Home - Siga Siga...

 By Maryanna Gabriel

I met the kindest British couple on the first leg of my journey home who shared their plane picnic with me which was heartening. The final leg in crossing the Atlantic was alarming, not just from discomfort, but with the awareness I had caught a cold. Not only did I have to negotiate the extreme agony of cramped air time, but I also had to catch a ferry. Catching a Gulf Island ferry tries the patience with the wait times at the best of times and I was very tired with sleep in twenty four hours. My cold worsened.

Now I am home in a state of collapse and very sick. Fortunately, an understanding friend is here, bless her, and she has left me with milk and precooked food. A winter storm arrived today and they are predicting thunder storms. This morning, I feel stronger and have laid a fire in the wood stove. My friend and I will sip our morning coffee and sit by the warmth, quietly chatting about this and that, as dry wood crackles.

I will never forget the hospitality I encountered. The kindness of the people of Greece ride with me. Now I have to decode many mysterious scribbles on many pages. But all that will unfold. I have experienced an easier way of living, different from here, slowly slowly - or as they say in Greek, siga siga. Maybe, just maybe, I can hold to that. 

"In the shade of the olive tree I rested, 
and heard the wind singing." 
- Cretan Folk Song