Day 22 -- My Son is an Angel

View of Kalymnos from the Monastary

This morning after breakfast, Eleni, Elina, all four kids, and I piled into the car and Eleni drove the seven of us to a monastary high on a hill. I got what looks like a great photo of the bay below. I'll post it when I get home.

We went into the monastary's church, built into a cave on the side of the mountain and Elina lit a candle for her mother's quick recovery. Ari was fascinated by the metal plates (each about two by four inches) with various body parts stamped on them that you could place on a peg to pledge a certain amount to the church conditionally, if the saint cured your (or your loved one's) ailment. Later, when I Skyped with Andrea she laughed because they were so like the small ceramic statues of body parts used to beseech the healing gods at Epidaurus. "3,000 years and it is still the same," she laughed.

Children swimming in the Mediteranean

Eleni had a long exchange in Greek with a woman working there who proceeded to dab holy water on the of foreheads of each child. Eleni explained to me that she told the woman that we did not believe in holy water but the woman insisted that the miracles that followed it's application would make is believe. She then explained to Ari that he must now behave like an angel.

We came home and I took Sasha and Ari to Kantouni beach, which is the kids favorite beach because it has the biggest waves. Ari has become quite the lover of frolicking in the waves. I usually stand on the beach and watch the kids like an eagle because I read an article about the increase in mortality rates from relatively tiny delays in responses by distracted lifeguards. If they go too far out I wade in and if the waves are high enough I go all the way out to where the kids are.

As soon as we got to the beach, as part of my continuing effort to have my father of the year award rebooked before my other children find out that Ari awarded it to me and roast him on a spit over a raging fire, I realized that while I sun-screened Ari in the morning, I didn't bother with the area under his t-shirt. I offered a choice of a short swim or wearing his t-shirt in the water. He chose a short swim and I promised we'd come back after lunch.

Kalymnos Monastary

For lunch we had a vegetable stew with eggplant, zucchini, potato, tomato, and herbs (most of which was grown here), shrimp, goat (also raised here), salad, bread, and watermelon. Sasha doesn't eat goat or shrimp so he got chicken nuggets. Ari ate potato, shrimp, potato, and bread, making his meal consist of perhaps four of the five things not grown by our hosts.

After lunch I talked to Andrea on Skype and Ari had some screentime with Sasha. I took a twenty minute nap and woke up to go listen to Ari's Greek lesson. I'm very proud of both how attentive he is and the amazing progress he's making as a result. In the last few days he's covered past and present tense conjugation and a ton of vocabulary. Eleni is very impressed with his ability to read Greek, which I have learned is far more difficult than it appears. For example, there are for letters and three letter combinations that make the sound "ee."

When the Greek lesson was over it was almost eight o'clock. The family wanted us to come with them to a concert followed by a movie in an open air theater but Ari and Sasha wanted to go back to the beach so, honoring my promise, I took them for a swim.

Shortly after we returned the family did too; they skipped the movie because Vasilis was feeling sick.  Vasilis went to bed while the rest of us sat in the yard and talked. Ari announced that he was hungry. I made peanut butter and jam for myself, Ari, and Sasha.

Aside from Ari and myself nobody had tried peanut butter, so the jar was passed around and declared delicious by everyone. I have promised Eleni a recipe for peanut butter cookies. Eleni served some sort of dessert with three layers that seemed to me similar to a Graham cracker/cream cheese crust, flan, and a very cherry jello.

We sat talking while the kids played chess. once Sasha's mom called him to bed Ari got bored enough to ask me to play. We started playing, but to make it fair, he was not allowed to look at the board; he had to remember the positions and call out his moves. Our hostest was so amazed at this that she began testing Ari's memory, hiding objects and asking him to remember which objects she hid where. This morphed into games of memory (remembering progressively longer lists of animals) and attention (find the killer who winks at other players to kill them).

This week, hanging or with Eleni, Gianis and their friends and family, I've had the joy of experiencing a relaxed sense of community that Andrea and I only had in Risley (and to a lesser extent at 36 Plaza). We often fervently wish we could have that again. I wonder how much of this is possible because of how much more free time I have, because of Ari's amazing  social grace which makes everyone pleased to be with him, because of Greece's amazing xenophilia, and  how much is because I was lucky ending up at Gianis and Eleni's home.