Grandma retained, unwavering throughout her life, the traditional and narrow-minded version of the Greek Orthodox Christian faith, without necessarily comprehending much of the content of the long liturgies and sermons in her visits to Church on Sunday, as neither did many others of her generation. When the old legs could not carry her to the church, she used to watch the repetitive and as much incomprehensible Sunday liturgies live on television. That is until senile dementia erased from her brain the images of Christ and the Virgin Mary and the Saints she was devoted to, along with the human presence around her and eventually her own self. The oil-candle in front of the bedroom icon had long ago burnt out and removed by her sons, the pervasive scent of incense could not be smelled again in the building on Sundays, but until the very end, various stimuli, visual or auditory, caused her to unconsciously cross herself – like many devout Greek Christians do when they pass in front of one of the numerous churches or a cemetery.
Sunday church visits and holy communions were
elements of a reverent routine, but major part of her social life and recreation as well. Sundays were focal and central days in the
six-day working week, as established in post-war Greece, and remained as such
for some time until after the transition to democracy in 1974, and the gradual
westernization of the Greek society that was taking hold. On sunny Sunday
mornings (I can only remember the Sundays of my childhood to be sunny) grandma
dressed in her elegant attire, a dark-gray 2-piece skirt suit with a brooch on the
lapel, perhaps the only formal costume in her wardrobe, and a handbag on arm, and
walked down our alley down into Deligiorgi Street, passed in front the locked Tsapatsaraina’s
taverna and over the bridge into Fleming
Street, then descended towards the seafront, and turned left at Delphi Street before
she reached her parish church of the Transfiguration of the Savior. On the
main religious feasts or for my occasional holy communion subjected to accompany
her in those church goings.
Within the same parish district several of our relatives
from grandma’s family, the family of Kampakis, were scattered: her brother
Stelios and his family, her nephew Eleni with her husband and four children,
and others, and after the ‘Divine Liturgy’ she often stopped by their homes for
a cup of Turkish coffee. On rarer occasions, she caught the suburban bus for a
long journey to the district of Foinikas, with its relatively modern blocks of
apartments for worker’s families: to visit her sister Chrysa and the oldest of Chrysa’s
two daughters, Despoina, a factory worker and a spinster for life. Or,
alternatively, she walked uphill to her old neighborhood in Toumpa, to some of
her childhood friends, such as the legendary Charikleia and her beautiful
daughter Mary. (Ah, Mary... The unrequited love of Father's youth, who could
have become his wife should adamant Charikleia had not timely recognized his awkward
character and vetoed against any attempt for a union.) Or, on the listless Sunday afternoons, which working people
dedicated to a siesta or attending football matches, she would welcome the good
friend Foula, equally religious but chattier, whom the single golden tooth was showing
through her smile made an impression on
me. A lovable woman Foula was; she always brought an almond ION chocolate as a
treat for me, a chocolate that later, as I grew older, became a gift of a
hundred-drachma note to spend as I wished. Grandma's life was, therefore, uncomplicated.
Pleasure was to be found in the small joys that her friendships and a close-knit
family offered, and it was enough to fulfill a life she might not have imagined
any better in her prime and old age, within the city she grew up and died.
But it was a winter Sunday and another translucent
Sunday morning when her joyful routine commenced as usual with the attendance of
the church service and ended in the early winter dusk, after one of her social visits,
when on her way home she slipped at the curb of the Deligiorgi Street bridge pavement
and fractured her hip. Grandpa and Father bemoaned, in a typically ungraceful
manner, the high heel shoes she wore for the occasion. Marios displayed more
sympathy. The surgical operation the followed inserted a metal blade to allow
her back on her feet, but from then on, the cumbersome walk on a crooked limping leg had to be supported by a
cane in her outdoors forays. Who knows in which turn in a lifetime some bad fortune
will show her ugly face to the detriment of one’s life? For the rest of her life,
she limped with an increasingly bent posture, leaning more and more towards the
shorter right leg. The will and perseverance, an innate optimism and stoicism
that always distinguished her, as sculpted by years of hardship after their
forced immigration from her homeland and wars, her extrovert and outgoing
personality, her sociability and longing for human interaction, all these attributes
her Smyrna heritage bequeathed to her, managed to keep her aged body standing and
walking on one- and-a-half leg until the last months of her life.
Unfortunately, apart from the persistence and some will and perseverence in the
face of life’s obstacles, a bit of stubbornness, the other beautiful and
admirable elements of grandma's personality were not passed on me.
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