I didn't know my great-grandfather, but I am told that we would have gotten along swimmingly, which is to say that he, too, was restless and very much liked to get into trouble. Back in the 19 aughts, Lucas Christodoulou was a discontented goat herder and a notorious prankster on the tumultuous island nation of Cyprus. The Turkish invasion would not occur until many years later, but Lucas was fiercely proud of his Greek-Cypriot heritage in the face of quiet Turkish encroachment, something he would carry with him until the day he died. The village of Lysos today There came a day when Lucas saw his future laid out before him – if he was anything like the majority of his ancestors, he would her
My first impulse was to name Amy Winehouse's Back to Black, because that album has gotten me through some difficult times in my life, but I settled on Edith Piaf's The Voice of the Sparrow for the following reason: For a time, until I could articulate thoughts beyond "Go up!" and *points to mouth to indicate feeding time*, my dad and I didn't really talk. My mom attended to the child-rearing stuff, my dad did the working stuff, and that was that. One day, when my dad and I were discussing spirituality and death (because I was nothing if not a happy child), my father told me that he believed in reincarnation. I of course asked why, as my head was jumbled with the various teachings with which
