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 time in the air, but I also had to catch a ferry. Catching ships to the Southern Gulf Islands tries even the most patient with the long wait involved. And I was already very tired… no sleep in twenty four hours. 

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 has 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 coffees, sit by the warmth and quietly chat about this and that as dry wood crackles with conversational rejoinders. 

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 in good time. 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.