My Mother’s Fabulous First Journey

My mother and two of her first cousins traveled with their mothers to Greece, Turkey, France and Egypt in 1950. It was the first time they were going to meet their grandmother. Mom was approximately fifteen years old at the time and she and her cousins took six months off of school to take this journey. Now that’s one incredible ” study abroad” trip! They had to go to summer school to make up for the absence. The mothers and daughters sailed on the ship Neptune (how appropriate for Greeks!) to Greece and they returned on the Queen Mary ship. Because my mother is deceased, I interviewed my two aunts about their journey. My aunt explained that they sailed on the lowest level of the ship to save money and this caused them much seasickness.

When they arrived in Greece after the long sailing trip, they changed their American money into Greek money. My grandmother and great-aunt suspected that the cashier was trying to trick them into exchanging too much money in the plan that they’d have to leave the extra money with him. My spirited and humorous great aunt raised her voice to the cashier proclaiming, “I’d rather throw the leftover money into the ocean than give it to you!”

They stayed three months in their grandmother’s home in their ancestral village on the island of Imvros (in Asia Minor) and were immersed into authentic and antiquated village life. They went from mid-century modern American living to outhouses, wood burning fireplaces, and donkey rides. The outhouses were made out of bricks built up around a hole. Fortunately, they were provided with some type of toilet paper.

The home in the village has an interesting history of hardship. Decades before this time, my great-grandfather came to America briefly to earn money and return to his village in Asia Minor to build a home with the money he saved working on the American railroad for two years. Tragically, an earthquake destroyed their new home.

My aunt recalled that they thought of this stay in the village as being in the colonial times—no running water, no electricity and no toilets. Their grandmother had a fireplace with a stool to sit on to start the fire. A funny memory my aunts have from this time is when my great-aunt (their mother) was determined to start the fire herself. As she huffed and puffed to stoke the fire, she blew so hard that she fell backwards off  the stool! The grandmother, exasperated by this, told her to move over and let her handle it.

They remembered their walks through the village, noticing that the figs and grapes were very big and the only meat they ate was from hunted birds or chickens that were raised on their land. They even made their own bread dough and took it to the bakery across the street to bake in the ovens there. They attended festivals held on religious feast days, recalling donkey rides and bouzouki music though the village and the occasional sighting of a handsome boy.

They went to France together for awhile before splitting up into two directions. My aunts and great-aunt went to a wedding in another town in France while my mother and grandmother went to Cairo, Egypt to see relatives. While in Paris together, they stayed in an uncle’s tiny apartment with a “2 x 2” foot kitchen that was so small, you had to shop daily for food because the refrigerators were the size of college dorm refrigerators. Their uncles in Paris worked as shoemakers so my mother and her relatives had special Parisian shoes made for them. When the relatives left their Turkish-occupied village decades before, two of the brothers became shoemakers but my grandfather and his brother- in- law did not want to be shoemakers so they went on to America to be restauranteurs.

My aunt recalled sightseeing with my mother in Paris, going to the Eiffel Tower and Versailles, specifically. When they walked on marble steps at a particular monument, my educated and intellectual mother wistfully remarked to her cousins, “We are walking where kings and queens have walked!”

In remembering this comment, my aunt explained that my mom paid more attention to history than she did and most other teenagers, probably. My mom thought about Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, and other historic French figures while they explored the sights.

My mother’s time in Cairo, Egypt is a mystery to me because there is no one alive who can tell me details about it. All I know from my aunts is that my mother’s favorite uncle bought her a special Egyptian dress. We have a picture of her posing in a robe and veil and we think it is from this time in Egypt. The enthusiasm on her face shows me her youthful spirit and reminds me that my mother was not always sick with cancer – she was once a young, vibrant, intelligent woman on a trip of a lifetime in the most exotic places of Greece, Turkey, France and Egypt—walking among the ruins where royalty have walked. I keep this framed photo in my writing study to inspire me to carry on her legacy of adventure and learnedness.

I love this memory about my enigmatic mother. It’s bittersweet that I have to excavate knowledge about her from her cousins. I know there is so much more information that is missing as my relatives are elderly now and have fading memories. Since I was only sixteen when my mother died, she is largely a mystery to me. This little snippet into her “wanderlust DNA” is meaningful and powerful to me and I’m grateful for it now as I piece together our  travel history. It bonds me to her three decades plus after her death as I hope my future generations will feel bonded to me.

Stories like this can be found in the  book, A Magic Carpet Ride  by Gina Michalopulos Kingsley. Click on link to order. Proceeds go to charity. https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Carpet-Ride-Michalopulos-Kingsley/dp/069271393X