The days are becoming sunnier and longer. The extremely pleasant temperature still hanging in the 69-70 range is short about 15 degrees of its full summer peak, but the signs of summer are emerging nonetheless. More cruise ships, more visitors to the islands. The rental cars and motor scooters are clean and lines up in front of their respective establishments. The shops are all open – more of them for the full-day. There are more people with backpacks and linen clothing – obvious vacationers. Petrino, the dominant cafe in the town square is abuzz on a weekday. Even Stefanos with his restaurant and cafe at Agriolivadi has brought back his signature entrees, despite still slow weekday attendance. Still, once the baked eggplant and feta is back, it's no longer wabbit season.
The school children are clearly nearing the end of the year and just like at home, they have more field trips and end-of-the-year fun activities. In a place like Patmos, these are obvious because they walk through town to go anywhere and last week they took a bus up to Hora – all of 10 minutes up the hill. That's a field trip on a 13 square mile island…. Maybe next week they'll visit the donkeys or learn to make gelato with Andreas the Italian gelato-maker from Naples? It's hard to know.
Stelios, right in the middle of town, is one of my regular writing spots. Emily and I have gravitated to it every time we've been here for its location, comfort, reliable WiFi, clean restroom, accessible outlet just inside the door if needed, Stelios' infinite patience people sitting indefinitely – but most importantly, cheapness. It's a great place to be when you don't want to spend too much on lunch. Stelios is also great for people watching because it sits right at the crux of town where the square narrows down into the main street/path that continues through Skala. In essence, unless someone is only either shopping for their groceries or sitting at Petrino, they're likely to pass Stelios. Perhaps better said, Stelios is sitting at the aorta of Skala's heart.
Some afternoons the same packs teenagers pass by again and again – like American ones do in malls, only there's no Orange Julius, Mrs Fields or Apple Store here. The same older man on his loud, barely working pink motor scooter passes 20 times. The children flow out of the elementary school at 1:30 and always the same set of identical twin boys shuffle down the road at a quick pace with their dad, who is a surprisingly fast walker for Patmos. After the middle/high school gets out, some drop into Stelios' for gelato or a piece of his pre-made pizza. It's a lifestyle common to suburban and small-town America in the mid-to-late 20th Century.
One little detail always leaves me curious – pink camouflage. I've noticed many girls wearing it.
Boys here wear blue camouflage a lot. While I've seen blue camouflage clothing at home, it's not so ubiquitous and it doesn't make a ton of sense – because what's blue that a wearer pretending or imagining being a solider might blend into? American military camouflage used to be green thanks to Korea and Vietnam and then changed to more of a khaki or sandy brown from Desert Storm onward – which all makes sense. Our concept of military largely relates to desert countries. Here, the military wears blue camouflage fatigues – I assume to blend into the very blue sea and sky (which has a shaky logic, in my opinion). So it's no surprise that camouflage clothing for military-admiring kids would be blue.
But pink camouflage? This seems to be an attempt at gender equalizing camouflage. If boys go around wearing blue – or perhaps sand or khaki colored camouflage – why can't girls claim the camouflage idea as their own – pink camouflage as a sort of junior feminism? On the other hand, doesn't that buy into the somewhat sexist paradigm of linking color to gender identity? In order to reclaim the camouflage, girls have to affirm the idea that pink is for women and their female identity is symbolized by a conservative construct of femininity? What kind of a statement is that?
As in the United States, women – albeit not a lot of them, at roughly 4% of the force – serve in the Greek military. This is lower than the United States' already fairly low percentage of active duty female personnel at 14.4% – which of course is dramatically lower than Israel's 69% of all active duty positions being filled by women (although notably, they make up only 4% of combat forces). I'm sure those Greek female soldiers are uniformed in blue – not as a gender statement but because the greek military uniform corresponds with the Greek flag which in turn corresponds with the color of the Greek seas. If the message is that women and girls have every much right, ability and opportunity as men, wouldn't it mean that the blue (or khaki/sand) camouflage is for everyone? Wouldn't the rejection of color as a symbol of gender be more powerful than taking a traditional masculine pattern and painting it pink?
These are the kinds of things Emily and I used to talk about - especially when we traveled. Observations of cultural habits and norms – sifting through assumptions, givens, beliefs and biases. One of my favorite observations Emily ever made was while we were sitting by Hoan Kiem Lake in the middle of Hanoi enjoying some delicious mung bean mooncakes. We were marveling at how rapidly Vietnam was developing as it emerged from decades of communism while Emily was coming around to my view on mooncakes.
I wondered why Vietnam could make such quick progress in the wake of oppression and forced economic stagnation while India with all its resources, education and relatively liberal democracy still struggles to get ahead across the board? Emily offered that India's capitalistic success will always be hindered by the caste system. If a person is born to be a barber, then what change can there be? If one person is too "low" to talk to let alone shake hands, then how can they climb the economic ladder? Upward mobility is artificially stalled and the ability for labor to flow to the jobs and sectors where it's needed is hindered.
I thought it was a brilliant point that would never have crossed my mind.
Whenever I look back at the blog of our first year of marriage traveling the world, not just the memories, but the feelings of that time come back to me. When I look at the blog of our family's travels, I see so many joyous moments. It makes me remember that not that long ago, Emily was a person I really enjoyed. I can pick through any period and find the annoying or negative things or remember the arguments or fights – but the vast preponderance of our time together was loving and positive. The good times overshadowed the bad. Isn't that all we ever have in any relationship?
When I was younger, I thought people's faults mattered more. I judged what they did that I don't like or I thought was ineffective and I thought my judgements were important. Obviously, I still judge – we all do – but I've come to learn that my judgments are not very important unless I'm evaluating whether or not to have a relationship with someone. Maybe they have some use in navigating a relationship – ie "that's this person's crazy – best to avoid talking about X, or don't get upset when they go on their idiosyncratic rant when the topic comes up." However, whether or not the person SHOULD go off about their pet topic or whether or not they're making the right life decisions – that's mostly not anything I'm going to change or affect. Besides, we all have our craziness, idiosyncrasies and make choices people around us won't necessarily understand or validate. How would I want a friend or loved one to show up for me when I'm doing something they find annoying or different?
I'm not perfect at remembering or living this out – but I try and it definitely gets easier with age.
As I have been imagining what I might find when I return home in just over two weeks, I've been debating my focal point – my fixed center. Is the Emily of the past year and a half all there is? Is that the Emily around whom I make my decisions and judgments? Do I accept that the frequently selfish, thoughtless, cold, mean and hurtful person is who she's become? Is that what's most relevant to my decisions – because the clock can't be turned back and she is who she's become?
Or has the meanness been a little like souring the milk to wean the baby? As children become teenagers, the tensions that develop between parents and teens seem like evolution's way to change the family dynamic so that young people individuate and parents are forced to let go. A slightly older friend from temple told me that while she's loathe to admit it, when she dropped her older daughter off at college, her husband was in tears and she was thinking "good riddance!" She's very close with her daughter now – but they were at the peak of their teenage mother-daughter tensions. That seems to be the way…
If I take Emily's mean and unpleasant behaviors as her attempts to get me to be the one to walk away or let go, then the remaining question is whether or not to take the hint? Do I decide that's the sign and enough reason in and of itself to cut bait? Maybe it is.
At the same time, love and family can mean wading through other people's worst. Just because you're being horrible doesn't mean I have to do the same or slink away. One of my options is to keep loving you and showing patience and care anyway. When a loved one experiences chronic pain and becomes mean from it, we cut them slack and love them through it – we show compassion. There are people who stay together and even heal their relationships despite addictions, theft and affairs. One person I know has been in his marriage for 30 years. At one point they were both addicts and alcoholics. Then his business tanked and they lost a ton of money. He became so frightening to her that at one point, she had a bodyguard. Both went to rehab and couples therapy. Today they're not only together, but are closer and happier than ever. They created a nonprofit foundation and turned their house into a sober living home – which they run together and keep a nearby condo for themselves.
It turned out that under all the substances and the layers of pain below those, they were each still in there. Are Emily and I still in there? We've gone through a lot less – in fact, the most perplexing part to me, is that we haven't really gone through anything at all. Our pains are made of paper cuts, pin pricks and picked-at scabs. Have we become so privileged that we lack grit?
Or am I standing at the scene of a car accident saying, "Well, at least it wasn't a plane crash"?
I continue to struggle in part because sometimes I see the Emily I know and love still in there. When she's not being walled off, distant or angry – she comes out. I saw her occasionally injuring our December/January trip to Thailand. Of course when she was drinking I also saw parts of her I had never seen or imagined before. It was a trip of highs and lows. Still, she's in there. We had a dinner date around October where she suddenly showed up and was her warm, open loving self for a night. There are moments I catch her eyes and I see her.
The problem is she doesn't want to be seen. Those glances and moments are mistakes on her part – moments of weakness where she relaxes, warms up, accidentally drops the armor, lets herself go. What am I to do with that?
How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one, but the lightbulb has to want to change.
It doesn't matter the reason, my lightbulb doesn't want to change – at least she hasn't for awhile. While she gives off the occasional flicker, my life has grown darker. I can't know for sure what I'll go home to – but I can't assume it will be different.
Still, it's hard to let go of the idea that Emily is not the insightful mooncake eater she once was or that the warmth we felt playing with our baby on the beaches of Patmos is gone forever. Our home is decorated largely in brown because it was one of the new colors that overlapped in our personal palettes – but we leaned into it and made it work. We brazenly brought a large sofa without measuring the space in our living room and it ended up fitting the space exactly. We were smugly pleased with ourselves. We had fantastic dinner parties, commissioned art in Bali, talked extensively about that time on Rhodes when a woman spanked her child in a cafe and what our reaction was and/or should have been. We visited a red light district in Bangkok because Emily was curious and in Kerala, India Emily went off on an overnight trip to the ashram of a famous woman-guru who healed people with hugs and I enjoyed and admired her story. Emily's curiosity and chutzpah to try things were always a joy to me.
If I allow myself, I can bring it all back. The question then becomes do I allow myself?
Is it better to look at Emily as the person I love and know she is inside? Does that draw her out? Even if not, does it give my heart the compassion to be more generous and kinder to her – in the face of whatever she may or may not bring to our conversations and dealings? Can remembering Emily's higher self help me to be my higher self with her?
My fear is I'll just get hurt more and maybe fail to negotiating well enough for myself because I won't be tough enough. Of course, hardness, anger and resistance rarely produce the best results in life and maybe if I come with compassion, it could create enough space to allow her to bring some too? Do I roll the dice on the power of vulnerability?
It's too early to say and there's probably nothing to do except make the call in the moment. For now, it's an idea – a new perspective. I would like to think there's room for kindness and compassion to make a difference – in some way or another. Namaste.
