Katherine

We are not always who we think we are

Photo by author.

Ourania, the daughter of the banker and Cleo,

spoke English.

Ourania, my cousin, the princess of the backstory.

Great aunt Katherine’s husband had been from up north -

Macedonia, Thrace, Thessaloniki, some place like that.

“A Turk,” some claimed.

Others said he drank too much.

Whatever the facts,

he left her with very little when he died.

Katherine asked to have me visit and I went alone.

Her whitewashed cottage,

no bigger than a Kentucky pioneer’s first log cabin,

had an open hearth at one end

and a shelf along a sidewall

for sleeping and eating

like the Romans did a thousand or two or three thousand years ago.

To meet the requirements of hospitality,

a boy about six or seven, his back straight with responsibility,

ceremoniously carried in

a single glass of water on a platter

and offered it to me.