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Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Rainy-day Parga and Memories


Once in a while it rains in the summer and when it does, it's absolutely glorious! 

    With great drama it rolls in from the sea, never lasting very long, but it cools the heat and it makes a perfect Parga-Sightseeing Day!

    Recently, just after a quick rain, Whitney Houston was singing in Kanaris Square as my husband and I took a seat under an oversized umbrella to escape the last stray drops. The lyrics from hidden speakers evoked a somewhat distorted memory from the Parga-past.

    The small Parga island with its little church stands just meters from the beach and yet as I recall those days past, I see it in my mind's eye as a daunting distance from the mainland.

    Suddenly the sky darkens to a threatening magenta. The umbrellas on the beach are blown from the sand with one giant gust and the beach plastic disappears into an aperture, as signs of the commercial world are erased with the wild spin of backward time. The tiled walkway crumbles into worn cement, the multitudes of people shrink to a few and I walk on the hot sand with my two little children in tow. It’s 1992.

    We’ve just gotten off the bus from Margariti. It dropped us in the heart of Parga near OTE, the telephone company, then backed its tail toward the post office to navigate the tight turn allowing it to exit the square and make its way back to the main road. We’ve had our visit to the bakery, the pastries but a joyous memory of crust flakes on our lips. Our towels are laid out and our big black beach bag is thrown aside as we head for the water. The island is the destination. We’ll walk a bit at the shallow isthmus jutting off the corner of the beach and then swim the rest. It’s an adventure that has been repeated several times.

    But this time is different.



Having made our way to the island and having walked around it a bit, we prepare to return to the mainland. We wade into the water and my daughter, Nikki, steps on something. She writhes with a pain I cannot stop. A poisonous black needle is lodged in her foot. She cannot walk. She cannot swim. I have to leave her there, in pain, and swim with Thomas for help. But from whom? I’m not sure. And the distance from my child seems enormous as I leave her on the island and begin the swim.

She sits on shore watching us. A brave young girl. I swim the backstroke so I can watch her. Thomas follows me. The island gets smaller and the mainland is an eternity away, or so it seemed to me on that day when the sea separated us, a sea teeming with life, its mere existence there to strengthen and sustain. But for the unlucky, to attack and destroy, as that sea urchin had tried.

A bit dramatic? Yes, but the memory evokes a litany of past parenting endeavors and life's hardships. I wanted to find that devil and crush it between the stones. I continued to swim, hours, days, months. Swim, stroke, breathe.Watching my little girl grow further as the water separated us. And yet, as I sat on the shore sipping my cappuccino almost thirty years later, the island seemed to be very close as though one only needed to take a few large strides to arrive there.

Memories. They are sometimes altered with age and colored by time. The "good ol' days" are not always as good as we remember -- though we cannot help but long for them. What we have for sure, though, is here and now--wherever you may be.

Now, Parga's manicured walkways are aligned with a multitude of cafes, their colorful facades like ready family members, awaiting our arrival. A trolley bell rings and along the road a snaking red train filled with passengers pulls close to our table. Part of the newer charm. Much has added to Parga's character over the years, and after a rain, or on a rare cloudy day, Parga is a perfect place for sight seeing. It's a virtual art gallery with treats beyond one's imagination. An opportunity to forge new memories.







Back in 1983, Parga saved my marriage, kind of. It was only a one-year-old marriage. But Parga made my Magariti village life, bearable to a degree that I was able to open up and better understand the stranger I had married. Here is an excerpt from the book, The Nifi, that shows my first glimpse of Parga. 


As time crept forward and the Margariti villagers came to get a look at the American, I did my best to sit, smile, nod and listen to the buzz of incomprehensible conversation. When I would say anything to Nick, all movement would stop as the ever-captive audience would become entranced in the gibberish between us. So—naturally, when a bug was trapped within one of my muffled yawns and I felt it flit about my palate, given the choice of a hacking spit with no hope of explaining my behavior or an unnoticed swallow, I chose the latter. It just seemed more tolerable to me.
“I want to go home!” Tears streamed down my face. I tried to sob as quietly as possible, enclosed in the small room, the sisters-in-law on the other side of the door. We’d been there less than a week. 
“Okay, We’ll go home.”
Nick was being pulled between the two worlds, wanting to live them both.  But it was the sea that had the final say.
We rode the bus to the seaside village of Parga. From the bus window, as we teetered on the mountain edge with each hairpin turn, I saw the hypnotic blueness of the Ionian Sea for the first time. The mountainside continued down into the shimmering turquoise, revealing rocky edges of underwater cliffs as if they were only inches from the surface. And patches of changing shades of blue slowly became black as they descended into the depths.
It was love at first sight. If all else had been pushing me to leave, run, get out as fast as I could, this one sight ensnared my heart and I knew I would stay. I had grown up on Long Island and had a variety of seaside fun at my disposal: the wild Atlantic Ocean, the calm salty bays, and the east end with the lush Hamptons on the south shore and quaint beaches of the north.
But they were completely ruined for me that day.
The untouched beauty was enough to hold me there that summer, but the warmth of that crystal water as I submerged myself into Parga's welcoming embrace, was the seductive siren that continued to call me back over the years. That coastline, in the northern region of Greece known as Epirus, offered pristine beaches that were often deserted. At that time, and for many years afterwards, that particular area was the poorest and least visited by tourists, which was the reason for my simultaneous misery and joy. That day, I bathed in the warmth of the Ionian and I was renewed.

Here are the links for The Nifi, Your Own Kind, and Among the Zinnias. I hope you'll give one of them a try!





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