I got along well with my Greek- American friends and cousins. They were at every Greek function of my childhood. I miss them sometimes, the little Greeky things about them that we have in common, the large groups of loud kids running, screaming, laughing and dancing- of course I miss that. That is where my love and involvement with festivals originated. If I wasn’t so “deeefrent” meaning open in mind and free in spirit, an artist, I might be with them today. I would be like the older Greek woman who gently cupped my chin in her hand, as if it was a precious bird. We would be celebrating a Nameday or Baptisimo… But, I am deeefrent, and I am thankful to have found others I feel connected to through spirit. If I had been raised one generation further into Americana, after the war to hold onto all that is Greek was lost, an artist / activist would be another compromise from the treaty, the rebuilding.
I suppose I could return to the Greeks, but I’ve traveled far and found my own tribe. There is always a small percentage of people who think of things a few years before the mainstream. We are the radical thinkers, the artists, the visionaries, open minded snobs (we have our issues) the freaks that pave the way. We are the ones our immediate families only appreciate viewed through the Oprah Winfrey show. How ironic the pride my parent’s generation feels for the small percentage of Greeks that thought ahead in ancient times, yet they fear the forward thinkers of their own time. For years I shook what felt like rejection out of my hair like a horse shakes it’s mane.
When I ventured into the homes of my tow headed American friends, I was exploring an exotic culture. The steps from inside my square suburban home with the square back and front yard, down the white cement square sidewalk, into their square suburban homes may have seemed small, but they were a giant leap into an alternate reality at the time. Homes appear quiet and nearly identical from the outside in American Midwestern suburbs, they differ like those box chocolate candies on the inside.
My neighbors were just “Americani” or “Xeni” to most of my relatives, but I was eager to learn more. Laura Poe’s family, from Alabama originally, lived in a house decorated in old American style, with antique glass jars; leather bound books, big solid furnishings. Her mother never wore make-up and liked to read. Her southern accent was slight though she was not. My mother once said in defense of being a divorce’, Laura’s mom didn’t leave her husband because she felt too unattractive to go on without him. Her father worked for Chrysler (not like Sals “work”) and was an alcoholic, with the heaviest southern accent I’ve heard to date. Laura’s brother was one of those red heads that is covered from head to toe in freckles that I found fascinating! His eyes were so light blue, they were almost transparent and the sun hurt them. Laura didn’t even look related; she had big full lips like mine, and no freckles at all. Her hair was curly and brown (brunette #2 on our street). Laura loved and admired my mother. She loved to eat dinner with us and pick my moms brain for beauty tips. When my mother made Avgolemeno Soup (that made me gag) I was welcome at Martha Poe’s table. Their food was a lot like my fathers, thick rich and heavy. I discovered my love of corn bread there and learned to say no thank you to headcheese and pork skins. These folks ate deer, so, it wasn’t so strange to them that we roasted a whole lamb every Easter. At summers end, we related our stories of having visited “the old country’ (Greece and Alabama) a place where people still did things the simpler way, as we readjusted to Michigan suburban living. One day while I was passing Martha Poe’s favorite Greek dish, Spanikopeta, over the fence to Laura who was handing me my mother’s favorite American dish, Corn bread, I realized the similarities and understood why it felt so good and solid knowing Southern Folks.
From the outside, the Poes house looked just like another neighbor, Louise’s house. Inside was another story. Louise’s father was from New York and her mother was French. Her mothers’ pastries were a lot like ours, she wore perfume and make-up like my mom did, and her accent was harder for people to understand. Her dad always wore suits, he was little and timid. Their furnishings were more delicate and detailed, fragile like the furnishings reserved for our “Living Room”. Louise, an only child, was pampered like a lap dog. She had hair whiter than paper that her mother curled everyday into long ringlets, everyday. Her skin seemed cold, raw; it was the kind you could see the veins through. The interior of their home was a fluffy delicateness that contrasted with the solid brick exterior.
Some families had lived in Michigan for generations. Like the 3rd generation Polish –American family, who were the first to explain to me the hyphen and the “generations” system. According to the oldest brother in that family, I was 1st generation Greek- American. It was at their house that I tasted my first American lunch. My friend Katie invited me during our school lunch break. They had fuzzy, stuffed, red and blue bear shaped chairs in the family room with TV trays so they could watch cartoon while they ate! As I sat in the red bear chair watching Bugs Bunny cartoons, Katie’s mother brought us each a plate with two white triangles that had purple and beige on the inside. Everything seemed to match the cartoon we watched. There were two machine made cookies next to the triangles. She offered us milk (which I never liked) or a red drink. I chose red. That was my first PB and J sandwich, first machine made, Nutterbutter cookies and first, but not last, Kool- Aid drink.
When Katie ate lunch at our house, she was awestruck. She couldn’t wait to tell her mom that we ate like Thanksgiving dinner for lunch everyday. Looking back on the soup, salad, bread, Greek Cheese, Olives, Vegetable dishes and Lamb, Beef, Chicken, or Fish, made with fresh Oregano, Basil, Parsley, Garlic, Olive Oil…the lunches during the years my parents were married was always a huge and healthy feast, that should have been followed by a siesta, like in Greece. It was Katie’s older brother who told me each family had traveled from somewhere at some time and had it’s own drama, maybe not a Greek drama, but a drama nonetheless.
It must have been during my parent’s separation that I had my first ever American birthday party. It’s not unusual for Greek – Americans (unlike Greeks in Greece) to celebrate birthdays, but I had a party with all of my “Americani” friends. The special “Americani friend” party was held before the “family party” for all the Greeks. I was the first of my siblings to associate with non-Greeks/ Xeni. It may have been my young age at the time of the separation or perhaps it was just my insatiable curiosity or fate. Eventually we all had at least one American friend that was like family and our birthday parties grew more integrated every year.
What I had brought back from an excursion to my neighbor’s birthday party earlier that year was my newly acquired taste for junk food. They had the kind of cake that probably came from a box; it was moist and solid and had no syrup, no layers. The bright blue and pink frosting was mostly synthetic and had a plastic like feel to it. There was a cartoon character and a big number candle for decoration. That is what I wanted for my party, and my mother got it for me. After all, I was the one she gave an American middle name to, a name they used rather than my Greek first name, so how could she blame me?
My mom bought me an American style cake from Saunders! In a photo from that day, I am the one in the center, with black hair, cut in bangs, above my enormous black/brown eyes, blowing out candles stuck in the image of Big Bird, surrounded by 5 blue – eyed tow headed blondes. I still love mass-produced or easily assembled, cheap, basic American desserts. You can eat those goodies anytime without feeling like it should be accompanied by a freshly cleaned home, and company.
That is not to say I don’t love Greek pastries. The delicate layers of syrup soaked cake with butter cream, whipped cream or custard between the layers, topped with designs you almost didn’t want to ruin by eating. They exploded in my mouth like the scent of a Gardenia hits the nose. It was more than just sugar melting, there were layers of delicate, naturally balanced flavors. I was blessed with a mother who knew the old ways of pastry making. If a recipe called for spices, she took the extra step of simmering whole spices in a cheesecloth bag and reserved the water for the recipe. She shelled walnuts with her perfectly manicured petite, moisturized hands. Peeling the dark skins, sorting the bitter nuts away, she chopped the rest by hand for her Baklava, that was made with homemade philo/pastry dough. If a recipe called for syrup, she always set aside a portion without so that I could taste the layers of flavor with out so much sweet. Her pastries were exquisite works of art. I loved sharing our Christmas cookies and cakes with the neighborhood kids and watching them light up as the cookies melted or crunched in their mouths. My mothers pastries were foreign objects of delight for those kids.
Marlene Zylstra lived 2 houses down the street from me, She was generations into being American. The day we met, my older sisters were in school and I was alone on the swing set in my back yard, the scent of pine-sol through the kitchen window meant my pregnant mother was cleaning. She would sing “Kunya Bella” with me occasionally through the window to connect with me, make sure I was still ok on the swing. During one of the rounds of the swing set song, mothers voice dropped off and I heard another voice singing along with me. I slipped off my swing and out of the back yard toward the voice, traveling my furthest adventure away from home, alone at the ripe age of 4. I found Marlene less than 2 doors down, out on the sidewalk, still singing my Greek swing set song and playing hop scotch alone. I spoke no English and she no Greek, yet we communicated with ease. When my mother found us we were covered in chalk, with spirals and dots on many of the sidewalk squares between mine and Marlene’s home.
As the years went on Marlene and I grew as close as girlhood friends / kindred spirits do. We were the Salt and Pepper Shakers. She had long, straight blonde hair like my long, straight black hair. We dressed in identical outfits in different colors. Marlene and I were wild, always on an adventure and full of zest. We played baseball games and tackle games with the boys, we ran and jumped and climbed trees, houses, swing sets, we were always finding a way to see things from a different view.
Once while playing tag or hide and seek, I found a spider nest with a pregnant spider in the peeling bark of a tree. I called Marlene over - we must have spent hours taking turns climbing up into that tree watching for the spider to perform. As the sun began to set, that small spider mamma and her zillions of eggs, their home a wedge of space between peeling bark and tree, gave us our first view of live birth.
One day during winter, Marlene and I were outside playing in the snow, wearing our snorkeldorf coats. It was the first sunny day in awhile, we had experienced snowstorms and there was an enormous, glistening icicle hanging down from her roofs awning. It must have been 2 feet in circumference at the top, no thicker than a stiletto heel at it’s dripping end. The icicle hung suspended one foot away from the ground with enough space for Marlene and I to take turns daring each other to lay under it and catch icicle drops in our mouths. The danger in the suns glare and the cold, wet drops tickled us, but we were careful not to laugh, sensing that the vibration could cause the icicle to break away and impale us. It was crazy and deadly! Our only protection was our enormous zest for life.
Marlene and I had a sense for the spirit world the other kids our age couldn’t grasp. We knew each other for 23 years, and were there for each other more than biological family; Marlene was my first spirit sister. My “blood sister” according to a ritual Marlene said came from the “Indians” - and she should know she was 1/16 “Indian”. Though I looked more native to this continent than she did and I was the “Indian” in all the cowboy and Indian games, back when the masses were still confused about whether the original people were the bad guys or the good guys, she was the expert on all things “Indian”.
We performed the ritual in her backyard sitting “Indian” style on the soil at the base of the oldest tree in the neighborhood. We prayed to the spirits of the 4 directions and asked the wind to carry our prayer. The winds magical swoosh was our cue to pick up the crystal we had excavated from a riverbank. We had sharpened it on her driveway early that week in preparation for our ritual. As we cut our right palms with it, we clasped our hands together, holding on as we pulled each other from sitting “Indam style” to standing. We were chanting “my blood flows with your blood flows from me to we” as we rose. Then we laughed and danced around the tree until we fell, dizzy.
I was always able to find similarities in my life and others lives; what Marlene and I had in common bonded us more strongly. She went to the hospital often as a brittle diabetic and I went to the same hospital with serious asthma. Her father, blind since before her birth, died of Diabetes the same year that my parents divorced and my dad moved away. We were shielded in our play world from the stigma that children without fathers in the home experience. I remember the day of Mr. Zylstra’s funeral, when Marlene stole the cross out of her father’s casket. I was the only one who knew that she did it and I understood why. Later that day, when we were out of our funeral clothes, Marlene wrote a note to her dad. She was too shaky with diabetic trouble to climb that day so I climbed for her. While perched on the chimney of my house, with Marlene looking through the closest window, we sang in unison “May the Angles of the winds please take this message to Paul Zylstra”. We closed our eyes, concentrating, waiting for the wind to pick up and carry the note to the heavens.
Everyday not grounded by my asthma or her diabetes was a day of adventure for us. Sal saved our minds during the grounded by health days, with books by Mark Twain. Twain’s adventures made us feel like we were all right for feeling so open, so alive. When we related our “out of body” experiences to Sal he provided us with books supporting both the Physical and Metaphysical sides of the discussion.
We were allowed to visit each other in the hospital any time. The antiseptic smelling nurses in their squeaky shoes knew us well, and allowed us our own therapy. As we grew into our teens, a few were nice enough to let our boyfriends visit, but only under supervision. We brought music to change the sterile atmosphere, bring a little funk in. We brought flowing eclectic, “mix tapes” that we recorded for each other and played them through early models of Jam boxes and headphones. No one else we knew enjoyed music the way we did. We listened to rare and collectable Billie Holiday, Peter Gabriel’s’ Genesis, David Bowie, Parliament Funkadelic, silly songs by the King Bees, Iggy Pop and James Brown.
Marlene lived a fast, full life. She was always positive, always the comedian. At 23 her eyesight started failing and she knew it would not be long before she too would succumb to the disease that took her father slowly, one piece amputated at a time. Organs failed… here a kidney, there a heart. We were both married by then; our husbands had difficulty understanding our coping mechanism, our crude jokes about blindness and death. In her kitchen we re- wrote and sang that old tune Billy made famous, “All of me you can’t take all of me…I’m so good without you”, then crazily back to the original words, their meaning twisted, “Ahhh Go ahead now, Why not? Take all of me,” we laughed so hard, we almost dropped the Sweet Potato pie that we prepared with plenty of sugar, as we put it in the oven. We literally fell out laughing! She often caused the loudest laugh to burst from my depths. It wrapped around Marlene’s giggling, and tickled her to the floor.
A few more years passed. I was divorced, living in New Orleans. There was a moment, in the French Quarter Coffee shop I was managing, when I caught a glimpse of Marlene’s laughing face in the mirror and I knew~ Diabetes took all of her in a rush; Marlene left her body for good at 27.
With my spirit sister I learned to laugh till bellyaches from it, through tears, piss your pants laughter. When you laugh that hard you know it’s healing some serious wounds. You can only share that with certain people. When asked what I mean by spirit sister/brother/family, I think that kind of laughter should go into the definition.
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metahara
