Huge Cows, Tall Trees, and Giant Pears

When you’re a kid everything seems big, magical, and interesting. Long time ago when I was just a little kid, back in the old country, before the war, in time of peace, stability and brotherhood, my grandfather and my father decided to take our whole family on a trip to the land of our ancestors. We packed up our stuff and all got into our tiny Russian Djuguli a car smaller then the 2-door cavalier that I drive right now, and we started the drive to Artsakh, the land of our forefathers. The particular village we were going to is called Norshen which translated from Armenian means new village or new town or something like that. This particular village was home to my father’s mother’s side of the family and we still had some land there so we had a place to stay.

What I remember is that once we got there and found our house (or cottage?) we discovered an unpleasant surprise. Not only has our village home deteriorated and broken down due to years and years of neglect, but there in the front yard lying down among the tall grass was a huge cow. “My God, after all these years, it is still alive…” said my grandfather. “That’s not our cow you idiot” shouted grandmother. “It must be lost.” “What the hell is a cow doing on our property?” yelled father. It turned out the cow belonged to our neighbor who figured us all dead and decided to use our lawn for feeding ground for his cow. After some yelling and then some drinking to celebrate our return our friendly neighbor took his cow away and we were able to unpack and settle in.

What is amazing about childhood is how much bigger everything seemed because you were so small. For me, as I try to remember my trip to the village I recall giant trees, huge domesticated animals, and amazing mountains. Now it probably won’t all seem so big but back then to small kid it all seemed so great and extraordinary. Waking up early the next morning I noticed some noise outside and I ran to investigate. I saw the dirt road full of cows leaving the village. “Where are all the cows going babulya?” I asked my grandma. “They are following the herdsman to green pastures where they will graze and enjoy the sunshine.” I was amazed how all the cows knew that they were supposed to follow some man and how they did it obediently. I was even more amazed later that evening when they all returned and every single cow knew which home to return to.

But the most fun I had was another evening when the entire village went to the forest to pick wild fruits and nuts. What seemed like work turned out to be fun and entertaining. All the big and strong man of the village ran up to these huge and tall trees and began to climb up until I could no longer see them and only hear their voices from above as they sang songs and tossed down the picked fruits. The rest of the villagers which were mostly women, children, and the elderly, would also sing as they walked around and tried to catch the fruits and the nuts tossed from above. That was a lot of fun, especially for us kids, as we were running around trying to catch giant pears, apples, and walnuts and store them in our bags. Except I didn’t have a bag of my own, which upset me greatly because I wanted to compete with the other kids and have the fullest bag. “I need a bag momma!!!” I yelled at my mom, but she only told me that I shouldn’t worry because her bag was big enough for the both of us. Obviously she missed the point completely, because for me it wasn’t about the fruit and nuts, it was about beating the other kids in the village. I was very sad when the time came for us to leave this lovely rustic village and return to the polluted oil-industry city where we lived, but as fate would have it, we wouldn’t have to stay there too much longer.