HOUSTON, TX – My Yiayia came to America when I was about eight years old. She was the only grandparent I ever met. My paternal grandmother had died long before I was born; my paternal grandfather lived in Greece and died before we could ever meet; my maternal grandfather died when he was just 43, and he left my Yiayia a young widow with seven children. She wore black from the day he died until the day she died – almost 50 years later.
One Mother’s Day, the older, employed, grandchildren chipped in and bought Yiayia a black housecoat (only in New York can one find a store that caters to Greek, Italian, Jewish and Puerto Rican widowed grandmothers). It had teensy white polka dots – I mean you had to go right up to her to notice them, and even then, they looked like flecks of dandruff. She refused to wear the housecoat. It wasn’t black. It would be disrespectful to Pappou’s memory.
I’m embarrassed to admit that when I first met my Yiayia, she scared the daylights out of me. She was tiny – I was probably already taller than she was. And she was completely swathed in black: black dress, black hose, black shoes, black kerchief. A long, thin white braid hung down her back, punctuating the unrelieved blackness of her frame. Milky blue eyes stared out from the wrinkles that etched her face, and her hands, dotted with liver spots, lay in her lap. She used to sit quietly, watching us play, and twiddle her thumbs. I don’t think I’d ever seen someone actually do that. The really scary part, though, was her “smile.” Yiayia had two teeth – that’s it – set on a diagonal so that when she smiled, she looked like a Jack-o’-Lantern.
Obviously, Yiayia wasn’t the grandmother I had seen on TV or read about in the Dick and Jane books at school. No pies cooling on the window sill when I got home from school. No special tea parties or shopping sprees. I was too young and clueless to ask her about life in Greece or what her transatlantic flight was like. Imagine that. She left a village that had no indoor plumbing or electricity and boarded an airplane for America. Alone. Now that’s courage. On my first flight, I traveled with my cousin, we spoke both English and Greek, and I dug my nails into the arm of a total stranger upon takeoff and landing. I’m sure Yiayia just sat twiddling the whole way.
Yiayia lived with my Theia Sevasti, my Theio Miltiadi, and my cousin Tom. They had more room, and they lived on the first floor. She used to sit under a tree outside their apartment and watch us play. We never asked her to throw us a ball or hold the end of a jump rope. It wasn’t like that. She just watched us – perhaps remembering her own children playing in the horafia-fields, perhaps just enjoying the grandchildren she never imagined she would see.
When the ice cream man jingled by, she would eat a vanilla cup, savoring every spoonful as we inhaled our treats. If we started arguing among ourselves, she would gently remind us to be nice to one another. But she never ratted us out to our parents. She wasn’t our babysitter. She was our guardian angel.
Our Jewish friends had their bubbas. Our Puerto Rican friends had their abuelitas. We had our Yiayia.
AWAY TO “GREECE”
Then, she died. The younger children were shuttled off to my oldest sister’s house. We weren’t told anything and we couldn’t ask questions, but we knew something was definitely wrong. The grownups were acting weird. Everyone was in black. Everyone was crying. When we could go home, we weren’t allowed to watch TV or listen to the radio. We were surrounded by strangers who nodded knowingly at us and pinched our cheeks until we lost all feeling in our faces.
This went on forever – actually, 40 days. Then things, kind of went back to normal. Except that Yiayia wasn’t there anymore, and we didn’t know why. “She went back to Greece,” the grownups said. That can’t be right. She would never leave without saying good-bye. Without a kiss on the forehead. Dino, the oldest of the youngest grandchildren, wise at 12 and the boss of all of us, said that Yiayia had died. We didn’t quite understand, but it made more sense than her mysterious return to Greece.
Twenty-five years later, my Theio Epaminonda, the youngest of my mother’s siblings, died of a heart attack. I flew from Houston back to New York for his funeral. One evening, we were all sitting around the dining room table in my mother’s apartment, and one of my uncles wondered who was going to call their brother, Theio Spiro, in Greece to tell him that his baby brother had died.
When my Theio Yianni died, my cousins and I were in Athens and had the dubious honor of telling Theio Spiro the news. To say he went nuts is an understatement. The keening and wailing and rending of garments – he left Euripides in the dust!
So now, the grownups were trying to figure out who would draw the short straw and make the call to Athens. Well, not exactly all the grown-ups. The cousins, all adults now, were thinking something else completely. I knew it was going to be Tom. It had to be Tom. We had all waited patiently, but he had earned this moment. After all, Yiayia had lived with him.
“Theio Spiro?” he asked. “What about Yiayia? Who’s going to tell Yiayia?”
We held our breaths.
“Yiayia? “Vre, trellos papas se vaptise-a crazy priest baptized you.” Yiayia died.”
“She did? Then who’s been cashing those checks I’ve been sending for Christmas and Mother’s Day?”
No one moved. We didn’t dare look at one another. But then we couldn’t hold it any longer. We had waited for 25 years! We burst out laughing as the “grownups” realized how preposterous they had been all those years ago. In their efforts to protect us from the truth, they constructed a clumsy, unrealistic story about our Yiayia that, under different circumstances, could have backfired. We could have all felt abandoned, resentful that she had come and gone from our lives so suddenly. But that didn’t happen. In her short time with us, in her quiet way, she made us all feel special.
So, even if we didn’t really understand what it meant to die, we definitely understood what it meant to be loved. By our Yiayia. By our well-intentioned, ridiculous parents!
Happy Grandparents Day to all the Yiayiades and Pappoudes out there, including the ones who went back to Greece.
The post Grandparent Tales: “A Crazy Priest Baptized You!” or “Yiayia Went to Greece” appeared first on The National Herald.