The Brighter I Shine

Mama always tells me stories on my birthday.
She tells me the story of how I arrived in this world.
They say I first came to them in a quiet dream
and that I was a gift from our ancestors.

For one Armenian child, birthdays are days for decorating the house with bunches of rose and mint and sumac, for eating beef dumplings with garlic yogurt, and for baking cakes with family and friends. But birthdays are also a time for telling stories—stories of ancestors and homelands, of births and new beginnings, and of the land their family now calls home. Because stories make up who we are; they are like rivers that lead into oceans, like seeds that fall from flowers, like pages of this book that come from trees. And the more stories that are told, the brighter this little child shines.