by Acrivi Artemis Koutavas Anninos Georgelos

In 1906 when my mother and father had three daughters they wanted to have a son also. They desired this very much, very very much. Someone told Mother that the Monastery of Saint Dionysios in Zakynthos had a miraculous herb and if a woman would eat it, she would bear sons. Mother’s great longing for a son made her believe this legend. When we left Cephhallonia for Odessa, our ship made a port stop at Zakynthos, Mother strongly expressed her desire to go to the altar of Saint Dionysios for prayer. We made the trip, Mother prayed, as we all did, and she came home with the famous herb which was given to her by one of the Monastery nuns.

We traveled on to Russia, and in 1909 the longed-for son was born. My parents named him Dionysios. He was the pride of the whole family and adored by my parents. He grew up to be a fine man. They educated him. He received degrees in business administration and law from the University of Athens.

I grew up too. I was well into my marriageable age when the fat man from Romania showed up to ruin my peace. He was too old and we were too poor, and those two things were my salvation. The second was more the reason for no marriage than the first. I had no dowry.

The dowry “matter” in Greece is a great scourge, to the parents who have daughters. Too many fine girls become wallflowers because of the lack of a dowry. This scourge must be eliminated. The dowry causes way too many family dramas.

If a man marries a girl whose father promised him he would receive the family house because there was nothing else to give the man as a dowry, and something happens and the father cannot fulfill his promise, the man can send the wife back to her father. If he chooses not to do that he can make her life completely miserable and impossible. There is very little possibility of a harmonious life together under such circumstances. The question has to be asked. Is this the union of two souls or a business transaction? If a woman has a big dowry she then she buys a worthy man, if she has no dowry she may not get married, ever. Men say that if they don’t get a dowry they cannot make ends meet. That poor father, that poor man that has two, three, or more daughters, who has to provide for and educate them, does he not have as many expenses as the man who has a son? Why should he, the father of daughters, have to plan for dowries the minute his girls are born?

House furnishes, furniture, cash, this is what the man expects to get. And what does he have? I will tell you. He has only a hat, a suitcase, and a lot of demands. It is time that girls wake up and not marry a man who does not respect their character and their good qualities. Do not accept a man who only wants to marry them for their dowry. Marriage is the sacred union of two souls, it is not to be treated as some kind of commercial trade.

For this reason, both the parents and the girls looked at a marriage proposal from abroad, especially from America, as salvation. Saved from having to have a dowry. Were all these marriages happy? I doubt that but what else was a girl to do when she has no dowry?

In 1922, I received such an offer of marriage. A friend of my father’s from Cephallonia told him one day that he had married off his daughter, Helen, to a man from America. This man had a brother who also wanted to get married. He was looking for a good girl from a good family.

“So I thought of your daughter right away,” my father’s friend told him.

A few days later, the prospecting bridegroom’s family paid us a visit to arrange a visit from the brother and because Helen’s family already knew me, they expected this first visit to go well.

I remembered that when we returned to Greece from Odessa, my parents looked for a tutor for my younger sisters and brother. We were introduced to the Michalatos family. Stella, the mother, was a very beautiful woman, and she was a teacher as was her only daughter Helen. How is one to explain this? A coincidence? It must have been fate that was working quietly and unseen.

The day Helen and Dennis Anninos, her new bridegroom came to our house, they brought a photograph of his brother Spyros, the hopeful bridegroom. After praising him and his qualities to the sky, and after deciding that I meet their requirements as a bride, they left the photo and said they would return to get an acceptable photograph of me for them to take to America and give to Spyros.

I purchased a new dress to be photographed in. I can still remember that dress vividly. It was black silk with yellow shadows. I wore white shoes and held a silver handbag. I went to the photographer’s shop with my mother. I struck or stuck, a pose as serious as I could, so serious that I looked almost angry. My photo made the trip to America, and miraculously, I was liked by him

We received the happy news that in a few days an engagement ring would arrive. I had begun writing to my new fiance. I answered every question he asked me. He asked me if I would like money to buy the engagement ring myself in Greece, but sentimental me replied that I would prefer that he picked it out himself and send it to me.. He asked if there were other things that I wanted from America. My nature made me content with little, but I consulted with my mother. I replied to him that I did not want anything. I had everything I needed. I found that to be ironic. I did not lack any basic necessities of life of course. The other things I left up to him and told him so in my letters. He sent me the engagement ring and another ring with a red ruby.

We wrote to each other for two years. In November 1925, Spyros came to Greece and we were married a month later. He decided to stay in Greece and go into business. He purchased a restaurant, but it was not successful for him, so after six months he turned it over to another brother and we left for America.

America! My first impression was not what you might think. It was full of disappointment and pain.

I was not yet an American citizen so I was detained at Ellis Island, that isolated little island that all immigrants had to go to. I found myself all alone, cut off from the rest of the world, and not able to speak the language. I didn’t even know why I was there. Everyone around me spoke some English, but I could not understand them. I was examined by various doctors. Using strange words and signs with their hands, they told me I was going to have a baby, and that he would be born an American. They tried to tell me not to worry, but I could not stop the tears from streaming down my cheeks. I spent my first night in America alone, I could not see my husband and I did not know why. The next day walking down many long and narrow corridors, which seemed like a prison, I was led to a room where my husband was waiting for me. When I saw him, I rushed into his arms and burst out crying, with many tears.

We stayed in New York. We rented an apartment in a building that housed many nationalities. Fortunately for us, a Greek woman had lived there for some time, and another one, who was on the boat with us, also moved in. This gave me some company during the day while Spyros was at work. He worked in a pastry shop and would come home in the evening very tired. New York made me feel like I was in a prison. The buildings were black and ugly. I rarely saw the sun and the air was hard to breathe. I was lonely for Greece and my family. The only thing I looked forward to was the birth of my first child.

The Greek lady whose apartment was one floor above ours was also a newlywed. She was married to a sea captain, but in order to stay ashore and be with his wife, he gave up the sea and became a painter. He was painting the exterior of a tall building one day. He fell off the scaffolding and was seriously hurt and taken to the hospital. The hospital notified his wife who ran down to tell us. I became terribly upset and very sad. I was in my ninth month of pregnancy and expecting our baby’s arrival any day. The sad news about our neighbor must have shocked me and started labor. I had to be taken to the hospital also. I was put to sleep. When I woke up, my husband was by my bedside. I asked him about our baby. He told me that our baby, a little girl, was stillborn. I wept. I wept for a long time. I could not be consoled. A night or two later, when my weary eyes finally closed, and sleep started to come, I thought I heard my mother call me, twice. I jumped out of bed and looked out of the window where I thought I had heard her voice come from. She was not there. Disappointed, I went back to bed and cried myself to sleep.

Our winter in New York passed. Spring came and we moved to Norfolk, Virginia. Dennis lived there with Helen and their two children. Spyros had lived in Norfolk before he came to Greece to marry me. He had owned a pastry shop which he sold. Now, with his brother as his partner, they bought it back.

Helen and I lived together in the same house, so now I was not alone. We were in Norfolk for just about ten years. Spyros and I had two sons, Andrew in 1927 and Augustine in 1930.

Spyros and Dennis wanted to stay in America for ten years. So did Helen, but not as much. You may wonder if I was happy in America. In a word NO! I was not. I felt like a timid little bird that could not sing because it was under a heavy hand and longed to be free. The heavy hand was homesickness. I longed for my family in Greece. I longed to return home. When we left Greece, we planned to stay in America for five years only. We would save our money, and return to Greece. This was the dream of most immigrant men and women when they leave their country. They deprive themselves of so much, almost everything that costs, to save money for the return to the land of their dreams. I was not the only one who lived with this desire. Everyone in both families felt that way.

In order to speed up our wish of going home, it was decided that I, Helen, and her three children, Augustine, Nicholas, and Dina, would leave as soon as possible for Greece. It was 1931 when we set sail. The voyage was very tiring. Our children were young and they needed constant supervision. Our ship, the Byron, was not as nice and did not have the comforts that ships have today. The trip took eighteen days. On the last day when we finally saw the coast of Piraeus, we forgot our fatigue. We embraced the sea, the air, and the sky of Greece with tears in our eyes. They were tears of joy now. All our relatives met us as we arrived. Instead of one daughter, that they had sent to America years before, they now had three…….

End of Part Three.

The Four Green Walls Part 4