Ireland & Greece → United States
To Be Safe. To Survive. To Thrive. To Be Free.
Before they were my parents, they were two beautiful teenagers. Katheryne and Nicholas. When they walked into a room, people noticed.
My father was tall with dark hair, penetrating dark brown eyes, and a classic tall, dark, and handsome. He had a low voice and an accent that made people lean closer. My mother was tall too, strawberry-blonde and fair-skinned, with hazel eyes, a steady gaze, and a warm laugh. She had an easy way of standing on her showgirl legs that made her look in charge or above it all.
But really, he was unsure of his English. And she was shy. Resourceful. Charming. Smart. Together, they looked certain of themselves, as if the world would welcome them and open every door. They looked as if they knew everything was going to be okay.
On a Labor Day weekend, when the traffic around the city was quieter than usual, they were married in secret.
They sat in a hotel room overlooking Central Park. The marriage certificate lay flat on a polished table. The window was open just enough to let in the end-of-summer air. Streetlights blinked on, one by one. The moon hung pale above the trees, lighting just the edges of the leaves. From that height, at that moment, everything looked peaceful. Contained and expansive, too.
They were alone at the church. No one from either family stood beside them. No sisters. No parents. No arguments. No blessings. They signed their names. They stayed the weekend. Then they went home as if nothing had happened.
Then they went home as if nothing had happened.
They met at the bank where they both worked. By day, they counted other people's money. At night, they went to school. My mother was an Irish-Catholic. She was studying art at the Art Institute. My Greek father studied finance at City College. He said he was agnostic. He believed in thinking things through.
Both families disapproved.
In my mother's family, you showed up for one another. So she would bring coffee to her Uncle Matt in the Bowery for her mother, Eileen. She'd give him a hug, one from her and one from his sister.
You carried what was needed. That was what daughters did. That's what families do.
My mother's parents left Ireland long before I was born. Each with their own reasons, each with no other choice. Each left because of the fighting and the conditions it created. Mostly because of the danger of staying.
I never met my grandfather. He died a year before my parents met.
When his name was spoken, faces changed. They softened. The air in the room seemed to get lighter. I could understand the sentiment in the song "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling"; their smiles carried something deeper when they spoke of him.
My grandmother's mouth would lift slightly at one corner, as if she were remembering something bright. Her gaze drifted somewhere beyond the room.
They said he sang at the piano and that people gathered when he did. They said even animals followed him down the street.
There was fighting in Ireland. There was fear. Some stories stopped halfway through and were not finished in front of children.
In that house, he was a hero. In Ireland, too. He fought the British to keep Ireland Irish.
My grandmother and my grandfather met in New York after they had immigrated. I wondered if they would've met if they had stayed in Ireland.
On my father's side, there were other stories.
His parents also married against their parents' wishes. Before the war, there had been a large house on the coast near Athens with balconies and high ceilings. There were servants once. There was silver laid out on long tables. Flowers everywhere. Enough for everyone.
My father told me they owned several silver mines. It was the kind of thing said plainly, as if it were just a fact.
Then the Nazis came.
He told me they were locked in a closet while soldiers dragged their furniture to the big fireplace and burned it for firewood, after they'd taken and burned down all the trees.
He said they could hear it breaking. He loved his home.
Yiaya once told me he sobbed.
I tried to imagine the darkness of that closet. The three of them locked together while their home was being dismantled, burned down, from the inside out.
I could imagine a house emptied of chairs, tables, and beds. I've seen that, but the charred furnishings, scorched walls, and floors. The ashes. The silver gone, their mines no longer theirs.
They lost more than a house.
They felt they had no choice but to leave. The Greek government could not help. They came to America and started again.
My father loved America. He said here, if you worked, you could build something back. Here, he said, the disabled, the downtrodden, were taken care of so that everyone had a chance to survive, even thrive.
All of them left their homelands for the same reasons.
To be safe. To survive. To thrive. To be free.
America.
— Murphy Thomas