Daddy's War: Greek American Stories

Epilogue: Surviving Daddy’s War

[ Epilogue ] Surviving Daddy’s War H ere I sit. It has been about three years from the moment I finally asked my siblings what they knew about our father’s war experiences and how they thought they had learned what they knew, until this moment: post-research, post-interviewing, and on the verge of finishing a final draft of this book. And I am different. I can chuckle at the memory of the self-righteous demand I felt at the outset of this project, that I had a right to know what had happened to my father, expressed in my working title at that point: “I Need to Know Your Story.” It was as if a child is sure the parent has a piece of candy in his or her fist and is withholding it even though the child has behaved and has asked for it properly. I laugh because I understood so poorly then how inapt the metaphor. There was no story like the one I sought: a single, coherent narrative that could be held accountable to a documented public historical record. I have found terra firma neither in my pursuit of family nor of Greek history, the narrative in the previous section not withstanding . Yet I have received much more than a piece of candy. For one thing, I learned about myself. The interview transcripts became unexpected mirrors where I saw myself reflected, not always as attractively as imagined. To be sure, I expressed interest, support, excitement. SURVIVING DADDY’S WAR [ 337 ] But I also interrupted, corrected, and worst of all, sometimes failed to listen . I’m reminded of a trenchant passage in Sebald’s magisterial Austerlitz , where the protagonist recounts something his high school history teacher had once told him: “Our concern with history is a concern with preformed images already imprinted on our brains, images at which we keep staring while the truth lies elsewhere, away from it all, somewhere as yet undiscovered” (Sebald 2001, 72). Sometimes I was so preoccupied with the images already imprinted on my brain that I didn’t hear the cues to precisely that history I wanted so much to learn: for instance, my father ’s passing comment that he returned to Athens “because of the fear of being recaptured.” Where was that first arrest? When? Why? I feel certain and sad that I will never know. And that’s partly my fault. Because for the brief moment when my father’s brain had access to that memory , I was “staring” elsewhere and didn’t ask. Perhaps due to the nature of traumatic memories, perhaps due to his increasing dementia, to my knowledge he has never had willed access to that past event since. Being confronted with my inability to reconstruct the personal pasts of my parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents and other ancestors produced a certain humility I’m thankful for acquiring. It, along with the privilege of in fact being able to learn some things, countered the rage I had felt so strongly for so long about emotional baggage my father had saddled his children with. I can remember that I hated him in the hospital that day in January 2005, but I do not feel hatred anymore. Similarly, by learning more about what my father went through, I feel like I have become more able to simply accept him the way he is rather than to judge him. For example, my fuller understanding of the physical cost of the war on him, the bodily suffering he experienced himself and watched others submit to has helped me extend my comprehension of his eating disorder to his intolerance of any pain. I remember my whole childhood thinking that he was a sissy for making such a fuss when my mother would comb his hair or cut his toenails. I had taken a certain perhaps misguided pride in being able to tolerate pain myself, [ 338 ] SURVIVING DADDY’S WAR partly in reaction to his behavior. Now the diabetes has created havoc with his nerve endings. While I recognize that his own actions played a huge role in his developing this terrible disease, it makes me sad that he is back in a situation like the war of never knowing when or from where the next “blow” will come. Furthermore, learning how complicated and ever-shifting the power politics were in Greece during the period of the war...