Love, Light & Remembrance

“As a child, I measured the rhythm of the year by the scope of preparations for and celebrations of each of our holy days. The month leading up to Christmas and the one before Easter were major, marked by fasting, and my grandmother’s baking and cooking of delicacies to be shared at lavish meals with family and friends.”—By Helen Noakes

Waking Point

By Helen Noakes

“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.”―Thomas Campbell

SAN FRANCISCO California—(Weekly Hubris)—1/11/2016—He wasn’t exactly dapper, my grandfather Achilleas. At least that’s not how I remember him. But then, I was only four when he died, and the word “dapper” didn’t exist in my vocabulary. Without the word, the concept, too, was absent.

He was always impeccable in his appearance, even in the grueling heat of Shanghai summers when winds from the Gobi Desert blew relentlessly and covered the city with a film of gritty sand. I recall the rosy tint of his close-shaved cheeks. For a Greek, he was fair skinned and needed to avoid the sun. Mostly, I remember his hats: a snappy Panama hat in summer, crisp over his close-cropped grey hair; a Fedora in winter, its dark brown felt sleek as a well-groomed horse. Perhaps he thought of himself as dapper. I don’t know. But I doubt it.

As young as I was, I could sense something distinctive about Achilleas. He had the unique dignity and self-contained assurance of some people who’ve lived through hell and chosen not to let it break them. The little rituals of daily grooming: shaving with a straight razor kept in a gleaming steel box which he carefully stored well out of my reach, donning the freshly laundered white shirt retrieved from the bureau drawer, its fabric crackling with starch, the unnecessary buffing of his shining shoes before putting them on. All these mundane tasks were performed with quiet precision.

I didn’t know it then, but now it’s clear that these simple acts were his way of maintaining sanity in an insane world. By stubbornly persisting in his traditions, he was declaring that he was not defeated and never would be. And all that, his meticulous care of his appearance, his insistence on keeping his personal standards high, made an indelible imprint on me.

One of many wealthy Greeks who lived in Russia, Achilleas lost everything during the Bolshevik revolution. Everything. And he had to begin again. I try to imagine that: having all you’ve worked so hard to build being taken from you by a violent rabble.

“We had each other,” he often said, meaning my grandmother and my infant aunt. “Your Yiayia was not so lucky.”

My Yiayia, my grandmother, lost more than house and home. Five of her seven brothers were murdered in their beds by the “heroes” of the “glorious revolution.” Another was sent to his death in Siberia. I’d learned contempt for those “heroic” murderers at an early age. What courage it must have taken to kill unarmed civilians in their beds! Glorious revolution indeed!

But Achilleas never uttered a word about that time. It was my grandmother, who never stopped grieving for the ones she lost, who told the stories repeatedly. So remarkable was she as a story teller that each time she told the tale we would be mesmerized.

And Achilleas would sit stoically, his dark piercing eyes fixed on my grandmother’s face as she recounted, yet again, the tragic, violent end of her brothers’ lives.

Once, he spoke up, voice deep and rumbling, “These stores are not for the child!”

My grandmother replied, “I must plant them in her mind now, so she’ll never forget.”

Although I didn’t comprehend the meaning of my grandfather’s response then, I never forgot it. “I’d give the world to forget.”

None of them forgot, not my grandparents nor my father, whose families were literally torn apart by the violent morons who inflict their “righteousness” on others—who would never admit to the real motives behind their actions, fear, greed, and a far from righteous pleasure in torture and killing. But while they carried the painful burden of their memories for all of their lives, each of them, like Achilleas, obstinately persisted in maintaining the small rituals of daily life which defined their culture and their personal dignity. Above all, it was imperative for them to maintain their religious traditions. These were tied to their identity as Greeks, as Christians, as members of a larger family.

As a child, I measured the rhythm of the year by the scope of preparations for and celebrations of each of our holy days. The month leading up to Christmas and the one before Easter were major, marked by fasting, and my grandmother’s baking and cooking of delicacies to be shared at lavish meals with family and friends.

My father and grandfather would carry in and set up the Christmas tree, which the women of the family would decorate. At Easter, my grandfather and father would carry the spitted lamb to the charcoal fire they’d set up in the garden, and would sit for hours turning it as it roasted. Eggs were dyed on Holy Thursday before we went to church to hear the Evangelio. We broke our fast at midnight on Easter Sunday, when I was awakened to find a red egg tucked under my pillow. My grandmother assured me it was put there by the Madonna Herself.

The Vassilopitta, with a good luck coin hidden in its depths, would be baked on December 31^st but cut and evenly distributed among the family on January 1.  The first slice was for the family icon, the second for the house, then the elders of the family, followed by my parents. My piece would be the last. And whether by design or improbable luck, I’d gleefully find a coin more often than not. The coin guaranteed good fortune for the year. It was, unfortunately, often mistaken.

Those rituals live in my memory, vivid and bright. And although I don’t do as much as my grandmother, I maintain some of the traditions in her memory and in the memory of all my family who clung to a way of life that some tried to rip from them.

I put up my little tree at Christmas, remembering the glow of lights on my family’s upturned faces as they stood around the tall pine. Achilleas and my father maneuvered it into our living room all those decades ago, but the scent of pine still evokes the sounds, the sights, the scents of that time, even the little shiver in response to the cold the tree brought with it when it first arrived. I light candles in front of the icons I’ve inherited to mark our Holy Days, and to commemorate the dates of deaths. It’s an act of homage, of remembrance, and my small defiance of all those who seek to destroy what others hold sacred.

It is with this feeling that I witness my Jewish friends light their Menorahs, my Pagan friends celebrate the Solstice. I stand silent and reverent before the worship of others whose religious beliefs I do not share, but whose faith I respect because to them it is sacrosanct.

Each of us with our own traditions brings light into the world. I urge you all to keep your lights alive in memory of those who fought so hard to preserve your heritage and as a way of adding richness to your lives.

May the New Year bring wisdom, clarity, compassion, and peace to us all.