Greece is the Way I Am Feeling

by Cathy

“Happy is the man...who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean sea.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

Navagio Beach in Zakynthos

“I want to see the Parthenon by moonlight."
― Daphne du Maurier, Echoes from the Macabre: Selected Stories

Every summer about this time, it happens. My mind starts wandering...traveling thousands of miles across the Atlantic to my other home, the land of my ancestry, the land where I've left the other half of my heart. Greece.

Things are different there.

Blues and whites in every shade and hue imaginable are mirrored from water to sky to the domed steeples of island churches. The air I breathe smells different, from the incensed holiness within ancient monasteries to the gritty smog of Athens to the bougainvillea overflowing onto the rooftops of pristine whitewashed homes and into the cobblestone streets of small towns and island neighborhoods. Heck, even my skin smells different, kissed by the Aegean sun and lapped by the Mediterranean.

The food tastes like the vegetables and fruits are plucked straight from the fields, the bread tastes like it's baked fresh every hour, the olive oil tastes like it was just pressed from the olives in the groves, the seafood tastes like it was just pulled from the sea and the wine tastes like it was just harvested - probably because they all were.

This is the land of myths, where the scenery consistently delivers an eyeful - from the gritty mix of concrete jungle and ancient ruins of Athens and the Acropolis to the hills, valleys, mountain ranges, beaches, fishing villages and 2,000+ islands that pepper the coasts of the mainland. It is said that anywhere one digs in Greece, specifically in the bigger cities, they are bound to find ancient ruins. The city of Athens pretty much sits on layers and layers of ruins, some of which were found while digging to build the underground rail systems for the Olympic Games in 2004 and are now on display in the main subway station in Syntagma Square.

The people there are uninhibited, lively and spirited. They enjoy laughing, loving and living life; they just live life differently there - where having coffee has nothing to do with coffee and when getting together with friends has nothing to do with going out.

Since 1993, when the house my parents built there was officially done, I have gone to Greece practically every summer - I've traveled the islands with my friends (times that will never be forgotten), embarked on roadtrips with my parents that gave me historical lessons I will never find in textbooks, and spent time with family whose company and stories I treasure the most, as I have spent the least amount of my lifetime with them.

I take in all they have to share with me. I have visited the now crumbling house where my father and his three siblings grew up, saw where they hid from the disciplinary actions of their parents or where they climbed up to sneak some homemade marmalade when they shouldn't have. I saw the spot where the Germans hoisted a tree limb to keep the roof of their house from falling in during World War II (the tree limb is still there) while they were there to demand a home-cooked meal by my grandmother on a cold night. I saw the rock on which my mother sat out in front of her house to watch my now father ride by on his motorcycle and glance at her sideways. I saw the backyard of my grandmother's house which is now roped off because of the ancient ruins found and exhibited there, and on and unbelievably on.

Every time I visit Greece, I find out or experience something new. I want my children to feel the same way about Greece as I do; I want them to experience it through my eyes and the eyes of their grandparents and one surviving great-grandparent, for little do my daughters know that there is a whole lot there that they wish to share with them and little precious time to do so. I want them to not only experience, but really feel and understand the culture of a people who dance when they are sad, who are passionate in everything they say and do, who are inherently religious and believe in miracles with the same voracity they believe in the evil eye and who have the privilege of descending from an ancient people who created civilization, democracy and higher knowledge in everything from medicine to astrology. I want them to feel the nostalgia and the family history when they hopefully return year after year. Bella has traveled there three times in her 11 years and Ari, just once.

My father has often told me that if he could go back in time now, he would not have made the decision to leave his homeland and immigrate to the United States.
"Even though life here has afforded us the ability to go to college? To live a more secure life?" I respond almost incredulously.
"Yes, even though," he tells me, wearily. "To belong to two countries...to have one foot in each and not fully belonging to either, it's very difficult," he tells me. "Yes, we had many opportunities in America, but..." his voice trails off. That's okay, dad. I know. I understand.

Tomorrow is August 15th, one of the holiest of days in Greek Orthodoxy, the celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. My mind, tomorrow, will be at the thousand-year old church named after the Virgin Mary (Panagia) that's near enough to our house that we can walk to, and the candles that will be lit and the offerings that will be made; my mind will be on the week-long celebration in honor of this holiday that will bring people from all over the world to the fields surrounding that church near our house to sell goods they have made with the dying crafts they still hone and herbs and teas they have grown and picked from mountainsides and fields, to see traditional dances in traditional costumes from various regions of Greece, to savor spit-roasted pig, souvlakia and Greek beer as you dance the night away to the clarinet and bouzouki laden songs, whose sounds are carried through the mountain air and can be heard all the way to my house while I drift off to sleep at night. I will think about the family gatherings and the good times that will be had there. And I will wish that, if there was one time of the year that I would want to be in Greece, it would be now.

As I browse through the statuses of my Facebook friends this summer, one side of me is overjoyed at the number of Greek acquaintances and their families that have decisively planned to visit the homeland this year - a year of political instability, a questionable future and economic despair. But the country itself is just as bountiful and gorgeous as it has ever been and the people, at their very heart, are still the same. The other part of me is sad that I cannot be there this summer to support my "motherland" and to selfishly, have a little fun while I'm at it.

However, my heart and my mind will be there - as they always do and as they always have. And I am counting on personally being there next summer - as I always do. As I always have.