Memories of my Godfather
Sometimes, when things were very serious—like during my mother’s long illness—my Nono would find a way to make everybody laugh. I distinctly remember a time when we were all gathered in the family room in the house where I grew up. We were talking about ordinary things (I think I was answering a question my Nona had asked me about how school was going), but the mood was dreary. Although I can’t say for sure when this happened, but I know my mother was still alive but not in the room, so she was likely in the hospital, which means I was between 9 and 13 years of age. In any case, quite suddenly and totally out of the blue, my Nono did a summersault off the couch. It seems impossible that this is a real memory, but I swear it happened. My sister and I burst out laughing. Nona was shocked and said, “Taki, what are you doing?” but then she started laughing too. He had a way of lightening things when they were too heavy.
He had the best sense of humor of anyone I ever knew. He was almost completely blind, though I didn’t know it until after an encounter I had with him in the Summit Mall when I was probably around 11 or 12. I was wandering the mall with my friends, and I saw Nono with a couple of his Greek buddies walking toward me. I ran up to him and said, “It’s so good to see you!” I took his hand and gave him a kiss on both cheeks.
“It might be good to see you, too, but I won't know for sure until you tell me who you are,” he said to me. His buddies cracked up, but I didn’t really get the joke until later.
“Very funny, Nono. It’s me, Argie,” I said, and then he smiled and gave me a hug.
Later I asked my cousin Connie about it, and she said, “Didn’t you know your Nono is mostly blind? He can see your outline, but that’s about all.”
It blew my mind. How could he be blind? He literally never showed any sign of blindness that I could see. Of course, looking back, I realize that he was always with others (usually Nona) if he was in unfamiliar places, and that by the time I was about seven or eight he was no longer driving. Maybe I wasn’t very observant, but I think the reason it surprised me so much was he seemed so invincible. Even when I heard about his death—although I knew he’d struggled with cancer and other illnesses and was 82—I didn’t believe it.
He wasn’t a large man, but he had a large presence. His features and glasses were big, as was his voice—but it wasn’t only the obvious aspects of his physical self. There was something about his presence that always made me pay attention.
He loved to be funny, but that that does not mean that he didn’t take seriously the important things in life. I remember Nono and Nona coming to our house after my mother died. They were so sad they could not talk. The love they had for her, and for my father, was deep. I would be reminded of this again and again by my Nono. In almost every conversation I had with him as an adult, he would say, “Your mother was one of the best.”
Nono was a wise businessman. I knew this because every Greek in Akron knew it, but also because I got to see him at work. He offered me a summer job at his insurance agency when I was in high school, and I worked that job for at least three summers. I have three memories of my time there that I think demonstrate what kind of businessman he was. First, I remember a parade of Greeks, and the occasional non-Greek, wandering in and saying they wanted to talk to Taki or Pete, depending on what they called him. They would go into his office behind closed doors and talk for what seemed like a very long time. I wondered once, out loud, why they didn’t just deal with those of us in the front office, and Judy, his secretary, said, “They’re not here to buy insurance or report an accident. They came to get some advice.” To this day I have no idea what that advice entailed—only that he was the kind of person who people from all walks of life could count on.
I also remember one time when I had printed the list of people who were late on paying their premiums. It was my job to call them to remind them to pay their bill. I gave the list to his secretary to check it, and she crossed out a couple names, saying, “Pete told me they have already paid.” A week or so later, one of those crossed out names called in. She was an American lady and sounded very sick.
“I’m calling because I can’t pay my bill,” she said to me. She told me her name, and I checked the list.
“It looks like you already paid it,” I said to her.
“But that’s impossible,” she said. “I don’t have any money because the medical bills are piling up. I haven’t been able to pay any of my bills.”
I assured her that her bill was paid and got off the phone as quickly as possible. Later that night, I asked my father, “Do you think Nono knew and paid it for her?” I asked.
“Your Nono does not pay other people’s bills for them,” my father said. “If he did, he wouldn’t be so rich. It must have been a mistake.” I realized suddenly that my father was jealous of him, and also of how I was interested in, and wrestling with the story. That was the last time I ever talked to him about anything that happened at the insurance agency. But I knew what had happened, and I realized even then that I wanted to be generous like my Nono was when I was older.
My third memory involves how he treated his staff—his secretary Judy, who was a very kind single mother, and her daughter, who also worked part-time in the office. If it was a busy week, he would buy everyone pizza on Friday. Also, once Judy told him about a little cabin by the lake that she wanted to buy, but she wasn’t sure it was a good financial decision. He said to her, “Judy, you deserve a little enjoyment in your life, you know what I mean? You should buy it.” He walked away abruptly as he so often did, and I glanced at Judy. She was wiping a tear out of her eye. I don’t think anyone had ever told her anything like that. I was too shy to ask her later what decision she’d made, but I hope she bought the cabin.
As for me, I was a terrible worker. First of all, I was a shy, awkward teenager who was definitely not cut out customer service, and I was terrible with anything math-related. I could handle the filing and other routine tasks, but even while doing those tasks, I distinctly remember daydreaming about whatever book I was reading at the time or whatever story or poem I was writing. I’m sure I drove Judy crazy. I realize now, of course, that I wasn’t much help, and that the whole idea of the job, besides giving me something useful to do and a little spending money, was to give him a chance to spend time with me.
Sometimes he would ask me to come into his office to do something that could clearly have been done at my desk. I remember stuffing envelopes at a table in his office while he talked to me about my father. “He’s a little bit crazy and mean sometimes, but he is a good person inside,” he said to me. At that time, when things were at their worst with my father, I didn’t really believe that was true—but those words stuck with me as I grew older and definitely played a role in my decision to reconcile with him and actively work at building a relationship with him in my late 20s.
Another time when I was in his office he told me the story of meeting and marrying Nona. I actually stopped what I was doing to watch him talk, because he got a faraway look in his eyes, and a huge smile.
“You’re still in love with her,” I said. I was a little bit surprised. I was a teenager, and I didn’t think any older people stayed in love after they had children. I was immediately embarrassed that I had said it out loud—it seemed somehow too personal or strange.
But he didn’t hesitate to respond. “Of course,” he said. “She is the best woman to put up with someone like me. I am so lucky.”
“You’re not so bad,” I joked.
“But she’s much better than me,” he said, without even a hint of laughter in his voice.
In addition to the talks we had in his office, he frequently took me out to lunch, either to Yocono’s or Wally Waffle. I loved these lunches. He was the only adult at the time who took my ideas seriously. Maybe that wasn’t exactly true—maybe he simply had more time than the other adults in my life to really engage with me—but either way, when I was in his presence, I felt heard and understood in a way I didn’t with many adults at the time.
My father was prone to making terrible business and financial decisions, none of which I knew about unless Nono told me. Unlike the other Greeks in Akron, he was too proud to actually ask my Nono for advice. Occasionally Nono would tell me about some decision my father had made—he’d heard about it from somebody else in the community—and he would say, “I would have warned your father against that if he had talked to me, but he would have done it anyway.” My family never talked about money, but I knew two things that I learned from my Nono: that my father made enough to make ends meet but just kept making bad decisions, and that he could have had the knowledge to make better decisions if he’d actually asked for help. At a time after graduate school when I was struggling financially, and more recently when my daughter’s needs have stretched my budget beyond its capacity, I have remembered the importance of asking for help when I need it—not for a handout, but for advice from people who know more than I do about money management.
Over the years, my father would get mad at my Nono many times, or avoid him altogether. My Nono always took this in stride. He told me during one of these fights, “Your father has a strong personality, but that’s OK.” It was the understatement of the year, and it made me laugh.
When my father had a nervous breakdown, Nono actually posed as a depressed person and went to a local doctor to get anti-depressants for my father. I found this story completely hilarious, mostly because Nono must have really had to put on an act. I never saw him depressed (except when I visited him during his long and ultimately successful battle with cancer). He wasn’t one to wallow in his sadness. Although this little trick could have backfired in multiple ways, it worked. My father actually tried them, and they actually helped a little. He was able to continue to get them once he realized they worked, and they really helped him to cope with the hardships he faced later in his life. Even when my father was pushing them away, Nono and Nona showed up when most people couldn’t deal with my father’s drama. They were definitely his most loyal friends.
Another gift that Nono gave me was that he took my academic interests seriously. Most Greeks, including my parents and extended family, are very committed to education, but Nono actually paid attention to what interested me. I was very interested in World War II when I was a kid. I interviewed him once, and maybe twice (I’m not sure) about his experiences as a young person during the war years. It was one of the few times besides when my mother died that I saw him very sad. He told me about seeing people die and bodies being piled up in the streets of Athens. I wish now that I had better recorded the interview, at least on paper, or that I could find the essay I wrote in 7th grade about the interview. I’m not even sure I ever showed it to him, but I do remember my 7th grade history teacher, Mrs. Moran, putting a big “A” on the top of the paper. I was a good student, so the “A” wasn’t that big of a deal, but below it she wrote, “You are lucky to have someone who can tell these stories to you in person.” I will never forget that, because it seemed like such an unusual thing for a teacher to write on a student’s paper.
Later, he and my Nona bought me Nicolas Gage’s book Eleni for my 14th birthday. They took our family out to eat that year—the first birthday I had after my mother’s death—which was critical, because there was not much celebrating happening in our house at that time. My father was mad about the book because his family had been on the opposite side of the Civil War in Greece than Gage’s—but even then, I knew that war made people do terrible things to each other, and that equally bad things had happened at the hands of both the right and left wing. This book and the interview I had with him led to a life-long interest in World War II and the Greek Civil War. I have written many creative works based on these historic events, and I have taken students to Greece to study them.
There are two conversations that I had with Nono that have had by far the biggest impact on me. I have returned to them again and again over the years. Once, he told me that he hoped I would be more successful than he was someday.
“I don’t think I will,” I told him. My father always hoped that with my “brains,” I would become a doctor or a lawyer and be able to afford everything he couldn’t, but even in high school and early college, I knew I was not going to become either. I was terrible at science and also terribly shy.
“I don’t mean like have a lot of money and more than one house, not that kind of success,” Nono said. “I mean I hope that you will do something where people want to come to you, instead of something where you have to go out and try to get the people.” It was such a different message than the typical message immigrants give their children and godchildren. It was not about wealth or even about belonging, but rather about choosing to do something meaningful, where your work was essential, needed.
“But people do seek you out all the time for advice,” I said to him. He didn’t respond to that—he just got up abruptly to pay the bill and walk back to the office.
I hope that I have fulfilled his hope for me. I am a mother, teacher, and writer, and I am now the coordinator of service-learning and community service at the college where I teach. Although I make a lot of mistakes in all of these roles and can’t claim that I am always successful in the way he meant, I know that the choices I have made in my life were influenced by him. I have, at least, chosen several times throughout my life to do what will be more meaningful and useful.
Another time, on a dreary, rainy day when we were eating at Wally Waffle, he asked me if I believed in God. It was a strange question, especially coming from the person who baptized me, and I don’t remember the context—though I’m pretty sure there wasn’t really a context. I think the question came into his head in much the same way that the idea to summersault off the couch came into his head.
I said honestly that I wasn’t sure. I was about to start college and was not sure anymore where I belonged or what I believed. He said to me, “I think people who don’t believe in God are idiots. How could you not believe when there is so much beauty in the world?”
My first thought was that there was absolutely nothing beautiful in my immediate surroundings. I remember looking around the rundown restaurant and out the window-lined wall at a parking lot, where a woman was struggling to open her umbrella. But instead of commenting on the irony of what he had said about beauty, I blurted out, “But Nono, you can’t even see!” Right after I said this, I was sorry.
For once, he didn’t answer right away. There was a long pause, and he took a bite of his food. Then he said, “I still know when things are beautiful,” and that was that.
I have been thinking about these conversations all of my life, and I have shared them with many people. Together, they account for what was probably the best spiritual advice I’ve ever been given. The world is an incredibly beautiful place—even in the midst of the worst suffering, if we bother to look, we can see that beauty. And if we can’t see it physically, we can certainly feel it and know it. Spiritual beauty is beyond what we can experience through the five senses alone. This understanding has made it possible for me to get through the very worst moments in my life, and also to fully enjoy the very best.
My Nono's influence on my life has also helped me to remain committed to living a life of generosity and meaning, even if I sometimes fall short of doing so. I didn’t get a chance to tell him how grateful I was, which was completely my fault—in the last 15 years since I left Ohio, I could have made more of an effort to stay connected, but life got in the way. So, I’ll say it now in a way I know he'll understand:
Nono, you were one of the best.
He had the best sense of humor of anyone I ever knew. He was almost completely blind, though I didn’t know it until after an encounter I had with him in the Summit Mall when I was probably around 11 or 12. I was wandering the mall with my friends, and I saw Nono with a couple of his Greek buddies walking toward me. I ran up to him and said, “It’s so good to see you!” I took his hand and gave him a kiss on both cheeks.
“It might be good to see you, too, but I won't know for sure until you tell me who you are,” he said to me. His buddies cracked up, but I didn’t really get the joke until later.
“Very funny, Nono. It’s me, Argie,” I said, and then he smiled and gave me a hug.
Later I asked my cousin Connie about it, and she said, “Didn’t you know your Nono is mostly blind? He can see your outline, but that’s about all.”
It blew my mind. How could he be blind? He literally never showed any sign of blindness that I could see. Of course, looking back, I realize that he was always with others (usually Nona) if he was in unfamiliar places, and that by the time I was about seven or eight he was no longer driving. Maybe I wasn’t very observant, but I think the reason it surprised me so much was he seemed so invincible. Even when I heard about his death—although I knew he’d struggled with cancer and other illnesses and was 82—I didn’t believe it.
He wasn’t a large man, but he had a large presence. His features and glasses were big, as was his voice—but it wasn’t only the obvious aspects of his physical self. There was something about his presence that always made me pay attention.
He loved to be funny, but that that does not mean that he didn’t take seriously the important things in life. I remember Nono and Nona coming to our house after my mother died. They were so sad they could not talk. The love they had for her, and for my father, was deep. I would be reminded of this again and again by my Nono. In almost every conversation I had with him as an adult, he would say, “Your mother was one of the best.”
Nono was a wise businessman. I knew this because every Greek in Akron knew it, but also because I got to see him at work. He offered me a summer job at his insurance agency when I was in high school, and I worked that job for at least three summers. I have three memories of my time there that I think demonstrate what kind of businessman he was. First, I remember a parade of Greeks, and the occasional non-Greek, wandering in and saying they wanted to talk to Taki or Pete, depending on what they called him. They would go into his office behind closed doors and talk for what seemed like a very long time. I wondered once, out loud, why they didn’t just deal with those of us in the front office, and Judy, his secretary, said, “They’re not here to buy insurance or report an accident. They came to get some advice.” To this day I have no idea what that advice entailed—only that he was the kind of person who people from all walks of life could count on.
I also remember one time when I had printed the list of people who were late on paying their premiums. It was my job to call them to remind them to pay their bill. I gave the list to his secretary to check it, and she crossed out a couple names, saying, “Pete told me they have already paid.” A week or so later, one of those crossed out names called in. She was an American lady and sounded very sick.
“I’m calling because I can’t pay my bill,” she said to me. She told me her name, and I checked the list.
“It looks like you already paid it,” I said to her.
“But that’s impossible,” she said. “I don’t have any money because the medical bills are piling up. I haven’t been able to pay any of my bills.”
I assured her that her bill was paid and got off the phone as quickly as possible. Later that night, I asked my father, “Do you think Nono knew and paid it for her?” I asked.
“Your Nono does not pay other people’s bills for them,” my father said. “If he did, he wouldn’t be so rich. It must have been a mistake.” I realized suddenly that my father was jealous of him, and also of how I was interested in, and wrestling with the story. That was the last time I ever talked to him about anything that happened at the insurance agency. But I knew what had happened, and I realized even then that I wanted to be generous like my Nono was when I was older.
My third memory involves how he treated his staff—his secretary Judy, who was a very kind single mother, and her daughter, who also worked part-time in the office. If it was a busy week, he would buy everyone pizza on Friday. Also, once Judy told him about a little cabin by the lake that she wanted to buy, but she wasn’t sure it was a good financial decision. He said to her, “Judy, you deserve a little enjoyment in your life, you know what I mean? You should buy it.” He walked away abruptly as he so often did, and I glanced at Judy. She was wiping a tear out of her eye. I don’t think anyone had ever told her anything like that. I was too shy to ask her later what decision she’d made, but I hope she bought the cabin.
As for me, I was a terrible worker. First of all, I was a shy, awkward teenager who was definitely not cut out customer service, and I was terrible with anything math-related. I could handle the filing and other routine tasks, but even while doing those tasks, I distinctly remember daydreaming about whatever book I was reading at the time or whatever story or poem I was writing. I’m sure I drove Judy crazy. I realize now, of course, that I wasn’t much help, and that the whole idea of the job, besides giving me something useful to do and a little spending money, was to give him a chance to spend time with me.
Sometimes he would ask me to come into his office to do something that could clearly have been done at my desk. I remember stuffing envelopes at a table in his office while he talked to me about my father. “He’s a little bit crazy and mean sometimes, but he is a good person inside,” he said to me. At that time, when things were at their worst with my father, I didn’t really believe that was true—but those words stuck with me as I grew older and definitely played a role in my decision to reconcile with him and actively work at building a relationship with him in my late 20s.
Another time when I was in his office he told me the story of meeting and marrying Nona. I actually stopped what I was doing to watch him talk, because he got a faraway look in his eyes, and a huge smile.
“You’re still in love with her,” I said. I was a little bit surprised. I was a teenager, and I didn’t think any older people stayed in love after they had children. I was immediately embarrassed that I had said it out loud—it seemed somehow too personal or strange.
But he didn’t hesitate to respond. “Of course,” he said. “She is the best woman to put up with someone like me. I am so lucky.”
“You’re not so bad,” I joked.
“But she’s much better than me,” he said, without even a hint of laughter in his voice.
In addition to the talks we had in his office, he frequently took me out to lunch, either to Yocono’s or Wally Waffle. I loved these lunches. He was the only adult at the time who took my ideas seriously. Maybe that wasn’t exactly true—maybe he simply had more time than the other adults in my life to really engage with me—but either way, when I was in his presence, I felt heard and understood in a way I didn’t with many adults at the time.
My father was prone to making terrible business and financial decisions, none of which I knew about unless Nono told me. Unlike the other Greeks in Akron, he was too proud to actually ask my Nono for advice. Occasionally Nono would tell me about some decision my father had made—he’d heard about it from somebody else in the community—and he would say, “I would have warned your father against that if he had talked to me, but he would have done it anyway.” My family never talked about money, but I knew two things that I learned from my Nono: that my father made enough to make ends meet but just kept making bad decisions, and that he could have had the knowledge to make better decisions if he’d actually asked for help. At a time after graduate school when I was struggling financially, and more recently when my daughter’s needs have stretched my budget beyond its capacity, I have remembered the importance of asking for help when I need it—not for a handout, but for advice from people who know more than I do about money management.
Over the years, my father would get mad at my Nono many times, or avoid him altogether. My Nono always took this in stride. He told me during one of these fights, “Your father has a strong personality, but that’s OK.” It was the understatement of the year, and it made me laugh.
When my father had a nervous breakdown, Nono actually posed as a depressed person and went to a local doctor to get anti-depressants for my father. I found this story completely hilarious, mostly because Nono must have really had to put on an act. I never saw him depressed (except when I visited him during his long and ultimately successful battle with cancer). He wasn’t one to wallow in his sadness. Although this little trick could have backfired in multiple ways, it worked. My father actually tried them, and they actually helped a little. He was able to continue to get them once he realized they worked, and they really helped him to cope with the hardships he faced later in his life. Even when my father was pushing them away, Nono and Nona showed up when most people couldn’t deal with my father’s drama. They were definitely his most loyal friends.
Another gift that Nono gave me was that he took my academic interests seriously. Most Greeks, including my parents and extended family, are very committed to education, but Nono actually paid attention to what interested me. I was very interested in World War II when I was a kid. I interviewed him once, and maybe twice (I’m not sure) about his experiences as a young person during the war years. It was one of the few times besides when my mother died that I saw him very sad. He told me about seeing people die and bodies being piled up in the streets of Athens. I wish now that I had better recorded the interview, at least on paper, or that I could find the essay I wrote in 7th grade about the interview. I’m not even sure I ever showed it to him, but I do remember my 7th grade history teacher, Mrs. Moran, putting a big “A” on the top of the paper. I was a good student, so the “A” wasn’t that big of a deal, but below it she wrote, “You are lucky to have someone who can tell these stories to you in person.” I will never forget that, because it seemed like such an unusual thing for a teacher to write on a student’s paper.
Later, he and my Nona bought me Nicolas Gage’s book Eleni for my 14th birthday. They took our family out to eat that year—the first birthday I had after my mother’s death—which was critical, because there was not much celebrating happening in our house at that time. My father was mad about the book because his family had been on the opposite side of the Civil War in Greece than Gage’s—but even then, I knew that war made people do terrible things to each other, and that equally bad things had happened at the hands of both the right and left wing. This book and the interview I had with him led to a life-long interest in World War II and the Greek Civil War. I have written many creative works based on these historic events, and I have taken students to Greece to study them.
There are two conversations that I had with Nono that have had by far the biggest impact on me. I have returned to them again and again over the years. Once, he told me that he hoped I would be more successful than he was someday.
“I don’t think I will,” I told him. My father always hoped that with my “brains,” I would become a doctor or a lawyer and be able to afford everything he couldn’t, but even in high school and early college, I knew I was not going to become either. I was terrible at science and also terribly shy.
“I don’t mean like have a lot of money and more than one house, not that kind of success,” Nono said. “I mean I hope that you will do something where people want to come to you, instead of something where you have to go out and try to get the people.” It was such a different message than the typical message immigrants give their children and godchildren. It was not about wealth or even about belonging, but rather about choosing to do something meaningful, where your work was essential, needed.
“But people do seek you out all the time for advice,” I said to him. He didn’t respond to that—he just got up abruptly to pay the bill and walk back to the office.
I hope that I have fulfilled his hope for me. I am a mother, teacher, and writer, and I am now the coordinator of service-learning and community service at the college where I teach. Although I make a lot of mistakes in all of these roles and can’t claim that I am always successful in the way he meant, I know that the choices I have made in my life were influenced by him. I have, at least, chosen several times throughout my life to do what will be more meaningful and useful.
Another time, on a dreary, rainy day when we were eating at Wally Waffle, he asked me if I believed in God. It was a strange question, especially coming from the person who baptized me, and I don’t remember the context—though I’m pretty sure there wasn’t really a context. I think the question came into his head in much the same way that the idea to summersault off the couch came into his head.
I said honestly that I wasn’t sure. I was about to start college and was not sure anymore where I belonged or what I believed. He said to me, “I think people who don’t believe in God are idiots. How could you not believe when there is so much beauty in the world?”
My first thought was that there was absolutely nothing beautiful in my immediate surroundings. I remember looking around the rundown restaurant and out the window-lined wall at a parking lot, where a woman was struggling to open her umbrella. But instead of commenting on the irony of what he had said about beauty, I blurted out, “But Nono, you can’t even see!” Right after I said this, I was sorry.
For once, he didn’t answer right away. There was a long pause, and he took a bite of his food. Then he said, “I still know when things are beautiful,” and that was that.
I have been thinking about these conversations all of my life, and I have shared them with many people. Together, they account for what was probably the best spiritual advice I’ve ever been given. The world is an incredibly beautiful place—even in the midst of the worst suffering, if we bother to look, we can see that beauty. And if we can’t see it physically, we can certainly feel it and know it. Spiritual beauty is beyond what we can experience through the five senses alone. This understanding has made it possible for me to get through the very worst moments in my life, and also to fully enjoy the very best.
My Nono's influence on my life has also helped me to remain committed to living a life of generosity and meaning, even if I sometimes fall short of doing so. I didn’t get a chance to tell him how grateful I was, which was completely my fault—in the last 15 years since I left Ohio, I could have made more of an effort to stay connected, but life got in the way. So, I’ll say it now in a way I know he'll understand:
Nono, you were one of the best.
Comments