Colorful stories were part of my daily life while growing up in New York City. Everyone living there seemed to have at least one juicy domestic yarn to share with a fellow subway rider or a neighbor on a sitting area bench. Through storytelling, bonds were forged and new friendships made. My family had plenty of their own tales to tell. Yet the stories that circulated in our household never felt like they belonged to me—I couldn’t grab them and re-tell them in my own circle of friends. My line of descent was different; my bloodline was unknown. I rejected the sagas of my adopted family and took refuge in those contained in a slim, time-worn volume—the tales of my favorite Olympians.

As a child, I remember crying for poor Demeter whose innocent daughter Persephone was abducted by Hades, the somber ruler of the underworld. I marveled at the lovely Aphrodite, who was born out of the blood and foam of Ouranos’ dismembered body. And, of course, there was Athena, the namesake of that ancient and polluted modern city where I was born, that wise and cunning goddess, who challenged the young and frightened Arachne to a tempestuous weaving contest no mortal could bear. I felt a strange kinship to these mythic deities, but Pandora was my favorite— it is said that curiosity drove her to open wide that coveted box, exposing mere mortals to the dark creatures inside. Like Pandora, my own curiosity and my growing need to find my own family ‘ιστορία’ (history) eventually led me back to Εƛƛάς (Hellas), land of light and immortality.

April 1962

Today was the day—the day she would say goodbye to something that had been sheltered deep inside her swollen body for the past nine months, something that squirmed around constantly looking for a place to be, and then came into the world “μϵ τα πόδια”—feet first.

She was denied the opportunity of seeing or holding her tiny boarder. The doctors took the baby while she was still “asleep”—asleep in that trance state so common to mothers giving birth during that time.