Postcards from Greece, 1979 — 2024
Where the feels are.
The first time my feet touched the soil of Greece, they were sporting those little black velvet Chinese Mary-Jane flats that were my preferred footwear for an inordinately long period of time. It was 1979, and I had just spent six months in Hong Kong and Taiwan learning Mandarin and writing my senior thesis, with a brief stop in Malaysia on the way to Athens. Oh, and a remote graduation from college. That story is told in Rottenkid: A Succulent Story of Survival.
On Skyros, the island where Achilles holed up dressed as a woman in order to avoid Odysseus—who would send him off to fight in Troy—I learned the alchemy behind a perfect Greek salad. While on Crete, my college boyfriend and I stayed for a week in a window-free, doorless white cubicle just off the beach, where the property owner asked for, in “rent,” only that we pick the ripe peaches in her orchard. Now, when I relate that story to a Greek person, they get all dreamy-eyed.
“That was the real Greece,” they say, tearing up a bit.
On the overnight ferry back to Athens, I was stung by a bee on my left forearm. The redness and swelling was fast, furious, and escalating. Back in Athens the next day, a Sunday, we went to a first-aid station. I used the universal language for a bee sting, circling my finger randomly while making a buzzing noise, then stabbing my arm with a finger (ouch). The kind nurse gave me a shot of adrenaline. Three days later on the old “Magic Bus” somewhere in then-Yugoslavia, my entire left arm was so swollen that it looked like an overinflated pool toy, about to burst. I couldn’t bend the elbow or wrist at all, much less crook a finger. Eventually we made it to London and slept on the floor of a church with fifty other nomads while awaiting our Freddie Laker flight back to the USA.
My next visit was in 1983. I lived in New York City and had recently kindled an intense romance with a lovely Englishman—an (early) Hugh Grant look-a-like, though I didn’t know it then. We’d been burning up the international phone lines for about a month, punctuated by two work-related whirlwind visits, him to New York, me to London. Then he sent me a ticket to join him on the island of Paros. I slept from Kennedy to Athens, hopped on a short flight to Paros and, descending to the soil of Greece had my breath immediately whisked away by the sweet, impossible softness of the breeze, the razor-sharp clarity of the air. I left Paros one intermittently cloudy week later with a wedding engagement under my belt and no clue about anything at all, other than that I loved Greece. And, it seemed, the Brit.
Over the next seven years of life as an English wife, he and I visited several different islands, mostly Samos, but sometimes Rhodes. The routine has no need for alteration because it is perfect. Drive to the beach in or on whatever vehicle you’ve rented; in those days it was always a motorbike. Lay down a towel on the sand, pebbles, or rocks. Read. Swim. Repeat. Have the most ridiculously honest and tasty lunch involving tzatziki at the sole taverna on said beach. Repeat the read-swim routine. Return to lodgings for a nap. Wander out to a waterside taverna for a dinner of hours-before-caught fish, pastitsio, Greek salad. Always: Retsina. Usually in a tall tin cup with a soldered handle on one side, cellar-cold and beaded with condensation. (Beware: For various reasons retsina does not travel well; it’s best consumed in Greece only.) Once, a patch of unseen gravel on a switchback curve on Samos caused our motorbike to wobble, then keel over into a brutal slide, thus scraping almost all the skin off of two pairs of right knees and right elbows. They looked like raw hamburger. We asked for some ice with the retsina and the sun and salt water performed their healing magic.
Then came a gap of way too many years, from 1989 to 2012. What can I say? Life. Also: Italy. And Spain.
In 2012 a swing by Santorini from the sterility of a cruise ship reminded me that Greece still had something very special to offer. But not anymore, IMHO, on that particular island. At a taverna in the village of Oia I shocked our cruise ship comrades by jumping up from the lunch table, diving from the cliffs into the sea, then shaking off before a return to the table. It was a skill not forgotten in the intervening years.
In 2022, I had again gone an inexplicably long time without a Greek odyssey (I half-heartedly again blame Italy). In June of that year, I descended from the ChampionJet 2 ferry onto the Cycladic island of Sifnos with a deeply damaged heart. Sifnos healed me with her soft and quiet, persistent longevity. The myriad terraced walls were built by hand over generations, to conserve the precious dew on this often rain-free, hilly island. This gently hammers home the understanding that our lives are ephemeral, while the land is eternal. So many came before, so many will come after. I swore never to let a summer pass without a return to this place, and for three summers in a row I’ve stayed true. This off-the-beaten path island works her subtle alchemy every time.
Two days ago at the glorious Vathy beach I was again stung by a bee, perhaps long descended from the first bee. But now I am armed with Loratadine and extra-strength Benadryl cream. There is some benefit after all to the march of time.
Twice now, the car-free, donkey-centric and somewhat glam island of Hydra has lured, post-Sifnos. But this year the punctuation to Sifnos will occur on the small and very far off the beaten path island of Serifos. For me, the further off, the better. Yes, hard to get to; that’s the point. New amazements and lessons will be revealed, I feel certain. For one thing: the blessing of longevity, no matter how fleeting. Also: Always rent something with four wheels, not two.
It amazes me how the circle is mostly unbroken. How many more summers do I have left on this planet? At this point, who knows. But vicissitudes and mortality be damned, because I have the antidote.
“A wise man travels to discover himself.” — James Russell Lowell, 1910
“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.” — Billy the Shake, @1600
“Did you know that if you tap the ❤️ at the bottom or the top of this email it will help others discover my publication and also MAKE MY DAY?”
Tidbits For The Week of June 3, 2024
Brigit’s What I’m
CURRENTLY LOVING ➡️ Saganaki, aka deep-fried cheese (for those who have been curious, best when dusted with cornflour, not heavily breaded). THINKING ABOUT ➡️ My next trip to Sifnos.... LISTENING TO ➡️ Bob Dylan, pulling at my heartstrings again with Tangled Up in Blue.