Memoirs

  I did not think that Joy was going to come to me dressed in brown but she did. She was shaped like a lake, undulating light with her smiles. She was dressed in brown, with streaks of green, and yellow. And she wore the forest for her skirt. She was warm. And we communicated through swimming for one mile a day pretty much every day for this summer. Turtles and fish entered the conversation at times. No words were ever required. 

  Red and white are the colors we wear on the 1 st of March. White is the snow that melts, red is the fresh youthful blood of spring. I have a meeting with my boss at noon, and an appointment at the doctor at 10 today. This was i thought the ranked order of importance. But the doctors decide i am not to go home. My baby is due to be born. Why now, is it not soon? Maybe they say, but the baby is in distress, and you are having contractions. We are going to to a C section because she is still breech. I am calling the husband, and he is planning to come at the end of the work day. Because he is close, and he knows that the birthing process takes long, and because he had waited for many ours outside the delivery door when our firs child was born. I am trying to explain that this will be different . He is stressed. The nurses are trying to wheel me out to the surgery room. I tell them to wait. I exchange my turn in line for surgery with another woman, and they warn me - you are next. I ...

I had promised to try not to give birth of a Friday afternoon, when the traffic is at its worst in Patras. But when the water breaks, you have no choice but to head to the hospital, leaving the lab at 3 pm. I dropped by home to get the few things that I had already packed for this big event, even if I did not expect to give birth early. I asked my friend to please dry the clothes in the washing machine, and i met her at my home too. The we all three drove to the hospital, the future parents and my friend. My protector - who is the wife of my PhD supervisor is out of the country, visiting her children in England.  She had given me in charge of an older and respected doctor, who did not show up. The young italian doctor is short haired, bright eyed and alert. I trust she knows what she is doing better than me. Which is very easy. The doctor moves around me, doing what she is supposed to be doing I guess, and being mostly  quiet. The nurse is a lot more verbal and is coaching me,...

  Blue was the color of the telephone booth in the plateia of the small village in Lefkada. Ovidiu, Chris and I had rented a room above the cafeneio of the village and were enjoying the morning looking down from our balcony at the center of the village. The cafeneio was the place were people would gather to drink and talk about the news, to get away from the wives. The place were you could drop off or pick up the occasional letters. Letters that would come to the village, with a name on them.  And on such occasions the owner would send word for the addressee to come get them. The old woman who was coming towards the cafeneio was short, pressed by the years closer to the ground.  But was walking firmly toward the phone booth. She used her card, waited a while for the connection to happen, and started talking loudly to her daughter. Maybe because she could not hear well, or because she had to be heard al to way in Australia we learned from our balcony as the old w...

I cannot decide on the color of stink, it must be a dark brown, with shades of black and repulsion. But if you cannot smell it, can you still assign it a color?  The story of grandma's lake starts with a Duke student who was losing smell, as a result of a degenerative condition that was affecting his olfactory nerves. He was from Missouri and drove up there, and asked his grandmother for money to help with his treatment. The old lady refused, and in his madness he decided to kill her. He then put her in the back or trunk of his car and drove during the hot month of August, from Missouri, all the way to Carolina, and Chapel Hill when he dumped her in the lake. He then took the car to be cleaned, and the poor men could smell the stink he could not, and turned him in.  The plans to have a restaurant floating in the middle up the lake had to be abandoned, because nobody wanted to come dine and relax on top of grandma's lake.  Few know this story today, and those who do must c...

  I was up early that morning for i had to catch the early bus to Athens, to be at the consulate and ask for a visa. I was trying to keep my eyes shut but the sunrise was forcing its light between the eyelids so i watched its beauty with gratitude instead for a while. I must have slept still and when i woke up the young man sitting next to me told me about the dream that he had. I do not think he ever told me his name, maybe he did but i do not remember. But his eyes were kind, and he was ready to open up and speak, so i got ready and open to listening to his story. He had dreamt of an island that was born from, and rose to the top of the sea. And the island looked like a flower, growing and blooming in the sun and supported by the sea. He could see it from his window (even though he was sleeping, and this was happening in his dream), and had an description of its intricate construction and metamorphosis. It was early in the morning and i could visualize his dream in my mind, ...

 Chris has asked for a red story and i am happy to oblige We biked in the clear sunlight of the morning to the bread shop. The bread shop sat across the street from the church, and was opening early, before our wake-up time. Kiria Angelikh stood there, straight, with the hands resting on the counter and dressed in black. She was dressed in black today, and was probably going to wear black for the rest of her life, because she was a widow. But she was also wearing a smile, because she had other family left to care for, and be cared for by. She was selling bread and koulourakia. The sunny air around the church was witness to how fresh the bread was. Perhaps the church's bells were ringing happy because of that smell this morning, even though it was lent. She handed us our bread, and cookies and her fingers were red. There was not need to ask the question, she had been dyeing eggs, and all we had to do was answer to her: “Kalh Anasthash” before walking out the door! And the day was go...