Welcome Home to Greece

We invited readers of our weekly newsletter to submit entries to win a copy of Anna Koska’s book ‘From Field and Forest’. This beautiful nostalgic piece is an elegy to childhood memories, rekindled by a return to Greece; nature sparking memories for Penelope (@penelopesbites). These gorgeous nature notes made the Short List

My heart skipped a beat: this scent. The unmistakable aroma of citrus blossom filled the air as I passed through the metal gate into the yard of our temporary digs.

So familiar, yet now almost alien, it whipped me back to days long gone, when my Dad would reach over the edge of the balcony to pick a handful of fresh oranges the juice of which would soon fill my glass. Or when, as a girl, I would arrive for big family get-togethers in Athens, greeted by the scent of citrus blossom on my grandmother’s tree-lined street.

 

It is a few short weeks since our relocation (repatriation?) to my native Greece, after nearly 3 decades of building a life and growing a family in the UK. My brain is spinning and I am wearing a weary heart on my sleeve.

Where is home?

After a move that happened at breakneck speed, the dust has yet to settle. A leap of faith; an attempt to share what was the very best of our own childhoods with our kids; to take it slow, eat good food, swim in the Mediterranean Sea … and then?

Then we’ll see …

Space. Sunshine. Sights and smells of pine trees, bitter bay, and citrus blossom have already started to bring me ‘home’, in small and unexpected ways. Never before have I been this aware of how tightly woven my memories of growing up in Greece are with the natural world that surrounded me.

Or of how indelible a mark this left on my soul. 

Quite literally everywhere my gaze falls as I stroll, lies a memory of childhood in plant form and an association to my Greekness. I had thought that food and the flavours of Greek home cooking were my only way to evoke this connection.

More fool me.

My senses have been taken back to another world that has been lost to me for too long

The iconic silver-green foliage of olive trees with their gnarled trunks and black fruits are present on every other street. Olive groves break up the rows of houses, nestled as they are even amidst the small-town residential streets. I can live without a great many things, but not without olives or top quality extra virgin olive oil - often handed to me in washed-out plastic bottles to stuff in my suitcase on trips home as a student.

Yet now I am also reminded of carefree summers camping in the shade of beach-front olive groves, playing among the trees with still salty skin, falling asleep to the song of the cicadas. 

A blanket of fallen pine needles and an array of cones at my feet lift my gaze upwards to patches of wooded land covered by pine trees - or is it the way the scent of pine rises up all around that does it?

Fig trees with their dark green leaves and smooth silver-grey trunks are dotted around; they remind me of the grand old fig tree I lived next to when I was growing up, and the wonderful sweet flesh of its fruit picked fresh from the tree.

Ruby red, wild poppies springing up through cracks in paving stones or adorning the roadside and otherwise dry wildflower meadows - delicate yet resilient, they root themselves and cling on resolutely. My favourite flower as a child, I soon learned that this is best admired and allowed to thrive in the ground.

Imposing ‘fragkosikiés’ - cacti bearing prickly pears, an ever-present sight along our route to the nearest beach in a hot car, with windows rolled down.

Oregano, growing wild and rampant on the Greek hillside. Memories of foraging in the spring and summer months, drying it and rubbing the brittle stems to release the fragrant leaves for that most staple of store cupboard ingredients. Farmers’ carts at the roadside, loaded with enormous watermelons that we begged our parents to stop for again and again

Graceful Eucalyptus trees remind me of tree-lined roads on day trips and the trees that my parents planted when my brother and I were tiny; they had grown tall and grand by the time I was old enough to notice.

And now?

It is as though nature is putting wise,

strong arms around me, holding space.

Now the process begins of weaving our family rhythms with Greek experiences, smells, and sights until we all begin to feel at home.

Growing fresh roots. 

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