Unbroken Circles

 

After enduring the usual indignities of long-distance flight —the crying babies,

the incessant talkers, the recycled refrigerated nightmare—I stepped onto the

sizzling Athens tarmac with no shortage of relief.

 

But one step outside the terminal and the reality of Greek summer became

apparent. The air temperature at noontime was 95 degrees, with enough

humidity to matter. Added to this, in the final days of a Saharan sandstorm—

more usual in March and April—a sky rendered a murky yellow.

 

Hosted by my dear old friends, Thanasi and Koula, it really did feel like I never

left (last July). In the evening, Thanasi and I went out to a quiet outside

taverna with another good friend, Akis, who I met when I was an archaeology

student in Athens in 1979. Friendships that begin in your late teens and

continue into your mid-60s are a thing of celebration, joy, and gratitude.

 

Dinner #1: grilled lamb chops, village salad, tzatziki, crispy fried zucchini, a

large piece of feta, village bread, beer, and wine. The warm-up of champions.

 

Drive to Spetses Island

 

The idea of driving to an island—where my grandmother was born in 1899 and

Ann and I were married in 1992—seems the stuff of fantasy. The fantasy ends

at a secure parking lot in the dusty village of Kosta, and followed by a twenty-

minute caique ride across the Saronic Gulf. 

 

The rental car was the cheapest ever at 23 euros a day—and it showed. Hills

are not a friend to a Citroen C3…unless they are downhill. I wrangled this little

French beast through the eastern Argolid, past the villages and remote craggy

outposts with Dorian names, past the girl from Ligouria—enamored in my 20s,

she is now in her 60s, in the same village bakery, surrounded by

grandchildren—through the wheat fields surrounding the village of Trachia

(pop. 40) with its five bakeries, past the enormous windmills on craggy peaks.

 

In the final decent to the village of Kosta (from where the caique departed) we

pass an important Neolithic site called the Franchthi Cave, inhabited by

humans in prehistoric times.

I can’t dispel myself of the notion of my ancestors

eating raw meat and picking lice off of one another…in a damp, dark cave

about 10,000 years ago. We’ve come a long way!

 

Spetses and nearby Hydra are home to the super wealthy, a few of whom

passed my little breadbox car at 140 kph on blind corners, driving their

Lamborginis and Mercedes with reckless abandon. One can’t help but notice

that the government has spread out its guardrail budget, accommodating every

other hairpin turn with a 300-foot cliff. Fortunately, more than a few arrive via

helicopter.

 

Spetses has a special place in my heart and my memories. I first went to

Spetses at age 19, just before my term at College Year in Athens. It was then

that I met most of my many aunts and uncles (my mother’s first cousins) and

their children (my second cousins), but the personal connection to this island

dates back to the late 1960s, when I met my Uncle Kyriakos, a ship’s captain—

at the time the youngest master in the Greek merchant marine. Kyriakos would

sail from the Norway, above the arctic circle, carrying minerals to South

America: Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. He would also sail to Philadelphia on

occasion, which allowed him to visit my Spetses grandmother, his aunt.

 

To say that I was enamored of this dashing young man in a uniform, at the

helm of a 650-foot freighter, would be a vast understatement. He offered to take

me aboard when I was twelve, for the transatlantic journey back to Norway and

then to Greece. (I am still angry at my Mom for saying “no way, Kyriakos!”).

 

All of my Spetses family have treated me with abundant kindness and true

village hospitality over the past 45 years. After obtaining my first job in

publishing, for a small British press in Athens, weekend trips to Spetses

became a monthly event.

 

One memory in particular resonates especially: walking beside my Uncle

Panayiotis, who rode his trusty donkey Solon, out to the family’s summer

cottage, located in an olive grove on a pebbly beach facing the nearby island of

Hydra—the 1960s home to Leonard Cohen. At high noon, the chirping of the

cicadas was deafening, and lizards darted across the hot asphalt. We would

arrive to the loving welcome of my great Aunt Eleftheria: her name means

“freedom”—could you ask for a cooler name? Each day she prepared a multi-

course meal that you could smell all the way from the main road.

 

The years have passed but I have returned to Spetses perhaps fifty or sixty

times—with friends, girlfriends, a wife, kids, more friends—and have always

been treated as the honored guest of my Spetsiotiko family. In 2021, in the

aftermath of Covid, I journeyed with my daughter Evyenia to run the Spetses

Mini Marathon, which circles the island in just under 30 kilometers of grueling

hills and heat (even in October). That year I won my age group (60-64) and now

I feel compelled to win my new age group (65-69). There’s still time!

 

Three days here and then the drive to the southern Peloponnese. Hoping the

key still fits in the lock.