Of course, like everything, there are lots of reasons, Carly muses. It is warm and different from home and not too far. The light of the Mediterranean is magical. When Carly thinks of Greece, she always thinks of this colour combination.
Fuchsia pink (of the bougainvillea)
Bottle green (of the fir trees)
Bright white (of the houses)
Deep blue (of the sea and sky)
Four colours. You may not know this, but Carly is obsessed with prime numbers. And four is a good number but not a prime number. Oh yes. Carly realises it is two times by two. 22. This is good as two is the first prime number. And the only even numbered one. Carly used to think one was a prime number, but her son Haz disabused her of that fact. One is a special number. She isn’t sure how or why it is special. But Haz knows about mathematics, so she has to respect that. Haz also told her that her blog and sabbatical theme weren’t true either. How time goes faster as you get older. He claims this just isn’t true. Unless you go to another planet. And Carly is sticking with planet Earth thank you very much for the time being.
Back to Greece and its charms. So, there is also the food Carly enjoys so much. Particularly the pale pink dish taramasalata. It goes so well on Zoe’s bread, secretly toasted at work for a yummy lunch. Carly is very pleased with herself for bringing a toaster to work. She hides it out of site behind the microwave in a little used kitchen. Carly is only too well aware of all the ridiculous myriad of rules regarding health and safety in a hospital. No toasters allowed. At all. Because if a smoke alarm goes off, three huge red fire engines come roaring in and the toasting perpetrator gets a roasting and possibly a fine. Consequently, patients have to suffer with bread that tastes of cardboard and has the texture of a limp sponge. How on earth will they get better with such poor incentives to improve their nutrition?
Actually, Carly has been told off for setting off a smoke detector. It only signalled an internal alarm. No arrival of fire engines. Phew. It was for burning incense. Now she is more careful and places the marble holder on her window ledge so it is technically “not inside” her office.
Carly considers what other Greek food she loves. Feta, particularly in Greek Salad, grilled halloumi, as well as Greek coffee with baklava. Of course, you can eat all this at home but it is so much nicer when you are away.
Carly loves to visit Greek Islands. She’s been to Rhodes, Mykonos and Lefkada. They were all very different experiences. Rhodes was several decades ago. She and Ades went on scooters all around including a visit to the oldest synagogue in Greece, the Kahal Shalom. Carly always makes a point of vising synagogues wherever she is in the world. She knows that irrespective of where they are, the layouts are similar and it is good to meet fellow Jews. On Mykonos, some 30 years later she was not allowed to ride a scooter. She did a test and failed. Oh no. How very embarrassing. For being too old and too crap. She consoled herself that really it was far too mountainous to scoot around anyway.
She went to Lefkada several times in between Rhodes and Mykonos with her children and their all-time favourite babysitters Piotr and Karina who helped looked after her kids to attempt to stop them fighting a great deal of the time. This meant Carly could actually have a holiday. Loads of happy memories, considers Carly. Trying really hard to enjoy them despite her subsequent divorce from Ades. Nope she says. The memories were good, and they will stay good, determines Carly.
More recently, she has gone to a remote yoga and writing retreat on a promontory of the mainland in Greece. It is near the sulphurous waters of Methana on the Peloponnese peninsula. Carly has been to Limnisa three times. She totally loves it there. You have to be silent until lunch – and surprisingly Carly can manage that. She wakes up to a class of either yoga or qi gong, looking out over the sea. Then it is writing for most of the day. Some swimming and walking too. Lots of well-meaning friends have suggested she gets her stories edited. Or put them into competitions to see how they fare. But really Carly writes because she wants to. It is a way of dealing with this difficult time in her life. Getting an editor to pour over your very personal work seems to be following an arbitrary set of writing rules. And Carly isn’t really in the habit of following rules. So why start now? She plans to self-publish her work and buy lots of copies herself and give them to people. This is a sort of charity which begins at home! Maybe this is really egotistical, but Carly is too old to care too much what others think of her. Funnily enough this used to be called ’vanity publishing’ but this name has been dropped as self-publishing has now become so very popular. Carly also doesn’t follow rules on giving money to charity. She gives money only to people who are doing sponsored thises and thats. Unless she really doesn’t want to support a particular charity. But this is rare and indeed this way she gets exposed to all sorts of charities she had never heard of and can see what they do. And she doesn’t have to choose them. Someone else does that for her, as well as the hard work of some sort of challenge.
On these retreats in Limnisa she is looked after by a very special couple. They have both been married before and this is like a beacon of shining light to Carly in her dark hours of her recent divorce. They are so respectful of each other, and it is a joy for Carly to be contained within this wonderful and nurturing relationship. She also meets lots of other participants from all over the globe and they have so many wide-ranging discussions – but only from lunchtime onwards! She also goes on silent walks, enjoys sunset mindfulness meditations and eating tip-top food. One time, someone led a mandala ceremony. The premise was to let go of feelings that were no longer helpful. This was done with intention and also to mark what was good to take away with you when you left Limnisa. For Carly, she tried to throw into the sea all the negative connotations of being a newly-divorced woman. She wanted to acknowledge the wonderful camaraderie of the fellow writers she had met at Limnisa. She so enjoyed being with all these creative women, to celebrate this and take the essence of it back with her. The ceremony took place on a promontory overlooking the sea at sunset, with 11 women. They were all told to bring items of nature which were laid out in a pattern. This was like a temporary art installation as most things would blow away by the next morning. Carly had gathered seven figs during her run earlier that morning. She placed them on the right half of the mandala. She squished them into place with her bare right foot. Afterwards, a couple of the women commented how poignant it was. That Carly had used figs which in texture and shape represent scrotums. The humour was not lost on Carly who had unwittingly chosen these fruits. She laughed and cried about this at the same time.
On her most recent trip to Greece, Carly stayed in Athens. Wow what a revelation. She had breakfast looking out at the Parthenon and loved all the graffiti and street art, as well as the shabby chic of many buildings and the equally dusty but friendly cats. Yes, Greece has many cats. And this pleases Carly who is a feline fanatic.
Probably the most significant reason that Carly loves to go to Greece is that it reminds her of her beloved Israel. She plans to emigrate there on Sunday the 2nd July 2023. This is an auspicious date. It is three prime numbers 2, 7 and 23. Sunday is the beginning of the week there – so it mirrors her new start. To Carly, Greece looks, sounds and feels like Israel. Just without the Israelis. This makes Carly chuckle.
Addendum
In the end Carly went to live in Israel in September 2023. She really wanted to mark her ex-husband’s first year anniversary (grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr) on 4/9/23 (42/32/23) sort of prime numbers but her brother persuaded her to come a day earlier on 3/9/23 which still fits Carly supposes (3/32/23). Carly is still really pleased with this attention to sort of prime detail.
