I positively cannot visit Rome. Tessa has been urging me to make the trip that Thea and I had planned, but Rome will forever be the place where, in my mind, my wife and I wandered through the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, hiked up the Spanish Steps, sat on a marble bench eating gelato, strolled through the Vatican Museum and gazed up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, learned how to make pasta, sat in a little café on the Piazza Navona drinking wine and listing to street musicians.
Tessa finally gives up trying to sell me on Rome, but she will not quit on encouraging me to make the trip to Greece. I do want to visit the cemetery where Mama and Papa are buried. It has been fifteen years since they died, and I owe them this much. I am not sure what else there is in Greece that I would want to see. But I allow Tessa to make the arrangements. With Becky’s help, Tessa has become very competent with computers and navigating this strange place called the Internet, so she manages to do everything on a Saturday afternoon without leaving her house.
It has been almost a year since Thea died. Leander and Sarah have had me over to their apartment almost every Sunday. I know that Sarah especially must be getting tired of this routine, but she is stoic about it and she manages to maintain a cheerful façade. Tessa and the girls have made almost monthly trips to Sheboygan, and twice they brought me back to Elmhurst to spend a few days with their family. Tessa and Robert drove up with the girls at Christmas and helped me pick out and decorate a tree – a ritual I would otherwise have forgone, with little regret. Maggie made the trip from Denver in March, staying at the house for a week and a half, taking me on long drives up into Door County and down to Milwaukee. So the kids and grandkids have not given me much time to sit alone and pity myself. Although there are still more alone days than I can bear.
Leander drives me down to Elmhurst on June 26, and two days later Tessa taxis me to the airport. She has booked a direct flight as well as three nights in an Athens hotel, insisting on paying for it all as an early birthday gift. Robert has apparently climbed high enough in the executive suite at the Chicago Stock Exchange that the family has no financial worries, even with two daughters to put through college in the years ahead. I am living mostly on my monthly Social Security checks and Thea’s life insurance benefits, which does not trouble me because my needs and wants are just as limited. But the trip would have strained my finances, so I hesitantly but gratefully accepted the offer.
It is an overnight flight, and I manage to sleep for three or four hours. When we arrive in Athens, and as we are taxiing to the gate, the stewardess makes an announcement to please be aware that contents in overhead bins may have shifted during the flight. It strikes me as the kind of warning we should all receive at birth, and marriage, and other milestone life events.
There is a young man outside the baggage claim area holding a sign with my name written in block letters. Tessa has thought of everything. He takes my suitcase, introduces himself as Theo, and leads me out to the parking lot. It is a clear, warm day in Athens. The flight was full, the streets around the airport are clogged with traffic, and the sidewalks as we approach the city are crowded with tourists. It was the first week of June when Thea and I travelled to Greece twenty-six years ago – the early days of summer, but apparently before the seasonal onslaught of foreign visitors. I could and should have come earlier this year. Would have come earlier, had I not been so stubbornly engaged in a battle with Tessa that I knew I would eventually lose.
My hotel is located on a pedestrian street in what seems to be the city center. It is what Tessa called a boutique hotel, which means that everything is charming and small. And the desk clerk informs me that the place has a rooftop bar with a view of the Acropolis, which is open until midnight.
I nap in the afternoon. At five-thirty, I dress and go out for a walk. I find a café that is just now opening for dinner service, and I take a seat at an outdoor table. For a moment, I am startled at how familiar the menu is. Spanakopita and dolmades, stuffed tomatoes, feta and olives, tzatziki and pita. Egg and lemon soup. Tomato and cucumber salad. Lamb shank, moussaka, gyros, chicken and pork souvlaki, stifado, baked fish. Of course, Mama and Papa brought all of these foods with them when they came to America – imprinted in their memories if not actually inscribed on paper – so it was simple enough to recreate them when they opened the Atheneum. I am hesitant to order something that I have come to love. On the one hand, I do not want to discover that Greek food in Greece is superior to Greek food in Wisconsin, which is a distinct possibility. On the other hand, I recognize that these little sidewalk cafes sitting in the shadow of the Acropolis, with photographs of their dishes taped on the windows, have almost certainly adapted their menus to tourist tastes – largely American and northern European tastes, from what I am seeing – so the authenticity may have altogether leached out of the food
I settle on the baked fish, which the waiter tells me is sea bream. Papa had baked cod on the menu at one time, but he had a hard time getting fresh fish every day, and cod was not particularly popular with our customers, so the dish was quietly dropped. I am happy with the meal. Sea bream is firmer and meatier than cod – more Mediterranean, somehow. I think I could develop a taste for it while I am in Greece. The waiter has persuaded me to have a glass of white wine with the meal. Something from his native Peloponnese peninsula, he suggests proudly. I have not had much taste for alcohol lately. But this is, I concede, a very good wine, and I order a second glass with my baklava. A few tourists look strangely at me as they pass by, as if there is something unspeakably sad about an older man dining alone at a sidewalk café. I answer them with what I hope is viewed as a proud and determined smile. I will not allow myself to sink into depression on this trip. Thea would not tolerate it.
Tessa has signed me up for a visit to the Acropolis Museum and a guided hike up to the Parthenon. She had also asked me to phone her at the end of each day to report on my activities, but five o’clock in the evening in Athens is one in the morning in Elmhurst, so we agreed that I will call every morning instead. I have no idea how expensive an international call is, so I try to keep the conversation short. But Becky knows when I am calling, and she invariably picks up an extension and demands a full report.
If you had email, Grandpa, you could write everything down and send it, and everyone could read it, and you could attach a picture.
That sounds exactly like a letter.
Grandpa!
I take some pleasure in exasperating Becky. I am not entirely resistant to technology. I can see the advantages of being able to write messages that someone far away can read almost instantly. Becky is persistent, and I am sure that she and her sister will eventually drag me into that world. For now, there is something about Greece that makes me want to resist modernity. Yesterday, I hiked up Acropolis Hill. I wandered through the Theater of Dionysus, where the plays of Sophocles and Euripides were first performed, according to our guide. I stood and gazed at the beautiful Temple of Athena Nike, celebrating the goddess of victory. Atop the great rocky hill, I walked around the perimeter of the Parthenon and looked down at Athens, imagining Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, perhaps drinking wine not far from where I had my evening meal, perhaps strolling through city plazas and olive gardens beyond, lost in thought.
Cassius had offered to drive into Athens, to pick me up at the hotel and taxi me back to Farsala. But I had insisted on taking the train, and I am glad that I did. The rails generally follow the route that Cassius took when he drove Thea and me from the Athens airport, winding west, then north, then east, north again, making its way lazily up the country’s spine. I try napping, but the scenery is too interesting to sleep through it. High up, several broad-winged birds are circling, riding the thermals, watching us. Train travel agrees with me. So does Greece, I have to say. This is the trip that I wish Thea and I could have enjoyed together.
Cassius is, of course, there to greet me when the train arrives. Farsala is off the beaten path, so he has had to drive to the next town over, but he insists that it was no bother. Twenty-six years have passed, but Cassius appears to have aged only modestly. His hair is thick and wildly unkempt, his blue eyes have the same mischievous spark, he walks with an impatient little hop. His parents, Cassius tells me, are still alive, still active, still living in the house across the street from where Mama and Papa lived. I am invited to their house for dinner tomorrow night. His mother has already begun baking.
But you will be staying with my wife and me, he reminds me. And Chloe is making tonight’s dinner.
Cassius and Chloe have known each other since high school, which does not surprise me. They have been married sixteen years and have two boys – Andrew, age fourteen, and Jace, age eleven. Both very badly misbehaved, Cassius warns me, although I detect the smallest note of paternal pride in his voice. The house has only two bedrooms, so it seems that my arrival has evicted the boys from their room. But the weather is nice enough that they have moved onto the screened back porch and are happy enough about the arrangement. I can stay as long as I want, Cassius tells me.
Right away, Andrew and Jace take to calling me Uncle Julian. They are too young to have known my parents, but Cassius and Chloe have told enough stories that Mama and Papa live on as the beloved couple who left Farsala for a life in America and returned in their final years to the motherland. I am better with teenagers than preteens – perhaps because Becky has been such a bright and sustaining light in my life – so I quickly begin to develop a rapport with Andrew. And he seems to enjoy sitting and talking, much as Becky always has. I learn about his school and his soccer team. I learn about his campaign, unsuccessful so far, to convince his parents to adopt a dog. I learn that he will turn fifteen in September and that, when he celebrates that day, he will be allowed to have an actual girlfriend. There are several candidates for that position, but none of them seem to be aware of the competition. Andrew asks about America, if every house really has three or four televisions, and is it true that you could start at one end of the country and begin driving and not even make it halfway across in a day? Andrew plans to drive a car as soon as he is legally able, although his parents have only one car and they do not like to talk about sharing it three ways. Jace has no interest in learning to drive as long as there is someone in the house who can take him where he wants to go. But Jace is not yet twelve, so Andrew knows that will change.
Andrew has a lot of questions about the Atheneum, about what it was like to grow up with a twin, about Maggie and Tessa and Leander, and about the woman he calls Aunt Thea. I tell him about Thea being hired as a server in the restaurant and how Mama, who knew a thing or two, conspired to get Thea and me together, despite my disinterest. I also tell Andrew about our trip to Farsala twenty-six years ago, how his father drove Aunt Thea and me around, showed us the school building where Mama and Papa learned their lessons and the pond where Mama learned how to ice skate, the square where all the mothers congregated every morning with their little ones, the cemetery where my parents would eventually be laid to rest.
They’re still there, Andrew tells me, shaking his head. The mothers. Every morning.
He says this as if the cast of mothers has not changed in a hundred years, as if the ancient buggies are still squeaking down the sidewalk toting babies who never age, pushed by weary young women tied to their rituals.
I thought maybe we’d get to meet Aunt Thea. My dad told us a couple of years ago that you might be coming for a visit. He told us to get ready to move onto the porch. But we never did.
I tell Andrew that Thea and I were planning the trip, that we had hoped to visit Athens, and Farsala, and Rome. Before my wife got too sick to travel. I want to tell him what I learned: don’t wait. But Andrew is only fourteen, and impatience is certainly not his problem.
If you stay long enough, my dad said maybe we can all take a boat to Naxos. He has an uncle who lives there, on an olive farm. We’d have to drive to Athens and then take the ferry to Naxos. It’s pretty far. He always talks about it, but we’ve never been. But if you stay long enough, we might go in August.
Tessa booked my airline ticket as an open-ended return. I had certainly not planned on spending five or six weeks in Greece, but there is no reason to make those decisions now.
The days pass at a slow and comfortable pace. Cassius works as a bookkeeper for a small bank in town, so he is gone every weekday. I accompany Chloe and the boys on their errands, and in the afternoons I help Chloe with dinner preparations. She wants to defer to me, since I spent most of my life in a restaurant kitchen, but I would rather watch Chloe and learn from her how to make things I do not typically make, or how to make typical things in new ways.
It is my second week in Farsala when Chloe asks if I would like to visit the cemetery where Mama and Papa are buried. I am surprised to see that someone has placed fresh flowers at the foot of both headstones. This is the first time I have visited the gravesites, and the presence of flowers scolds me for coming late and empty-handed.
Cassius’ mother comes every week, Chloe says, noticing my reaction. She brings the flowers. Whatever happens to be in bloom. Last month it was mostly red poppies. This month it’s bougainvillea. Which grow everywhere, you’ve probably noticed.
I didn’t know that the four of them had gotten that close, I say. Cassius’ parents were neighbors to Mama and Papa, of course. But neighbors in America do not generally bring flowers to cemeteries every week for fifteen years.
Chloe smiles and shrugs. She is a pretty young woman, dark-haired and dark-eyed. She must have been not much more than a girl when she and Cassius married, and when she became a mother. Motherhood does not seem to have aged her in any observable way. This is Farsala, she tells me. People get close. Cassius’ parents and your parents had supper together once a week. They went on walks together. They brought each other flowers and vegetables from their gardens. Your mother – she became a very good gardener. Did you know that? People would walk by their house just so they could see her garden.
Mama showed little interest in gardening when she and Papa lived in Sheboygan. Or maybe it was that she just had little time for it. In any case, it surprises me to learn something new about Mama. It also gives me pause. If I were to die this year, what could anyone say about Julian Pappas that would surprise his children? I can think of nothing worth mentioning.
I have continued to phone Tessa every morning, but after two weeks in Farsala I tell her that the daily calls are unnecessary. I tell her I will call twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. And I tell her that I have not yet decided when I will return.
But you’re coming back. Right, Grandpa? Becky has picked up the extension phone. She has heard the last snippet of the conversation, and she is demanding some answers.
Of course I’m coming back, Becky. Sheboygan is my home. I’m just not sure how much longer I’m going to stay.
Because you have to come back. You’ve already been gone a long time.
I am trying to picture Becky and Andrew as a couple. The idea makes me smile. Two curious, passionate teenagers anxious for their real lives to begin, anxious to absorb whatever the world has to throw at them. They will almost certainly never meet, but there is a cord connecting the two of them and I am the only one who will ever see it.
Against all expectations, July passes and the family begins discussing plans for a trip to Naxos – a trip that will include Uncle Julian, if Naxos interests me. It does, and I tell Tessa and Becky that I will not be returning at least until the middle of August. I learn a little bit, on these calls, about how Tessa and Becky and Kat are spending the summer. Kat is going to cheer camp, hoping to make her middle school cheerleading squad in the fall. Becky will be on the high school swim team for a second year, swimming butterfly. She has been at the pool almost every day, practicing. Tessa is preparing her lesson plans for the fall semester and has decided to attempt one new recipe every week, with Becky’s help. I do not hear much about Robert, and I do not ask. He and Tessa seem to be following their own diverging paths. I am sad to see it, because I know that Tessa is probably viewing this as a personal failure. But if the marriage eventually ends, as seems likely, I think that maybe my daughter will discover something about herself, and that she might be happier in the long run. And Becky will manage, although I am not sure about her sister.
Athens is a crowded, hot, chaotic scene the first week of August. I am glad that I experienced the city early in the summer. We are, fortunately, going directly to the Port of Piraeus, west of central Athens, and Cassius knows how to avoid the most congested areas, so the trip ends tolerably. There are high-speed boats that can make the trip in a little more than three hours, but we are in no particular hurry, so we board one of the large, slow-moving less expensive Blue Star ferries and settle ourselves in for the long trip.
Today, the Aegean is tranquil and the skies are clear. One of the attendants tells us that the trip last week was very different, with heavy rain pelting the windows and high waves rocking the ship. A dozen or so gulls have followed us from Athens, soaring and dipping and waiting for a passenger to toss a cracker or a slice of bread into the water. Andrew and Jace and I have made our way onto the open deck, where we can watch the action. After a time, the gulls begin losing interest, peeling off one or two at a time and flying away. Jace too loses interest, and he heads back inside. Andrew and I remain at the ship’s stern, watching the islands pass by to the east. The island of Naxos is the largest of the Cyclades, and it is still far from view.
At first glimpse, Naxos appears greener and more mountainous than I had expected – wilder, somehow, than most of the islands we have passed. A pretty little whitewashed town sits along the harbor, its houses and shops climbing a modest hill behind it. As we approach, Cassius points to a huge, strange-looking stone doorway standing alone on a rocky outcropping, connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway. No one would construct such a doorway, I reason, unless it opened to something even more grand. It has taken more than five hours to get here from Athens. The thought that the ancient Greeks were building temples this far out into the sea is almost beyond imagining.
It was the Temple of Apollo, says Cassius. Or it was supposed to be. It was started but never finished. I don’t know why. Just the door. That’s all there is. The door, and all the marble blocks that were dragged here and dropped, like big chucks of rubble. I guess waiting for some emperor to order it finished. Some people started calling it the Doorway to Nothing. I don’t think that’s right, do you? Every doorway is a doorway to something.
Cassius’ Uncle Alexandros is at the harbor to greet us. We follow him to his van, load our luggage, and start the last leg of our trip. We are heading north, roughly following the coast, climbing slowly. At a hairpin turn, several cars ahead of us are stopped. Alexandros puts the van in gear, shuts off the engine, throws his head back and sighs.
Goats, he says resignedly. It’s a Naxos traffic jam.
It takes several minutes for the road ahead to clear. Finally, it is our turn. Alexandos maneuvers around an old goatherder and his herd of two or three dozen slow-moving creatures.
I wonder if I will have to forfeit the honorary title of uncle, now that I am in the presence of an actual uncle. But Andrew, at least, is not fickle, so the label is evidently mine forever, earned or not.
Alexandros has forty acres of olive trees, which produce enough fruit to provide a modest living for him and his wife. And from what I have seen, modest describes life on Naxos perfectly. When harvest season comes, Alexandros and several younger men from the local area spread large nets under the trees, shake the branches with rakes and metal rods, and collect what has fallen. They do this every morning until the trees have given up everything that they are going to produce for the year. The olives are transferred from bucket to crate to truck and are hauled off for pressing. Then the trees are inspected and trimmed and prepared for another season. Some of the trees higher up on the property, Alexandros tells me, are 150 or 200 years old, and still they produce. His younger trees are merely sixty or seventy years old. I am continually amazed at how time is measured in Greece.
Alexandros and his wife own a small house behind his own residence where the seasonal workers often stay, so they can work through the week without interruption. Since it is not yet harvest time, this is where Cassius and Chloe and the boys and I will stay. Cassius is allowed two weeks off at the bank, so we will have twelve days to spend on Naxos.
I have always been a morning person, and I have vowed to get up quietly each day so that I can go outside alone and watch the sun rise over the sea. But Chloe is also an early riser, and she is usually up, the coffee made, when I emerge from the bedroom.
I don’t know if I would ever get tired of the views, Chloe says one morning. She and I have taken our coffee outside and are standing near a stone wall on the side of the house. A slight breeze is rippling through the leaves of the olive trees, moving them like pages of a book. Beyond the treeline, a cliff drops sharply down to the Aegean. Two of the nearby islands are visible to the north – the small island of Dilos and the larger, trendy island of Mikonos. Alexandros has warned me that on some nights, when the sea breezes have stilled, you can stand in front of the house and hear the partying on Mikonos. I have not yet heard the sounds, but at this hour I am sure that everyone on Mikonos is sleeping soundly.
Over the next few days, I go for long walks – along dirt roads and foot trails and across open fields. My walks, especially in the mornings, are often solitary. In the afternoons, I am usually joined by Cassius or Andrew. The paths winding through the olive grove are especially peaceful. One ends, eventually, at the cliff edge, where Alexandros has erected a small wooden bench. It is the perfect place to sit for an hour, lost in thought, watching the ferries shuttling people from one island to another. I am glad that Naxos is not one of the more popular of the Greek islands. Much of its charm is that, at least from this vantage point, there seem to be more goats than people, and that the locals do not mind yielding them the right-of-way.
On one of our last days on Naxos, Alexandros drives us into the island’s interior. We stop at one of the little mountain villages, wander around the streets for a bit, and find an open café where we order lunch. There are shops in the town selling candies and bottles of the local olive oil, paintings and ceramics, hand-carved wooden bowls and utensils, hand-woven tablecloths and hand-knit scarves. Every item has its own small imperfections and personalities. Nothing suggests mechanization. We are not the only tourists in the town, but those that have made it to this town deep in the interior seem to be in no hurry to leave.
On the drive back, we are stopped again by a herd of goats being driven across the road by a man holding a tall wooden staff. Alexandros stops and shuts off the engine as he did on the day of our arrival, and everyone in the van sits quietly watching the parade.
Alexandros finally breaks the silence. So what do you think of our island?
This is the first time that Cassius and Chloe and the boys have been to Naxos, so the question is anyone’s to answer, but I presume that Alexandros expects me to reply.
I could live here, I say, without really thinking about it. I turn around, see that Chloe is smiling at me.
It’s really a perfect life, Chloe sighs. Isn’t it? I’m sure it’s not always easy. Living on an island in the middle of the sea. I suppose it gets hard, sometimes. I’m not sure I could do it. But it just seems like such a peaceful, perfect place. I do like your island, Uncle Alexandros.
We should do this next summer, Andrew says. We should come back every year.
The last of the goats is casually making its way across the road. Alexandros restarts the engine and puts the van in gear. You’re more than welcome here, he says. If you come a little bit later in the year, you can help us harvest olives.
There are, I say to myself, worse ways and worse places to spend your retirement years.
But two days later, back in Farsala, I am making plans to return to Sheboygan. Just as Rome will always be the place in my mind reserved for Thea and me, I think that Naxos will be the perfect place to which I can never return, the island of goats and olive trees, sunrises over the Aegean, small whitewashed mountain villages and a mysterious doorway that seems to be inviting you in and ushering you out at the same time.
You’ve been gone a really long time, Becky scolds. It is my last phone call home. Tessa has made my return arrangements, and Cassius will be driving me to the Athens airport in the morning. I had planned on taking the train again, but Cassius would not hear of it. Chloe and the boys will be accompanying us.
It was a good trip, I tell my granddaughter. Maybe some day you can come and see Greece for yourself.
Tessa quickly interrupts. Careful, Dad. Becky will take that as an invitation.
As much as I have enjoyed this trip, as much as I resisted it, it has also made me realize that my life is in America. I have lost a lot. I have lost the only woman I will ever love, but I have family and I have a life. I have no idea how many more years I will be allowed. But I will not spend them sitting in a recliner staring out the window, trying to remember, holding desperately onto scraps of memories. Everyone loses someone. The real tragedy is when someone loses everyone.
Home again, Becky immediately begins my technology instruction. It is the last weekend before the beginning of the school year, and she and Tessa and Kat have driven up from Elmhurst to see that I am properly settled, and equipped for the New Age. I am driven to a store on the north side that I have never seen before, where Becky introduces me to the world of personal computers, all of which seem to function pretty much the same. I leave, unsurprisingly, with the same model that Becky uses. At home, I watch her unpack the equipment, set it up on the dining table, hook up all the attachments, turn on the power switch, wait. She narrates everything, thinking that I will remember it all. Tessa and Kat sit on the sofa, observing. Tessa has the most delighted smile on her face.
When they leave on Sunday, I have an email address and I know how to send messages to Tessa and Becky and Kat, as well as Maggie and Leander. I know how to attach a file, although I have not actually created anything to attach. I know generally what the Internet is and how to search for something.
You can look up a recipe, Becky explains, taking me to a site that has recipes for Greek pastries. If you forget something.
I cannot imagine forgetting recipes of dishes that I spent years making – and they are all written down in the binder I gave Leander, if I do forget. But this is part of Becky’s first lesson, and I offer no protest.
I send Becky and Tessa a message every day, and they both take the time to reply. Tessa tells me that it is easy enough to send the same message to more than one individual, but I would like to feel that I am writing something personal, and that it is received that way. A handwritten letter is not sent to several people simultaneously, and I want my computer letters to be the same. My messages, initially, are not filled with news. It took me a full week to get over the jet lag from my trip, and learning how to use a computer is now occupying much of my time. When I am feeling more comfortable with the device, or when the novelty of it wears off, I hope to have something interesting to share with Becky and her mother.
Becky’s return messages remind me of her wild stream-of-consciousness thought process, which I find charming. One moment she is telling me that her sister is outside kicking a soccer ball against the wall, the next moment she is telling me about a vampire book she is reading, then she is describing the aromas from the kitchen where her mother is making dinner, then she is writing about a girlfriend who backed into another car on the day she got her driver’s license. Computer letters are certainly different from handwritten letters, but I can see that this is not necessarily a bad thing.
Eventually, I become reasonably proficient doing basic computer functions. Maggie and I communicate at least once a week, which is a blessing. She knows how to send photographs, so I know what her apartment looks like, and her friends, and all the places where she likes to hike. I find it difficult sitting for long periods, writing messages and searching the Internet for interesting things, but I have fortunately found other diversions. The community college offers free courses for senior citizens, and I have taken classes in English literature and comparative religions. These are two subjects in which I had no real interest, but Maggie persuaded me that there is value in learning things simply for the sake of learning them, regardless of whether or not they have any practical value.
The public library is also offering a workshop on coin collecting. Nicholas once began collecting Mercury dimes when we were kids. I have no idea whatever happened to them, but it seems as if coin collecting is something I might enjoy. And Becky, in one of her messages, has suggested that I might want to learn how to speak Greek, so I can serve as a proper tour guide. She has not forgotten my off-handed comment that she may want to visit Greece some day. But learning at least how to speak passable, conversational Greek is not something I would necessarily rule out.