At the begining of May each year we celebrate the mother. Everybody search to find a present for her... a present to show her the appreciation for the great gift a mother gives to the world... the gift of life.

As we use to say in Greece a child who have lost his/her father is not an orphan, only when he/she lose the mother is an orphan and I am an orphan. I have lost my mothers and one more year this celebration brings to my memory the happy moments I had having them all around me.

Strange eh? Yes I am talking for mothers because I consider my grandmothers as my mothers too. I felt the warm hug of all of them and I grew up in a nest they had created. All these mothers were the real leaders of our family.

It was a period of my life that my family had 4 mothers. This photo shows 5 generations of women. From right to left, my grand grand mother Penelope, my grand mother Panagiota, my mother Evangelia, me and my baby daughter, Despina. This photo was taken 25 years ago and covers the history of my family for more than one century.

My mothers were tough because life made them this way. All of them had to work hard and keep their family safe and happy in difficult times.

Penelope Vasiliou was married at her 14th. He gave birth to 5 children, 3 daughters and 2 sons. She worked hard at the farm of her family and she was the leader of her family as she was a widow from her 40's. She wore the black dresses from that time and she never took off them.

She lost a son at the difficult years after the World War II, at the time of the stupid civil war. Her son had just finished the medical school. He was a physician and wanted to go at the mountain to help the leftist rebels with his medical knowledge. One of the rebels was his older brother. Giakoumis killed by a gunshot short after he joined the rebels. Imagine this grandma...
She lived a tragedy but she remained a sweet happy lady. I remember the times that she heard a gunshot. That brought her in panic every time it happened. She thought that she lived in one more war.

Penelope was the classic grandma. She liked to spend a lot of time with me. He had the patience to design stories at her mind... every time a different story... a story that continued for many hours with Princes and Princesses, with Knights, with Kings and Queens. She designed her own world, a romantic world and I was there... at the middle of the story... I was her Princess. She liked to call me with the strange phrase to those who don't know the samian dialect, "Kso' m" that was the "Chriso mou" meaning "My gold treasure ".

Panagiota Vasiliou, my grand mother and daughter of Penelope. She loved a very handsome man, my grand father, a kittle husband. Still famous for his crazy way of life but also a very brave man. He worked a lot at the resistance during the World War II but he was from the opposite side of the rebels, he was at the central political side. Imagine what happened that period at my family. A war had separated a family...

Panagiota had to work a lot at the family shop for bikes and at the same time at the farm and at her home growing up 3 children. Not the kind of woman who would tell you stories...

A needlework is hung close to my bed with two deers represents the tenderness between a mother and her child. This has been embroidered by my mother. It is something I have with me from the moment I left my parents home. This small picture keeps me connected with her. I feel her close to me when I turn to see it.

Evangelia Eleftheriadou, daughter of Panagiota and my mother... another tough woman. She had a good education, she was a very good accountant but she stopped working outside her home after my birth. My father was a marine mechanical engineer. He traveled around the globe with different kind of big ships and Evangelia had to keep the family and build a house. Difficult times for us and my mother succeeded but she never had the time to live a normal happy life.

Evangelia born at the difficult years of the war and she lived many sad and difficult times. We had never been very close as we were different characters. She always wanted too much from me. She wanted to design a life for me, the way he thought it was right. She loved me and my brother a lot and she wanted to give us the tools for a good life.
Many communication problems between us but my heart was broken when I lost her a Christmas Day. She collapsed after the death of my uncle, her brother and she was an easy target for the cancer. She died after a year's fight with the disease.

One more grand mother... a grandma I have never met. I have her name... her full name, Fotini Eleftheriadou of Ioannis. Looking at her photo I could see her expression which looks to mine. She was so serious... so far-of the other world.

What I have from her is only this photo and a name... my name. The information that came to me about her is not enough to know her well but I am sure I can feel her searching the books trying to find the facts that formed the history of the tragic years she lived.

Fotini had born in Kusadasi, a small village during the years she lived there and now a very touristic big town in Minor Asia very close to Samos, the island I have born.

Fotini's life was not difficult. Fotini's life was a tragedy. She and her family forced to leave their land and their belongings. They lost relatives but survived from a genocide. Fotini survived the storm of the turkish nationalism and she was not the only one.

Millions of children, men and women were tortured and massacred or expelled from their homes only for being Greeks ( Hellenes). In the same places and often at the same time, were also tortured and massacred millions of Armenians and Assyrians of all ages.

The only "sin" of those millions of persons was to live where their ancestors had lived for thousands of years before the Turkish invasions . The Turkish rulers carried out with unimaginable cruelty their plan to create a " Turkey for the Turks."

It is a period of my life that I need to learn more for her for the history of my family. This started when I visited the ruins of her home which still exist in Kusadasi.
After that I searched to find books to learn more. I believe it is my duty to learn and transfer all this history of my family to my kids.

Just for her memory I will place an excerpt from a book I have read recently.

" Many officers and soldiers of the Turkish army who have been captured by the Allies and have arrived at Salonica, upon being questioned, have told of the destruction of Hellenism in Turkey .... Three means have been used, general mobilization, requisitions, and deportations.

Up to the end of 1917 more than 200,000 Greeks between 15 and 48 years of age were mobilized. Large numbers of these have succumbed to maltreatment, famine, exposure, and epidemics.

The Hellenic populations that have been compelled to leave their homes in Thrace and Asia Minor number more than 1,500,000. With the exception of the Greek populations of Constantinople, Smyrna , and some other cities, all the Greeks of Turkey are suffering martyrdom through deportations, outrages on women, and starvation.

Half of the deported populations have perished in consequence of ill-treatment, disease, and famine. Many have committed suicide or have been massacred in the interior of Asia Minor. Those that remain are subjected to continual martyrdom as slaves or are forced to become Mohammedans. Turkish functionaries and officers declare that no Christian shall be left alive in Turkey unless he embraces Mohammedanism. . . . "

Fotini and her family were survived but they lived many years in a refugee camp. My grandfather found her in Macedonia, at the city of Katerini. He was an elementary teacher but at those dark days of the war he was there as an army officer for more than 8 years and as I have learned from a relative a street in Katerini has his name.
They married in Katerini and Fotini gave birth to 3 children They came back in Samos. Life was cruel for them. They both died after a few years as also the younger of their kids whom Fotini left as baby. The name of the baby girl who died was Irine (Peace).

I haven't met her and I don't know if I will ever learn more details about her life. I met my uncle, Fotini's brother, many years ago but at that time it was too late. He was at the final stage of Alzheimer and it was very difficult for him to remember details from the life with her sister.

Last week I designed a cover for a book. I worked for her. I will not be paid for it. It was an offer for her, my gift to a grandmother I haven't met. The book is a republish of a book of George Horton, the american consul in Smyrna during the days that Fotini lived the worst times of her life, the genocide of the Christian population of the Minor Asia.
George Horton described what he had seen with his eyes there, what he lived there.

"Fortunately there were two steamers in port, and we managed to embark the unfortunate Christians in small groups. Despite all our efforts, these wretched people were in such haste to depart that they upset the small boats. An odious detail proved the cynicism of this horde, which, under pretext of disarming those leaving, shamefully robbed these poor, terrified people of their last belongings. They tore away from old women packages and bedding by force. Anger seized me and I blushed to see these abominations and I told an officer of the gendarmerie that if this did not stop, I would take a gun myself and fire on the robbers. This produced the desired effect, and these unfortunates were enabled to embark with what they had saved from the disaster, which proves that the whole movement could have been easily controlled." "

" I have often been impressed with the hopelessness of making people who have not been eye-witnesses, comprehend the dreadful character of the massacres which were carried on by the Turks against the Christian population of the Orient. I have never been able to describe sights that I have witnessed in such manner as to make my listeners actually see and understand. It frequently happens that people, sitting in their comfortable houses, lay aside an article or book on the subject, with the remark: "We are fed up on Armenian atrocities." Here is another strong point of the Turk's position: he has killed so many human beings and over so long a period of time that people are tired of hearing about it. He can, therefore, continue without interference. "

And now something for the last mother of my family, for me. I feel so happy... so lucky because I made 3 special kids. Well... as you know from the myth, an owl finds her kids as the most pretty of all. I find them special.

The relationship with them is not perfect, specially after the divorce but this 15 years old photograph brings back all these beautiful moments we have lived together.