Yiayia's Journey Part 19

In 1960, my 106 year old grandmother eagerly embraced a welcome new role. The eternally feisty, always enduring, and ever evolving Penelope Conomos officially became "Yiayia". Daughter Anastasia gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. And in a show of respect, she and her husband named her Damiani after Giagia's beloved mother still living in Greece. A few years later, Yiayia's joy multiplied when Anastasia welcomed a second baby girl. And in another great gesture of love, the proud parents christened her Penelope, after my dear grandmother.

The hard as nails Penelope - once reknown for raising her own children under the threat of spanking by Koutala (wooden spoon); who sent them off to school with the daily Greek admonition "mi mas kanis rezili" (do not bring shame to the family name) ~ was by all accounts a doting, devoted, darling of a grandmother. Just like her American counterparts, Yiayia spoiled her granddaughters with an abundance of adoration and praise. But she never strayed far from her Greek roots. In lieu of Barbie dolls, she'd give them traditional Greek peasant dolls. And instead of chocolate chip cookies, she'd serve plate after plate of Koulourakia. She'd present those traditional Greek cookies with a joyful order no one dared to ever refuse: "Fae!" Eat! 

But it wouldn't be long before devastating news from Greece tempered Yiayia's newfound joy. Her beloved mother Damiani was suddenly ailing. And the resourceful peasant woman--revered in their village of Agia Anastasia for helping to feed neighbors during the WWII Axis Occuption--was growing weaker by the day. Yiayia needed to sail to the old country post haste. Yet ultimately time proved to be unkind. Before she could even board a ship to return to those familiar shores, her mother's heart failed. Still living alone on their ancestral island of Kythera, the once indomitable Damiani passed away in her lonely little stone cottage overlooking the sea.

Decades later, my future husband and I would join my parents to visit that quiet cottage on the trip of a lifetime to Greece. Surrounded by Damiani's once prolific olive orchards, my father Tasso led us up that rocky terrain to Yiayia's  ancestral home. He took out his key, turned the knob, and opened up a world of incredibly poignant family history inside.

With heavy hearts, we solemnly gazed upon those stone walls now bare of family photos. The quiet corner of the cottage where Yiayia was miraculously born. The back room where her beloved donkey "Keecho" and the family's livestock slumbered. The adjoining room where Yiayia, her mother, and three siblings slept side by side on the cold, hard floor. The well outside - now dry. The nearby latrine - a shadow of itself. The voices inside - eternally silent. But for one, of course. 

All these years later, that lone voice now lives in a little pink house with the red door in San Jose, California. But thousands of miles away that quiet stone cottage still stands proudly overlooking the Mediterranean. Just like my 106 year old Yiayia, those lonely walls have defied the test of time. 

Yiayia's beloved ancestral home in the village of Agia Anastasia, on the island of Kythera, in the southernmost tip of Greece, still receives the occasional inquisitive visitor. And when it does ~ just like Yiayia's traditional Greek dances ~ it eagerly tells a tale of incredible human sacrifice and endurance. It's a beautiful, poignant story of one poor but proud family forced to adapt and to endure so future generations could one day thrive. As my beloved Yiayia always says, "such is the life." And yet it hardly seems fair.