Tuesday, Day 38: Prosforo

My great-aunt's son had been born with a disability she always blamed on herself. He died young. She never quite recovered.

She was the old woman who made the prosforo, communion bread. There’s one in every village (and every church in the states). The recipe itself is simple--yeast, flour, water--but the process is long, laborious. Two pieces of dough are shaped into small, round loaves, then pressed on top of each other: the two natures of God. They are left to rise, once, twice, then marked by a huge stamp that is with symbols that mean “Jesus Christ Conquers.”

A small part of the bread is consecrated to become the body of Christ during the liturgy; the rest becomes the antidoron (literally, “Instead of the gift”), cut up into small squares and given out to every parishioner at the end of the service.

But on the island barely anyone goes to church, so parts of the antidoron are always left. They can’t be thrown away—they’ve been especially blessed—so they must be consumed.

She took them home, promising to eat them. But even with her husband, grandson, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter living with her, she couldn’t keep up. The loaves went moldy in her cupboards. She didn’t know what to do.

For some reason, one afternoon while I was visiting, after her 3:00 prayers, she went over to her cupboard and began to remove the loaves, one by one. She carried the first one out to a clay pot in her backyard and lit a match, pressed it to the crust until it burst into flames. It was easy after that, each loaf thrown into the fire. I stood at the corner of the lot and watched, unsure if I should help, unsure, even, of exactly what kind of ritual I was witnessing.

About a week later, she died during her morning swim.

Before her funeral, they unburied her son, lifting his small, white bones from the ground and washing them, to make room for her.

I was a witness to her baking, her prayers of the ancient hours, the incense always burning on her icon table, the black dress she never removed except to sleep. I wept for her.

My other great-aunt, her sister,  was visiting the same summer. For a week we shared a room on the second floor of my great-aunt's house. "We have to live," she said to me one morning, over coffee. 

We were looking down over the veranda, watching my great-aunt carry the prosforo toward the church. She moved slowly, a small, black speck topped with a white circle--comical, almost. 

Perhaps it was Sunday, or a saint’s day that required a liturgy. Either way, we were content to sit on the veranda, sipping our coffee, eating hard boiled eggs and cheese. We watched until she disappeared on the other side of the mountainous road that led from her home to the church.

“We were made to live," my great-aunt said, "Not to die. To live, and to be happy.”