My life in Athens has been a round of sorting pills, helping mom with everything, dressing her, putting on her back brace or taking it off. I walk Vincent on the hill near the house with a friend and her elderly dog most days. I run errands, do the cooking and grocery shopping.

So far I’ve learned to make greek lentil soup, bean soup, octopus with pasta, spinach rice and cabbage rice, chicken and vegetable soup, yiouvetsi, trahana soup* and I’m sure more things I can’t remember right now.

Trahana is something I’ve always hated. Yuck:

I can’t say its all been fun. I don’t usually cook greek food. Sure, I do cook something that resembles greek food now and then, but not often. I’m more of a stir fry, chinese, thai, vietname or italian food kinda girl. I’m also not a ‘cook often’ kinda girl.

I don’t fry unless you count oven or air-fryer frying.

And I never add a excess olive oil to anything. Mom is like “did you add olive oil while it cooks?”

“Ummm, no. I browned the onions in a bit of oil. You didn’t specifically tell me to add oil so I didn’t. I’ll add some now.”

Drizzle a tiny bit…

“And at the end, once its cooked, add a little more on top.”

Hmph.

When I defrosted pasta sauce from some tomatoes mom had cooked and frozen, I actually drained the excess oil OFF in order to make pasta sauce.

ugh.

And to think I always told everyone that MY mother doesn’t use a lot of oil in her food like most greeks do – dishes swimming in oil slicks to rival the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Yuck. She’d spent enough time in Australia to cut down drastically on oil.

Anyway.

Tomorrow we return to Paros. Me, mom, Vincent and a ton of stuff. We already sent 5 boxes and a suitcase ahead of us by transport company.

Mom doesn’t travel light. She used to fill her car to the brim when she used to drive and lived in her own unit. She’d take everything with her to Paros and bring a ton of things back each year.

“Mom, don’t they sell toilet paper on Paros?” “Its cheaper here.” Sheesh.

This time we are NOT taking everything with us, but her medication alone filled one box.

But this time she doesn’t know how long she’s staying, so she had to be prepared for all seasons. To be honest, at this stage I don’t know when, or even if, we’ll be back to Athens to stay. It all depends on mom’s health. Plus, I live on Paros, I don’t want to be leaving my home, friends, life and work for too long.

We will see. My life is all about taking it day by day.

z