Just when I thought life couldn't get any better -- boom -- Holy Week. As a Greek Orthodox person, I like to follow the rules. In the Greek Orthodox church, religious tenets have 2 main corollaries: (1) the rules must be convenient; and (2) someone must be watching me or otherwise able to find out that I am following the rules. That second corollary of Greek Orthodoxism is extremely important to us. Our yiayia's taught them to us, our mothers emphasized them and now, as a Greek Orthodox big boy, I follow these corollaries quite strictly. Let's talk about the rigors we go through.
Holy Week means fasting and the story usually goes something like this:
OMG -- it's Holy Monday and all I have to eat is a stick of butter and a 3 pound package of thick sliced bacon. Well, we all know that you can't eat butter or meat during Holy Week. So, let's see what the Convenience Corollary tells us. That's right, it's time to eat out. Restaurants always have things we can eat during Holy Week like potatoes, side salads, unleavened bread and table napkins. So, Convenience Corollary solved rather easily.
But let's not forget the 2nd corollary. That's right -- you never want to go to a restaurant alone. But, not to worry, invite a friend. Bravo! DO NOT under any circumstances invite a relative because they too will be fasting. You don't want your sister, thea or nouno to use up their corollary 2 on you. So, pick a friend -- someone who's Jewish, or Lutheran or, better yet, an atheist. Then pick up the menu and just stare. Stare for a long time -- keep staring at that menu long after your friend has eaten all the bread (which you can't eat anyway because you can't put butter on it and without butter why bother) and started on the Sweet'N'Low packages. Finally, say something like "hmmmm" or "well, I just don't know" or "no, that won't work." Your friend will, of course, ask what the hell you are talking about and then you can tell them that you are fasting and it's quite important and that they are not fasting and that you can't eat meat, fish (with backbones), animal products, olive oil or alcohol. Therefore, in the Greek Orthodox equation of religion and hierarchy, you are a better person than them, very devout and impressive and -- the best part -- better than them. Repeat this 3 times just for good luck. We Greeks do everything 3 times just in case nobody saw us doing it the first 2 times. That is why we cross ourselves 3 times at church -- that is why we kiss our friends' cheeks 3 times when we greet them -- that is why we repeat ourselves 3 times if we are saying something clever (which as you might imagine happens quite frequently). We could just save a lot of time and effort if others would simply pay more attention to us and, after all, why wouldn't they want to pay more attention to us because we're Greek and therefore better than them.
My mother was so sly back in the day. Holy Week would come along and suddenly, after years of saying that I must eat a hot lunch every day at school, she was packing me crap that would normally be thrown out with the garbage. Old dried out oranges, bananas with the peels already removed and cut into disgusting brown discs, special peanut butter with no oil in it, green beans in zip loc bags, 5 pounds of fasolakia (bean stew without anything good like meat) in a washed out Harvard beet jar. With one of the nice silver spoons from the top drawer in the dining room! My mother always sent me to school with hundreds of little packages of different sorts of shit and a remote and vague hope that one of the things would taste vaguely good. But they didn't. They were disgusting. Disgusting? Yes but also skillfully crafted to garner maximum attention and, most importantly, loud reactions from those around me at the lunch table. Zero, bang, bulls eye, ka-pow, hit the target -- and you, little Nick or George or Alex -- or, in my case, Lew -- are going to Greek Disney World where everybody wears black head to foot and pinches your cheeks because you're so darn cute! Mom couldn't have been a better teacher if she had written it out and illustrated it in color with a red Sharpie. Learning by watching the master.
I was no dummy either. At Christmas time when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, I asked her why Santa came to our house on Christmas eve when everyone else at school said that he came only after they went to sleep so they could find their presents when they woke up on Christmas day morning. Well," she said, clearly prepared for this moment, "the answer is very simple. Santa comes to Greek people's houses 1st -- while he still has all the expensive good presents and, only after all those are gone, does he go to the other lesser and smelly Christian homes." Jews? Forget it. "Sure they get 7 days of presents but have you seen how small they are?" Stella may have never gone to college and inexplicably did not know how to drive a car but nobody, not even Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking, could out-do her in a game of logic.
Her wiles knew no bounds. On birthdays in elementary school, when other mothers were making cute little pastel cupcakes or brownies -- from a boxed package she always surmised-- my mother was sending huge trays of baklava complete with the special diamond cut into small pieces that is always sure to impress. I tell you that I could not lift even 1 tray they were so big! But my mother, fearing that someone else might get the same idea, always sent 2 trays -- 1 for the kids and 1 for the teachers. Each little diamond piece placed delicately and perfectly into something hauntingly dirty called a nut cup. A nut cup? Bright shiny foil, crimped around the outside -- about the right size too. Whatever. Anyway, when my teacher, Mrs. Thompson, said my mother could no longer send baklava because little Mindy Jo Shea had a severe nut allergy, my mother did not stop. She sent them at birthdays, holidays, Fridays, anytime she could think up a reason or if a test was coming up. "There's no nuts in there," she said, "it's pecans." Later, my mother told me that this was just the Greek way of weeding out the sick ones. I understand that Alexander the Great did the same thing to the Spartans.
Brilliant.
So, here I am, older but no wiser than the venerable Stella, and I am still grappling with the strategy of how to survive a whole Holy Week on nothing more McDonald's french fries, potato chips and my own fasolakia, while also trying to invite as many friends over for the same stinking dinner that I am eating. It is not easy but, after all, I am Greek.
No comments:
Post a Comment