Fattened for the kill

 

Fattened for the kill

 

One of the perils associated with visiting my Greek family involves overeating—

or more precisely, being overfed: too good, too much, too often. Whether it is

Spetses (mother’s heritage) or Crete (father’s heritage), the family feels

compelled to fatten me up…for something. Feeding the foreigner is an ancestral

imperative. Not even my dual citizenship (EU passport as of 2017) immunizes

me against this torrent of good food.

 

Sometimes I feel like the ball in a pinball machine, with each ringing bell

signifying another household, another meal, another dessert. Relatives

constantly harangue me: “Eat more. You’ve hardly eaten anything. You can’t get

up until you’ve cleaned your plate.” It is an infantilizing gesture, reducing me

to the toddler who is implored to eat. And then eat again.

 

Thank goodness for the daily run, swim, walk.

 

Ayioς Panton (Αγιος Παντων)

 

The older monastery on the island, Ayios Pantos, is perched at the highest

point on Spetses—like most monasteries, accessible only on foot or on the back

seat of a motorcycle, in my case driven by an 88-year-old uncle with failing

eyesight and hearing. Up the mountain we went, the motorbike struggling with

the incline, my too-tight legs cramping with spasms during the ascent.

 

Kyriakos dropped me off so I could visit at my own pace.

 

I’m told that our family has been patrons to the nunnery for 400 years, which I

don’t doubt. I always make it a point to visit the sisters, to light a candle in the

chapel in remembrance of my grandparents, parents, and sister, and to enjoy a

coffee and some loukoumia (the ill-named “Turkish delight”) on the terrace

overlooking our family’s ancestral land, a rocky peninsula called Kouzano.

 

It is an homage that I rarely miss and much enjoy. The abbess sent me off with

a handful of kamboskini--prayer bracelets that are spun from the monastery’s

own wool—and a curious booklet, written in old Demotic Greek, intended, she

said, for my children. The subject: how to get married. Not so much a best-

seller these days.

 

 

Garifalo/Γαριφαλο beach

 

There are only a few quiet beaches on the north side of the island. One of them

is called Garifalos (“carnation”), a narrow cove with great depth and a fantastic

view out to sea.

 

I walked there through the Palio Limani (the Old Harbor), past the fishing fleet

and the multi-million-Euro yachts. Spetses, the “poor, dry island” (my

grandmother’s description), is now like the French Riviera—with the locals

living in humble homes up the mountain, the extremely rich in villas with

infinity pools and heliports. It is quiet the contrast. Yiayia, who sailed for

America in 1912, would not recognize the place in 2024.

 

Garifalos is a stony (not a sandy) beach, which means that the clarity of the

water is unreal. Each time I come, I bring a dime from the United States. I

swim out to the center of the cove, which has a depth of 40 feet, and I drop the

dime, and watch it flitter to the bottom.

At a depth of 40 feet, it remains visible

from the surface. Until recently, I would then dive for the dime, retrieve it, and

leave it on a special (to me) rock near the channel that leads to the open ocean.

 

Self-preservation now necessitates leaving the dime on the bottom—my annual

gift to this special place.

Tomorrow I will set off on the first ferry to the mainland, hop into my

mighty Lamborgini, and traverse the Peloponnese—from the Argolid in the northeast 

to the province of Messenia in the extreme southwest. It will be an epic drive toward 

a second homecoming.