For years, the attic in our Volos summer house was just a place to put things. Not the tidy kind of storage, but the sort where you let it pile up: boxes from one year to the next, odds and…
There is something about the way Americans celebrate July 4th that I find genuinely moving. I grew up in Greece. We have our own national celebrations, our own flags, our own particular relationship with the idea of independence and what…
I started making hair bows for Maria and Marina out of necessity. Not because I couldn’t find bows to buy — you can find them everywhere. But anyone who has a daughter knows that the bow you find in the…
There is something about American patriotic quilts that I find genuinely moving and I say this as someone who grew up in Greece and did not encounter them until well into adulthood. In Greece we don’t have this tradition. We…
Chrysa, my sister-in-law, has two cats. I mean that with all good will since I have a fondness for both her and the animals. Then again, having been to her apartment, you can see where I’m coming from: I have…
Let me be upfront: I know what I am in for. I have been here before. My daughter has a way of putting her creative confidence on display, as when she decided to paint the hallway wall. Then there is…
Like clockwork, the same thing happens in our kitchen every June. Marina figures out what she’s going to get her teacher around three weeks before school is out, and she has a very definite idea. This idea will use quite…
Every year, one particular Saturday towards the end of May (though the actual date moves around) I go around our Thessaloniki flat and get a feeling that things have to be altered. It’s not that there’s something wrong with the…
The summer house is supposed to be the quiet place. That’s the idea anyway. You leave the city, you leave the noise, you arrive somewhere slower and more peaceful and you decompress for a few weeks before going back. That’s…
Every summer we arrive at the summer house and I do a tour before anything else gets unpacked. Not the excited kind. The cautious kind, where you walk around the perimeter of the house looking at corners and eaves and…
