ourbigfatgreeklife

On the night of the blue moon I was busy counting my blessings. We were down on the beach just below my house, (that one was counted). We weren’t the only ones; there were lots of people there to enjoy the spectacle. Families with small children, groups of friends from all age groups. Mostly Greek. Everyone had settled in a spot and there was a gentle babble of conversations punctuated with exclamations and laughter, emphasized with energetic gesticulations. People dipped in and out of the sea and it was peaceful. Not in a silent or quiet way, but in a ‘feeling’ way. I drank ice cold shandy’s with my friends, I swam backwards and forwards through the moons long reflection in the water. I did handstands in the sea with Angeliki, aged 6 and was very grateful when her face scrumpled up in giggles and told me ‘your booby’s out!’ And it was just so beautiful. That moon, the sea, the atmosphere. My ‘booby’ safely back inside my bikini.

I was talking to someone a couple of days after, whose (Greek) cousin enjoys a successful business in the UK. She appears to have a settled life. Nice house, family, good standard of living. But the lure of her Greek DNA is calling and she wants to move back to Rhodes. ‘I told her don’t come!’ he says ‘you have everything there – here you will be poor, your children will have no opportunities and you will live in this chaos!’

Am I seeing all this through my rose tinted sunglasses? Should I have traded our beautiful, but apparently hopeless life here in Greece for one of more opportunity in the UK? Would my children have been better educated, been better people, would we have a new car?

As I swam in the moonlit sea my teenage daughter and her friends were a bit further up the beach, singing. Their voluptuous, bikini clad bodies not quite in sync with their gaucheness and folk songs. Its 10.30pm and the only light is coming from that huge, radiant moon. It’s mesmerizing. But I am happy to be mesmerized and I have made my choice. Too many blessings to count.