Cats
Every morning she makes her rounds through the village. She takes care of the cats in the village. Not everyone appreciates that. Especially the Greeks who come in the summer, they don’t like it and many cats have died as a result. However, the village needs cats against animals that you would rather not have in and around the house, such as mice and rats. An everlasting discussion. “They must be sterilized,” one group says, the other group disagrees. “Nature controls it itself, the strong survive, the weak don’t.” When you live close to mother nature one accepts her laws.
I now get to know her a little better. We can communicate reasonably well. She speaks calmly, unlike many others, occasionally breathes while speaking, articulates clearly and describes what I do not understand.
Google translate is my buddy and the conversation is pleasant and not tiring. She is just like me, a cuckoo in the nest. She came to live in Greece thirty years ago and never returned to her home country. She has spent most of these years in this village. In addition to taking care of the cats, she also takes care of an old housebound man, who lives higher up in the village.
Partners in crime
With a nice cup of coffee and the luxury of a cigarette, (yes, yes, we are partners in crime), she tells about her younger years, her unnoticed pregnancy, her more or less forced marriage and inevitable divorce. A few years later she came to Greece with her son, who grew up here.
Like many people here, she has a hard life and is uninsured, resulting in a rebelliously painful body. She has to live on very little, and then a large part of her household money goes on food and medication for the cats. She has one child, now an adult and the father of a daughter. She has not seen them for four years, she tells me somewhat sadly. They have returned to their country of birth.
I am an internet user from the first hour and the only one in this village with an internet connection with a laptop so for me that is too crazy for words.
“Does he have Facebook?” I ask thinking of solutions.
“Yes, yes, but I don’t have a modern telephone”.
“Doesn’t matter, I have this thing here” as I point to my laptop, which is long past the “state of the art”. But it meets exactly the purpose, to make contact, communication. So we dive together in front of the screen and we look for him on Facebook.
Suddenly she folds her hands around her cheeks and big tears roll down her face.
“O yios mou, o yios mou*” she sobs when we find him among his namesakes.
“Now we are going to arrange an appointment (rendezvous). I send him a friend request and arrange an appointment. “
That was this morning.
Bad weather
Soon after I made the request, it was accepted. I had just written a private message with an explanation. The appointment was made within two minutes. During a rain break, I went to her house to say that she could SEE and speak to her son and granddaughter tonight!
It was exciting because the whole day it rained and thundered, and the electricity and therefore the internet connection dropped out every now and then. At six o’clock I am sitting with candles and with a flashlight on, I knit a few rows. Knitting a shawl, a project that I started as a distraction from the need for smoking.
An hour before the appointment, she is at my door. While I make a full pot of hawthorn tea, she chits chats. She asks me four times what time it is because without glasses she cannot read the screen her 20-year-old phone. At the stroke of 8 p.m., I make the first video call. At 8.04 p.m. I have made ten attempts.
“He may not be home yet.
Maybe he first makes coffee.
He may want to go to the toilet first.
Calm down, he will come.”
“Maybe they have bad weather too?” She suggests herself with a deep frown.
Mothers
Not a minute later he called.
Not much came of speaking. I sat down in the kitchen while she was sniffling in the living room on one side of the screen, with her son and granddaughter on the other side, sniffling.
Afterwards, she told me that her granddaughter is growing up so beautiful and nice, and her son has grown his beard and moustache. She didn’t like the sight of it.
“Did you tell him that?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said with a cheerful frown.
Mothers remain mothers of course.
Now we are going to look for her brother, who she has not seen for 20 years.
There was a lot of hugging today.
Music: Paul Simon – Mother and child reunion
ο γιος μου – my son
Creatively engaging from start to finish. I feel to also give hugs, virtual hugs. The cat lady. What to say about her that wasn’t already poignantly said? We all have our stories. She is a sad one. Yet thanks to the author, she now has two reasons to smile: knowing strangers think fondly of her, and the great joy given her by the writer of seeing her son and granddaughter.