Evey’s eyes are hypnotic.
She looks at you, and you wonder briefly if you’ve disappointed her somehow and if the last thing you said was so unbelievably stupid that you can never retract it.
And there was Yia Yia’s voice again.
Leave the Paros family alone.
But it was already too late.
And as I walked into my new class and let the heat smack me in the face, I had to wonder if there was anything left to be afraid of.
Mom died when I was four, and I guess I never moved beyond that awful feeling of waking up and the entire world being scary.
I’d had a nighttime routine with Mom. She’d turn on a bedside light that projected stars on my ceiling, and then she’d hold my hand until I fell asleep.
But on the night she died, it was my dad who put me to bed. It was a weird night. She had breast cancer. It moved quickly. The chemo didn’t work. And then neither of us knew what to do without her, and I was little and didn’t know yet what it meant to be dead and that it was a forever thing. But I knew I was sad that my mom wasn’t there, and Dad somehow still managed to turn the stars on for me. Yia Yia was already living with us, so she rocked me until I stopped crying and eventually fell asleep.
Dad slept outside my open bedroom door that night. He’d dragged a pillow and a blanket into the hallway. Maybe he was lonely. Maybe he wanted to be with us. I don’t know. But after that Yia Yia handled bedtime alone. Actually, Yia Yia handled a lot alone. So I don’t think it’s even possible for me to explain how much it hurt when Yia Yia died last year. It’s been quiet.
I like quiet. I really do. But since Yia Yia died it’s been unbearably quiet. Not that an old lady made that much more noise, but she took up a lot of space too. She was always running a sewing machine or watching old movies or on the phone or cooking. She wasn’t loud per se, but she filled a room. I knew she was there before I heard her, and I guess she filled more than the physical space. She filled my childhood.
Dad didn’t know what to do with me. I never wanted to play rough. And I liked being by myself. I cried too much. I was too sensitive. None of that was okay.
Every single thing I did was just a little less than what he wanted, and I knew that without him saying a word. That’s how disappointment works. It seeps into you until you know it without hearing the words or seeing the looks. You just feel it in everything the person does, even when someone else watching might not notice. The only thing Dad ever did 100 percent for me was ask Yia Yia to come from Greece and live with us.
He knew I needed her.
After Mom died there was an emptiness. And it’s not like Yia Yia’s arrival erased the fact that Mom wasn’t here anymore, but Yia Yia threw everything she could at the darkness. Until the world didn’t seem so dark anymore.
Stories were her weapon of choice.
I think the best thing about Yia Yia was that she told me the things I wasn’t exactly supposed to know. And she always told the truth, even if it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
She had other grandkids and family in Greece who wanted her there too, but my dad made a case for her to come here. He said my need was greater, and at the risk of sounding super pathetic, he was right. We agree on this. I needed Yia Yia. I needed someone to listen and love me without question. And Dad knew he couldn’t do it, so Yia Yia had to teach me everything.
Yia Yia taught me to swear. She was the one who told me to never, EVER smoke. And she said that with a cigarette in her mouth. She said she’d kill me herself if I ever tried it.
I remember the way her hands felt guiding mine with the yarn.
“Something to keep your hands busy when you get nervous, agapi mou.”
And we’d sit there. She’d be in her chair and I’d be on the floor and we’d make stuff together.
Leonidas, let me tell you a story.
Leonidas, let me tell you something.
Leonidas…
Even the way she said my name made me feel braver.
She was the one who’d picked it, even though I wished she hadn’t. It’s a heavy name to carry. Being named after a warrior who led Spartan men into battle seemed like wishful thinking on her part. Especially since I was not born tough or particularly brave and I mostly just want to knit and take pictures. Mighty Leonidas actually has anxiety.
That’s why I go to the cemetery to talk to her. I wanted to feel some kind of connection again, something that made me feel braver and stronger—something. The Greek church only recently started allowing cremation, but Yia Yia was old-school. She wanted to be buried in the ground, preferably in Greece, but graveyards in the country are overcrowded, like to the point that a burial is like renting a grave plot for a couple of years. She agreed that was super gross and creepy, so she settled for being buried somewhere close to us.
Mom was cremated, and we scattered her ashes in the ocean. She said she never wanted us visiting a grave site.
So even if family curses are real and bad luck does follow lies…the worst has already happened, right?
Namaste,
Leo
3
Today’s Pose: Downward-Facing Dog
A pose in which I bend over and proudly stick my ass in the air and stare down at my hairy Greek feet and then stare forward at my hairy Greek knuckles.
It is one of the easiest and most-used poses in yoga. Or so I am told. It is how our instructor, Annabelle, tells us we will start our “flow.” Which makes me think of peeing.
Everyone in this room has been doing yoga for a while. There’s a guy in the corner balancing on his forearms. And another guy in the other corner balancing on his dick.
Okay, no, he’s not. But that’s the level of the people in this room. They’re all good at this. There’s an older woman doing some floating Yoda shit and some girls my age standing on their hands like it’s no big deal. They like being here, and I very much doubt that any of them started doing yoga as a way of avoiding the manly obligations of their heritage.
But they’ve accepted me into their group. I almost wish they resented me, because the kindness is overwhelming. If I stumble, someone wants to adjust my pose. If I slow down, someone wants to offer an encouraging nod. I’d feel more comfortable if they just acknowledged the fact that I suck.
Instead, I’ve become the class pet that everyone is eager to train. Every time I do something remotely correct there’s this moment where everyone looks at me like I’ve fetched the tennis ball for the first time.
Dear Journal,