In Memory Of My Mother…

Today, we say goodbye to our mother, aunt, and grandmother, the last of the Karpathos-born generation.

From the moment she saw the light until the moment she closed her eyes forever, her life was a miracle of love and faith.

She never said a bad word about a person and had a rare weakness, by nature and by the grace of God: an inability to feel malice…

Always ready to give everyone from the surplus of her soul…

She passed to us a thirst for letters, an impetuous and uncontrollable passion that I have difficulty explaining to my children and nephews…

What should I remember first? Only one… She was engaged to our father when he suddenly, after a terrible accident with two fractures in the spine, learned from the doctors that he might never walk again. You are free, he told her. The engagement is no more. She thought about it for a while and replied: I’m not going anywhere, I’ll stay. She explained it to us later: God sent me this man, how can I know that if I leave him in his hour of weakness he won’t give me another calamity later?

She lived life’s difficulties with a smile, uncomplainingly carrying her cross. And the joys in moderation, knowing that they are the fewest..

With poetic measure, springing from the roots of our culture. With “mantinades” that came out effortlessly at the first spark of emotion…

Have a good trip, our mother; you will always be among us,

to rejoice, sing, and suffer with us

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SOME BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

• My mom was born in Karpathos in 1933, the weaker of twins; her “stronger” twin sister died as an infant… She was the fifth of seven children, with six sisters and one brother. Three of them immigrated to America, and all eventually returned to Greece.
• Her father, my pappou Mihalis, emigrated to America in 1912 and returned some years later to get married. He returned to America in 1923, became an American citizen, and returned for good to Greece in 1929 after the Great Depression. When I went to Ellis Island to find his name, I had to look under “Italy” as the Dodecanese Islands were occupied by Italy then (1912-1945).
• At age 12, in 1945, my mother, an excellent student, had just graduated from elementary school and wanted to sit in the exam to be accepted to the island’s only high school in a village an hour away (by foot, of course). But life was tough then: On the exam day, her father sent her to another town nearby in the opposite direction to bring back some goats. Even if she had passed the exam, I am sure she would not have been able to attend the high school. Taking care of the fields and the animals was the priority in those difficult times. But her passion for education was such that when I turned four in 1965, I knew how to read and write…
• At age 15, she was sent away from Karpathos to Pireaus to live with an aunt and help her in the coffee shop she operated. A couple of years later, she found work at a factory the US Mission in Greece had established in Piraeus, making uniforms for the Greek Army — which was still fighting the communists in the Civil War until 1949. There, not only was she making a small salary, but she learned how to design clothes in the factory’s school and became a seamstress.
• Arranged marriages were the rule in Greece in the late 1950s, which was the case with my parents.  My dad was born in Serifos. His father was born in Sfakia, Crete, and came to Serifos as a toddler after the massive last revolt of the Cretans against the Turks in the 1890s. His mother was also from Karpathos and came to Serifos to help her father, who was among the 50,000 miners working in the iron ore mines of the island. Was it a coincidence that a relative was among the organizers of a big 1913 miner’s strike that led to the first 8-hour workday in Europe? Was it a coincidence that my dad “pursued” a woman from Karpathos, his mother’s birthplace?
• My father was a welder, among other things, and this is how the explosion in the accident happened. When I was two or three years old, in the early 1960s, my dad had a similar accident, with a broken spine again… And he spent another 5-6 months in bed… Yet a few years later, in the early 1970s, I remember him as strong as ever, hanging from scaffolding as I was helping him on construction sites. His recovery was nothing but a miracle…
• When I graduated from elementary school at age 12, mom turned Pireaus upside down to ensure that I would have the chance to sit for the exams for Ionidios High School, one of the top five high schools in Greece. After I passed the exam she did not have to push anymore; I had taken a course to high educational achievements. When the time came for me to go to America for graduate studies, her sisters advised her to stop me “because she would lose me forever”. No chance… Mom reprimanded them harshly…
• Our family was big: I had six sets of uncles and aunts on my mother’s side, four sets on my father’s side, and twenty-five first cousins!! In such a big family, you can imagine bickering and fighting were usual—as in most families. Some brothers (primarily the sisters) did not talk to others for long. My mom was the only one in this big family whose door was always open to all.
• Writing and singing “mantinades” (15-syllable rhymes) has been a way of life in Crete and even more so in Karpathos since Homer’s time. My grandfather, Mihalis, and most of my aunts from my mother’s side had the reputation of being “top poets” on the island. Writing a good rhyme is still a way of life in our family today, and some in the younger generation continue it.

Memory Eternal…