In this European autumn, the whole family is steeped in sadness, wrapped in mourning, for my Greek daughter-in-law has very recently been delivered of a stillborn girl. Our hopes for a new generation fade and drift with the falling leaves, and we all have to find our own means of managing unexpected grief. My two bachelor sons do not know what to say or do; neither does their father. Having babies is easy stuff, you can almost hear them thinking. Women manage it all the time, don’t they?
Niko, my second son, serves in the Greek Special Forces, but is currently halfway through a three-year posting in Germany, at the NATO base near Pfullendorf, in Baden-Württemberg. At this crucial time, both he and Katerina are separated from the language, the culture, and the traditions that are so much a part of them. The nearest Greek Orthodox Church is over an hour’s drive away.
Women of the senior generation do what such women always try to do; we move heaven and earth to be there. Katerina’s mother flies in from central Greece and brings the reassurance of familiarity with her. The priest from the hometown has been on the phone and has sent a phylacto with mother, a talisman to keep Katerina safe, to let her know that she is being guarded and protected, that a whole community, both spiritual and material, is thinking of her. And Mama also brings her a little token from the Monastery of St Catherine (Aghia Ekaterini), all the way from the Sinai Desert.
Then it is my turn. I am not Greek, not Orthodox, not Catholic. I am that mysterious thing, a Protestant. I was also raised Nonconformist, a concept with which your average Greek has a great deal of trouble, for 97 per cent of the population of Greece is Orthodox. All I can do is bring a willing ear, books and magazines of a distracting nature, and the mandatory Greek goodies: the dried figs and the sesame seed and honey pastelli sent by a worried father-in-law.
Katerina’s mother is single-mindedly devout. Katerina herself is prepared to be eclectic: she writes a note to God and pins it on the prayer board during our visit to Ulm Minster, and does not look askance at the many statues; she fasts and then makes the trip to the Orthodox Church so that she can take communion. And she