It was also the year that my parents decided that they wanted to sell the house and move to Florida. We didn't want to uproot the children; they would have enough to adjust to with the sudden absence of their grandparents, Thomas being especially close to my father who was a dominant figure in his life. I remember at Thomas' kindergarten screening when a young woman had read him four words: chair, sofa, bed, father—and then asked him which did not belong. He answered correctly: chair, for he had seen his father sleeping on the sofa or in bed, but rarely upright in a chair. It was my father who spent time with him, nurturing him as he had done with his own six children.
So Nikki and Thomas watched their grandparents pack their possessions and we adults worked out a plan for the purchase of the home, accepting higher mortgage payments for the extra money that would get us to Margariti that year and add to the construction. My parents headed off to Florida with a moving van as Nick and I moved our family onto the larger side of the house. And it would take some years for my siblings to realize it was not mom and dad's home anymore.
That summer, we boarded the plane, all four of us, taking a respite from the chaos we called home, and we started our journey—once again on our way to Margariti. As we walked to our seats, an odd feeling chilled me. Something was sucking the oxygen from the cabin and the aisles pushed inward. The warm air became oppressive heat. Beads of sweat trickled off my neck into my blouse as I stumbled to my seat, confused by the racing of my heart. Staring down at the floor, I trying to focus, to calm myself—hoping it would pass.
“Mom, what’s the matter?” I wasn’t sure which child was speaking.
“Shhh. Sit over here.” It was Nick’s voice, and then to me he said, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m okay.” It slowly passed.
It was the first episode of something that would occur at random moments for the next several years and then would subside as life became more manageable.
That trip, however, did not offer the rest we had hoped for. It was the year of the plumbing. The plumber was a young man from the village and we would receive a phone call from him in the U.S. ten years later, apologizing for his behavior. But that summer we had not yet learned that friends from the village were usually not the best candidates for seeing a job through with professionalism. And we didn't want to cause any hard feelings within the family for not using a friend of an uncle or a cousin's son-in-law, but the money for these projects was so hard to come by, eventually we would find it necessary to seek out those workers who were the most interested in their professional reputation enough so as to provide an appropriate work ethic, something that was common among the Greek American immigrants that I knew from the U. S. but seemed to be more elusive to their brethren at home.
So every morning, rather than pack for the beach and begin a day of fun, we waited for Nick as he drove Fotis’ car to the plumber’s house after he failed to show up at the designated time. Nick would have coffee with the young man’s mother as she tried to rouse him from his half drunken stupor after his early morning return from the bouzoukis. Then we would have to sit and wait for him to do his job, for if we left him to work independently, as we found out on his first day of the job, he would disappear moments after we had left. The ten-day plumbing job took over a month and required beach days to be replaced by many village days. It was not one of my fondest summers in Margariti.
* * * *
Two years later, in the summer of 1999, having finally received my graduate degree the year before, I was finishing up my Clinical Fellowship Year as a speech pathologist—a requirement for certification with the American Speech and Hearing Association. For me it would by eighteen months instead of twelve because my teaching job had limited my ability to fulfill the required hours, so I had been working after school, evenings, weekends, and holidays—extending the twelve months, to eighteen—which also meant that I would have to spend that particular summer in an office attending to patients. So that year, Nick and the kids left me behind, to travel to Germany and meet up with Fotis who was living there at the time. They would drive south to Italy and then take a ferry across the Ionian Sea, to the port in Igoumenitsa.
According to one of the many tales the kids brought back, Nick and his brother drove through the night to make it to the Italy-Igoumenitsa ferry, so Nikki and Thomas were asleep in the back seat when they parked the car into the tightly packed hull of the ship and went atop for coffee! Thomas was the first to wake up as the water rocked the vessel back and forth, churning his stomach and he—not knowing where else to do it—opened the window and vomited down the side of the car. Then he pulled himself through the front window, as the cars were too tightly packed to open a door, and he ascended the stairs to look for Nick and Fotis. Nikki awoke soon after and encountered the same issue with the doors, so she slid herself out the window, her sandals in her hand, and she felt her feet push down into a warm slimy liquid on the floor, which was also dripping down the car door. Both children were eventually reunited with their uncle and father.
“Oh they were fine,” Nick defended himself, “we were just at the top of the stairs. We could see the car.”
But I wasn't sure he could see anything when he was engrossed in one of his conversations with his brother.
That was the year of the eaves. Nick had drawn up an ornate, multi layered design that would create the cement eaves, in preparation for the roof that would eventually be built on top.
“We don't do it that way, here,” the mason told him.
“I didn't ask that.” He was tired of hearing objections on every leg of the project. “Can you do it or should I find someone else?”
“Well, I can do it, but it won't look good.”
“That's my problem, isn't it?”
When it was done, it looked fantastic and even more beautiful with a roof on it the following year. The kids had the video camera, which would provide me with a window into their activities. And when they returned a month later, I would enjoy it tremendously as they, with their cousins, performed on the screen, walking through the maze of walls, sunlight pouring over the new eaves, and for the first time I would realize that the years of labor and sacrifice were actually going to bare fruit. I saw a house emerging in the blur of bricks and cement.
* * * *
The following summer, the millennial year, we all went to Germany, borrowed Fotis' car, drove down through Italy and spent two days exploring Venice. Then, we took the ferry across to Igoumenitsa. Armed with money from another mortgage and feeling confident that we would be able to make the exorbitant payments, we sought out a reliable roofer.
Nick had a very specific plan for the roof that required much reinforcement with treated beams, which is the plan that The Roofer From Senitsa agreed to follow. It had been necessary to remove the old roof of the little house, which had been absorbed into the new house the year before when the eaves were constructed, making it necessary that summer for us to stay elsewhere. We took residence in the living room which was the former store room in the old house. The beds were lined up, our suitcases and possessions piled around the room.
It's not a pleasant situation to sleep in the same room as your adolescent children. In addition to our having different sleep patterns, noisy night breathing, and a variety of bed squeaks, there was no screen on the only window, so it was kept closed all night to avoid mosquitoes. The stuffy air made for headaches and irritability.
The circumstance was bearable only because we had expected The Roofer From Senitsa to begin construction soon and when it was done, we'd be able to move back into the rooms of the little house. But he didn't show up and time passed. Nick sought him out and talked to him again, and he promised to begin within a few days, but a few days turned to weeks and then we questioned whether The Roofer From Senitsa would ever begin.
“Don't worry,” he reassured us, “I'll work on it when you've left and you'll have a perfect roof when you come back.”
That's when Nick
realized what was happening and with a few choice words, he told The Roofer From Senitsa what he could do to himself, and fired him. But I was baffled.
“What's going on?”
Nick explained. “This guy is waiting for us to leave so he can do the job when we go home—when no one’s here to see what he’s doing. He wants the money and then he’ll probably use fewer beams, probably not the quality I want. Without me or my brother here to watch how he's building it, he could pretty much do whatever he wants."
Eftihia told her brothers of a quality roofer she knew in Igoumenitsa, but he didn't drive. He would need a ride back and forth every day.
There were only eleven days left and although The Igoumenitsa Roofer had a son-in-law who worked with him, two single workers would not be able to finish in that time. Nick and Fotis would have to help. Eventually, we would all help by carrying the roof tiles up the ladder, handing them tools, bringing them water. The work was started early every morning. Chevi would cook a large midday meal which we all would stop to eat, but no one would take a siesta—including the neighbors, though they had no choice in the matter—and after ten days, the roof was finished, one day before our departure. Chevi, in keeping with the old traditions, insisted on affixing a wooden cross to the roof with a clean towel hanging from one end and some apples from the other. This was to show that the final step in making the structure a true home—the completion of the roof—had been accomplished. The cross, a symbol of a Christian home, was something of importance to a woman who rarely visited her church but was ingrained with memories of a time when one's religion determined survival. The towel was a message to all who viewed it that this was a family who respected its workers, thus providing a towel for their use, and the apples symbolized a fruitful future for the inhabitants of the home.
The year of the roof left us exhausted, and it was time to go back to a schedule more grueling than any in the past. The bitter taste of that summer kept me away for several years, while Nick took some off-season visits to see his mother and to install windows and screens in the house.
* * * *
In the fall of 2004, with both children in college, Nick and I were experiencing a second honeymoon. Life had never been so good. He tried to convince me to return to Margariti, but I could not shake the memories of the past. And why would I want to leave Long Island then? We finally had a comfortable income and time alone to enjoy it. In the end, there was a compromise. I said I'd go, but only for three weeks.
So after a five year absence, in the summer of 2005, I accompanied Nick to Margariti. When we arrived, we entered our cement shell and closed the door behind us. It was filled with the loose cement-dust that we created with every step. The exposed bricks had holes for spiders and centipedes that I would battle during our stay. Without ceilings, our voices echoed up to the exposed roof tiles that were draped with webs. A porcelain toilet was affixed to the floor in the empty cement bathroom and rocked back and forth when it was sat on. A shower head with its exposed pipes was propped up in the cement wall.
It was glorious!
There were screens on the windows, efficient plumbing, a small washing machine, one bed and a lock on the front door. It was the first time, since our visit as newlyweds, that we were there without kids—ours kids or the sisters’—and it was a far different experience than it had been that first time, an eternity ago.
It was so wonderful, I didn’t want to leave. I learned what it meant to relax and regenerate. And, except for the year that Nikki would get married, we would return every summer.
* * * *
The following summer, 2006, Nikki had just graduated from Albany University and Thomas was in his second year at Binghamton. I had my teaching job and per diem work as a speech pathologist, which gave Nick the ability to make his departure from the restaurants at his leisure, but as it turns out, when one is not drowning in the whirlpool of survival, one's job can be a tolerable task, so he continued to work—an aging man at a young man’s pace. On the other hand, I found myself alone on the weekends and wondered what all the toil had been for. I thought we had fought that twenty year battle so that we could be together. But, Nick said he didn't feel comfortable not working when I had two jobs, so he found a five-day-a-week job as a cook at a local diner, with Sunday and Monday off.
That was the summer that Nikki and Thomas returned as adults to Margariti with their father, the first time since the year of the roof. That visit reconnected them to their childhood memories—remembering themselves as villagers among friends and family while also enjoying the comforts provided by the new house. After a short while, they returned to Athens and the three met my arriving airplane at the airport. We spent the day sightseeing and reminiscing about our old days in Athens. Then the kids boarded a plane to return to New York as Nick and I made the drive north in Fotis’ car.
Three weeks later, we went back down to Athens and greeted my brother, Bob, his wife, Anne, and their three daughters. They had decided to visit Margariti after having heard so much about it for so long. We spent a few days with them in Athens showing them the sights and then we rented a car for the drive north. Nick drove ahead in Fotis’ car with two nieces and I drove in the back seat of Anne and Bob’s rented car with another niece, ensuring that they never felt neglected.
I sat leaning forward. My head protruded through the bucket-seat space into the front of the car, separating my brother and his wife. I provided a steady monologue, describing the scenery and little anecdotes that came to my mind as we drove on the winding road through beautifully sculptured mountains and over rough terrain, and we chose the nicest places to stop and eat, and steered them toward the tastiest Greek cuisine, and when we arrived in Margariti, we settled them into our beautiful new home, where I was so proud to offer a place to sleep—almost free from insects—complete with screens and a washing machine, and then we showed them a different beach each day, because the topography surrounding the area was the most exquisite in the world and we didn't want them to miss any of it, and we discussed what we had done that day, going over the details of each step, never leaving them to feel lonely or neglected, as that would be a terrible insult.
And then I saw it.
The day before we would escort them on the drive back south for their departure, they were coming into the house and my sister-in-law looked up at me. Our eyes locked for a split second, and there it was. So clear! How had I missed it in all those days?
My transformation into a Margaritian had been so gradual, I'd never realized it was happening and by then it was so complete, I had become blinded by my love for the place. But at that one moment, I had recognized that look. And I knew. She was me . . . the old me. The American me. The anxiety that comes from the strangeness of a new culture was there in her eyes. She needed the privacy of which I’d been depriving her, the choices she had been denied, and I looked around the house and saw the dust, the cracked cement, unfinished fixtures, hanging wires, and complete lack of anywhere to sit and relax, except for the beds in the bedrooms.
The weariness in those eyes, I knew it well.
“No, no, no,” Anne would say, as she read my book, “I did enjoy myself. Really.”
And I would tell her, “Yes, I know, but it was mostly a difficult trip. I get it. Let’s move on . . .”
* * * *
In the summer of 2010 Nikki came back to Margariti for a short visit. While there, she accompanied Nick and me to a cousin's wedding. When she got up to dance a traditional Greek dance—basically the only artifact left from her eight years in Friday-night-Greek-school, our table exploded with applause.
“Bravo, Nikki!” They were so impressed to see the American girl keeping step with the other Greek dancers.
“Who is that?” Elias asked Chevi.
“Nikos’ daughter.”
“What? No way!” He looked to the young woman dancing and back at Chevi. “It can’t be. I am looking at you Chevi. Her face. Her smile. That’s you!”
; Elias was the son of Uncle Spyros. He stood to watch my daughter and his gaze was far off. He saw Cousin Chevi, the young woman he remembered as a small boy growing up in the village.
Chevi beamed. Yes, she knew it. She had thought the same. It was an incredible experience to see herself again as a young person. And that young Chevi—Nikki—Nikos’ daughter, could read and write. Chevi had heard about the school she was attending then. Imagine that—she'd soon be a doctor! And her brother, little Thomooli, a lawyer! The dream Chevi had dreamt for her own children was still alive, hers to watch unfold within that new generation. She felt the pride of her ancestors rise in her. The Lykas bloodline, her blood, would prosper in her children's children. Chevi watched her granddaughter, her legs sweeping in the rhythm of the music as she turned with the other dancers. She thought of her other grandchildren.
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