Reminiscing...

Can it be that it was just two weeks ago? When we were walking through the orange groves outside Tyrinth, or moseying our way through the pedestrian streets of Marousi? Could it be that we celebrated the first (and official) of Irini's birthday's on her actual day of birth (the second such celebration took place just this past Sunday morning - poolside with a chocolate cake covered in multi-colored M&Ms)? Is it possible that we met Monica for the first time just a month ago? Can it be that just a few short weeks ago we were enjoying Christmas-eve dinner with Ralph, Anne and Maria (and Maria)?

Before heading back to Greece for this vacation Laurence was in a self-proclaimed "mid life crisis". His head was swirling in the realization that inspiration was running dry, that professional life had reached the proverbial "rut" and that the family life had reached the point of an amazing consumption of time spent preparing for, participating in, or just having come out of either naps, feeding or pooping. Was this was "mid life" was all about? And then Natalia reminded him: "You haven't been home in a year and a half". Suddenly Laurence recognized just how true that statement was.

The subsequent weeks were spent partly enjoying the social touch of friends and family and partly spent in seeming endless hours of various government offices doing paperwork that it now happily forgotten (well, not completely). But in just under three weeks Greece was able to restore a good deal of mental stability and balance to Laurence. The cool air. The Greek language. The friends so often missed for so long. The conversations on economy (and there were many of those!), and politics and soccer and corruption. Catching up for a year and a half. And now something new.... surrounded with high school friends, but only this time as parents. What a new and wonderful experience.

Now that we've returned morale, memory and mental balance have been restored, and Greece has, once again, shown itself to be more than the myriad of woes that brazenly cover the newspaper front covers. It is also the walk in Kifissia, the rizogalo at Varsos, the mediocre frape at any plateia (square). Rut or not, Laurence (and the rest of the family) is ready once again to face the future and take things in stride.