May 2022

I hope it is safe to say that spring has sprung at last. It has taken a long time this year, and winter seemed to go on forever. But now the wild flowers are taking their well-regulated turns, and the wisteria, draped over various walls and hanging from numerous pergolas, is forming purple curtains. A glorious show, as my grandmothers would have said. And all the loquat trees are in full fruit, reminding me of my childhood, when everybody’s Granny had a loquat tree in the garden. These are the things to concentrate on when the world continues to be in an ever-worsening mess.

Good things happen, and so do coincidences. (Our mathematician friends tell us that coincidences are very common.) Orthodox Easter Day fell on April the 24^th this year, and the baptism of my youngest grandchild was scheduled for the day after: Anzac Day! I was intrigued by this coincidence and so wrote about it: see A Peloponnesian Anzac at www.eurekastreet.com.au Of course I was the only one who really appreciated this conjunction, although I made sure my three sons knew about it.

First came Easter Day, with the celebrations being ably managed by my youngest son and his very capable wife. Sixteen people included eight children, who ranged in age from 9 to 5 months. The traditional roast lamb was the main offering, but it was cooked, of necessity, in the oven at home and not on a spit. Nina’s Cretan family was in attendance: her father and I are much of an age, and he might have agreed with my thoughts that there are advantages to being old. I had made a couple of Oz-inspired cakes as well as the mandatory lettuce and spring onion salad, so felt honour had been upheld. Thereafter I sat and observed the scene and allowed myself to be waited on now and then, while wondering what the next day would bring.

As I’ve not grown up in or with Orthodoxy, I still find the baptismal procedure an ordeal to witness, and the child certainly finds it an ordeal to endure. The little person is coated with oil beforehand and that includes hair: the danger is that a few drops get into the sufferer’s eyes, causing quite a lot of pain. A side benefit of the crying that inevitably ensues is that the tears tend to wash the oil away. Then the child is supposed to be totally immersed three times, but the local priest, who is related to the family, has his own view of this part of the ritual, and merely sits the child in the font, and makes sure he or she is splashed all over. My granddaughter screamed her head off, as expected, but recovered quite quickly, and soon looked as pretty as a picture in her new pink dress.

Then ensued the mandatory party on a perfect spring day. All five of my grandchildren were present. I hadn’t expected the two eldest to be there, so that was a bonus: they are now six-footers who naturally tower over me. The age range is from 16 years to 15 months, a fact of interest to me, even if not to anybody else. And they all seem to get on well, with the big boys being quite interested in the goings-on of the younger contingent.

I have recently been asked about my rights to vote. It is a major irony, I think, that I am able to vote in Greece, but not in Australia, the government of which has always disenfranchised expatriates very quickly: governments always find it hard, I consider, to cope with people who do not fit into prescribed little boxes. But I try to follow Australian politics, and flatter myself that I manage pretty well, on the whole. But I also like to think that this is a family column, so will not express my views of the current Federal Government. But it saddens me, the whole situation, because I can remember the way Australia was. I wonder how it will be after May the 21^st.

Countries, history, politicians: patterns seem to recur. Last year Greeks remembered with pride the War of Independence, which they always call The Revolution. This began in 1821, and was a long struggle against Ottoman tyranny, but by 1833 the Greek state was established, albeit very tentatively. But this year, Greeks are forced to remember 1922, which has been described as the most calamitous year in modern Greek history. It was then that an ill-conceived plan to recreate the Byzantine Empire and to reunite the Greeks still under Ottoman rule, failed. And completely. The city of Smyrna (now Izmir) was almost destroyed by fire, and the Greek community there was driven out amid scenes of unimaginable horror. An exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey soon followed. There were many anomalies, such as Greeks who spoke only Turkish becoming settlers in an unknown land, and Turks who knew only Greece and Greek having similar experiences on being forced to settle in Turkey.

But people, or those who crave power and control, never seem to change. We only have to think about Putin’s Russia and events in Ukraine to realise that.