I am thirteen years old. Forever. Pasternak said he was fourteen. But I am younger. Just starting but no longer a child. And aging fast. Although the world stays new and wet behind the ears. I just begin to understand that I will never understand. And I am in love as if for the first time with the written word. This affair began when my grandfather promised me that true love would always be returned. I was conceived in 1915 when the blood of my other grandparents soaked through the earth of Kharpert and seeped, seeped until the thirties when it reached Worcester, Massachusetts. I was born in a garden when war cracked the face of the earth that had not listened to the 1915 blood. I was born in the New York City subway when everyone turned to stare at my American legs. I was born in the Boston University Mugar Library the first time I heard Gerard Manley Hopkins playing with words. I arrived after difficult labor in the seventies attended by physicians named Narek, Siamanto and Varoujan who decided I might be worth saving. That was thirteen years ago.