Weary in the airport, I wheel my suitcase toward check-in. Our well-planned trip to Athens, Santorini and Mykonos is ending. We share a final toast with our traveling companions, a fine Greek wine from the airport bar.
My husband bends to whisper: “Let’s not leave.”
He approaches the ticket desk, asks what it will cost to change our return flight.
I stand speechless, confused.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re not leaving. I want to find our family.”
We’ve both up grown up hearing stories of the “The Mani”, the land of our common Spartan ancestors, tales of its rugged beauty, the fierce, loyal nature of the people, the famous vendettas, starting as far back as Achilles. We know we still have family there.
My husband is spontaneous, determined. I’m a teacher, structured, organized.
“We have tickets,” I protest. “Our family is expecting us back home. It must be the wine!”
“That’s exactly my point,” he claims. “The wine reminded me. Our family IS waiting. We ARE going home.”
At that, our unplanned odyssey begins.
We rent a car, purchase maps, end up in Gythio, the small harbor town that opens up to the high mountain roads of Mani and our family’s villages. In his best broken Greek, my husband asks a woman sweeping the sidewalk if she knows a name: “Demetroulakos.” The broom stops mid-air. “My name”, she cries, welcoming us with big Greek hugs and her homemade wine to celebrate our meeting. She hands us a bottle to take, no label or date, the vintage her indelible connection to my husband.
We continue up tiny roads to villages that hold promise of more relatives, ask a man walking a dog of my family. He gestures towards a hill with a vendetta lookout tower. We wind up dangerous switchbacks to a small cottage, pull a string that rings a bell. A wrinkled man in a funny hat emerges. “Boucouvalas” I announce. Again, spontaneous hugs encircle us, tears wet our cheeks. He too brings wine, fills our glasses, shows grainy pictures of family, many with the piercing blue eyes of my grandfather who found his way to America as a boy, alone. This wine holds the taste of the hard times and history of those who left and those who stayed behind.
We drive on, see a man digging a ditch, say the name “Papaspryidakos.” He points to a house overlooking the sea. We find an open porch full of people, say the name again. They rush to hold us close. Platters of food fill the table next to jugs of wine made, we’re told, from the grapes of my ancestors.
A withered old uncle then grabs his walking stick, points to the mountain and gruffs,
“Now we go!”
We climb up hard-scrabble paths through twisted groves of olive trees, then further to an arbor laden with grapes, ripe and hanging low on the vines. Finally, an opening and an old stone house, the year 1886 etched by the door. Inside, on a crumbling wall, hangs a picture of my great grandparents.
“This their home”, he proclaims . “We keep to remember.”
It is one big room with a fireplace for cooking, a stone wheel for crushing olives into oil, a huge wooden vat where grapes were transformed into the wine of my lineage. In the corner, clay jugs hold the same wine my weathered uncle continues to ferment in honor of our ancestors, many forced to flee from war and starvation.
He fills our glasses. We quietly sip the wine of our history and all the stories it has to tell.
It’s the sweetest wine I’ve ever tasted.
I touch the thin gold band that encircles my finger, once encircling the finger of my grandmother, who, as a young girl, lived in this old stone house before setting sail at fifteen, never to return.
At that moment, I know I’ve returned for her. I feel her deep in my blood and bones, her spirit and that of all the others who inhabited this place infused in the wine of my heritage, their legacy embodied in its vintage.
I have, indeed, come home to a family that has been expecting me, a glass of wine at the ready, and I thank my spontaneous, determined husband for knowing.
“It must be the wine”, I say again, my palate savoring the memory and family waiting to be found on this mountain in Mani.