Geraniums

My Armenian grandmother, who told us little of her life in Turkey, planted her window box with red geraniums, and now that she is no longer here to answer my questions, I wonder if the geraniums and their color meant anything other than a personal preference; a quick internet search reveals that red is the color of Armenian national garments and rugs, and what’s more, the dye comes from an insect, a cochineal indigenous to the Armenian Highlands, and its use dates back at least as far as 714 BC, and as my research continues I find the narrative of the Armenian people stretching back three thousand years on the same highlands, along a major trade route—merchants and soldiers, nomads and crusaders, the entirety of human history a tide bringing goods and war and taking away horses and sovereignty, which is the story of my unnamed ancestors spread across some four hundred thousand square kilometers—three thousand years as mysterious as twenty-three, my grandmother’s age when she came to America, her previous life hushed, her voice hidden in the brown and brittle letters spread over the top of the black steamer trunk as I search for my family, as I seek a single cochineal insect in a field of red flowers.

Laura Rink is writing a memoir about her Armenian grandmother and the genocide she survived and that Turkey still denies. She earned her MFA in creative writing from the Rainier Writing Workshop in 2021. Her essays are online at the Brevity Blog, Two Hawks Quarterly, and The Keepthings. She blogs at LauraRink.com and It’s a Good Day on Substack.

This essay first appeared in Complete Sentence (April 2021).