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Authors: Sue Monk Kidd
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part in whatever renaissance might lie in my aging, perhaps opening me to the deeper, more primal layers of creativity I yearn for, and at the same time, taking me down to an irreducible essence, all the way to the severity of my own dying. Down to the gnawed bone.
Light sweeps across the slits of windows in the dome of the cathedral, sparking the air with bits of coppery brightness, and I look up for a moment and feel the spaciousness of wonder. And then a kind of guilt. How long have I been sitting here? An hour? Where is Ann? As I jump up, I see her walking toward me. “Did you see the bones?” she says.
I must have looked at her quizzically.
“St. Philothei’s bones.”
“Oh.” I shake my head.
“They’re over there,” she tells me and points to a silver reliquary on the altar.
We stand beside it and stare at the bones. We stand with our shoulders touching, without saying anything, and I can think of nothing now but Ann.
I have one of those stabbing, crystalline moments when it’s as if I’m outside of myself, observing. I see myself almost fifty and my daughter unrecognizably grown, and I wonder: How did this happen? Where did all the time go? Where did we go—those other selves? Then the moment passes and I’m back, staring again at the bones, these tiny sticks of enduring.
Ann
Restaurant-Athens
The hotel concierge recommends a restaurant in the Plaka. He writes the name on a piece of paper bearing a watermark of the Grande Bretagne and tears it off the tablet.
“We need good directions,” I tell him. “We’ve been lost in the Plaka once today.”
“All the streets there look alike,” he says and pulls a map from behind the desk. Using a yellow highlighter, he draws a spiraling path from our hotel to the restaurant.
“The yellow brick road,” I say. For no apparent reason.
“The road isn’t brick,” he explains.
Mom smiles.
“Right,” I say, deciding to stop while I’m not ahead.
“There is music and dancing,” he informs us as he marks the destination with a big star.
“Oz,” Mom says.
I give her a look that says very funny , as the concierge hands her the map. Everything on her face—mouth, eyes, eyebrows, especially her eyebrows—turns up as she looks at it, and I know she’s thinking this is a great way to spend the evening: music and dancing, a real Greek experience. She’s right; it’s a tradition that goes back centuries and there’s nothing more Greek than dancing—but I feel the wary beginnings of a stomachache.
We follow the swath of yellow on the map until Mom stops suddenly on the sidewalk. I’m already a few paces ahead of her when I hear her say, “Look, this is the same store. And it’s open.” When I turn back, she’s pointing into the window at glass pomegranates in a bird’s nest. We’d passed by them earlier today, but the shop was closed.
The place sells just about everything: key chains, worry beads, Byzantine icons, Zeus beach towels, miniature statues of the Olympian family members. Mom goes over to the nest and plucks out a pomegranate. It has an eye on top to slip a chain through. On the bottom, the glass is fluted out like the knotted end of a tiny red balloon.
I learned about Persephone and the pomegranate reading Edith Hamilton’s Mythology in middle school. As I recall, it boiled down to three things: Persephone ate the pomegranate seeds that Hades offered her in the underworld; this guaranteed she and her mother would be separated a third of every year; and that was how winter came into the world.
“I’m going to buy a pomegranate for each of us,” Mom announces.
“Thanks,” I say, but frankly I’m wondering, why pomegranates?
At the register, Mom fingers through the colorful bills in her wallet—cream, aqua, and orange. Our new charms cost 1900 drachmas, about seven or eight American dollars. I pull out several hundred-drachma bills, but Mom tells me to save my money for something else. As I slide the money back,
Light sweeps across the slits of windows in the dome of the cathedral, sparking the air with bits of coppery brightness, and I look up for a moment and feel the spaciousness of wonder. And then a kind of guilt. How long have I been sitting here? An hour? Where is Ann? As I jump up, I see her walking toward me. “Did you see the bones?” she says.
I must have looked at her quizzically.
“St. Philothei’s bones.”
“Oh.” I shake my head.
“They’re over there,” she tells me and points to a silver reliquary on the altar.
We stand beside it and stare at the bones. We stand with our shoulders touching, without saying anything, and I can think of nothing now but Ann.
I have one of those stabbing, crystalline moments when it’s as if I’m outside of myself, observing. I see myself almost fifty and my daughter unrecognizably grown, and I wonder: How did this happen? Where did all the time go? Where did we go—those other selves? Then the moment passes and I’m back, staring again at the bones, these tiny sticks of enduring.
Ann
Restaurant-Athens
The hotel concierge recommends a restaurant in the Plaka. He writes the name on a piece of paper bearing a watermark of the Grande Bretagne and tears it off the tablet.
“We need good directions,” I tell him. “We’ve been lost in the Plaka once today.”
“All the streets there look alike,” he says and pulls a map from behind the desk. Using a yellow highlighter, he draws a spiraling path from our hotel to the restaurant.
“The yellow brick road,” I say. For no apparent reason.
“The road isn’t brick,” he explains.
Mom smiles.
“Right,” I say, deciding to stop while I’m not ahead.
“There is music and dancing,” he informs us as he marks the destination with a big star.
“Oz,” Mom says.
I give her a look that says very funny , as the concierge hands her the map. Everything on her face—mouth, eyes, eyebrows, especially her eyebrows—turns up as she looks at it, and I know she’s thinking this is a great way to spend the evening: music and dancing, a real Greek experience. She’s right; it’s a tradition that goes back centuries and there’s nothing more Greek than dancing—but I feel the wary beginnings of a stomachache.
We follow the swath of yellow on the map until Mom stops suddenly on the sidewalk. I’m already a few paces ahead of her when I hear her say, “Look, this is the same store. And it’s open.” When I turn back, she’s pointing into the window at glass pomegranates in a bird’s nest. We’d passed by them earlier today, but the shop was closed.
The place sells just about everything: key chains, worry beads, Byzantine icons, Zeus beach towels, miniature statues of the Olympian family members. Mom goes over to the nest and plucks out a pomegranate. It has an eye on top to slip a chain through. On the bottom, the glass is fluted out like the knotted end of a tiny red balloon.
I learned about Persephone and the pomegranate reading Edith Hamilton’s Mythology in middle school. As I recall, it boiled down to three things: Persephone ate the pomegranate seeds that Hades offered her in the underworld; this guaranteed she and her mother would be separated a third of every year; and that was how winter came into the world.
“I’m going to buy a pomegranate for each of us,” Mom announces.
“Thanks,” I say, but frankly I’m wondering, why pomegranates?
At the register, Mom fingers through the colorful bills in her wallet—cream, aqua, and orange. Our new charms cost 1900 drachmas, about seven or eight American dollars. I pull out several hundred-drachma bills, but Mom tells me to save my money for something else. As I slide the money back,
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