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This story isn’t easy to tell, but it’s important for me to tell it.
Last August, I traveled to Greece to visit my family—an experience that can only be called The Great Ancestral Reckoning.
Before I start, it helps to know a few things about me: I’m first-generation Greek American (an eldest daughter no less); I was raised in the fluid spaces between my inherited cultural identity and the one I lived within, causing me to connect deeply to the immigrant experience; and, finally, I’ve spent much of this year knee-deep in healing ancestral trauma.
As you can imagine, it’s been wild + painful + truly beautiful.
Now, I’ve been to Greece many times, and while I didn’t exactly plan to experience what I’m about to tell you, I did know this particular journey would awaken something within me: a cache of dormant, nameless aches.
Greece is comprised of a mainland and innumerable islands, speckles on a map, some bigger than others. I come from island folk, and when we visit, we always spend time on the island of Chalki, a tiny dot off the coast of Rhodes and the seat of my maternal lineage. We normally bop around, island hop, hang out in Athens for a few days, but this time around we would be in Chalki for pretty much the entire duration of the trip.
I felt myself resisting that: we were gonna get bored, I argued. We would miss out on some other cool things we could be doing. Resistance is always telling.
Chalki has an interesting history.
It’s small but strategic located, lying very close to Turkey, making it an ongoing hotbed of military activity (Greece was under Ottoman rule for centuries).
The island was also plagued by incessant pirate raids during the Middle Ages, forcing the inhabitants to abandon their harborside village and resettle at the top of the mountain, where you can still visit the remnants of that settlement today.
As I was reading up on all of this, it struck me just how much of the world doesn’t realize how stark and lonely the landscape of Greece is, how isolated the mountaintop villages and small islands can be. How can they? They see only picture-perfect whitewashed houses crowned by bright blooming azaleas, a sea indescribably clear and blue, and sunshine, glorious sunshine. And Greece is those things.
Yet the houses are made of stone as it’s the most abundant natural resource, and they’re painted white to withstand the punishing midday Sun. The rocky ground won’t support most crops (only some olives, figs, pomegranates), making that crystalline sea the primary food source. And the sea is finicky: it gives, and it also takes. The people I come from lived and died by the water.
On Chalki, for a very, very long time, the people made their living in the sea sponge trade, as did a smattering of other islands in the Dodecanese, most notable Kalymnos.
My research on the topic revealed…horrors. In a nutshell: capitalism spread more quickly than science, a new diving suit was invented enabling divers to stay underwater for unprecedented lengths of time — yet these divers, mostly island youth, were ignorant of the effects of decompression sickness (the bends) until it was too late & entire generations of young men either died painful deaths or were disabled for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, the women of the islands became vessels of strength & grief; it was a very hard life.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot, how generations of my ancestors must have gazed out across the water awaiting the safe return of golden sons and beloved husbands, their keening when the ships rolled back into harbor without even a body to bury, the bottomless hunger of the sea.
The islanders did eventually learn about decompression sickness, but their land was barren, rocky and diving for sea sponges was extremely lucrative — they had no choice. Conditions eventually improved, but by then legions of island folk were emigrating to Australia and the US (mainly to Baltimore & Tarpon Springs, FL — in fact, the only road in Chalki is named Tarpon Springs Boulevard!).
On a more personal level, my great-grandfather Anargyros drowned after smashing his head on a rock while diving for sponges, leaving my pregnant great-grandmother to care for their five children, all of whom eventually also left the island for greener American pastures.
That’s quite an ancestral inheritance.
A few days into our trip, we walked to the small island cemetery to visit and honor the gravesite of my great-grandparents. It is an unspeakably beautiful, peaceful, mournful place. The kind of place you can’t even believe the locals don’t stop to marvel at it every single day; to them, it’s normal. It’s just their village cemetery.
I was with my mother, daughter, sister, and sister-in-law. My mother had never visited her grandparent’s grave before, so it took a little while to find, but find it we did it. The names on the gravestones were all familiar ones, names still prominent on the island today. Since there is no earth to speak of — only rock — the tombs were all above ground, fashioned of heavy stone with little glassed-in cabinets housing those supplies necessary for ancestor veneration: an incense burner, jars of Greek Orthodox incense, several spiders, and the very first image of my great-grandparents I have ever laid eyes on. They were beautiful.
In Greece, family names are traditionally passed on. My great-grandfather’s name was Anargyros, and I have countless uncles and cousins bearing his name.
My great-grandmother’s name was Maria and, even though I also have many, many relatives named Mary or Maria — including my own mother — for some reason I never truly knew her name until this moment. Her name was Maria, but she but she was actually called Maritsa. That was the name on the gravestone.
The fact that I didn’t know her name, didn’t know her, made me unspeakably sad, and angry. It was a heavy sadness, a resigned anger. I did know the reason why I never knew her name: she was a woman and her story didn’t matter as much.
I lit some incense as the twilight deepened into a dusky lavender-blue, fumigating the gravesite as best I could as a salty wind whipped smoke in every direction. I don’t even know how to describe how I felt at that moment — the weight of the ocean, mountains of rocky grief, the fiery anger of a Sun so strong it can only be worshipped. Ships, births, deaths, weddings, sweat and toil and love and laughter and also celebration. The passing of eons. I stood on the shoulders of generations of women that led stark lives, hard lives. They were me, I was them, I wept for them all.
But I also felt resolution, and peace. I felt the weight of it lifting, replaced by a whispery voice that said yeah, it was like that for sure, but — please don’t pity me. Don’t pity us. We didn’t view our lives in such a way. Yes, it was hard but it was a different time. And we are with you now, you silly dramatic girl, toughen up, life’s hard, we lost husbands, children, mothersistersfriends, but we danced all night, cooked huge feasts for every celebration, and found joy in the work.
The only thing we ask is that you remember, and help the rest of them remember. Especially your daughter, the little one, because she is us too…she is you.
It must have been the wind. And then I had to keep walking.
In Greece, I realized you can break these hereditary cycles. All you have to do is look them in the eye.
In Greece I witnessed a lightning storm, the night sky brilliantly white over the mountain’s silhouette. I thought of Zeus, lightning rod in hand.
I thought of Helios, the Sun, and how a place like this must have originally worshiped him — to garner favor and protection against the object of their worship.
I thought of Anargyros and Maritsa, and how, according to family legend, he saw her on the beach one day, playing with a doll, and declared she would be his wife.
During the following days, I felt like I was bleeding out trauma. Every pore felt like a pinprick of acid. But it eventually lifted; basking in paradise has a way of softening such things.
I’m still processing, but one more thing occurred on the last plane ride during the arduous journey home: I had finished reading Bitter Sea: The True Story of Greek Sponge Diving and actually forgot it on the plane! And without even thinking, my psyche went: “Well, that’s over. Good work….now we gotta work on your father’s side…”
Bury me here.
