The lives of migrants often consist of divisions and collisions. At least partly: that’s the way it seems to me, anyhow, although ‘collisions’ may be the wrong word. There is the border between the old life and the new, the line drawn between past and present, the home country left behind and the strange one with its various demands and necessary adjustments. But sometimes both lives come together in unexpected ways, and one such conjunction is about to happen to me.
My youngest grandchild, a little girl of 15 months, is to be christened the day after Orthodox Easter, which this year falls on the 24th of April. Result: she is to be christened on Anzac Day! I have told my three sons about this important anniversary: they are amused by the coincidence, and pleased that I am pleased. There is, of course, no more reaction to be expected.
I can remember my first Anzac Day. Not even five, I held my partner’s hand as the class wound in a crocodile towards the local war memorial. Then I put the cross of white chrysanthemums my mother had made on the memorial’s lowest step. Even after decades spent in Greece, I still remember Anzac Day. It is no effort, while I’ve always thought it is the least I can do, as both my father and grandfather saw active service, my father in Borneo, my grandfather in France and Belgium. The day is remembered in Greece, too, for Greeks and Anzacs fought together in the last war, so that in years not beset by pandemic very moving memorial services are held in various places throughout the country. The biggest is held at the beautiful military cemetery in Phaleron, Athens, and is always well attended.
But Anzac Day has been a controversial anniversary for years, with many people maintaining it glorifies war. I have never agreed with this point of view, thinking instead of young people’s willingness to make the supreme sacrifice, and believing that they will always have a right to some acknowledgement. At the time of the first war, Australia’s population was under 5 million, 417,000 men between the ages of 18 and 44 enlisted, and 60,000 died. Do the math, as they say.
Such thoughts will be tucked away at the back of my mind this year, because baptism is a very important day, the day one begins the Christian life. My granddaughter will