March 20, 2007

The Greek and I, Part 2

He had a name, one I didn’t mention in the last part. Loukas. He came from the island of Chios, off the Turkish coast, and had come to Canada as part of a crew on a Greek freighter. He was one of probably many thousands who’d decided to … well, stay, rather than sail off. I learned this much later, but it wouldn’t have made any difference.

When I met him, in 1960, during my first year at McGill University in Montreal, I was barely 20 years old, a language major at the time, with aspirations to join the United Nations as an interpreter: French and Italian. A few months later I decided this wasn’t for me, but luckily I was also taking geography classes that interested me a lot more. Greece was one of the countries that had fascinated me since a stay in Italy and a visit to a Greek temple in Southern Italy.

Loukas and I met at a small restaurant that he’d worked in for a couple of years and become part owner of. A lot of his and George’s (co-owner) friends came there, as well as many students from McGill. I was one of those, and my first visit was during a mock United Nations weekend. I told you about that last time.

We first became good friends, and I made some extra money typing out weekly menus and specials on my old Smith Corona manual typewriter. Free lunches helped too.

I have a lot of memories of our times together, memories that I kept close even long after we parted. His parents were not happy that he wanted to marry a Scandinavian and ordered him to come back to Greece. My parents went ballistic about me "carrying on with" a Greek! I was sent to California to think things over. He eventually married a Greek girl from his island. I married a Swede that I had met in California. Both on the rebound.

Years later, in 1977 we ran into each other again, when I’d literally escaped to Montreal to stay with my cousin and her husband (also a Greek, by the way, but that’s another story). I’d hoped we would meet again, and we did with the help of a mutual friend. We reminisced about the times we’d spent together that year and a half in the very early sixties, and were somewhat surprised how deeply we still felt. I couldn’t stay much longer, I was there on a limited time, not working quite legally for my cousin’s husband. I had to return, but with a heavy heart. My kids were pulling me back, and their father made promises that things would be better. They weren’t. If anything, they got worse. But, what kept me going were the memories I had kept, and still carry with me.

Memories of learning Greek dancing the first time at a Mardi Gras dance at his church; of my first innocent encounter with a pepperoncini (jalapeño pepper), not knowing that it wasn’t a baby cucumber, followed by my first sip of ouzo, an equally fiery licorice-tasting Greek type of vodka; of listening to Greek music as we lay on the grass at a nearby park with some friends; of learning to speak some Greek and finding it surprisingly easy; of sharing Greek foods that I really enjoyed; of planning a future.

(To be continued)