Five weeks of a motorscooter rental costs me about $450. This is my second year of having a house here and it struck me that $450 might be better put toward owning one. In the weeks before coming to Patmos, I explored my options both via people I knew here on Patmos and listings on Facebook Marketplace.
After careful consideration, the best choice seemed to be Stefanos who I usually rent from. He has an older scooter he's been considering retiring – a slightly larger one – that has low mileage for its age. Because Stefanos meticulously maintains his scooters, essentially warranties the vehicle and doing business locally is good guanxi which Wikipedia defines as "a term used in Chinese culture to describe an individual's social network of mutually beneficial personal and business relationships".
Only when I went to get the bike from Stefanos, we hit a snag: the Greek island equivalent of the DMV (a very nice man named Nikkos in a well air-conditioned office by the marina) said the vehicle can't be registered into my name without a residency number. I have a house, but haven't bothered with any visas because I can come to Europe for more days per year than I actually need at this time. A series of calls ensued during my visit to Nikkos – a virtual huddle of Nikkos, Stefanos and Manos (my attorney/one of the two attorneys). The group determined the best course was for Stefanos to put the bike on layaway until I had my residency card and then transact the purchase at that time.
Manos quickly researched what was involved in my obtaining residency – because the regulations change annually. Thanks to the house, I meet all the criteria except having a long-stay visa that can then be converted into a residency card. Getting that visa is my next step to motorscooter ownership.
It could be more significant.
The world feels scary these days. Whatever your political outlook, I think we can all agree the United States feels at best edgy and uncertain – particularly as a Jew. A few years ago, I used to think the most likely reason to relocate internationally was the kids' safety in school. After a fatal shooting at the high school next our niece Bailey's junior high, I flipped out and told Emily it was time to apply for visas to Singapore – there are two synagogues, so we could still raise the kids Jewish, the education quality is top notch and most importantly, there would be no shootings. I couldn't deal with the idea of sending my kids to school to die.
Like a rational person, Emily said that seemed a bit extreme and that we should wait and see how things go.
I'm not sure things are any better, though.
These days, like most people, I've come to accept random shootings around the country are just part of the news on any given day. Now, I worry about more specific shootings – antisemitic ones. How safe are we at our synagogue? In our homes? On High Holidays? Our community seems better off than many – but could that change? Could our last name one day be a target on my kids' backs? I certainly hope not and I want to remain optimistic – but I'd be foolish not to consider the possibility.
After all, I exist because my great-grandparents – each and every one of the eight – decided leaving behind their families and everything they knew for the unknown on another continent was better than what they had known their whole lives and for generations in Eastern Europe. They created a future for their descendants and spared themselves from the Holocaust – which came about 20-40 years later depending on the great-grandparent – because they knew when to get out.
I also worry about our general political stability. Both sides of the political spectrum seem to have a narrative that the other is becoming authoritarian and trampling or rights – that respect for our constitution is diminishing. It's pretty scary the one thing everyone can agree on is that things are devolving.
If epigenetic and inherited trauma are real, then this seems about the right time for my spidey-senses to tingle. Residency in another country – one in which I already own a house – as a backup plan can't hurt. In all honesty, I've pondered this idea of Patmos as an emergency escape hatch since I made the offer on the house in September 2022. This motorscooter issue felt almost like God, or the Universe, or however you want to conceptualize, giving me a nudge.
Sure, I realize there are important details yet to be worked out. I would need Emily's buy-in and for the kids to also gain residency. Whatever issues there are between me and Emily, I would want my kids' mother to be able to get out too – so is there a way for her to get a visa or residency too?
I also realize Patmos has a few distinct disadvantages. First, I've heard the schools aren't amazing. Patmos is the Greek equivalent of a rural area and the national government contracts teachers to do annual rotations on the island. The schools do not have a stable resting faculty who are rooted in the community. The same goes for the medical center – doctors from around Greece and residents from Switzerland do rotations on Patmos. Trauma cases and serious medical issues have to go to hospitals either on other islands - like Kalymnos, Rhodes and Samos – or to Athens. Perhaps the biggest strike against Patmos is the lack of any Jewish community.
Of course, as many immigrant groups have proven, where you can get to and where you ultimately settle can be two different things. Maybe Patmos is an easy place to land in an emergency – a place to regroup and plan a next move if shit really hits the fan. That can be valuable in and of itself. I still think Singapore is where I'd want to finish raising my kids in a disaster scenario. But who knows?
I suppose this is the irony of a Fourth of July post – that I'm contemplating what happens if our democratic republic really does implode which is not something I ever took seriously until the last decade.
Hopefully, my thinking is just the product of an overactive, insidious media. We are all flooded by so many messages of different bents in which at best we receive facts without complete and fair contexts – if we receive facts at all. Unlike the days of three TV networks and at least one major newspaper if not two or three in each major city – when the media took pride in reporting top quality, unbiased news, we now live in an age of infotainment. We can all choose our flavor of information and the echo chamber we want to enter. The world is increasingly complex and it's hard to know if we're being presented anything fair and balanced. Although, sometimes I think the world has always been complex and humanity on the brink of disaster (think World War II, Cuban Missile Crisis, Bubonic Plague and everything in Billy Joel's We Didn't Start The Fire…) we just had less ability to communicate all of it and fewer media in which to do it.
Maybe the other lesson from my great-grandparents is that the world has always been an unfair and scary place? Maybe their gifts helped shield me from it for a good potion of my life? Maybe being a parent made me more vulnerable and everything more frightening?
It's hard to know.
I just hope that next Fourth of July this post looks silly, pessimistic and overly anxious. I hope that we continue to celebrate the freedoms, liberties and respect America has always stood for – and that as we so often did in the past – we all feel free, safe and grateful.
