“Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring,” the president said.

~ Boston Globe

My grandmother cored them
with a serrated knife

with her hands that had come
through the slaughter—

So many hours I stared at the blotch
marks on her knuckles,

her strong fingers around the
long green gourd—

In a glass bowl the stuffing was setting—
chopped lamb, tomato pulp, raw rice, lemon juice,

a sand brew of spices—
from the riverbank of her birth—

Can holding on to this image
help me make sense of time? . . .

~ Excerpt from Peter Balakian, “Zucchini”

The red maple buds reflect in the brook. I walked to the swamp and back before yard work. Near the brook I bend down and see my first anemone. I call my sister. I have not remembered, but she does, today is the anniversary of our mother’s death. On some level, yes, I remembered. Frank is on his tractor, he has started burning the brush and I get to work clearing, raking, cutting, pulling out dead branches for the cleanup. We both work long and hard in the lovely weather. I tackled a very messy, dead brush and bracken filled area on the driveway that I have wanted cleaned up for a long time. A new project, a new garden area to develop. Finally, we’re exhausted. We have done as much as we can. In the afternoon my dear friend drops by and we hug, heartily, safely, the first time in well over a year, and have a cheerful time with our dogs playing in the yard. On a whim, in the late afternoon, Frank and I drive into the North End and walk around a bit in the crazy sidewalk crowds of people, we have pizza and Bova’s Bakery and all the trees on the Rose Kennedy Greenway are in bloom as we sit on the grass and eat. The moon is white in the pale blue cloudless sky and we drive home west in the pinkening of the sky. And I am thinking about my mother and all the days when she was here on earth.