Just when it seemed like we made it through the craziness of a Blue Star ferry boarding on Patmos – the mass of people pushing onto the boat, the madness of the cargo hold, the gentle shove up the stairs to the reception lobby, the line to get our cabin keys and getting into our nicely air-conditioned, four-bedded cabin, moving through the throngs of people settling in common areas or headed to the stairs and elevators to get to their cabins – the unexpected crisis began.
We had set down our things in our nice, clean cabin when Ailyn began panicking that the ship might sink. It was a mistake to have allowed the kids to watch Titanic on their sick day. The array of assurances was staggering – we have much better technology today with radar and satellite, Blue Star 2 has been navigating these waters for years, the boat is never far from an island that could send help, Greece is small and can send help, if the worst were to happen the water isn't freezing cold and people can just swim and survive, but most importantly – we've been on Blue Star 2 many times without incident and nothing's going to happen.
"All your words aren't helping," Ailyn told me. "I just feel this way."
Fair enough. She laid down, cried and went into panicked breathing. I figured there may be no reasoning our way out of this, but we could breathe our way out. I got Ailyn to move to box breathing – four counts in, four counts hold, four counts out, four counts hold and repeat. Her parasympathetic systems were more willing to listen than her mind and she began calming. Some.
Meanwhile, Sennen was glued to the window and began breaking down and sobbing about not wanting to leave Patmos and wanting to stay forever. Why do we have to leave? At one point he threatened to leave the boat. But mostly he just cried uncontrollably and wanted off.
I was now in a two-front meltdown with both having visceral, physical reactions. Reasoning didn't seem like the tool of choice, so I went with hugging. I got down on my knees positioned between the bed Ailyn was laying on and the window at which Sennen had perched himself on a chair, put my right arm over Ailyn and pulled Sennen in with the left.
"Guys, I think we're all having a tough, very emotional moment for some very different reasons. But we can all be together through it – and it's going to be alright."
Eventually it was. Ailyn had the good idea of getting her monkey she still sometimes sleeps with. Monkey helped calm her and she came down. No monkey was consoling Sennen, but after the boat pulled away from Patmos and it started falling out of sight, there was less to hang onto and he climbed up to his bunk to lay down. It was now almost 1am.
But like a horror movie when the monstrous villain appears to be dead and everyone relaxes, Sennen's tears came back in one more giant burst as he mourned actually having left Patmos. He toyed with the idea of grabbing a ferry back from Piraeus, but then calmed again and fell asleep – as did Ailyn. And the cabin went quiet.
In the hours prior, life had been much happier.
For our final Patmos dinner, the kids chose gyros at Alas Grill – a much simpler dinner than I had expected, yet fitting as we had probably eaten at Alas more than any other restaurant on the island. The staff all knows us as does the family who owns it. This year, the kids concluded Alas makes the best hamburgers of anywhere they've been. It was sort of a surprise given the burgers don't take center stage and therefore went untried for a long time. It seems Alex – the husband, who oversees the kitchen – knows what he's doing around a burger. Once the kids discovered this, it became a struggle to decide on gyros versus burgers each visit. Nonetheless, they felt wrapping up their summer on Patmos meant finishing with a true taste of Greece and no one makes gyros better than Alas.
Like any restaurant on Patmos – and throughout most of Greece – Alas has cats who call it home. Fawning over a very fuzzy, sweet calico let to an in-depth discussion of the cats in our yard. Patches/Pebbles, the smallest and weakest who has only one working eye, had disappeared for almost a week and just returned that afternoon. What happened to Patches?
A rousing discussion with many theories and observations ensued.
"I think it's cat drama," Sennen said. "Ketchup has been losing his dominance and Caramel and Gingos are trying to step up to claim it. Some of the cats are friends with Caramel and support her, others are friends with Gingos and support him – and so it got weird. Patches is friends with Gingos and maybe things just got too crazy for her."
Both kids blamed the changing demographic of the yard. With Little Gray – the dominant cat from last year – gone from the yard and several new cats beginning to spend more time including Khao Neow Mun (Thai for coconut sticky rice) who they agreed might be vying for dominance, things are just getting a little weird. Basically, it's kitty Game of Thrones out there.
Both kids favor the ascendance of either Khao Neow Mun who they see as friendly and confident or Gingos who has been the longest-standing cat in the yard and also has a certain grounded confidence even if he is more skittish about being pet.
I asked how they felt about Tiramisu – a cat who has been coming around more.
"I don't even know Tiramisu!" Sennen exclaimed. "She doesn't let herself be known. She's skittish and doesn't come up for petting. She remains a mystery."
Ailyn agreed. There's no knowing Tiramisu.
They both also have no love for Oreo – a black cat who comes along each night to eat and leave.
"He's a bully who takes the others' food. He's mean. He would be the bad guy in a movie. One time I stared at him and he just stared back and then he just walked away," Ailyn shared.
The kids have concerns about what will happen to the cats when we're away, but guess they must go back to some other house where they get fed. Supposedly, there's a man two doors down who feeds something like 30 cats and several people have guessed the cats in our yard branched out from that family to get more space.
As we left the house for the ferry dock, one of the last things Sennen said was, "Gingos, I will cherish you forever!" As if he understood, Gingos sat on the porch as if he was standing guard and would hold down the fort. They had their moment.
I spent our last two hours on Patmos running laundry, tidying and making sure we had either packed or stored everything. We have a closet and two drawers of things to remain in the house. There were showers, shuffling things between bags, discussing whether we were bringing certain items home or not, washing last minute dishes, etc. By the end house was in order and ready for Airbnb guests and our bags were set for us to mobilize with everyone knowing what they would carry and/or wheel.
Sennen wanted to make sure we left ample time to get to the ferry, feeling we were likely to have goodbyes along the way. Indeed we did. Christos was talking with Eirini and Alessandro. We chatter, shook hands, bumped fists and hugged with our neighbors. Eirini especially loves the kids and wants them to come back sooner than next summer. The staff of Yiamas restaurant, the owners of several clothing boutiques, the waiters at Alas – all exchanged farewell greetings as we came through – several encouraging us to come back soon. We stopped at Stelios and said goodbye to the crew there including Stelios himself. Even the lady at the 24 hour kiosk by the port where we stopped to buy water knew us and wished us well. There were some shockingly heartfelt exchanges and we really needed the extra 20 minutes we built-in.
When we finally made our way onto the ferry dock, Blue Star 2 was coming into port – shockingly running a few minutes early. Nonetheless, during that short wait time, Ailyn managed to run through all the possibilities of what could go wrong she gleaned from Titanic. We even had to check the red water line was visible and not submerged, briefly considering whether the additional people and vehicles might be too much for the ship. Ailyn seemed intellectually convinced the boat was safe – but as she aptly pointed out later, how we feel and what we understand can be two different things.
I pointed out to her that I had no fear of Blue Star 2, but the boarding process is something to worry about – it's important we stick together in the crowd. That got her attention and rather than worry about the ferry hitting an iceberg and splitting in half, Ailyn turned her attention to making sure the three of us could stay connected in a workable formation.
So it seemed we would be drama-free, until we weren't.
Luckily, everyone got sleep on the ferry, which arrived a half hour early. Our driver got us to the hotel in style in a Tesla Model Y. And though our room was not yet ready – it was an early arrival – the lobby and cafe of our well known Sofitel Athens Airport made a comfortable base for the morning. As Sennen observed, if leaving Patmos is undesirable, at least the Sofitel is a nice transition between worlds. From my perspective, its location a crosswalk's distance from the departure terminal reduces friction dramatically – especially when catching a morning flight with kids in tow.
Is leaving our Patmos desirable? No, of course not. But as in life, we can take the journey one step and try to do it in style – and just maybe, we can keep the drama at bay. At least for now.
