, but
that couldn't be any more different than the one I grew up in.
The marriage of my multilayered identity, including our beloved
barbari tradition, is perhaps most evident during this time of year.
On Saturday, a mad dash to the bakery, followed by a feeding frenzy,
took place. Soon after, gingerbread men were made, Ralphie and his Red
Ryder BB gun was watched on a loop in `A Christmas Story,' and
presents were wrapped. And a few days after 2012 was ushered in by the
Rose Parade in neighboring Pasadena, the holidays will start all over
again for many families like mine as we celebrate Armenian Christmas
on January 6, better known around the world as `Epiphany.'
Growing up as a child of immigrants is a harrowing experience,
littered with pangs of insecurity and identity issues that stay with
you. Pulled between two worlds, you find yourself not really fitting
in anywhere, trudging through life with cultural issues that make that
already awkward phase of adolescence and being a teenager all the more
- well, awkward.
Caught between the Verdugo Hills and the Caucasus Mountains, barbari
and toast, Christmas and Epiphany, your dual identities wage internal
war with each other. Your sense of now and here competes with your
parents' sense of then and there.
It happens that the weight of making peace with a multilayered
identity is sometimes overwhelming. You feel an ultimatum must be
made, a decision must take place; and embracing one surely means
losing the other layers. But there doesn't have to be a sense of loss.
http://articles.glendalenewspress.com/2012-01-04/news/tn-gnp-0105-intersections-breaking-bread-with-two-identities_1_identities-bread-dough
Jan 4 2012
Intersections: Breaking bread with two identities
January 04, 2012|By Liana Aghajanian
Every Saturday morning for most of my life, it has been the sweet,
lingering smell of fresh-baked bread, rather than an alarm clock, that
has lulled me out of a drowsy haze and brought me gently back to
reality.
In a ritual initiated by my dad, the piping-hot baked dough wrapped in
a simple paper bag and delicately decorated with sesame seeds found a
way home with him before ending up on the kitchen table, where its
aroma swirled around the house until it found and awakened me.
It was devoured almost immediately, while the loaf of toast routinely
used during the week for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that ended
up in lunch boxes remained untouched. It wasn't just any kind of
bread. It was barbari, an Iranian flatbread whose origins began many
hundreds of years ago in a part of the world that I was born in, but
that couldn't be any more different than the one I grew up in.
The marriage of my multilayered identity, including our beloved
barbari tradition, is perhaps most evident during this time of year.
On Saturday, a mad dash to the bakery, followed by a feeding frenzy,
took place. Soon after, gingerbread men were made, Ralphie and his Red
Ryder BB gun was watched on a loop in `A Christmas Story,' and
presents were wrapped. And a few days after 2012 was ushered in by the
Rose Parade in neighboring Pasadena, the holidays will start all over
again for many families like mine as we celebrate Armenian Christmas
on January 6, better known around the world as `Epiphany.'
Growing up as a child of immigrants is a harrowing experience,
littered with pangs of insecurity and identity issues that stay with
you. Pulled between two worlds, you find yourself not really fitting
in anywhere, trudging through life with cultural issues that make that
already awkward phase of adolescence and being a teenager all the more
- well, awkward.
Caught between the Verdugo Hills and the Caucasus Mountains, barbari
and toast, Christmas and Epiphany, your dual identities wage internal
war with each other. Your sense of now and here competes with your
parents' sense of then and there.
It happens that the weight of making peace with a multilayered
identity is sometimes overwhelming. You feel an ultimatum must be
made, a decision must take place; and embracing one surely means
losing the other layers. But there doesn't have to be a sense of loss.
http://articles.glendalenewspress.com/2012-01-04/news/tn-gnp-0105-intersections-breaking-bread-with-two-identities_1_identities-bread-dough