16 and now she is 40.
When Malama was pregnant with Efrossini, her obstetrician told her she was not pregnant and urged her to abort this abnormal growth, this tumor, this chocolate cyst, that she had growing inside her. Disturbed Malama went to sleep that night and dreamed that her pregnancy was normal, and she was carrying a little girl. She was warned in her dream not to abort it. Malama was adamant about carrying a real baby, and a girl yet, not a tumor.
Malama told her doctor she already had nine other pregnancies and she knew how it felt to carry a baby. She had no pains, as she would have had, if she had a tumor.
Her doctor would shake his head, in disbelief. He did not hear a heartbeat. He insisted all through the pregnancy it was a tumor. And now, she had that big, the biggest baby she ever had, in a taxi cab.
This was her miracle baby girl and the family was so elated, they named the baby, God’s gladness, Efrossini. This name also belonged to Malama’s grandmother.
The original name Efrossini belonged to Efrossini of Alexandria, in the 5thcentury. According to legend an older rich couple of Old Alexandria wanted a child desperately. A monk prayed to God on their behalf and they conceived and had the little girl. They named her Efrossini.
When she was older, her father Pamphnutius wished her to marry a local rich young man.
But she already had taken vows to God. She disguised herself in men’s clothing, assumed the name of Smaragdus and escaped to a man’s monastery. There, her guidance came from the same monk who had prayed for her birth, many years before.
When Pamphnutius was bereaved over the loss of his daughter he looked for comfort and guidance at the monastery. The monk placed Pamphnutius in Smaragdus’ care.
Smaragdus (Efrossini) was not recognized by her father and she cared for him many years. At her death bed, Smaragdus revealed to her father, her identity.
After a while Pamphnutius became a monk himself and used the same cell she had lived in. He died ten years later.
September 25th is the name day for St. Efrossini in both religions, the catholic and Greek orthodox.
Efrossini was born after the terrible war and to new prosperity. They even had a newly built modern home in Thessaloniki. It had electricity and indoor plumbing, even though the water had to be carried by buckets from the corner (vrisaki) public water spigot. It took many years for the public water to come to their house. This was a new street and the public water was a big project. She remembers the bus would even make a routine stop at the vrisaki. It was such a landmark! Her house was located between the Vrisaki and Martiou bus stops.
Since Efrossini was born a few years after the war ended she was spared the war’s hardships. But she remembers hearing the true stories of her family living through such terror. Her family like others did all they could possibly do, to somehow survive.
Malama, who was a true homemaker, had an extensive vegetable and herb garden in Thessaloniki too, to make nutritious, tasty and economical meals for her family. She also dried fruits, made preserves from her husband’s fruit trees in the garden, and from the citrus trees of lemons and oranges which were growing in huge clay pots.
The father and the older teenage brothers would carry those huge clay pots into the house for the winter because we had cold winters. Malama had an arsenal of foods hidden. These people lived in a suburb with a large back yard, not on a farm.
They kept a dozen chickens for fresh eggs. Back in Serres, during the war, the occupying enemy outside their door would grab anything of food value that was not hidden.
They did not care how many children would go hungry. So, this family was used to hiding most of their foods, in the stone foundation.
Malama had learned how to make soap by using the pig’s head and the pig’s fat and those two items would become some of the fat needed to create a coarse type of soap, a much-needed item. Malama also saved her used olive oil after frying vegetables for the family. Along with the fat from the pig, and some other necessary ingredients, including fresh basil from her garden, she was able to create a wonderful, coarse, green soap that smelled like heaven, she said. She had used that soap for washing clothes and washing dirty little faces, keeping her family healthy.
The father was a painter and had plenty of work in the warm months. In Greece, people painted their homes often, inside and out for health reasons, to kill germs, and to freshen up the interior and exterior pretty pastel colors. So, painters were busy in the warm months. This family was used to economizing and storing away nonperishable foods for the cold winter months, when it was impossible for their father to work. But their father Achillea was not idle in the winter.
People had to recycle back then from necessity, and the father would repair everything.
That size family in a small home did a lot of wear and tear.
In the winter, her father Achillea would make repairs to the family home. He would build furniture from recycled materials. He also made large containers, used to air dry the fish and meats. He built shelves to store foods on, and even made simple wooden toys for the smaller children. He used the unfinished construction white wood scraps.
Simply, nothing went to waste. That was real recycling, the original recycling. Those people were not landfill fillers. On the counter next to the sink there was a little trap door where clean paper, cardboard and dried sticks would be placed and when they needed hot water one special burner on the counter would heat a huge water pot. They burned paper, they composted food stuffs, and there was nothing to throw away.
There was no refrigeration or electricity in their home yet, at Serres. There was no way to keep meats and dairy products cold or fresh, unless they were salted or dried and preserved in some fashion.
Their goat produced the exceptional protein in the milk for the children, homemade feta cheese, yogurt, meat for a special feast, Easter Sunday. When the young goats were born, they would even have kidskin leather for school shoes from their hides. It was a simple life, a good life.
CHAPTER 8
THESSALONIKI
After the war, Efrossini’s parents found a maternal aunt of the young Jewish girls and the two young girls were placed with her. Efrossini’ s father sold the Serres home that their maternal yiayia (Zafiro) had left them and moved his family to Thessaloniki, a much larger city. It would be a brighter future for his family. Their brood was growing, and the older children would be needing jobs, possibly leaving home to start their own families. There would be better opportunities in the second largest city of Greece.
There, in beautiful Thessaloniki (named after Alexander the Greats’ half-sister) Achillea stretched their funds from the sale of the Serres house and built them a two-bedroom modern house.
It had electricity, two large bedrooms, one in the front and one in the back. A large square living room with two front windows, a rear kitchen close to the vegetable and herb gardens, and one bathroom with a high window that opened to the rear of the house. The father with the older sons dug out all the dirt under the master bedroom and they created one huge room under the house, a partial basement.
Malama always wished this large room in the earth to be her perfect root cellar. It was cool in the summer and warm in the winter. But her husband had other ideas when he dug it out. They needed another bedroom for their boys.
Achillea
