made the children feel bad with a certain look and her intense words, but she did not have to spank them. This was a time where people did not tell each other “I love you” constantly. They were shown love by their parent’s discipline and hugs and kisses. They treated each other lovingly.
Actions are much more appreciated than words. They felt they were loved. To this day Efrossini feels like one of the family in the two shows on television.
One is The Little House on the Prairie and the other is The Walton’s. These two shows reminded Efrossini of her home life back in Greece, safe, loved, well fed when she was a little girl.
Everyone loved their wonderful aunt in America for thinking of them and sending them the large trunks. They had never met her, but they loved her for her thoughtfulness. This woman had brightened their lives so many times, through some tough years, especially during the war before Efrossini was born. On top of this twice handmade bureau, perched a large, shiny, brown, glossy Grunding radio. It was a German made quality radio with a large fluorescent colored green eye.
From this radio came entertainment for the family, and news from around the world. Efrossini had not seen a television yet in a home, other than the one at the yearly World’s Fair in Thessaloniki.
In this living room with the four pastel and different colored walls, with a large and colorful ceramic tile floor, also sat against the rear wall, a beautiful eggplant colored ceramic coal stove. This was the central heat. In the bottom drawer were the ashes, and there, their father would bake the most delicious potatoes.
Sometimes when they only needed a little heat for a few hours then they just lit a portable brazier (mangali). It was a metal round appliance that just held the coals they lit. This little appliance was on metal legs and it was only used when everyone was awake. When lit, it quickly heated the entire space very efficiently.
Efrossini remembers the winters within this living room.
While her older siblings were playing cards for small change on the walnut table, which her mother bought, the younger children were playing under it. They would peel and squeeze the rinds before they ate the oranges and the tangerines. They ate healthy snacks like roasted chestnuts, sunflower and pumpkin seeds. Sometimes they cracked nuts. They also played games with Victorian colorful, shiny die paper cutouts which they collected through the year (skalista.)
Christmas time the children would decorate the citrus trees in the living room with the Victorian shiny, colorful die paper cut outs and some were even articulated with moving limbs like a cat cut out or a clown, or an angel with moving wings. They also added real small candles that were attached to miniature colorful clothes pins. They secured them to the branches and only on Christmas Eve they would light them one by one, and then enjoying them for a few minutes, all lit.
Natural fragrances were simply unforgettable from the citrus trees that many times were also blooming in the winter. Under the walnut table sat her mother’s pride and joy: a very large, thickly made, woolen, handmade Persian rug. It was nice and warm sitting on that wool rug. It felt like sitting on warm velvet.
The rest of the furniture was mint green consisting of a well-constructed rattan living room set with thick colorful cushions. These colors complimented the tall green and blue handmade bureau. We have such furniture today, usually in our sun rooms. Efrossini’ s oldest sister Soula had bought the living room set with her own money when she was working, right before she got married.
The small wedding reception was held in that living room and it had to look its best. So, by the time Efrossini was 12 years old, the two older sisters and two older brothers had gotten married and moved out. The family consisted now, of only the last four children and their two parents.
The last two boys moved out of the basement which developed a moisture problem. Malama did not want her boys to develop a respiratory ailment. They took the older sisters’ front room, and Efrossini was still on the divani! The boys were 16 and 20, when Efrossini was 12. Anna was eight years old.
1961 Edessa, Achillea and an employee
CHAPTER 9
GOOD NEWS
One day the family received a letter from America. Malama’s oldest married sister named Efrossini and her husband from New York would be coming to visit them. Finally, they would get to meet the lady who sent them trunks full of quality clothes and all those goodies, in the lean years. The trunks would come during the war and for about ten years after the war.
Their father Achillea would turn those heavy wooden trunks into beautiful, colorful pieces of useful furniture, much needed items for his large family. Now, Achillea would get the chance to show them, that nothing they had ever sent them had gone to waste.
The aunt and uncle came to Greece by ship. They had made reservations downtown Thessaloniki at a beautiful hotel. They would come to Malama’s home almost daily. They stayed half a day each day and in the evening after dinner they would go to their hotel.
The aunt and uncle were very impressed with the father’s handy work. They were also impressed with the young twelve-year-old Efrossini, who by the way was sharing the same name as her aunt. They were impressed that she was an excellent student, and with the fact she already had four years of French.
Now she was taking a third language English, at a night school. In Greece even back then, you had to speak a few languages to get a good paying job later in your life.
The aunt and uncle promised to go back to New York to America and start proceedings to bring Efrossini to America and give her a bright future, because she deserved it!
One year later the ticket came and Efrossini would be leaving for this great opportunity in America. It seemed like a dream. It was so exciting to be making such grand plans. Her parents told her, she would have everything they could not give her, including her own bedroom. She would go to better schools, and most of all, "You will become anything you wish," they told her.
This is such a wonderful opportunity, and you deserve it! You are so smart, and you love learning. Go with our blessings! You will take trips and come and see us, they continued. While they were telling her all these wonderful things about her future, they were hugging her and kissing her and crying, as they were missing her already.
“Finally”, she secretly said to herself, “I am going to America!”
CHAPTER 10
HER SECRET DREAMS
No one knew of little Efrossini’s dreams. Her first dream was to be able to sleep in that front bedroom her two older sisters had. She loved the breezes that blew through those sheer curtains and lifted them up into the air carrying subtle acacia scents from the blossoming front trees. She loved that room so much she would ask her mother weekly if she could scrub that wooden floor with a special bar soap for wooden floors her mother had made with lavender flowers. This way she could linger in that room and enjoy it like it was her very own bedroom. She also dreamed someday she would get a chance to go to America but with her whole family.
You see when she was about four years old she had tasted America. It was a chocolate bar with the famous brown wrapper. Who doesn’t know or like that bar of sweetness?
An American family rented one of the older luxurious villas in
