The reality is that most of North America knows next to nothing of the 20th centurys first genocide - the systematic slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the First World War.

My grandparents, like many genocide survivors, took most of their stories to their graves.

He recalls what that first German soldier said to his major: No God-not yours or mine-approves of what you're doing.

But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want.

We may talk a good game and write even better ones, but we never outgrow those small wounded things we were when we were five and six and seven.

Food is a gift and should be treated reverentially--romanced and ritualized and seasoned with memory.

Now it is you who everyone presumes is so fragile. Wounded. Scarred. Maybe they're right. Perhaps you are. A nursery rhyme comes into your head, and, like an egg, you allow yourself to topple onto your side, your legs still pulled hard against your torso. You lie like that a long while, watching the chrome shell of the tape measure sparkle until the sun moves.