Romance about Immigration

turally as breathing, even in our current feminist world. Other traditions are strictly guarded, oh, sure they are!

It is a fine day when we are having jovial lunch in the college canteen at a long table because our study group is well amalgamated in learning and partying. The conversation dances around the eternal topic of parents and children; about how half of my colleagues are already married and the other half is about to follow into the matrimonial bliss, but parents continue to give them unsolicited advices.

- And I tell to my father this morning, listen, what do you know about it, you, my poor Sicilian immigrant who all your life have been making sidewalks since you moved here from that island of yours?! - One of my colleagues is waving hands animatedly. Above the table an awkward silence hangs - I am the only immigrant and all hold their breath how I would react.

- I did not mean to sound insulting! – the colleague starts apologising, already covered with red adrenaline spots.

- It did not sound insulting, - I smile - but will you allow me to guess what your father ‘s answer was? He laughed at it heartily!

- How do you know, we were only the two of us! - The colleague’s eyes are very-round.

- Well, I come from over there, I know from what poverty your father comes by your last name after his Sicilian village located right after the end of the Boot, and I can appreciate exactly like him, what a blessing it is to have a job to make sidewalks, and with this money to put you three children through their studies!

- He said the same about the blessing, practically word for word! Sure you do not know my father?

How can I not know your father, we all from "Mayflower" know each other and we have rehearsed together our speeches for when we start explaining you things you do not believe us about, and we are insanely happy, truly happy that you think these stories of ours are the result of rather vivid imagination. You will be disoriented tourists at the places of our first youth and this will be our reward for pouring sidewalks, carrying furniture, packaging socks, washing stairs. You all will have been spared it, otherwise why we did we do it?!

 

We are sitting in a small tavern with a couple of friends whose immigrant roots are ripped off from a small island somewhere in the Aegean Sea. Both spouses are not immigrants, they are second generation, who speak Greek at home and go to the Greek church, just like their parents. And their parents are from that adamant type for whom the traditions of the old country are like carved in stone. If the great-grandfather's name was Stavros, and the grandfather is Stavros, there is no chance the first grandson will be named Krasyumir, figuratively speaking. And there is no way he will not speak and write Greek, because one has to know his roots! There is a Greek school, not Sunday one but a regular school, which teaches Modern Greek