Life and Island Times July 22 2016 – Christos Anesti

This one is from 2015.

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For many years Marlow supped every Easter Sunday with the grandparents of his second godson Nick. Papou George and γιαγιά Helen were Greek Orthodox Catholic. Fleeing the Nazi occupiers, George emigrated from Cyprus, washing ashore in America during WW II. He met and married his belle Helen after the war, and they lived in Mount Vernon, Virginia, like the family depicted in the movie comedy “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”

They were a joy to be with and celebrate that day. Everything was done as it had been in the old country – imported Greek charcoal, whole lamb roasted from early morning. pastitsio, spanakopita, red eggs, the traditional Greek-Cypriot sweet bread tsoureki, mandolin music, dancing in circles with upside down water cups atop our heads, and of course George’s retsina homemade with the sap from the pine trees that grew along a creek that fed into the Potomac.

When the lamb was done, George, his son George, grandson Nick, Nick’s father, and godfathers Vince and Marlow would hoist the lightly charred beast from the pit and bring it to the carving table underneath the deck these six men had built for the belle Helen years earlier. They would then pray in Greek over the meal that they were about to share.

Christos anesti (“He is risen”) was how they greeted one another in the Greek Easter custom. Their response was always Alithos anesti (“Truly He is Risen!” or “He Has Risen Indeed!”).

The challenge of those Easters wasn’t so much believing but something more mundane and human, realizing that their years together were brief and George’s retsina was powerful. During the early years, George, one his neighbors Jack and Marlow were the only ones who would regularly without fail sip the pine top tasting restina poured from the gallon sized, wicker covered bottle that had sat the previous months in George’s cooled basement closet.

Most years it was stiff and difficult, but sometimes it was smooth and inviting further consumption.

When Nick’s father Mike, Vince and then Mike’s children started to quaff the retsina with the oldsters, the tradition had been passed down and the subversive belief fully shared – Christ is risen.

Copyright © 2016 From My Isle Seat