The Wildfires. August 29, 2007

In many ways, Greece has always felt more like home than any of the other places I’ve lived: New Jersey, Manhattan, the suburbs of Philadelphia, London. 
 
My family is fortunate to have a house there, on a beautiful island, in a small town where everyone knows your name and then some.
 
I could kick myself for being the bratty teenager that I was, stomping my feet about the fact that we had to go to Greece again, and why didn’t we go to the Caribbean or Hawaii or Florida or the shore like the rest of my friends? Why couldn’t we be like everyone else? I’ve never even been to Disneyworld, Mom and Dad! GOD!
 
My kids will probably give me much of the same, pouting and complaining and wanting to be “normal.” They won’t realize until a little later that most people would kill to be “abnormal,” to go to Greece every summer of their lives to a house just a block from a crystal clear ocean and sand so white and fine it feels like sifted confectioner’s sugar between your toes.
 
Many of you have emailed about the fires, to inquire as to my family. That means a lot to me. The fact that you took time out of your day to shoot me a “hey, is your family okay? What’s going on with your mothership?” email just reinforces the fact that y’all are so awesome.
 
My heart is broken for the lives lost, the towns destroyed. Luckily, my family is fine.
 
Initially, I dismissed the fires as the media playing up something that is so commonplace in Greece. We have had wildfires on our island, Kefalonia, almost every summer that I can remember. And, while it is a terrifying sight to see fires raging up on the mountains, normally it looks more threatening than it really is. In fact, there’s only one summer I can remember that it threatened us directly.
 
I was going into third grade at the time, woken in the middle of the night by my mother urging me to put on my sneakers and grab a few of my belongings – things that would’ve been inconceivable to live without at the time, like Pink Dog and my journal. Also, Gameboy.
 
They rushed us down to the ocean, where many in the town had gathered. It looked like an impromptu beach party, without the laughs. Everyone was drinking wine. I remember being carried by my father down the road that led to the beach and sneaking a look back at the fires that were closer than I had ever seen before. Smoke so thick that everything beyond our orange and lemon groves was not visible, not even in the slightest. Miles and miles of road and homes and hotels leading to the mountain that looked like they had just been erased.
 
We were lucky enough to have a rich and generous uncle who ferried everyone out to his yacht, docked in the Ionian, where his staff served bread and feta and olive oil and ouzo.
 
I remember crying because my grandmother and my great uncle – hearty Greek stock that they were and are – refused to leave. They were going to resist the fire with garden hoses. They had worked hard to build the house that still stands, the place where we go every year, that gorgeous refuge, a maze of white washed bedrooms and marble baths and beautiful verandas and balconies off of each room. My mother and father pleaded and begged, to no avail.
 
To hell if they were going down without a fight.
 
My parents – of less hearty Greek American stock – weren’t taking any chances.
 
We stayed on the yacht until the early morning, until the relentless dumping of water from the planes overhead finally made some headway, until it seemed safe to return home.
 
We went back to the house, to my grandmother who was already cooking the afternoon meal, shaking her head at the “idiot shepherds.” She was cursing in Greek and in English; she rarely ever cursed in either language.
 
Apparently, the fires – on our island, at least - are usually set by shepherds so that the grass will grow fresh for their herds. Idiots, indeed.
 
I don’t know if that’s the case in the fires that are currently raging in Southern Greece. There has been a lot of speculation. I do know, maybe, why some have died: we Greeks are stubborn.
 
I read about a couple who perished because they refused to abandon their only donkey. They rejected a drive to safety in a police car because of a donkey. That’s love, that’s loyalty. That’s also part of the problem.
 
My parents’ (American?) sensibilities told them to get out and fast that summer. My grandmother and great uncle’s Greek sensibilities told them to defend, go down with the ship. Luckily it all worked out for them but that story could have had a very different, very tragic ending, as it has for so many in Greece recently.
 
I read about the graves being dug for a mother who died with her arms around her children, a teacher who died in a futile effort to shield her students, people too sick or disabled to flee in such a short period of time. I cried at work. These are my people and many of them are in peril and the government is playing a blame game. It’s oddly Katrina-esque, on a much, much smaller scale.
 
I’m not a very religious person, but bless everyone over there that has been affected.