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My Mother, Myself

June 11, 2012April 12, 2013
by irene Archos

As Greek women, we have grown up intimately attached to our mothers. Our mother is our greatest role model. They feed us both body and soul, and we become Hellenes through the transmission of such time-honored traditions such as baking koulourakia, cooking pastitsgio, and doing our cross, the Orthodox way, before we have dinner. Let’s face it—we owe them our life and our way of living. But, when you grow up in another culture, and you are given a different cultural perspective from which to view the world, you become more critical of the roles handed down to you. With some of us in the second, third, or even fourth generation of living in an adopted culture, a generational gap exists between daughters and their mothers. Some mores and ways of thinking we have borrowed from the dominant culture and some we have retained from the old. For this month’s issue, we take a good look in the cultural mirror and analyze, how similar are we to our mothers and how different. How much should we emulate our mothers and how much should we reject?

Think about it. In the course of one minute, list the ways you resemble your mother and ways you do not. Once you are done, review your list. Is the list of the ways you are different longer? What five things in the list of ways you are like her are the most important for you? On a scale of 1 to 10, how similar are you to your mom? In what ways would you prefer NOT to resemble her? What ways would you not like to change?

Personality differences aside, I believe most Greek-American, Greek-Australian, Greek-slash-anything women would have a list similar to mine:

Of course, there are ways I adore my mother and want to be just like her. Yes, I want to have such a big heart that it burns with love not only for the members of my family but for those outside it. Yes, I would love to be able to cook a killer pastitgio and make koulourakia that makes your mouth water. I would love to be an excellent homemaker that keeps things clean, beautiful and hand-made in the house. I would love to be an active member of my church and take part in all sorts of philanthropic causes. I admire the drive, the charisma, the dynamism of my mother—who takes care of everyone, is so wise that she can avert a fight between two members of the house by knowing exactly what to say so diplomatically. I love my mom, the hearth of the home, who keeps the kandilaki, the vigil lamp, always lit with her prayers. She is the force of goodness and affection. I could not have grown up sane without her everyday sacrifices—her packing our lunches at 6 am every day, her waiting for us in the rain with a baby in the belly and another in the carriage for early dismissal, her saving every penny of her part-time job to stash away in our college fund. God knows—if there is anything close to a heaven on earth it has to be the warmth in the arms and the heart of a Greek mother.

HOWEVER, in many ways I would NOT ever want to be like my mother. I would not like to see myself as a passive victim of circumstance defined by fate. “Och, Christe kai Panagia mou,” I can see her now doing her cross whenever something beyond what she was able to handle came around (and there were many things she could not handle, like paying the electric bill or writing out a check). I do not want to be limited in my career aspirations. I do not want my natural curiosity and lust for adventure to be curbed by old-fashioned “what would the neighbor’s say” or “what might happen to a defenseless girl like you” arguments. I do not want to be defined through my relationships with men or the family, even if they can be wonderful things in themselves. I do want to have to be the one everyone turns to when giagia or pappou gets sick and needs an escort to the hospital. I do not want everyone in the extended familieis during birthday parties, tsk-tsk and feel sorry that I have not found a husband yet and am already in my 30s. I do not want to act as if I am inferior in relationship to my husband, the head of the house(no, I do not even want the cute metaphor of being the “neck” that turns the head this way and that.) Most of all, I want to be financially independent, something my mother could not be. In fact, in comparison to my mother, I am much more independent—financially, emotionally, and socially. My mother would cringe at my having coffee with my gay and lesbian friends. I would not like to have her restricted (constricted) view of the world. I definitely do not want to be obsessed with my marital status as with my son. (I think that would be sick! Freud knew enough to name the Oedipal complex from the crazy dynamic that exists between a Greek mother and her son). I definitely would NEVER tolerate the emotional or physical abuse from my husband that she endured.

Now if you try to step back and pick up the general thread responsible for the major differences it would have to do with the fact that because you were raised in a less-patriarchal society, where sex roles are not as rigidly defined, you are more liberal and more independent in your thoughts and actions. Here is where we as women can reap the rewards of being bi-cultural. We have more options and more possibilities of realizing our life’s choices by virtue of living in more progressive, more diverse societies. As Americans, Australians, Brits, Belgians and the like, we are free of the social shackles that women in the home country are still bound by. We are freer to circulate than our Greek cousins; we can carve out our own destinies without having to cave in to family pressure (at least to some extent). Yes, it is good to be a hybrid Greek because you CAN have the best of both worlds.

But there is a slight catch. Because women (and men) are socialized differently in the home, and because mothers are the means of the transmission of culture, it is harder to go against your mother because in a sense, you would be rejecting your culture. And to be left cultureless in a pluralistic society would mean an identity crisis or worse, something along the lines of anomie (a vague sense of not belonging anywhere and not really having an existence; just a free-floating being without ties or roots of any kind, which can give rise to depression and even delinquency according to some social psychologists.)

To finish up, I think it is important to be conscious of the cultural dynamic that goes on between Greek mothers and daughters. And while as daughters we can praise, admire, and cherish our mothers for who they are, we should be free to carve a different cultural destiny for ourselves and not feel guilty for doing so.

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Half-Fish, Half-Woman: The Hybrid Creature of the Greek-American Identity

April 11, 2012April 23, 2013
by irene Archos

Koukla, if you clicked onto this page, you are a Greek-American girl. The one half of you to the left of the hyphen is Greek; the other half is American. This can create polla problemata. That little hyphen can become the twisted rope in a perennial tug-of-war between the two cultures, the two poles that you run to, back and forth, back and forth, the two foundations that you were fashioned out of. Which do you identify with more?

It’s like living in two different worlds. You know how it goes—stuck on the “N” train in rush hour traffic half-way between 49^th and 42^nd Street on a grey, below-zero Monday morning, freezing your bun off, you get visions of the turquoise, crystal-clear beaches outside your giagia’s white-washed stone house in Zakinthos. You look around to the blank, empty faces of the poor miserable souls around you, and you harken back to the Friday night, actually Saturday morning 2:30 am in Disco Dream where you and maria and Stacy met those hot Italians, the ones who bought you the Summer Breezes that sent you gyrating to the top of the bar where Kostaki, the bartender, treated everyone to a string of sfinakia under the ceiling of your thighs. How easy it was to connect there!

Dodging the buffets of briefcases and the blows of doubled-over morning edition New York Times squeezed under stiffened elbows as the massive exodus charges to escape the closing doors, the eternal question creeps into your head again and again—“Ti sto dialo kano edo?”

You remember the apogevmatakia when you’d gather bronzed and brazen at the Kafenio and sip frappe, share a Marlboro, and talk about everything from Papandreou to the new Metro, to whether or not Socrates was a pousti, talk about everyone from Gus the Rat to Bougouklaki, or talk about nothing at all just gia na chalarosete. As you rush off into the bowels of the greasy, water bug infested NYC subway, 20 minutes late to your corporate post, you wish—“Ach! If only I were in Greece right now!”

If only it could be so easy. When you are in America, you think about Ellada, and when you are in Ellada, well, you bitch and complain about it because it isn’t Ameriki. Doesn’t any public restroom have free toilet paper in Athens? Can anything be cashed on time? Is there no one who updates boat schedules in Pireaus for the benefit of the tourists? What’s the use of having traffic signals if no one bothers to follow them? Is there not one honest taxi driver that takes you from point Alpha to point Gamma without going through the remaining 22 letters of the alphabet? These people here don’t work. They just complain about working. So narrow-minded. They don’t think in terms of long-term. Everything is “live for today.”

While you love Ellas, you are proud to be an Ellinida, you couldn’t possibly live there for more than four weeks. There is something foreign about the place. Plus, you aren’t really accepted there, really. To them, you aren’t an Ellinida, you are another Amerikanaki—a turncoat to the cause of Ellinismo. Your parents forsook their country by pimping themselves for the seductive American dream. You have sold your pschi to the American dollar. You are sweet, but stupid. You work too much; you have been sucked into the capitalistic black hole. You waste your life working for someone else, when the purpose of life “den eine i douleia alla i zoe” (is not work but life itself).

Your cousins, although they’ll never admit it, hold a grudge against you; they speak with a latent malicious undercurrent of rivalry under their tongues. You are not “in” and they let you know it without so many words. You speak Ellinika with a funny accent; you confuse your ousiastika—“fanella” for “fallen” and your rimata, ksechase to. You have given up your seat at the Agora; you are no longer a citizen and cannot vote. You do not exist, except for a random summer here or there. You can’t recite the Pater Imon without tripping on the 6^th line. You no longer fit in ekei. So, tin a kaneis?

You cannot live there and you cannot live here without the siren songs of Monastiraki, ochtapodaki, and sfinaki haunting you. Face it, kopella mou, you are neither pure Greek nor pure American. You are this strange hybrid creature—those beasts from your mythology, half-human, half-horse, half-fish, half-woman, half-man, half-goat. You were born out of the blood of the Medusa, from the drops that fell from Chronus’ detached testicle, and frothed out of the sea. You mingle two completely opposed elements—sea and earth. You have more in common with Anjali, the Indian dorm mate, another minority spit onto the great US of A than with Marika your cousin in Thessaloniki.

You belong to this estranged subculture called “Greek American.” It spends 5/8ths of its time struggling to get a share of the enormous portions of the rich American pie while the other 2/8^ths it spends strung out on a psatha on some beach in Mykonos recuperating. You’re forced to marry within your limited gene pool so that your “cultura” and “glossa” don’t disappear. And so, you have become a very selective, unique species native to a certain space, captive of a certain time, isolated on an island or two, surrounded by others who hyphenate their identities too.

Who knows what the future holds for you and your kind? Will it die out and disappear—becoming so isolated and clinging to its own that it implodes? Or will it adapt to the larger environment, mate with the other rare breeds, and become unrecognizable from its original form?

Your identity is an artificial construct in a way. You were created out of circumstances. The product of someone else’s choice, way back when at a time before you even knew that your last name was tampered with. What creates your identity is the combined force of two contrary cultures impinging on a point in time outside your control.

So here you are. On the “N” train going to work on a gloomy Monday with dreams of Myknonos in your head. You can never go back, except in spirit and in memory. This sea-change has made you into the weird creature that you are. Your grandchildren and their children’s children will hear your song in the turquoise-blue, clear fathoms of their sleep and wake up crying.

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Joseph Pilates-The Man with the Plan

April 11, 2012
by irene Archos

SOMA

As Greek girls, we love the generosity in our breasts, but we hate the same in our butts. What can a girl do to keep from looking like Kiria Evangelio—you know, the widow in black with the podgia and knee highs rolled down right under her knees, in a fish hair net. You know, the one who looks like a giadouri when she bends down to pick up the chorta from her front yard? Yes, that middle zoni is considered irresistible in Middle Eastern cultures, a tribute to the Goddess, but in Ameriki, agapoula mou, you can’t get away with wearing your flab like a Firestone radial around your waist.

Luckily, another Greek has come to our rescue. His name is Joseph Pilates. Pilates designed a fundamentally new regimen of fitness, one that focused on one’s “powerhouse”—the stomach and butt, the center point of all the body’s activities. If you are a Greek girl who likes a little more than your usual helping of galaktobouriko and feta cheese in her souvlaki pita, chances are those are the areas you need most help toning. We at greekamericangirl.com can vouch for Pilates. In one month, there was a noticeable difference in our bodies. It is the one sort of exercise that combines yoga with muscle toning so that with a concentrated, efficient use of muscle, you can burn fat and tone at the same time. In contrast to other workout programs that build bulk through repetitive movements or useless sit ups (most sit ups never even touch the lower abdomen, the part that sucks your gutt), Pilates both flexes and elongates muscles in the torso and oxygenates by using controlled breathing. In the end our stomach winds up looking like one of those 6’2” models on the runway of the upcoming Vogue collection.

THE MAN

Joseph Pilates was born in Germany at the end of the 19^th century to a Greek gymnast father and a German naturepath mother. He was a very sickly, fragile child , always getting sick. When he was passed over as a player when he was a teen due to his ill health, he devised a series of exercises that toughened up the gutt, the core of the body.

Years later, he put this exercise routine to work on his patients who were crippled or parapalegic casualties of World War I. He gave these patients a gentle but firm way of using their torso, the only part of their bodies they could use, for some of them. He eventually migrated to the US where he founded a studio on Manhattan’s East Side. His technique which bears his name very soon became popular with the actors and dancers of the NYCity arts and culture scene.

His technique has witnessed a massive wave of popularity in recent years, appealing to many from the likes of Melanie Griffith to Daisy Fuentes. It is especially effective for women’s bodies as it elongates the torso without building excessive muscle.

THE PLAN

Check out these sample Pilates moves, but remember to consult your doctor before starting this or any other exercise regimen. It is recommended that you take a class or two with a certified Pilates instructor to get the gist of the proper form and the most effective breathing technique.

THE ONE HUNDRED: This is a classic Pilates opener. Lie down on your stomach on your mat, feet together stretched straight out, arms at your sides. Slowly lift your head and bring your chin into your chest while at the same time raising your arms off the floor straight out beside you along your body. Then, taking a deep inhale, bring your head towards your neck and stare at your navel, slightly picking yourself off the mat. Then using a count of five, pump your hands up and down, exhaling through your mouth with a short puff for each number. Without lying back, continue with another round of five inhaling through your nose. Exhale out slowly – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5—pumping your hands at your sides, then inhale in—1, 2, 3, 4, 5—pumping your hands all the while. Do this for five series of inhales and exhales for a total of 100 pumps.

THE TIGHT ROW-ROW-ROW YOUR BOAT: Start by lying down relaxed with your hands by your sides, legs, together. Take a deep inhale while lifting your legs together to a 45 degree angle off the floor while at the same time extending each arm straight out next to your ears over your head. Your torso should make a slight “V” shape. Next, with a through-the-mouth exhale, fold your legs towards your crotch while each hand finds and clutches its corresponding ankle. Hold this pose for a second or two. Then with a deep inhale, straighten out your legs and your arms. Your legs should go back to the 45degree angle and your arms should be straight out past your ears. Then exhale again bringing your legs close to your torso while at the same time reaching out your hands to hold onto each ankle. Repeat this inhale, extend, exhale bring back for a total of five times (ten if you can bear it.) Your torso should never lie all the way back to the floor. This is what tightens the lower ab.

ROLLING LIKE A BALL: Sit up straight with your legs folded in front of you for this one. Grab your right ankle with your right hand and your left ankle with your left hand. Lift them slightly off the floor and find your balance on your butt. Then extend your legs out straight in front of you holding onto your ankles with your hands all the while. Your legs should make an open “V”. Then taking a deep inhale, rock yourself back all the way to your shoulders. With the exhale, rock forward and stop just at the starting point of the V leg extension (if you can.) Your hands should be holding onto each corresponding ankle throughout this exercise. The trick is to tighten your abs and torso so that they counteract the force of gravity and momentum bringing your body to a halt. The power it takes to end the forward force is what tones the muscles. This is a hard one. It takes balance and skill, not to mention a lot of guts.

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Greece’s National Sin #2 Madame SouSoudismos

March 21, 2012March 25, 2012
by irene Archos

Athenian writer and satirist, Anthony Psathas, personified another major “hamartia” of the Greek national character in the character of Madame Sousou. Madame SouSou was a lower-class housewife married to an even more humble fisherman. But Madame Sousou lived in a grand delusion of splendor, put on aristocratic airs, and generally tried to live the dream of a well-to-do Parisian lady of fine extraction. She’d speak in nasal overtones, wear outlandish hats, linger gingerly in bed and make dramatic appearances down long staircases. She was “oh so sophisticated” and rich–in her head. Because in reality she lived in a humble flat with a fishmonger as a husband who, lucky for her, is madly in love with her even if she disdains him. Her character is rife for ironic rendering; in fact, she makes the most terrific blunders both in her speech as well as her manner, but with the utmost confidence and high-falluting airs.

So deluded was she that she actually made her delusions come true after all. She wound up inheriting a large sum of money, moving to a flat in an upscale part of town, and hooking up with a supposed “aristocrat” descended from Byzantine nobility, and hiring a real maid. This aristocrat winds up swindling her of her fortune and abandoning her with a small infant. As this rags-to-riches-back-to-rags story has it, Madame Sousou has to give up her baby by abandoning it at the steps of a rich family and moving back to her forgiving and loving husband and what she deems the vulgarity of a low-class life.
So infamous is the character that in a strike of onomatopoeia genius someone coined the phrase “sousoudismos” in Greek to describe the way of trying to emulate something unattainable to ridiculous effect. And it has since stuck.

Greece is Madame Sousou. While industrially and economically eclipsed by the stronger nations of Europe, it still keeps up the delusion that it too can keep up appearances in the “grand club of Europe.” Rather than live within her means, a Greek would feign superiority by buying only name-brand products, boasting of winter vacations in the Swiss Alps, ascribing to French accents and chic fashions. The Greek elite never wanted to admit that the country was never financially prepared to handle the realities of staying a member of this elite club because doing so would mean peeling away the persona of delusion and admitting its own humble capabilities and its own inferiority complex.

Like Madame Sousou, it would rather wear an expensive mink scarf, something that it had to borrow against its entire house for, and starve. Now it is stripped of its scarf and it’s lost the house. Fleeced compeletly, done in by the unscrupulous aristocrats. And by all media and personal accounts, she is starving.

Kaimeni Madame Sousou! You have been done in by your own arrogant, nose-in-the-air delusions of grandeur and the money-hungry creditors out for your gold. You should have kept your eyes down on the ground on your own earth. You should have been humble enough to recognize how happy you could be with your own sweet husband who smells like salt and fresh fish and sunshine in your modest but clean flat by the sea. Because they are genuine and they are your own.

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National Sins of Greece Defined and Decoded: Sin #1…

March 20, 2012March 25, 2012
by irene Archos

I have noticed that there is a long-standing paradox in the Greek character. On the one hand, we say we are very proud to be Greek. Like Toula Portokalos’ father in the infamous movie, we can trace every English word back to a Greek root; we can come up with the notable Greek philosopher/mathematician/artist/scientist/doctor that first came up with the idea for the atom or the rainbow or the bodily humours; we can spontaneously relate a lesson from Greece’s glorious past or illustrate a subtle point using a myth or legend. But when it comes to supporting our people and products in the present, we harbor an inferiority complex.

Greeks by default think foreign products and ideas are better than those produced in-house. For example, while visiting the country last summer (a typical Greek-American thing to do), my Greek cousins invited me out for “kafe”, a typical Greek thing to do. I thought we would meet at one of the outdoor cafes lining the plateia of Kolonaki, or Kifissia, or even Galatsiou Avenue. But that was not the case. They told me to plug in an address in the GPS for the new “mall” as they explained. I did as I was told and faithfully followed the commands of the voice of that very polite Greek woman coming from the gadget, “Se 150 metra giriste aristera stin Leoforon Kifisias.” To my surprise I was led to a ring road on the outskirts of Marousi, itself a suburb on the outskirts of Athens, to a place called “Golden Hall.” It came suddenly from within a very convenient ramp to an indoor parking garage. It reminded me of a mall I had been to outside of Paris. Before I could settle into the newness of the place, I saw my cousins waving me to a table under the escalator to the second floor. Lo and behold, I was in Starbucks. My cousins were sipping iced coffee. “Koritsgia,” I said, “of all the kafenia you could have taken me to, you brought me to Starbucks? I just came from a city with a Starbucks on every corner!” “Kai na me sichorisete for the paratirisi, but you just paid three times the price for a frappe you could have had at a local establishment. And what you are drinking might be called a frappucino, iced mocha, kai alla korofexala, but in the end it’s still a frappe. And the Greeks invented it!”

Throughout the mall (a new luxury mall) I saw all kinds of examples of commercial corporatedom: Imaginarium, Ikea, American Eagle, some other European chains for jewelry, etc. etc., but very few Greek establishments. Even if it is Greek, and I went out of my way to buy Greek designed clothes and products, it masquerades as Italian or French because somehow the European ring to it makes it superior to Papadopoulos or Pappas. I double-checked with the salesclerk at MantouFrance, “Are you sure these are Greek designed clothes made in Greece?” “Yes, I assure you,” the attractive, middle-aged chic salesclerk with bronze highlights and perfect lavender make up replied. I ducked into a quaint boutique of coutre baby clothes to shop for my toddler named Delfino. The styles and designs were so smart and adorable, I could not walk away without purchasing four or five pieces. “These are made in Greece and are Greek designs, right?” I made sure. Of course they were. Why the foreign name? They wouldn’t sell as well if they people didn’t think they were Italian.

Let me translate: “Xenolatreia,” it comes from the Greek words, “xeno” meaning “foreign, different or strange” and “latreia” “excessive worship or blind adoration.” It must be the opposite of “xenophobia.” The same Greeks that criticize the Germans, ridicule the Americans, and pooh-pooh the French, are the ones that dress in their clothes, speed in their cars, and drink their wines OVER their own. They are crazy for anything foreign “xeno” as it means by default “better than domestic.” I cannot understand the Greeks’ economic suicide. Why they go out of their way to support ideas and people outside their borders and not focusing on their own human and material resources.

The only way I can explain it is that on the surface conscience level we are more than proud to be Greek and of all things Greek. But on the inside subconsciously, we harbor feelings of inferiority, that somehow we are not up to par with other European and Western countries. This is why Greek Greeks buy Hollister instead of Hellenic. Why they brag that they are spending the holidays in Paris or London instead of Crete. When it comes to putting pride where it counts, in the economics of buying and selling, they sell themselves cheaply. How can a nation of such great ideas and innovation not look through the shameless co-opting of their heritage by multinationals? (Witness the bastardization of Greek heritage and history by Hollywood, “Alexander” Disney’s “Hercules”, “The 300” and on and on?) And to add insult to injury, how does this nation actually stand to buy these foreign Greek knock offs only to line the pockets of the xeno investors and companies that have tricked it into paying triple for its own products when it could have afforded domestic designs and products of equal or surpassing quality to foreign types and have supported its own industries? It seems rather dysfunctional, like a drug addict who sells his own blood to the blood bank in order to get his next fix. Only a people who have been brainwashed or who seriously lack self-esteem and common sense could do such a thing. And now with the austerity measures, the inferiority complex will escalate so that they really feel inferior.

I believe this silent inferiority is at the root of the country’s economic shambles. If they weren’t so hell-bent on getting entry into the European country club and more interested in their own domestic interests, they might not have been in this mess after all. But as it stands, “xenolatreia” is one of the deepest sins of Greek national character. Lets hope the next time I visit Athens my cousins won’t be gulping down the frappe from McDonalds as this corporate jaggernaut has capitalized on another Greek invention and is now selling it back to the Greeks for a profit.

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Greek Sons Have all the Fun

March 12, 2012
by irene Archos

“Mama,” I’d ask every so often just to catch her off guard, “you prefer Niko to me and Kati, don’t you?”

“Of course not,” she’d respond. “I love you all equally.”

Yes, we all know the politically correct answer to the question. But deep down in the heart of me, I always knew my parents preferred the son, the “gio” over the “kori.” I think to a certain extent all Greek families prefer the boy over the girl. It’s part of the patriarchal bias.

And this is how I know.

Males get to eat first. It is at meal times when each family member’s position of power is revealed. First to be served that deep dish of fasolada is, of course, the patriarch of the family, the father. Next to be served, no matter how young or immature, is the Greek son or sons. After that comes the daughters of the family, in chronological order, and lastly, comes the mother. It differs little from one family to another. Those who eat first are those who are valued first. And the mother is the perpetrator of this hierarchy. Without fail, a Greek mother lavishes her greatest attention and by extension joy, on her son(s) as opposed to her daughter(s). Father and sons would garner the choicest chunks of meat on the center platter, and somehow they were always allowed to without question or objection, while the daughter(s) would get the bonier, more scantly clad bones of meat. The mother would get the scraps of the animal, a gizzard or chicken wing, or perhaps nothing at all if by then the pot had run out of contents.

Males get unlimited “outside” privileges in comparison to their sisters. “How come Nick gets to go outside and play with his friends?” I’d ask my mother, “while I’m older, but I have to stay inside doing the laundry?” My question uncovers the sexual double-standard assumed to be a given in a Greek household.

“Because he is an ‘arseniko’ (a male) while you are ‘thilikya’ (females). There are more dangers in the world for a girl rather than a boy.”

The differences in treatment my mother would always dump on the apparent differences in nature between the male and the female sex.

“We are only trying to protect you, koukla mou” was my mother’s defense. Protect us from what? My brother who was the youngest, most catered to and hence, most irresponsible, had more probability of getting in trouble. My sister and I excelled in school, obeyed the injunctions of our parents, helped with the housework, while my brother ran around with dirty fingernails and smudged t-shirts playing manhunt. Little Niko at thirteen got to stay out late with his friends while we girls at 16,17, even 18 had to defend our right to stay out past ten on a Friday. We had to pass through the seven toll houses of our parents’ investigation—who are you going with, where are you going, who will meet you there, what are you going to do there, how are you going to get there, how are you going to get back, what happens if you have an emergency, etc., etc. Biology determined social destiny. We were so precious princesses, we could not walk out of our golden tower.

Males are given more attention in and outside the home. My mother would spring to her feet when my brother came in, a basketball under his left arm, and demand, “Ti echoume na fame?” She’d scramble to the kitchen to serve his food, place knife and fork within his reach, fill his glass with ice and water. When I’d come in after a long day of work, she’d announce from the living room, “There’s broiled chicken in the grill, broccoli in the pot, and salad in the refrigerator. Help yourself.” This was subtle socialization at work. As a woman, you were supposed to serve, especially the males; you were not supposed to be served.

While making our weekly supermarket treks, as any faithful Greek girl is forced to do, my mother voices the rationale behind the choice of spare ribs over the beef chuck steak or—“O Nikos really likes spare ribs.” When we order Chinese on Fridays, she chirps up from the confines of the kitchen, “Don’t forget to order the beef with broccoli for Nick!” When we are taking walks through the park, “I wonder how your brother is doing?” she ponders anxiously, as if he’s six instead of twenty six. “Ma!” my sister protests, “he’s not a baby! He’s a grown man! He can take care of himself.”

“Kala,” she responds, “that’s what you think now, but wait till you become a mother. Then you will understand. Your paidi is always your paidi.” But we know it’s more than that. There is something supernatural about a son to a Greek mother.

When Greek mothers meet at the butcher’s check out line or at the vegetable stand, they answer each other’s “How are your children?” questions first by mentioning their “Yio.”

“O yios mou spoudazee yiatriki.” “My son is studying medicine.”

“O yios mou vreke kali doulia.” “My son found a good job.”

“O Yios mou areboniastike.” “My son got engaged.”

“O Yios mou” this and “O Yios mou” that. The “Yio” is a mighty figure that looms large in their world;

Males can get away with much more and not get penalized. As much as he’d do wrong, Nick was the golden child. Even after he demolished the car in a night of partying or when he’d run a credit card bill of $10,000, or when he from so pampered an existence did not even deposit his finished plate into the sink along with his soiled fork and knife, “Astone,” my mother would come to his defense, “Paidi eine, eine kourazmeno. Siga, siga tha mathi.” She’d tidy his room, haul his laundry, send his mail without ever asking him to reciprocate in any way. “Your brother has never given me any grief,” she’d remark. “You girls have given me much stenachorgia.”

Is it any wonder, then, that the Oedipal complex did after all originate from the confused mother-child dynamics of some young boy and his mother in ancient Greece? Greeks were the first to found the Oedipal complex and have long since played out the drama of the nursery. The blatant acting out of this complex is apparent not only in my family. I have heard of the shamelessness of mothers who would prepare two glasses of warm milk for their two sons, both in their 30’s and MIT graduates, before they went to sleep. Of mothers who brag about their sons virginity at birthday parties, who have a speed dial function to their son’s cell phone to keep constant tabs on them, “Pou eise paidi mou? Pote tha ertheis spiti?”

Even with all the hidden resentment at the double-standard of Greek sons vs. Greek daughters, in a way, I might be happier for NOT being a Greek son. I’d like to hear what other people think.

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Paradise Lost: Greece Then and Now

March 1, 2012March 5, 2012
by irene Archos

A-homeless-man-begs-for-money — News World news Greece Greek woes drive up suicide rate Experts attribute rise to the country's economic crisis following release of statistics that show a 40% jump since last year Share 1016 reddit this Helena Smith in Athens guardian.co.uk, Sunday 18 December 2011 15.17 EST Article history A homeless man begs for money in Athens A homeless man begs for money in Athens. Photograph: Alkis Konstantinidis/EPA

Anyone who is Greek and has half-an-ear open for the news has to be feeling something for the economic agony that is happening in our old country right now. As a first-generation Greek-American, I feel helpless, distressed, chagrined/ashamed, perplexed, sort of how you feel when you get the news that someone very close to you but who lives very far away gets into a fatal car crash. On the one side of the heart, you feel “Kala na pathoune” they had it coming to them. Those clever, no-work and all-play, take-it-easy grasshopper cousins of ours. They loved to have a good time; with their cushy civil servant jobs so they can stresslessly spend their lives sipping cold frappes for hours in the chic cafes. “Kalo perasaides “ (“have a good timers””) my mother calls them. When we worker ants would visit them in the summer, they’d laugh at us and call us “Amerikanakia” you know, like we were stupid for working so hard and sweating for that American dream.

But on the other side of the heart, it hurts. It hurts when I walked through Syntagma Square last June when several public unions and the universities called for a general strike. The sting of tear-gas still suffocated my throat. Car corpses charred from Molotov rockets, shop windows shattered, the red “A” anarchist graffiti on the National Bank of Greece. It hurts when you hear the land of your ancestors mocked on the international media stage enveloped in charges of corruption, mismanagement, malfeasance, fraud, incompetence, and now financial ruin.

When I had lived in Athens 15 years ago, sure there had always been strikes. A Greek national exercised his or her right to protest and strike as often if not more than his or her right to vote. “Apergia” was the magic word that’d be called to get attention for the slightest injustice, to voice dissatisfaction at the general way things were. Never get between a worker and his or her right not to work. There would be a strike called for anything by anyone at the drop of a drachma. “What happened to the electiko “ the electricity”? (I’d ask my aunt when the light bulbs flickered and went out during the early evening”?) “Tipota, apergia.” (Nothing, strike). If the kids didn’t have enough books to write on, “apergia.” I remember while living there that the entire city of Athens was deadlocked in the grips of a universal transit strike that lasted not one day, not two or three, not one week even, but two TWO entire weeks. When the bus, trolley, train, taxi systems all announced “apergia” the army trucks had to be called out. I still have the memory of that poor “giagia” in her black kerchief and knee-his getting a boost by a young soldier up a twine ladder into the back of a khaki army truck.

But this time it was different. I had never seen demonstrations with such urgency in people’s faces. Before the apergia was called as a relief; now it was called as a state of emergency. Before, protests had a sense of inconvenience about them of a national kvetching natural to a nation that complained even when things were going well. They might even be, well, fun. You never knew if you would wind up to work on any given day. That period of the great transport strike, it was so difficult to commute to downtown Athens, I’d call in sick. But the university’s secretary was never there to take the message; she couldn’t make it to work; neither did my students. We all found our way to the local café and talked about the national shame of the country around the strong but bitter Greek coffee.

“My poor country, Kaimeni patrida” my mother kept crying as we watched news of protest police bulldozing young protestors. “It was such a beautiful country! Now it’s lost, it’s lost.” This time Greece is not the devil-may-care, drink-your-troubles away eagle dance at the end of Zorba the Greek that Anthony Quinn dances. There is a sense of paradise lost.

When Greece was still under the drachma, perhaps things didn’t function as smoothly and sophisticatedly as under the aegis of the Euro, but there was something quintessentially Hellenic about it. Yes, it took two years for my application for a new phone line for my flat to come through. Yes, the washing machine service man would say he’d come on Tuesday morning and he’d call Thursday saying he couldn’t make it. Yes, there was grand chaos in the underdeveloped infrastructure. (My first impression of Greece during a summer vacation in the mid-1980s was of a stray German shepherd that was walking through the tarmac of the airport in Glyfada.) Yes, I had not received a paycheck for three months of teaching freshman English at a private “American” university because as I found out later, the president was using the teacher’s salaries to pay off debts from his failed newspaper business. tBut for the couple of years I lived there, people were happy and carefree. They didn’t make much, but they wound up living freer lives. Greeks notorious night owls and money-burners for spending money in restaurants, cafes, movie halls, beach clubs, and dance halls. Athens must have the most cafes per square foot of ground besides Paris. I remember coming back from a coffee break in Kolonaki surprised to find the Ethniki, the national highway, was deadlocked in bumper-to-bumper traffic even at 3 am. Other coffee-drinkers had been coming back from their soires too. I would spend hours sipping on a frothy Frappe in one of the bumper-to-bumper cafes lining the sidewalks Kolonaki Square with silver coffee tables engaged in the perennial conversation: the supremacy of the capitalistic work ethic vs the Greek “work to live, but never more than you have to” ideal.

The Greeks were infinitely proud of this Greek way in contrast to what they considered the foolish American way. Greeks would look down on the “Amerikanakia” the derogative form of Americans, those pathetic slaves of the capitalistic superculture, the cogs in the wheels, brainwashed into thinking their good work and accolades for the “corporation” spoke more for their merits, stuck in their golden cages. Their way, they felt was superior. “The object of the game is to make enough so you don’t have to work,” the retired lawyer my coffee companion said, “ You Americans don’t know how to live. If you stopped working, you wouldn’t know what to do with yourselves.” When I asked an ex-pat I had met who was running a café/sandwich shop on a Cycladic Island what she had done during the winter, she blurted, “Done? I did nothing. I just lived. I just was. I am just being. Why do we have to do anything to feel that we are alive?” She had escaped to an idyllic Greek island to escape the rat race and the stress of the big cities in both America and Northern Europe. Back in those days, you could actually find people like this in Greece; they would actually flock there for this reason. Greece was the anti-capitalist, antidote to the work ethic. In Greece it was acceptable to do nothing (or close to nothing) and get away with it and most importantly not to feel guilty about not doing anything.

Greece was so un-American in its ways of thinking. While Western/European in its aesthetic and culture, it was Eastern in its philosophy. Greeks were content in just being, living in the now, not thinking about the long-term, not calculating, or organizing but living for the day. They had no qualms about blowing several thousand drachmas on a good party breaking plates and dousing good wine to capture that “kefi , that term to describe the mood of feeling good in the moment, the high of living. What with vibrant tourism, great sun and cerulean beaches, it was possible back then to experience the glory of a good time in Greece. My youth I spent belly dancing on bar tables in the early glow of sun’s rise in so many of those sun-fun islands.

When I visited Greece in 2004 several years after it had made the Euro transition, in the limelight of the Olympic Games, it had turned more European and less Hellenic. The Metro had been transformed into a slick, chic silently-sliding system of digital plaques announcing the minutes of the next arriving train. The pot-hole ridden Ethniki ribboned into a neat loop of ring roads and upper and underpasses in neat bow ties. There were even blue-and-white destination signs now, and fancy road-side rest stops. The dink local bakaliko (good-for-all grocery store with dried beans in burlap bags smelling of mountain tea, salted cod, and wild oregano) had been replaced by a three-story super-antiseptic supermarket with spanking white aisles and sliver shelves that glittered stacked with a ziggurat arrangement of Evian water. Even the airport had been transported and had received a face lift and tummy tuck with lipo. The new Eleftherios Venizelos rivaled the boutique airports of other European destinations what with glass-enveloped structures and avant-garde beams.

But things had gotten a lot more expensive too. A kilo of lemons I remembered buying at the traveling open-air fresh food market, the laiki, for 250 drachmas spiked to 3 euros a kilo (from say 75 cents a pound to 2.50 a pound). The Metro ticket soared from 150 drachmas to 1.5 euros. A frappe once 500 drachmas at an upscale kafeneo became an astronomical $7 or 5 euros. The salaries had not increased to keep up with these costs. I wonder if I could afford to live in my own country on a teacher’s salary.

Now it seems the days of wine and roses are lost forever and with them the Greek way. Like the grasshopper in the fable, the winter of economic reality has caught up with it. The American way, albeit in the form of the European Union, has eclipsed it. The grasshopper’s ways of overspending, not keeping account of the granary, and dawdling away the days of fat in the summer spell an almost certain scepter of death in the coming winter. Frankly, while they had it coming to them, the Greeks and their fun-loving ways are doomed, and this is very sad.

It is sad because a people free in spirit will suffer economic serfdom even slavery for years. Even with this second gargantuan bailout of 170 billion, there is no guarantee that the country will ever be able to pay back what’s owed. Even if taking these bailouts is preferable to bankruptcy, the country is damned if it does and damned if it don’t. Greece has become the sacrificial lamb on the chopping block to bleed for some greater European Union. It will become like some Puerto Rican colony, a cheap, year-round tourist destination like the Club Med type into which Greeks will never be admitted only as wait-staff and shoe-shiners. It is sad because whole generations of young people will have to make mass exodus to other nations to be able to afford to live in their country. It is sad because the middle class feels it’s been sold out by its so-called democratically elected elitist government. Democracy is dead in its cradle. And with it dies an entire civilization and way of living.

“Krimas, (What a shame!”) my aging mother born at the foot of the Acropolis just at the start of World War II exclaims. “The Germans weren’t able to defeat us in the war with arms, but now they have taken us without any force. They have always wanted Greece. They have waged an economic war and have taken us over. We’ve lost the country.”

I keep hoping that there might still be a happy ending to all of this. I keep wishing that the economic fiasco in Greece might turn out like the short story by Guy de Mauppaussant I read in the 7^th grade. It’s called “The Necklace”, and in it a middle-class housewife with airs of superiority and aristocracy borrows a jewel-encrusted necklace from a jeweler in order to fit in with the high society at an exclusive ball. While dancing away, she loses the necklace. In order to pay it back, she goes from comfortably middle class to rag poor. Her husband has to work two jobs, she cuts eating meat, she has to sell even the little jewelry that she had. She loses her arrogance and her pride as she is plunged into years of paying off the debt. Then in the end, emaciated, humbled, and exhausted, she learns from the neighbor she casually bumps into one day that the necklace was not real, it was a fake. She had learned a good lesson though and had developed her character. I keep hoping this is the moral of the story for Greece.

You've got issues

Career vs Family? Are Greek American girls skewed to…

February 10, 2012
by irene Archos

I’ll never forget the valecditorian of my class in high school. Her name was Evanthia: short cropped hair, petite, with huge saucer blue eyes. She talked with the tilt of the off-the-boat Greek accent ever so often even if she had lived in the States for eight years by the time she graduated from high school in Astoria. In the 1980’s Astoria was still the little village of first-generation immigrant families from Greece. What most impressed me about Evanthia was that she was brilliant. She had a 99 overall average on every single subject. She had won the Westinghouse Math and Science competition, maybe twice in a row. She was good at both English/Social Studies and math/science in a high school known for high standards. Although I never asked, I’m sure her SAT scores were off the charts. She could have gone to any Ivy League school she chose. I even remember her valecdictory speech; she defined “success” according to Webster at the beginning of her speech and argued that success depended on what you thought was imporant by the end. She beat out even the swarm of hungry and cut-throat Chinese first-generation sons by her brilliance. I admired her. Until that day during AP Bio, when we were waiting for the lab assistant to ready the chemicals and specimen samples whiffing of formeldahyde, that I caught her during some down time. She was sitting on the wooden stool at the corner of the black marble lab table leafing through a thick “Modern Bride” magazine.

“I can’t wait to get married,” she uttered in a trance state, her eyes wandering beyond the glossy photos of perfectly powder-puff models in frilly chiffon and white lace into that fuzzy distant future the kind you have to squint to imagine yourself in. “If I could get married, I wouldn’t go on to college. I’d stay home and have a family.”

“But Evanthia, what are you talking about?” I answered. “You got a full scholarship to Yale. How can you give that up?”

“All that stuff does not make you happy,” she replied. “I know I would be happy just to be married and have a couple of kids.”

“But Evanthia,” I continued, “You’re brilliant. You can’t waste your mind like that. The world needs intelligent people to come up with the cure for cancer or something.”

“Yeah,” she said, “that might be true, but what does it matter if you wind up alone without a family around you. Wouldn’t you become a waste in a way?”

“I don’t know, maybe you’re right,” I said. “Maybe we’re both right.”

I was shocked. Here was the female Hellenic equivalent of Albert Einstein in my eyes and all she wanted was to get married and knocked up. Ti sto diaolo! Was it a waste or did she have a point?

I think every intelligent Greek woman who has made the decision to get educated and have a career runs into the dilemma: which is more important–my career or my family? Many women solve this dilemma on their own terms; some find a balance between pursuing their career but still devoting quality time to their families. Some take time off from stressful careers to raise a family and return when the kids are school-bound. Some choose careers that allow for a balance. But, knowing what I know about being raised as a dutiful Greek-American daughter, I tend to think that when push comes to shove, when the choice is lethal–either you kill your career or your chance at happiness with a doting husband and children, most choose the “marry and live happily ever after” option. Just like Evanthia. She would rather be happy than successful. She would rather use her uterus than her cerebrum. Not that the choice has to be so either/or. But I find that in such a dilemma, even when one tries to do it all by becoming a superwoman driven career-tracker and devoted mom, one always pays a price. You cannot have it all without driving yourself to physical and emotional exhaustion. One way or another–something gives, either your dreams, goals, aspirations or your family’s needs.

I think Greek-American women choose the family over career for several seminal reasons. One is the importance of the family in Greek culture. Two is the socialization that girls in Greek culture get. Three has to do with “the voice” that voice that we have internalized deep in our being that yanks us back when we are about to do something for ourselves and not for the family, for the ethnos, or for the patrida. (Funny how that “voice” always sounds like the high-pitched nagging rasp of your mother–“Mori, anoieiti ti kaneis?”)

One of the greatest things about growing up Greek is the strong binds that the family has on you. Family is sacred. It is the thing that raises you, supports you, strengthens you, teaches you; the place you return to day after day, decade after decade, generation after generation. It is a fortress, a cooking pot, a comfort station. It is unescapable. Because family takes such prominence in our culture, we know it is so valuable so it is worth investing and saving. The pillar of that institution is the mother; without her it would not be as great. The family derives its power from the power of the mother. We know how important the family is to Greek culture and identity so as women, we know our pivotal position in that structure. We know the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. So being CEO of the Pappas clan is as powerful a post as being CEO of Pfizer.

As Greek girls we have been groomed to assume that CEO position from birth. We are indoctrinated to think that girls should know how to keep house, cook mousaka and make galaktobouriko with just enough crust. We are raised with the expectation that we will all marry and bring “eggonia” to our parents. (Not that it’s any different for our brothers; Greek children are in debt to their parents until they are married and still they carry the yoke of parental interest until the investment of grandchildren satisfies their parents’ need to guarantee that their name is perpetuated down the generations.) It goes without saying that girls are born to get married and bring more descendants that carry either Pappou or Giagia’s name. There would be a stigma and a shame attached to any person, either male or female, who chooses to stay single. There is something wrong with those people. It is a cross the family has to bear if their children do not marry. “Achristos” or “achristi” they think. It is a waste of life and potential if someone does not marry.

From as long as I can remember, my mother kept a bulky, overgrown “baulo” in the corner of the kitchen. For my the baulo became a symbol for a girl’s destiny. It was the sort of living bank account of my family’s investment in my conjugal bliss. That clunker, a wooden crate lined with aluminum plates beveled with iron nails, held layers and layers of neatly folded linen, bath towels, doillies, silver platters and assorted other housewares. Wafting of mild moth balls, the baolo was a living reminder of my mother and father’s stake in my marriageable future. Every so often she would open it up to rearrange its contents and add new ones: a mixer, silver goblet sets, crystal bowls, 24k silver cutlery in a red velvet-lined box, knives, forks, big spoons and little spoons with tendrils on their edges cozily sleeping in their grooved compartments. It was the holding pen for the dowry or the “prika” a vestige of the village farm practice her mother had practiced and her mother before her. The dowry is the price a family paid to get rid of daughters, to make them more desirable to a groom and his family who would take on the burden of having to upkeep her and her progeny. “And what if I never get married?” I would ask my mother as she gingerly folded assorted kitchen towels into the baulo. “Ase tis aidies,” she would say (“Stop the nonsense,” there is no such thing. Of course, you are going to get married.” Such a possibility is unthinkable. It is the natural course for all young Greek girls.

And then there is that “voice”. That voice, that even with two advanced degrees and a fulfilling career, whispers and nags, “You are not really happy. You need a husband to do that.” “Don’t be selfish; a woman’s place is with her family. You will not feel fulfilled if you didn’t have three kids.” You must be the one who sacrifices her goals, her career, her intellectual potential so that the children grow up in a stable, loving family. But what about that voice, my voice, that screams you will not feel fulfilled until you start living to your potential, until you have discovered who you really are and who you really want to be, on your own terms, not in relation to anyone else. Up to this point, I actually thought that my kids and my family were more important. But that wasn’t my voice telling me that. That was the voice of my teacher friends who sacrificed a lucrative marketing career to have three kids; that was the voice of my mother who still is praising my achievements as a mother and homemaker more than any other of my accomplishments; that was the voice of my patriarchal culture dictating to me what the “good daughter” would do. But this voice has nothing to do with me. Ironically, it is imposed by the very woman who loves me dearly. But she slaughtered herself on the sacrificial altar of the “family” so that she could carve out an easy identity for herself because it is always easier to follow the dictates of our culture and the norms of our society instead of trying to figure what makes sense for ourselves by ourselves.

And so I think it is that many otherwise intelligent, ambitious, self-reliant young Greek women choose the conventional route of love-marriage-and-two kids instead of staking out on their own and following the beat of their own inner drum. In many ways young women shortchange themselves because they listen to the “voice”.

I often think about Evanthia and what became of her. What choice did she eventually make? Was she successful according to her own definition of the term? And if she married and became happy ever after, did she make the right choice? Would it be a waste of her potential to live a conventional happy-homemaker life and make keftedakia and skordalia? Or would she be an “achristi” if she chose to never marry but devote her life to science and live in the passionate pursuit of the cure for cancer? I hope whatever her choice it was from her, the real her.

Have you ever wondered who decided on the life you have taken? Growing up as a Greek American girl, the answer is not that easy. Of course there is you–the woman who wants to start a career–to be a practicing physician, a chemical engineering calibrating minute solutions of acids in petri dish, a forensic psychologist or a country-skipping international correspondent, a Greek captain sailing through the South Seas, or even a stock broker, or an installation artist. And then there is “the voice”–that voice of culture that usually takes on the shrill voice of your mother that voice when she called you to come to the kitchen or get home before your curfew, that voice deep within your subconscious that nags you , “Pote tha pandrefteis mori? Pote tha kaneis paidia?” A woman without a man, who is not married or at least in a committed relationship is not really successful.

That voice that I kept hearing deep within the caverns of my conscience nearly destroyed my life and definitely obliterated my youth. You see, you can’t ever be happy. Greek women are usually very strong, independently-opinionated, and innately confident. They were born to be somebodies; however, that bugle call of culture sometimes undermines their living to their highest, most liberated potential. They compromise living “an actualized self” as the psychologists say. Why? Because whether you choose a successful career or not, you are stuck feeling inadequate. And even if you do choose a career, it probably won’t be the one you are meant to pursue because so many smart, independent, educated Greek women shortchange themselves and limit their potential because they are following some deeply imbedded script of how a Greek girl should be and what a respectable Greek American woman should do. Most of the time that script involves that she be married, have a few kids and be in the kitchen making koulourakia. But is this who we are as modern American women? Is this archetype compatible with the opportunity for professional and psychological fulfillment we can achieve in the greater arena?

In my case, sadly, it is not. I feel so stifled and constricted in this Greek matriarchal role, even though at the same time I realize it is extremely important. While I know many women have to deal with the family vs. professional and personal fulfillment issue, but for Greek-American women the choice is made tougher because of the strong pull of culture on our heart strings. Because family is so enmeshed with cultural identity maybe the thought that if we are not true to our biological calling we will also be unfaithful to our culture does a hidden whammy on us? Perhaps we pick conventional roles because those roles we assume to be part of our cultural identity and to deny them would mean rejecting our culture, which is anathema to any immigrant group threatened to be consumed by a larger cultural hegemony? How have other Greek-American women accomplished this task? Is it possible to stay faithful to the Greek side of you, raise a proud Greek family with an Eleni, a Yiannaki, and half a Marko, while at the same time pursuing your professional and personal goals? And can you do this without losing your sanity or getting zapped of all your physical and emotional strength? I would really like to know. Join the forum to discuss.

Category: You’ve got issues

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