FROM ASIA TO ATHENS: Reflections On Our Family Move
I sit in the early morning sun, on the rooftop of the hotel.
We arrived the evening before, discombobulated with a tattered heart. The rooms felt stuffy and crammed, unlike the modern spacious hotel rooms in Asia.
I feel a brief sharp pain in my chest when I think of our home in Singapore, empty, apart from our dog and Lyn waiting for her transfer. I remember the sounds and smells. The south China sea mud and palms that we looked onto, where sometimes monkeys caused a raucous fight with the crows.
The marina to the left with the yachts bobbing up and down. Below on the ocean front path, people biked and walked, and the odd monitor lizard sidled across.
The tankers and containers further out either side of the island in front of us. The city with its gleaming skyscrapers just visible and in front on the horizon some of the oil refineries, hazy in the humid heat.
A constant stream of sea traffic passing, fast ferries to Indonesia, working boats chugging up and down constantly doing who knows what. A steady stream of hired catamarans out for the day, the occasional billionaire yacht gliding past, stealthy and shiny, fully staffed all wearing crisp white polos and police boats making their rounds at the allotted times. I feel a lump in my throat.
I bring myself back to where I am, and there she sits, majestic, rich, perched in prime position for all the city to glorify, The Acropolis.
The air is light, clear, fresh, the colours pastel-like, the sky bigger away from the equator. And to the other side I see the Olympic stadium. I feel the richness of the history around me, I feel the weight of my ancestors, a heaviness and yet a comfort too. I am held, I have a past here.
I think of my father here as a young boy in this city. Fleeting stories, fragments catch in my memory. I think of him leaving on the ship heading to the unknown, stopping in dirty noisy colorful ports, unknown languages all around him, full of hope and adventure, unsure when he would come back. His mother patiently waiting for his letters.
My mind drifts back across the ocean to Singapore and across Asia, to Hong Kong. My husband and I newly arrived from Greece, just a few days married, at the beginning of this adventure together. It’s like I am broken into parts, scattered across the planet.
I am looking down on my life of some 16 years, floating above the metropolis of Hong Kong, like it’s someone else’s life. I see us all eating Yum Char, Japanese snacks salty and sweet, steaming fragrant bowls of soup, endless rice, standing in line for freshly squeezed sugarcane juice on jammed Hong Kong streets, the endless choice of tropical fruits or juices available. The old sinewy men shirtless, sweating, pushing heavy carts of trash up steep streets, shouting out the harsh sucking sounds of Cantonese. The sound that came to feel so familiar to me, that I missed it when we first moved to Singapore and I heard other Chinese dialects more.
The rolling, thick, tropical storms, lashing wind. The relief momentarily from the heavy moist heat. The feeling that the cracks of lighting would break the building or earth, strong and persistent. My body young and pregnant with my first child, practicing yoga in studios high up on 50th floor, where finally we felt peace from the city that is endlessly awake, pulsing and pushing with life.
I remember in those final months in Singapore, I was greeted endless times with rainbows appearing. In all the years I lived in Singapore I never remembered seeing rainbows.
It surprised me the first time. But I took it as a sign the universe was telling me something. Perhaps it was miracles do happen, or, remember good things are coming, or simply, keep going and don’t forget to look up and see the rainbows amongst the grief. Or, have patience, there is always magic to be found every day. Those rainbows had a million messages for me each time. I won’t forget them.
I dreaded this part, the arrival here. My old life dissolved and my new one not yet known. The space in between dissolution and rebirth, lonely and painfully still. For months I had spent organizing this move and increasingly as the time neared to leave, the pace accelerated. I bounced around the city in my car, in-between catch ups with friends here and there for coffee or lunch.
Wrapped up in the humid heat, surrounded by giant palms and leafy jungle like vegetation and endless air coned malls. In and out of giant underground carparks.
I was in constant motion. My body rejected any stillness at all those final weeks, apart from when I put my head down to sleep. I felt dizzy, like I might fall sometimes.
I would wake up in the mornings early, while the house was still quiet and it would hit me - the enormity of what me and my husband were doing, leaving a life here. I had the sense I was standing at a very high ledge. I could feel my chest tighten as I prepared to jump into this unknown.
I was sure that when I jumped I would just fall, and fall, may never stop falling. I found I had to steady myself sometimes when I got up. It’s like my centre is gone. I knew I better start trying to be still again, but I felt the resistance like a huge wall in front of me.
On that last night in our almost entirely empty apartment, I look at the kids as they sleep in a row on mattresses on the floor. Tears prick…what have we done, wrenching these sweet little souls from their life, a life they loved?
I think of my youngest as she watched the garage uncles drive our car out of the carpark, bawling, crying. The car she had always known since birth. Not fancy, but our car, the one she was bustled about in, in the city with Mumma doing errands, seeing friends, carrying gaggles of children, balloons, cakes, pizzas being transported to parties, bags of shopping, sandy feet after the beach, soaking wet as we dive into it after a tropical rainstorm. I see the men’s faces, kind and concerned, as they watch her cry and stop the car, they coax her to take one last photo in front of the car, to ease her upset.
I see the anger on my son's face as he pushes me away and tries not to cry as he shouts that I am taking him away from his friends. I worry that my oldest daughter seems too calm and tells me she is fine and then on the last night breaks down and sobs that she doesn’t want to leave our home and begs me to stay. I see it all now and finally tears roll, all the tears I held back for months.
As we walk around the green leafy streets of North Athens in the following days, we notice how differently the birds sing. Gone are those hollow staccato sounds of tropical birds and in its place are the sweet chirrups of a European bird.
I can smell the pine trees. The air is warm but still has a sharpness to it, summer hasn’t quite taken hold yet. It will soon. Its waiting to bathe this land in its harsh, dry, heat with endless blue skies.
The kids try to read the signs and ask me sometimes what something means or how to read it. We eat lunch in a restaurant on a patio surrounded by honeysuckle and a cacophony of plants and trees. A crisp white tablecloth. The waiter explains where all the food comes from, all different areas in Greece, what is in season and why some isn’t available yet. The food is fresh; the tastes are delicate; I can feel the land as I eat. I imagine the sea where the fish was caught and the high mountains where the herbs were gathered, the dry soil the olives grew in, now big and juicy.
The kids talk happily, then argue, then talk again, as only kids can. Tears and anger forgotten for now. It’s hard to know, is it stupidity or bravery to leave a life you know and love for the unknown?
But all we know at this moment is, if we don’t try it, we will never know. And to live this life is to take risks, to seek out adventure, to challenge the edge a little, to stretch our minds.
But it isn’t easy, for some of us it is harder than others. I realize I crave familiarity, routines, and a home. The daily conversations with the person at our favourite coffee shop, the familiar face who fills my car with gas, the short chats with the receptionist at the dentist, the ladies on the check out at the local supermarket who I recognize, these all somehow make our world a smaller place.
I think of my ancestors who traveled and left their lives for the unknown, heading to faraway places where they often didn’t speak the language. I also think of those that stayed, stayed in the place they were born, sometimes even the same house. Both have their beauty and their challenges.
Coming to Greece isn’t really coming back for me, but in a way it is. I often catch memories as I ride about the city in a taxi, I remember the buses I used to take across Athens as a teenager visiting. The food I liked to buy from the street vendors.
I only lived here briefly as a child and went to school for a short while. Before and after that, there were summer holidays and extended stays here and there over the years.
I remember leaving Greece after we lived here and heading back to England with my mother. I remember the pain I felt saying goodbye to my aunt and Grandma as I hugged them at the old airport. I remember arriving in England and feeling miserable. I sat on the windowsill and looked out at the damp never-ending drizzle across the pretty green fields and cried. Of course as time passed I settled back into life in England.
But in those early days I missed Greece terribly, it was my safety, my warmth. I loved the endless heat and constant noise. In those days no one had aircon, us kids would lie on the marble floors wrapped in sheets to cool down in the heat of the summer. The rich tomato-based home cooking that I could barely eat in the heat, the cool sweet crisp watermelons. No, I didn’t want to leave.
And here I am back, after so many years, as an adult with three children and my husband.
I wonder if my kids will fall in love with Greece as I did all those years ago.