“Yes, my son is building me a house, it will be a palace, you’ll see,” he says to anyone who will listen. But this is not the life he had dreamt of as a young lad when he left the village with his young wife. He married the woman he loved, no arranged marriage for him or her, they were in love. He did not know her controlling, domineering ways back then, or what disappointment would turn her into. He promised her wealth, travel, adventures, only the latter came true, and were adventures of a more trying kind. They had both longed to leave the village and the deprivations, poverty and limitations it imposed, not understanding that the wider world had its own versions of all of that. She had big aspirations, he had big dreams. He would make it big in a foreign land and come back to the village a wealthy and well-respected man, and she would beam proudly at him and affectionately hold his hand. His parents would be proud of him, and all his cousins and fellow villagers would look up to him,
“That Dimi did well, who would have thought he had it in him? Did better than his older brother. That wife of his must have been a help – didn’t think she would be good for him.”
The villagers would slap him on his back and invite him in for an ouzo, or a coffee, or a feast and take him to the taverna where they would play backgammon and ask his advice about this and that. He would recount his adventures and relay the successes of his children, all doctors and lawyers.
Dimi and Maria would show them all, that love prevails. He would be the Greek peasant-turned-businessman, now wearing expensive suits and well-made leather shoes with no holes in them. He would renovate his parents’ house by adding running water, and electricity. What a proud moment that would be and he could retire to the village, ending his days in comfort and in familiar surrounds with the esteem of his fellows. Dimi had dreams, and the dreams endured through bankruptcy, illness and failures. The saying goes, if you have your health then anything is possible, now his health is waning. He transposed his dreams to his son, a smart young man born in a foreign land, with an education and opportunities one could only hope for back in the village. His son would build the palace he had promised his wife and then he would retire back in the village. “Yes, my son will build me a house,” he reassured himself.
