Heritage

There was no shortage of flat stones on the pebble-strewn beach at Corfu, so I skipped several across the placid surface of the Ionian Sea.  My grandfather, whom I called Pap, taught me how to skip stones.  The most important part of the process, he told me, is finding the right rock.  One side has to be relatively flat and smooth. Then you grasp the stone between your thumb and forefinger.  Position your arm perpendicular to your hips and make a side-armed toss.  Be sure to flick the wrist and bounce the stone off the water.

When I was a child, the majority of my first attempts splashed into the creek near my grandparent’s camper, where they stayed in the summer before wintering in sunny Florida.  Although Pap didn’t like to swim, he enjoyed sitting out by the water under the sun.  Tanning was embedded in his genetic history, which traced back to Greece.  During beach vacations in New Jersey, Pap would get so dark that he could pass as a black man. 

After retiring in his late sixties, his skin had faded into a light tan, but he was still the darkest white man I knew.  When my twin brother was about six years old, he drew a picture of my grandfather riding his bike, and he colored him in with a brown crayon. 

During the summers of my youth, my brothers and I would visit our grandparents in rural Pennsylvania.  Pap would often take my brother and me on bike rides down a winding gravel road to a shallow creek that gurgled under a wooden bridge that connected the campsite to a trail in the wilderness. 

Pap confidently tossed stone after stone that lightly kissed the creekwater and hopped several times before sinking to the bottom.  My brother and I would scour the creek bank for flat rocks, and we’d collect the best ones for Pap.  They would be wasted on us and swallowed by the creek without a single bounce. 

Although I wanted to practice so I could become as skilled as Pap, I preferred to watch his seamless movements.  Skipping stones at that tiny, muddy creek became a favorite activity, and I would always look forward to another visit to the boonies of Pennsylvania.  Year after year, I visited my grandparents in their summer home until eventually I could bounce the rock a few times before it disappeared into the murkiness. 

As autumn approached one year, my grandparents announced to the family that they might not come back to Pennsylvania anymore.  The chilly air was too harsh on my grandma’s lungs, which had been impaired by years of smoking.  My grandparents wanted to prepare the family for their inevitable ends.  They weren’t young anymore, and death was becoming more and more of a possibility. 

Contrary to their warnings, they did come back to Pennsylvania for a few more years.  They celebrated their 50^th anniversary together and danced to their wedding song.  As they embraced on the dance floor, I witnessed one of the most beautiful moments in my young life, one that strengthened my faith in the concept of marriage.  When I visited their rural Pennsylvania home the next year, only my grandma came back.  The family gathered at my grandpa’s memorial service, and I haven’t been to the creek since. 

On the beach at Corfu, I could skip stones as confidently as my grandpa once could.  The sport is so simple, yet so fulfilling because each stone is heavy with memories.  As I got older, the stones could travel farther and stay above the water longer, but eventually they all sink.  As I stared out at the ocean, my thoughts wandered into the impenetrable space beyond the horizon.  I bounced one last rock across the water and headed toward the restaurant at the Karda Campsite. 

I ordered a gyro at the bar from the Greek woman who ran the place.  Everyone called her Nana.  She is a beautiful and gracious woman with long dark hair and a radiant smile.  A natural caretaker, she is attuned to subtle nuances that most of us can’t perceive.  I have rarely encountered such a welcoming presence.

“Where are you from?” Nana asked. 

“The United States,” I said.

“Which part?” she asked.  Her speech had a lilt that suggested her words were chosen carefully as her second language was not automatic. 

“Pennsylvania.”

“Oh, I don’t know that one.”

“Do you know Florida? My family lives there.”

She shook her head.  Many outside the U.S. know New York and California, but the states in between are a blur unless you mention Disney World.  I told Nana about the Greek community in Tarpon Springs, Florida, about an hour north of Tampa on the Gulf Coast. 

In the early 1900s, the Greeks started a sponge-diving enterprise off the peninsula’s western shores.  When my grandparents retired and settled down in St. Petersburg, we’d often drive to the sponge docks and eat gyros and baklava at the same Greek restaurant year after year.  We even requested the same waitress who always greeted my grandparents with a hug and a kiss.

“My mother’s maiden name is Dristas,” I told Nana at her restaurant in Corfu.  “My great-grandfather is from Greece.”

Nana’s eyes lit up.  She tapped her forearm and said, “You have Greek blood?”

“Some.  I am German, Irish, about one-thirty-second Greek, but I always emphasize the Greek parts because they’re my favorite.”

I wrote down my mother’s maiden name on a piece of paper that Nana offered.  I spelled the original surname before it was anglicized:  Dritsis. 

“Ah, that is a very Greek name,” Nana said.

“When my great-grandfather came to America, he changed his name to Dristas.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “Many immigrants anglicized their names to sound more American, I suppose.”

After I finished my gyro, I ordered hot green tea and handed her the exact change, but she wouldn’t accept my money. 

“It is my gift to you,” Nana said.

I thanked her in English and then asked how to say thank you in Greek.  She grabbed a pen and a slip of paper and taught me basic expressions.  She finished the last line and said, “When you see your mother, you can tell her:  S’agapo, Mama:  I love you, Mama.”

I thanked her in Greek for the lessons and the tea.  I messaged my mother on Facebook and asked where her grandfather lived in Greece.  Due to the major time difference, I had to wait to hear from her the next day.  After receiving my mother’s message, I went straight to Nana to talk more about our shared Greek heritage. 

“I asked my mother where Nikolas, my great-grandfather lived,” I said to Nana the next day.  She smiled and waited for me to proceed.  “He lived in Smyrna, but now it’s not part of Greece.”

“It is Turkey,” she said.

“Do you know what happened?” I asked her.

Between 1919 and 1922, there was a war between Greece and Turkey. The Ottoman Empire had been dissolved as a result of the First World War, and the Allies took land from Asia Minor and granted that territory to Greece.  Smyrna, once part of the Ottoman Empire, became occupied by the Greeks.  Turkey won the war for its independence and reclaimed their land, including Smyrna.  Many Greeks fled to the mainland or immigrated to other countries due to the conflict.

“Maybe my relatives are in Turkey,” I said.

“No.  All the Greek people moved back into Greece, or they moved away.  They did not stay in Turkey.” 

There was a population exchange between Turkey and Greece engineered by a Norwegian diplomat who aimed to reduce tension between the ethnically diverse nations.  Orthodox Greeks from Turkey and Muslim Turks from Greece were essentially swapped to create homogenous populations devoid of minority conflicts.  Nana explained that many of the Greeks in the new Turkish lands were educated, and they were ridiculed and treated with hostility because of their relative wealth.  Most of them relocated to avoid civil unrest.

“Maybe that’s why my great-grandfather fled to the US,” I said, although I later learned he moved to escape his abusive, alcoholic father.  If it weren’t for this pugnacious, drunken behavior, I probably would never have been born.     

“My grandfather, too lived, not in Smyrna, but another part of Greece that became Turkey,” Nana said.  “He moved to the mainland because of the...”

She flicked her fingers and gestured with her hands as though she could grab the elusive word from the air.

“The war,” I offered.

“Yes.  That is the word.”

“It is interesting to think our families, our ancestors, are the same,” I began.  “We have the same history, but the war caused your grandfather to flee to Greece and my great-grandfather went to America.  Yet here we are in Greece again.”

She tapped her forearm again——the same blood runs through our veins.

Most Americans are mutts of various nationalities.  Since I am a few generations removed from my relatives who first stepped upon American soil, many of my European characteristics have faded.  I don’t tan as well as my grandfather, who was half Greek.  Perhaps my Irish genes have tampered with this ability.  Despite the near century that has passed since my great-grandfather crossed the Atlantic, seeing Greece and connecting with the people made me realize the importance of one’s heritage. 

I used to mock my schoolfellows who would tattoo their bodies with Italian flags or Native American insignias.  You’re not Italian.  You’re not Cherokee, I would think.  You’re American.  But I was wrong.  We are all from somewhere else.

Somehow, I managed to be born in a small town in central Pennsylvania in the United States of America.  There are worse places to be born, but I always contemplated my plain surroundings and thought, “Why here?” Luck had a lot to do with it, and so did the war between the Greeks and the Turks. 

Nana’s existence owed to this conflict as well.  Although I just met her, I felt strongly connected to this woman because we share the same roots.  Our hair is both thick and dark.  Our noses protrude at similar angles.  Our meeting——like our existence in the first place——was highly unlikely until I traversed the Atlantic and retraced the route from which I came. 

When I sailed to the Greek islands, I only needed to heed my grandfather’s advice in order to reconnect with my ancestral past.  To skip across the water, you need to find the right rock.