My self-imposed ban on "dad stories" lasted a few days. Meanwhile, even simple daily situations continued to remind me of my father, Njdeh. But the much-talked-about Glendale multilingual ballot and information pamphlet was the latest phenomena that brought him to mind.
Here is why: After years of being physically separated from our family due to political upheaval, he was finally able to join us for a third and final time here in America. He was already in his mid-60s.
Once we all had enough of the sentimentalities and our family unit was back to a quasi-normal state, he had a few pieces of important business he wanted to take care of.
First, as the rest of his family members were American citizens, he put his citizenship documents into motion.
Simultaneously, he signed up for English as Second Language classes at an adult education center. He took pride in going to class every day and scoring perfectly in his exams. I have kept his exams.
In the process, sometimes he ran my patience thin by asking me numerous detailed questions. Once he asked me the meaning of the word "ambivalent." It was not always easy to give satisfactory answers to his questions in Armenian. Often, certain words do not have a direct equivalent in another language. But he was determined and my answers often brought on new questions.
Njdeh wore out the English-to-Armenian, as well as the English-to-Persian, dictionaries at our house. I have kept them, too.
He graduated from his courses with the unofficial titles of "best student" and "teacher's pet." We were all proud.
Dad did not live long enough to take the oath of becoming an American citizen. This had been one of his dreams since I was born. He always reminded me that America was the best country in the world.
