Zipping back to town by motor scooter at midnight with the moon almost, but not yet full the sea was aglow, the outlines of the island against the water sharp and clear. The night was about 75 degrees with a gentle wind and not many people on the road. It reminded me of summer evenings in Seattle during the heady days of the college summers I spent there – late sunsets, warm nights, fun with friends. We either had nowhere we needed to be in the morning or didn’t mind less sleep in exchange for time that felt precious – particularly in the summer between my Freshman and Sophomore years. I felt very free and even more, learned so much.
Both like and unalike from back then, I was returning from a late evening with friends. Only instead of jumping off an old concrete boat at the docks along the cut between Lake Union and and Lake Washington followed by insane amounts of ice cream at Marbletop Creamery, I was returning from a delicious, but pricey farm-to-table meal with Eric and Sylvie at Ela! Farms in the Campos river valley. Ela! doesn’t advertise, has no signage, is all fairy-light lit outdoor seating and fills-up every night. The menu is on a large, portable chalkboard and the kitchen is outdoors, in the open. You can watch the whole chickens roasting on spits – and if you don’t order them in advance, you probably won’t get one. Ela! serves fine wines only – no other alcohol and has the closest thing to fusion food I’ve encountered here. The waitstaff is equally international with French, Spanish and Australians. I’m not sure anyone was actually Greek.
With produce grown on their own small farm, the flavors were outstanding and the cuisine creative. For people who value great meat, Ela! is the only place I’ve seen on Patmos grilling giant ribeye steaks.
Along with the great cuisine, I had a great time with my French friends. In past years, I’ve always seen them with the kids – and it’s a wonderful relationship. We were introduced by my friend Bruno who I met through yoga. Syvlie and Eric are friends of Bruno and his girlfriend Agnes who has a house on the backside of Hora and lends it to Sylvie and Eric when she isn’t occupying it. This is the first year I’ve had extended opportunity to talk with Sylvie and Eric in strictly adult conversation and it has been a joy getting to know them better.
I had a moment Friday afternoon where I thought maybe I would cancel – maybe I wasn’t feeling that social. Then I reminded myself how rare the opportunity is, how great they are and that a dinner out would probably be good for me.
It was. And riding home – not only did I feel good, enjoy the beautify of a well-lit Patmos summer evening, but I even remembered the feeling of days gone by riding motorcycles in Taiwan and Thailand and how (mostly) fun that was.
Someone recently asked me why Patmos works so much better for me than Westlake. My primary response is the social network I have here mixed with the fact that I feel there is more a place for me as a divorced, single dad than there is in very couple and family-focused Westlake. The same reason I wanted us to move to Westlake – that it’s an amazing family community – now socially works against me when I don’t have my kids. And there are a lot of days and hours of that.
But why should Patmos – a place where I will always be an outsider – work better for me than Westlake? It even has similar strong emphasis on family and generally conservative values.
I realized it goes to the heart of something I heard discussed a lot back in the anti-heady days of 2020 and the COVID lockdowns. In English, Friend is a very flexible word. We use it to describe many kinds of relationships with people to whom we’re not related and with whom we feel some kind of a connection or bond.
There are a LOT of gradations.
My yoga friends weren’t asked to Sennen’s Bar Mitzvah or my dad’s Celebration of Life. They’re not hurt and I won’t be invited to their lifecycle events. Still, they are a kind of friend. My friends at temple are a layer closer – with some being people I love to chat with outside services to others who I share more deeply with to others who have been to my home and with whom I hand out. I have friends I feel close-ish with but in the stage of adult life we’re in, the best we can do to spend time one-on-one is to grab lunch periodically.
There are work-friends who make work a lot more enjoyable and former-work-friends who I try to hold onto as best I can – though as we progress through life, the ranks of former-work-friends grows and it becomes harder to maintain (although I have a knack for recycling former work friends into current work friends again).
I have people who are closest-to-my-heart – people who know me well and who I in turn know – who I know will be there for me and vice versa during life’s tough times. Those relationships often don’t correspond with distance or even hours we spend together these days, but involve a lot of communication and commitments to find blocks of time together when we can. I sometimes forget when I haven’t seen those people for a year or more because they’re woven into my life – even if we’re just texting each other or talking by phone. Undoubtedly, most of those relationships were forged when we were younger and enjoyed more time and shared experiences. Shared experiences are key to close relationships and even if they are rare today, the ones we had are the shared foundational mythology that binds us.
On Patmos, I have no one who meets the closest-to-my-heart category. That’s a given. Though in Westlake, there are only three within driving-distance and one in my same area – but it doesn’t mean we see each other much more than the ones who live states away, though it’s nice to have them for holidays and important events.
All of that said, this being my fourth summer with the house, in the span of three years I have made a number of friends of one kind or another and at least one who if I was around more during a less busy season, I could imagine hanging out with and becoming closer friends. When it’s not prime tourist season, people here do slow down and put time into their relationships – which I love. The two and a half weeks here in Winter of 2024 absolutely brought me closer to a number of Patmians, including my neighbors. They’re not the people I called when my dad was dying, but we have a better understanding and regard for one another, which is lovely.
And that’s the thing right there. On Patmos, every day, just doing mundane things like buying produce or walking across town, I have positive interactions – and at least one of them is with someone I would introduce as a friend.
Yesterday, when I stopped at the produce market for a seedless watermelon (snagged the last one!) George the Greek-Australian guy who works at the appliance and electronics shop came up and gave a warm handshake and wanted to catch up. He and his Greek-heritage family moved here two years ago – leaving behind the only country they had ever lived in, choosing to raise children on Patmos largely because his wife felt it would be better for the kids and had no love for the rat-race of Sydney. George was nervous and trying to settle into it when we met. Now he’s loving life and is always extremely warm with me. There’s a kinship of being outsiders moving our way in – although he is ethnically Greek and speaks fluently, so he’s definitely got a leg up on me.
I spent some time at Agriolivadi Friday afternoon. Although Petra is my beach of choice, Agrio is where I feel most socially connected. In the spare moments of their exhausting, long days, I get to kibbitz with Andreas and Vanghelis – sometimes Stefanos who owns the taverna and cafe. We know things about one another and some depthful details of our lives.
Even Stavros, a 23-year-old waiter at Aetherion Cafe – I know a bit about his family, how he gets his clothes and what it’s like to be a 23-year-old living on Patmos. My kids know who he is and like him. Again, my winter sojourn created that connection.
Tassos the butcher is one of my favorite people on the island because we manage to communicate in phrases and gestures – but seem to understand one another and he’s always smiling. I don’t know if hacking up meat all day is good for endorphins or what – but he’s a really happy guy, maybe a little younger than me and I walk out of his shop happy that’s where I spend my money.
I could continue on this way with a long list.
It could very well be that in a society where people don’t get in their cars to go everywhere, everyone just gets to know one another better. They also largely do business with one another – buying from each other’s shops and businesses. After all, other than the largest supermarket and the bank, there are no corporate entities, no chains on Patmos. It’s all small businesses with real people behind them. A lot of them go to church together. A lot of them are related at one level or another. Even people who compete against one another are often friends – like the gardener I wanted couldn’t take my house because he’s friends with the gardener Kristos uses – who was caring for my yard. So, he had to respect the other guy’s territory.
None of these people are the closest-to-my-heart friends and probably never will be. Maybe a few of them could be the kinds of friends I go to lunch with or even go to one another’s home for dinner (Dimitris and Christina had me and Michelle over in December 2024). But there’s something to be said about having a large supply of the people you call friends, even if they aren’t the center-of-the-circle people. It feels nice to recognize and be recognized – and to know there’s a shared set of values between you.
For all the people I know and like around Westlake, I’m not sure how often we share the same values.
I’ve also been thinking about the other side of the Westlake equation. In Westlake, if I were coupled, I would easily find my social standing again. All the friends who can’t really invite me to their couples’ nights out, suddenly could. Being a couple opens lots of doors. I felt it when I started dating Michelle – people were happy for me not just because I was with someone, but because it restored a certain social standing. Suddenly, people at temple wanted to invite US over for Shabbat dinner. I’ve never had an invitation on my own.
At some point – whether in Westlake, Patmos, or ideally both – I’d like to find someone again. If I learned anything from my divorce and first run at dating post-divorce, it’s that I need to be clear with myself about what works for me. I’m not sure if I’ve fully figured that out. I’m getting much clearer on what doesn’t work – which mistakes I don’t want to repeat and some situations in which I don’t want to find myself. I have a list of qualities that matter. I have some dealbreakers. And then I have worries – because I want to meet a woman within range where I live, who I don’t want to raise children with (ie no blended family), with whom I would like to develop a long-term relationship and who might also want to live abroad once my kids are old enough. It’s a tall order.
I know everything’s a compromise. People all have their quirks, baggage, idiosyncrasies and of course all those traits you love about them in the beginning that somehow down the line turn into the very things that most annoy you. Where do I hold firm? Where do I give and accept? There has to be chemistry – but how do I keep that from blinding me?
Most importantly, I knew a lot more about what I wanted in a partner when careers and kids were in front of us. What do I want for the next phase of my life? I’m not fully sure.
It’s a lot easier to find cool people to have coffee with, or even dinner on Patmos – I can tell you that.
Yesterday, I took a day without devices. The blog post was set on an auto-timer, written Friday. It was a true Shabbat with no communications or constant checking my phone – or using it to look up things, check news, etc. I finished a novel at Petra and felt very grounded and relaxed. I ate dinner slowly and watched movies and fell asleep early on the sofa I so love here. Heaven. Something I need to do more frequently.
This morning I realized the joy of a day like that – as is the entire meaning of Shabbat – is that it stands out. Humans are a social animal. We need the interaction. We need all those degrees of friends and interactions. We need partners with whom we share life including the risks we take along the way. I would just like to make my choices as smartly as possible and it feels scary to figure out for mostly different reasons than it did the first time.
I guess something about the moonlight bouncing off the coves of Kampos and Agriolivadi as I sped by made me realize just how joyous friendships and the time with friends can be. Those were the days when I made new and lasting close-to-my-heart connections and furthered them with friends from home who came to hang out. At the time – just as when I lived in Bali, looked up at the night sky and smelled the fragrant air – a part of me knew it was a special and fleeting period. I savored the time with friends – because being together was a seemingly boundless luxury with an invisible, but lurking cap. Now shared experiences and particularly late nights of laughs and open-heartedness are far fewer. How to maximize the opportunities? How do I make the time spent count and with whom?
