“Does your life feel like a microcosm of what’s going on in the greater world? That everything that could go wrong is going wrong? Nothing as dramatic or appalling as being targeted by…

“Looking back over all that has happened since the 4th of June, 1972, it seems I was extraordinarily fortunate in that roll of the dice that sent me here. It didn’t look like it…

“The storm is called ‘Elpida,’ or Hope, but does it bring hope with it? Hope that our lemon tree on Andros will not suffer frostbite; hope for all the citrus groves in Greece—for…

“As the summer drew on, we became aware that we were living in a bubble, somehow protected from the disasters that seemed to be striking most parts of the world. Besides the unstoppable…

“Dearest Friends and Rellies, sorry it’s been so long since you last heard from me, but since the lockdown ended on May 14, exactly a month ago as I write this, I’ve had…

“Didi found me a small pension in Calenzana, a nearby village notorious for being a center of the Union Corse and the white slave trade. ‘How can you go there on your own,’…

“I also remember the tales of my mother-in-law, my first husband’s mother. Dora Lada, known to the family as Dodo, was born in 1900. She brought up her two children on her own,…

“Maroussi would be an idyll that lasted almost two decades. I would meet the rest of my neighbors, who included a quintet of wonderfully eccentric older ladies, Greek, English, and Maltese; an academician/professor…

“Then, I might stare at the laptop screen for a few minutes until I remember a phone call that must be made. Today—and this is five days after I started this piece—we have…

“The journey I’m about to describe took place a few years ago, but it could well have happened four or five decades ago. We seemed to travel back in time as we chugged…