6 strictures of home: see, e.g., Kolocotroni, Vassiliki and Efterpi Mitsi (Eds.). Women Writing Greece: Essays on Hellenism, Orientalism and Travel. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2008.
7 a Turkish bath in Athens in 1786: Montagu, Mary Wortley. The Turkish Embassy Letters. Malcolm Jack (Ed.). London: Virago, 2000 [1763], Letter XXVII, p. 57; Craven, Elizabeth. A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople. London: G. G. J. & J. Robinson, 1789, p. 264. See also, Women Writing Greece [note 6, above], Chapter 1: “Lady Elizabeth Craven’s Letters from Athens and the Female Picturesque.”
8 tender of heart: Woolf, Virginia. “Jane Austen.” The Common Reader: First Series. New York: Harcourt Brace & World, Inc. 1953 [1925]. p. 138.
9 labor and birth: see, e.g., Michaels, Paula. Lamaze: An International History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014; Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: W.W. Norton, 1976.
10 physically possible for her: see Postscript.
11 Moffat, Mary Jane and Charlotte Painter (Eds.). Revelations: Diaries of Women. New York: Random House, 1974.
Prologue
12 the song has a life of its own: Ben Kremen was a writer and a friend of my parents since their college days. See Introduction, p. xviii.
Hopa nina nina nai: the song was, and remains, popular in Greece, Macedonia, Turkey, and throughout much of the Balkans. Its origins are obscure and it is sung in different languages, but the lyrics can be roughly translated:
Stand up and dance, my girl / So I can see you happy
Dance the Turkish tsifteteli
Hopa nina nina nai, nina nai nai / Nina nai, yavroum, nina nai nai
I will sing for you again / That robust melody
Hopa nina nina nai, nina nai nai / Nina nai, yavroum, nina nai nai
Shake your body a little / We live only once
In this false world / We must enjoy ourselves a little…
13 jalabas: a traditional, long, full-sleeved robe worn in North Africa and in Arabic-speaking countries.
14 muezzin: a crier who calls Muslims to prayer from a mosque.
15 Casbah (or Kasbah): ancient fortifications in the medina (old city) that once guarded the sultan’s palace.
16 La Ronde…round and round: La Ronde (“carousel”) was a waltz in the 1950 French film of the same name. The song’s lyrics include Tournent, tournent, mes personnages (“turn, turn, my characters”). In the film, the carousel is a metaphor for the characters’ revolving romances. She is probably conflating this song with the 1938 song Love Makes The World Go Round, by British songwriter Noel Gay (1898–1954) and perhaps with the proverb which serves as that song’s title.
17 Rebecca West’s book on Yugoslavia: West, Rebecca. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia. New York: Viking Press, 1941.
18 Arno’s article: my father was writing an article about Yugoslavia for Holiday magazine.
19 visiting him for a week: Anthony C. West (1910–1988): Irish novelist and short story writer (not to be confused with British writer Anthony West (1914–1987), the illegitimate son of authors Rebecca West and H. G. Wells).
20 a spastic dog: in her diary entry for April 17, 1963, written while my parents were still in the States: “A letter came today from Anthony C. West in Ireland … A baby, he says, will be born where it wants to be—no matter how you plan. An interesting idea, suggesting there is a Will before life—a force that directs a very specific child into being, and when it wants. Perhaps it is not all in the will of two adults.”
21 Rex Morgan: the square-jawed, black-haired, small-town family doctor of the comic strip Rex Morgan, M.D., which launched in 1948.
22 Dick-Read’s chapter on self-delivery: Dick-Read, Grantly. Childbirth Without Fear: The Principles and Practice of Natural Childbirth, 2nd Rev. Ed. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959. The chapter referred to is titled “Childbirth in Emergency.”
Chapter 1: Arrival
23 Antioch College: a small, liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio. In the 1950s, Antioch had a reputation as an institution combining radicalism with high academic standards.
24 Greeks, embassies, and foreigners: “Far from basking on the Aegean, pounding octopus on its shores for lunch and standing in sunny excavations on an Island Hellenic,” she wrote home, “we are settled in the equivalent of Madison Avenue—Kolonaki Square.” This comparison with the fashionable street in Manhattan is roughly accurate. The Athenian neighborhood, on the slopes of Mount Lycabettus, the city’s tallest hill, had been a bastion of affluent conservativism since the late nineteenth century. Its well-to-do families largely survived both the Second World War and the Greek Civil War into the postwar years. The neighborhood retains its character today. See, e.g., Smith, Michael Llewellyn. Athens: A Cultural and Literary History. Oxford: Signal Books, 2004.
25 good Diners Club restaurants: Diners Club was among first credit cards, but the phrase describes expensive restaurants anywhere.
26 ouzo: a potent, anise-flavored aperitif popular throughout Greece. Ouzo is usually combined with water, which makes the clear liquid turn into a cloudy-white mixture.
27 my eyes… morning dips: the ancient city-state of Sparta was a warrior culture, in which boys began hard military training, including swimming, at a young age.
28 the Eighth Avenue clubs: New York’s Greek nightclubs, with their exotic, exciting atmosphere, greatly shaped my parents’ vision of Greece and their resolve to journey there. From the mid-1940s, the “Greektown” clubs had clustered along a few streets of lower Eighth Avenue, a working-class neighborhood since gentrified as Chelsea. They had picturesque names—“The Grecian Palace,” “Port Said,” “Egyptian Gardens,” “Istanbul,” “Ali Baba,” “Arabian Nights,” “The Britania”—and flamboyant décor, with “Arabian” and “Oriental” motifs. (There was also the famous “Roundtable” in midtown and the “Feenjon” in the Village, a favorite of my parents).
Although the clubs were known as Greek, they drew crowds and musicians from across the Middle East, North Africa, and the Mediterranean. Starting in the early 1950s, most clubs featured belly dancing, or “Oriental dancing,” and were sometimes called “bouzouki-and-belly-dance clubs.” The 1960s was the heyday of the Greektown night spots, when flocks of tourists, along with jazz and classical musicians and celebrities, packed in with the regulars for revelries lasting into the early hours. The bands included some of the Middle East’s finest musicians, and their robust, virtuoso music spread from the Eighth Avenue clubs into American and then international popular culture. The clubs remained popular into the 1970s, but had faded away by the end of the 1980s.
In January 1966, the year after my parents returned from Greece, Holiday magazine published an affectionate and lengthy article about Greektown written by my father. The piece provides a fascinating glimpse into a lost New York enclave whose music was as complex, authentic, and thrilling as that played in the city’s jazz and folk clubs of the time. In one passage, he described the flavor of clubs in their early years, which was largely unchanged when my parents enjoyed Greektown:
The audience was mostly Near Eastern—Greek, with some Turks, Armenians, Lebanese, Arabs, Syrians. Many were from the surrounding “Greektown” and the crews of Greek ships. They would give a few dollars to the band to hear their favorite songs; men did the shuffling zeibekiko dances, and lines of men linked hand to hand by handkerchiefs performed the folk dances of their native regions of Greece. If a man had money, he would get drunk and throw fistfuls of bills at the band, at the dancers, at friends as they danced and downed shots of Greek brandy—much the scene, except for the dancers, that many Americans first saw in Never on Sunday…
… When Never on Sunday came out, and the tourist rush to Greece began, what had been neighborhood clubs became tourist spots…But often the spontaneity remains: Greeks still come in to drink, dance, throw money. The music is always amplified too much, the noise is terrific, the atmosphere relaxed and gay.
The performers chat; the dancers may leave the stage to do Greek folk dances with each other or with customers.
During my parents’ stay in Athens, they could not find nightclubs similar to those they had loved in New York. In December 1964, my mother, recalling their nights in Greektown, wrote home drolly: “I long for where the real, authentic atmosphere is—in New York, in the Feenjon, the Britania, the Hellenic Pallas.”
29 omphalos: a central point. Literally “navel” in Greek.
30 a friend, Alice: Alice Boehm was a school friend of my mother’s who had moved with her husband, an anthropologist, and their two sons to Yugoslavia about a year before my parents’ trip. My parents visited them at their mountain home near the town of Cetinje, in Montenegro, while traveling. The phrase quoted here about a “clinic run by a woman who practices natural childbirth” is from a letter that Alice had written to my parents before they left America for Greece. In the letter, Alice had promised that her sister, Mary, who had lived for three years in Greece and had given birth at the clinic in Athens, would provide them with the clinic’s name and address. However, Mary was in Japan, and was about to return to Afghanistan with her husband, so her reply to Alice’s letters did not arrive until after the birth (part of one of Mary’s belated letters was included in the book (p. 77). My mother ended up finding the clinic by the fortuitous encounter she describes with the Greek woman Liesel.
31 Minimal Infant Wardrobe: the U.S. Government, through the United States Children’s Bureau, published many pamphlets on children’s health, including Prenatal Care, Infant Care, and Child Care. The pamphlets sold millions of copies from their first publication in 1913-14.
32 like small sheets: these were swaddling sheets. Infants were wrapped snugly in the sheets after a triangular cloth was wrapped, diaper-like, at the groin. See note 56.
33 Braxton Hicks contractions: named for British obstetrician John Braxton Hicks (1823–1897), who first described them, in 1872. Braxton Hicks contractions refers to sporadic, brief tightening of the uterine muscles during pregnancy. The contractions become stronger and more frequent as childbirth approaches and may be mistaken for labor pains (known as false labor). The contractions also can be caused by activities such as walking, by dehydration, or by stress. Women experiencing discomfort are generally advised to stop activity or change position, drink water, and use visualization and breathing techniques.
34 a sonnet read by Olivier: Laurence Olivier (1907–1989): English actor, famed especially for Shakespearean roles.
35 KΛAΔKH: Kladaki.
36 Madame Kladaki: Charis Kladaki (1912–1990), who ran the little clinic, was a gynecologist/obstetrician and a pioneer in Greece’s medical profession, who overcame strong resistance from the medical establishment as both a woman physician and a crusader for the Lamaze method of natural childbirth.
According to her daughter, Ada Kladaki, and a nephew, Petros Kladaki, Charis Kladaki was born on the island of Symi, in the Dodecanese archipelago, near the Turkish coast, north of Rhodes, Kladaki was of a distinguished family. Her father, a lawyer, was a longtime mayor of Symi, her grandmother was a well-known midwife in Symi and Rhodes, and her brothers included lawyers, a mathematician, a psychoanalyst, and a high-ranking army officer during the Second World War.
An exceptional student, she finished high school at age fifteen, then studied painting in Athens at the Doxiadis School of the Arts. She was among the few women admitted to the medical school of the University of Athens. After receiving a medical degree, she specialized in gynecology and obstetrics, serving as assistant to Dr. Nikolaos Louros, a prominent gynecologist and academician schooled in Switzerland and Germany, and a lecturer at the University of Berlin. Louros was a founder of the Alexandra maternity clinic in Athens, in 1954, which was credited with introducing the Lamaze method to Greece.
In 1955, Kladaki moved in Paris, to study the Lamaze method at Rothschild Hospital, under Dr. Pierre Vellay, a protégé of Dr. Fernand Lamaze who became a leading advocate of the Lamaze method internationally. Returning to Athens two years later, Kladaki sought an academic career but faced obstacles from colleagues. In 1958, she established her natural childbirth maternity clinic, at 26 Bouboulinas Street, a few doors from the Alexandra clinic. In 1961, she wrote a doctoral thesis on the Lamaze method.
After the clinic closed, in 1972, Kladaki continued to practice as a gynecologist/obstetrician until her death, of liver cancer, in 1990, at the age of seventy-eight.
During her career, Kladaki regularly spoke at medical conferences in European cities such as Paris, London, Cannes, Bordeaux, and Strasbourg. Widely respected in her profession in Greece and abroad, Kladaki was known for her idealism, resolve, intelligence, and compassion, often treating women without means for a nominal fee or at no cost. She married a lawyer, and her daughter, Ada, became a pianist.
37 psychoprophylaxis: see Introduction, p. xxxi.
38 C’est merveilleux, Madame!: “It’s marvelous, Madame!”
39 in illustrated copies of Grimm: Grimms’ Fairy Tales, the nineteenth century compilation of German folklore by brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
40 Quasimodo: this surprisingly cruel nickname was derived from the famous character of Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Quasimodo, the bell-ringer of Notre-Dame Cathedral, is described as a repulsively ugly mute with a bowed back.
41 Never on Sunday: see Introduction, p. xix and note 2.
42 worry beads: strings of beads, made of amber, wood, bone, coral, and other natural and synthetic materials. The beads are similar in appearance to Catholic rosaries and the prayer beads of many religions. According to one Greek legend, the beads originated with monks in Northern Greece in the Middle Ages as an aid to keeping count of prayers. However, the beads had lost any religious significance long before the 1960s: back in 1854, in England, John Murray’s Handbook for Travelers in Greece, observed: “It may be worth mentioning, that all Levantines, whether Greeks or Moslems, may frequently be seen twirling a string of beads in their fingers. This is mere restless habit, and is nowise connected with any religious observance, such as the use of rosaries among Latins.” Traditionally, the beads were used by Greek men, although they have become more commonly used among women.
43 Melina Mercouri (1920–1994): Greek actress who became internationally famous for her role as a carefree Greek prostitute in the film Never on Sunday.
44 Bouzouki music: see Introduction, p. xix and note 3.
Chapter 2: Birth
45 my dearest friend: Shirl Root, a decorator, and her husband, Billy Root, a jazz musician, were my parents’ close friends and neighbors in Philadelphia.
46 Sonny Liston: boxer Charles “Sonny” Liston (1932–1970) became World Heavyweight Champion in 1962 by knocking out Floyd Patterson. He lost the title in 1964, to Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali).
47 Madame, la tête de votre bébé!: “Madam, the head of your baby!”
48 est ce que la tête? … Ah, oui, Madame: “Is that the head?” “Ah yes, Madame.”
49 levez-vous, Madame: “Get up, Madame.”
50 egg-lemon soup, yogurt, and fruit: traditional Greek foods. Egg-lemon soup is known in Greece as Avgolemono soup. Spanakopita, which she is also served at the clinic, is a traditional spinach-and-cheese pastry; the custard she is later given is galaktoboureko, a dessert of custard in phyllo dough.
Chapter 3: The Clinic
51 I had lost two pregnancies: see Postscript, p. 147.
52 Seth … Saul, the tragic king … Joshua: Seth was the third son of Adam and Eve, born after the murder of their son Abel by his brother, Cain; hence, the name’s meaning as “compensation” or “appointed” one. (“And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.” Genesis 4:25.) Saul: the first king of Israel. She refers to him as the “tragic king” because he died in battle against the Philistines after he transgressed the will of
God by keeping the enemies’ cattle and sheep, rather than destroying them. Joshua: a leader of the Israelites. Joshua brought them to the Promised Land of Canaan after the death of Moses.
53 uncaring professionals: breastfeeding had indeed been declining in the United States for several decades, as women turned to feeding infants by bottle and formula. By the early 1970s, when the numbers began to increase, less than 30 percent of women breastfed their infants. See, e.g., Hirschman, C. and J.A. Sweet. “Social Background and Breastfeeding among American Mothers.” Social Biology, vol. 21, issue 1, pp. 39–57, spring 1974; Hirschman, C. and Marilyn Butler. “Trends and Differentials in Breast Feeding: An Update.” Demography, vol. 18, issue 1, pp. 39–54, Feb. 1981.
54 colostrum: the first milk from the mammary glands after a woman gives birth. Colostrum, which the mother’s body produces for several days until it is replaced by milk, is a thick liquid, either yellowish or clear in color, and is rich in protein, nutrients, and antibodies.
55 Dr. Spock: Dr. Benjamin Spock (1903–1998): influential postwar American pediatrician, author of bestselling books on childcare, including The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946), which, in various editions, has sold more than 50 million copies.
56 swaddling was still practiced: in the 1960s, swaddling—the wrapping of infants snugly in cloths, leaving only their heads exposed—was still practiced throughout much of the world, although it had begun to wane in Western Europe and America as far back as the eighteenth century, partly as a result of criticism by Enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau and Locke. Few young middle-class Americans had actually seen swaddled infants outside hospital nurseries. The practice, if known of at all, was considered akin to a medieval legend. Hence, in the diary, her delayed recognition, and shock, at finding swaddled infants in Athens. But throughout Greece (as in Turkey and the Middle East) swaddling had been ubiquitous for millennia. Like their ancient counterparts, 1960s Athenian families swaddled their infants. The belief endured—and the Greek women insist throughout the diary—that swaddled infants were kept warm, slept better, did not scratch or hurt themselves by fussing, and developed straight limbs. Today, advocates of swaddling assert these same benefits, and also that the practice helps prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Critics contend that the custom negatively affects infants, resulting in overheated bodies and damage to hip joints, and that it in fact can cause SIDS. While swaddling is practiced in many countries, and has arguably seen some resurgence in recent years, it has generally been on the decline. See, e.g., Stearns, Peter N. Childhood in World History, 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge, 2011; Shapiro, H.A. (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Archaic Greece. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007; Coleman, Marilyn J. and Lawrence H. Ganong (Eds.). The Social History of the American Family: An Encyclopedia, vol. 3. Los Angeles: Sage Publications Inc., 2014.
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