Family
For Thea Maria
My mother's two sisters, Thea Thespina (left) and Thea Maria (right) on either side of Theophanis when we visited Greece a couple years ago.
My mother’s sister, Thea Maria, died the other day. She was 101 years old and was the oldest of six children, Maria, Thespina, Eleni, Sophia, Efrosini, and George. Yes, five girls and finally a boy.
As their mother died very young, when my mother was only three years old or so, Maria took on helping to raise the other children. My mom told me stories about how hard she worked and how she was often strict with them. She also told me about how, while still a girl, Maria broke her ankle badly. In the hills of the Peloponese back in the 1920’s, there was not great medical care. The villagers set it as best they could and let it heal. But she was considered crippled after that. How crippled? I’m not really sure. What I do know is that she didn’t work in the fields after that, and she didn’t attract a mate. When she died this week, she had been living with her sister Thespina for the better part of 70 years.
They lived together in Thea Thespina’s house in Athens. Uncle George, the baby of the family, had lived around the corner and looked after the sisters. He bought groceries. He fixed things. He drove them to the doctor. He did a lot. He drove them from Athens to the village every summer, and back in the fall. The sisters spent summers in the village of Arbouna, in the family home, the home in which they were all born, until fairly recently. But Uncle George had been too ill to drive everyone around the last few years, and he finally passed away last spring. Neither George nor Thespina had children. As they aged, it fell to their nephew Taki, Thea Eleni’s son, to look after them all. Thea Eleni herself died more than 40 years ago.
Thea Sophia died in 2002. So now it is just Thespina, and my mother, Efrosini. Both have dementia, and my mom is a little worse, I think, though at 91 she is a good five years younger. My mom had a tough year last year, real tough. But she is bouncing back and doing surprising well right now. Who knows, she might have another 10 years in her.
All I know is that I wish I had gone to Greece more, paid closer attention, and knew more about my blood than I do. I suppose there is still time to learn a little more before the last two of the people that connect me to a different world and a different time are gone.
Misty Mountains, Mystical Morning
Looking south from St Nicholas Ranch into the Kings Canyon area of the Sierra Nevada.
Last week we attended the Winter Family Camp at St Nicholas Ranch. The ranch, run by the Greek Orthodox Metropolis in San Francisco, is located in Squaw Valley near the entrance to Kings Canyon National Park. It was the first time I had been to the retreat, after hearing about it for years.
We had a wonderful time at the family camp. The weather was perfect, but with moments of drama as above. We met Greek families from all over California, from the Bay Area all the way down past Los Angeles. We ate, drank, talked and played. It was great to experience the Sierras again; I have always loved those mountains and been missing them for a couple years. Saturday was spent sledding at Grant Grove. The kids loved that, but I was happy just seeing the giant sequoias, the biggest living things on the planet. They are simply awesome, in the original sense of that word.
The site also has a monastery with a dozen or more nuns. Thus, Sunday started out with the Divine Liturgy in the chapel at the monastery. This was an amazing thing. One enters an incense-filled cavern of gold, marble, and medieval iconography, and hears the etherial voices of the nuns. Huddled over to the right of the altar where you can’t quite see them, they stand and sing for hours, occasionally shuffling and moving things. Softly but quickly they weave their way through the liturgy. Colored light streams in from above. The mysticism of the Orthodox Church transforms everything. Suddenly, a pair of nuns emerge with small incensors the size of a genie’s lamp and fitted with sleigh bells, their faces dimly visible beneath their black scarves; shaking bells in time like a chant, they quickly and precisely float around to each of the icons stationed around the chapel, shimmying the smoking bells as they bow before each one. Just as suddenly they disappear behind the altar screens. The singers continue spinning their soft cloud of sound. Outside the fog slowly lifts.
Pin holder
Last year we moved mom to a board and care facility on account of her increasing dementia, and it was while we were emptying out her apartment that I photographed everything in it for my Family Heirloom Project. Among the items was this one: a little ceramic bowl.
I attended kindergarten at Del Mar Elementary School and had Mrs. Kasner. She was an older lady with fiery red hair. I liked her just fine, although she occasionally sent me to the “thinking chair” or, if we were out on the playground, the “thinking step” to think about something I had done. All that thinking; maybe that’s where I picked up the habit that eventually resulted in grad school in philosophy. My cousin Tommy claimed that she once told him he’d never learn to read and that he never got over it.
In any case, we did a lot of art projects in her class. For example, there was lots of finger painting. I still remember the first day when we were told to bring an old shirt of our father’s to wear while painting. We wore them backwards. I still managed to get paint all over myself. One day, we did a ceramics project. I made a small, simple bowl. I remember shaping it with my fingers, over and over again, trying to get it right. I never really succeeded, but eventually got something to hand over to Mrs. Kasner.
So, I made this little bowl, and painted it blue and black. On the bottom was inscribed “Nickie AM”, because I was in the a.m. class. I brought it home and gave it to my mom as a gift. She did a lot of sewing and needed pins to be handy. She was always pinning things up for alterations, or pinning patterns to fabric, and so on. So she kept pins in it. For 40 years or more that thing sat on her sewing machine with pins in it. After we moved my mom, it came to our house and sat on a bookshelf in the office. Without the pins, of course.
Just a few months later I was cleaning up around the side of the house where the trash and recycling bins sit. I saw a little patch of blue on the ground and a wad of neurons jangled in my head. It was so familiar. I picked up a little chard, then another and another. My heart sank.
What one kindergartener made, another demolished. (I know, it’s a metaphor for a natural process all children and their parents go through.) I don’t know exactly what happened, and never will, I’m sure. Somehow Theo got ahold of the bowl and it became a play thing, until it broke. I have to admit that at first I was pretty mad. But when i looked into that sad, confused little boy’s face, I knew I had to just let it go. I might have gone a long time, maybe forever, never thinking about that little bowl. I don’t know what I would have done with it anyway, other than allow it to be another piece of baggage to carry around the rest of my life and eventually leave to someone with no personal connection or emotional attachment, and hence free to take it to the Goodwill with all the other old crap. So, that came sooner in this case. I didn’t have to carry it around another 40 years. Still, I can’t help feeling a little loss, not of material wealth, but of a piece of the story—a little hole, just like the growing gaps in mom’s memory.
And then there was one
Uncle Pete at his 90th birthday celebration a couple years ago at the Slanted Door.
My Uncle Pete died. They say it was kidney failure, but I’m not sure. I think it might have been exhaustion. So, now my mom is the only one left, the only one of the previous generation of our family left in America.
Peter Panos came to America in the 1950s. He came from Greece without knowing the language. He came crippled, with hip dysplasia that was never treated in his mountain village. He came with his wife and a three-year-old daughter, Aglaia, who had inherited this disease. He came believing he could help his daughter and make a better life for his family. And he did.
Greece had suffered. The village, the families, they all suffered. There was the depression, the Second World War, the Nazi occupation, then the civil war. There was rural life in the mountains of the Peloponnese, a region that had a long history of resistance, of the Ottoman Turks, and then of the Germans. A relative told me that the village of Arbouna prides itself that no Turk ever stepped foot in the village through all the years of occupation. I don’t know if that’s true or not, and it doesn’t really matter. Today the village is decimated, like so many others in Greece, by the great migration out of the countryside, out of the olive orchards and fields, out of the sheep and goat pastures, and into the big cities. And for some, into America. With the wars, Uncle Pete’s opportunity to continue his education and develop his love of classic literature ended. But he was smart as a whip, talked a thousand miles per hour, and was creative with his big strong hands. Eventually, he talked Sophia Vlahos into marrying him and going to America.
Uncle Pete knew how to repair shoes. He found himself in central California. He opened a shoe repair shop in Marysville. It burned in a fire. He bought land. It was a swindle. He opened another shop in Stockton. It didn’t work out. He always moved the family and tried again somewhere else. Uncle Pete met every adversity with renewed determination to overcome and to succeed. Energetic, driven, proud, and smart, he always figured out how to get through tough times and make the next opportunity happen. He also had a deep, fiery faith in the Orthodox Christian Church. He had faith that no matter what is thrown at him, Jesus Christ is with him and will support him. Eventually. he landed in Fresno. By then, there were three children. There was a boy with Down’s syndrome, and the golden child: a boy, strong, blonde, and blue-eyed. In Fresno, things seemed to head in a better direction.
Uncle Pete liked being in the middle of things, a trait he passed on to his son, Tommy. He loved introducing people to one another and easily made many friends. In 1960, he and his wife Sophia brought her sister out from Greece to help out. The 40-year-old spinster had had her own hard life in Greece, working as a housekeeper from the age of seven. The chance to go to America seemed worth taking. She came to work, but far from slaving away in her sister’s home, Efrosini Vlahos was soon married. Uncle Pete had a niece in San Francisco, Olga Rakos. She had a friend in Fresno, Maria Kalsoyas. And Maria knew Paul Serafimidis, 20 years Efrosini’s senior. By 1962, I was born.
To be honest, Uncle Pete was often a difficult person. It’s paradoxical because to anyone outside the family he was always perfectly charming, often deferential, and of course, generous. But with family it was often different. He could be controlling, and short tempered. He always wanted things his way. This always came from a conviction that he knew best, a desire to help, and an expectation of respect. Sometimes he was hard on Sophia and the kids. Too hard. He was also particularly hard on my mother, his sister-in-law. He teased her and they fought often. But they always made up, and the families always remained very, very close. I suspect a lot of what made him tick was growing up crippled in the highest mountain villages of the Peloponnese. In order to survive he was going to have to work ten times as hard and demand respect from people who might otherwise dismiss him. He did both of these things. He drove his children to succeed and supported them all the way. His little girl with his hips would graduate from UC Berkeley and eventually get her PhD, marry and give him grandchildren. His son Tommy would make it in the financial world of San Francisco. Along the way, a lot of support was needed. Uncle Pete provided it. He believed in them and pushed them. He scrimped and saved and managed to provide financial support seemingly beyond the means of a simple shoe repairman.
I remember some other things. Peter Panos was a master at grafting fruit trees. He always had a small orchard in the yard of any house they lived in, and there were always a couple trees growing four or five different fruit on the same tree. I remember how proud he was of buying new American style furniture, or adding a room onto the house on Griffith Way. I remember his cars, the Rambler, Valiant, and something big and brown from the 40’s. These were all symbols of having made it in America. I remember him driving my family to church every Sunday, since my father did not drive. Uncle Pete couldn’t understand that, but he always did this for us. I remember he was the cantor at church and had an extraordinary voice. I remember he liked to get where he was going early; we were always the first ones to arrive at church in the morning, or at the picnic grounds at Hume Lake. If we were driving to the Bay Area to visit Aglaia, you can bet we were on the road before the sun was in the sky.
There is much, much more to say, but I’ll stop for now. I’ll just say that I love you Uncle Pete, and I am going to miss you for a long, long time.
One day in the waiting room
Efrosini Serafimidis
A couple of weeks ago I got a call from the board and care facility where my mom lives. It was late morning. They said she simply woke up complaining of intense pain and couldn’t move her left leg. She had been in bed all morning. I went over as soon as I could. She was clearly not able to move her leg much and certainly could not stand. But as she lay there in bed, she said she would be okay, that she just needed to rest her leg because she had been overdoing it. Then a little later, she said she had fallen down a couple days before and now it was sore. I had seen her a couple days ago. And the day before. This didn’t really quite add up. That’s not really a big surprise considering she has worsening dementia. Nonetheless, I worried that she had indeed fallen and that I wasn’t getting the whole story from the nursing home. They claimed she just woke up with pain in her leg.
She was actually in pretty good spirits and insisted she would be fine with some bed rest. I already had a lot on my mind that day, so I didn’t push it. I decided I would go back home to finish a couple errands and call the Kaiser advice nurse from there. I described the situation as best I could. The advice was to get to the ER as soon as possible. Which we did.
I started to assume the worst, which was that she had fallen and destroyed the hip replacement she had just had done in May, and from which that she had only just fully recovered. In fact, just two days before when I had seen her she was really getting around great with her walker, and taking a few steps here and there without it. This was part of the reason for my increased worry. She has always been incredibly stubborn. I plead with her to be safe and always use her walker. Which she doesn’t.
We spent all day and evening in the ER. They x-rayed her hip. It looked fine. That was a huge relief. She is so small that the x-ray image got about down to her knee, and the ER doctor saw something down there. So eventually they got another set of shots of the left knee. There they saw a bone chip. The location and lack of bruising suggested that she had not fallen. The doctor opined that something like a sudden muscle contraction could have pulled off a bit of her fragile bone. Perhaps she was catching herself from falling. It also appeared that there was not much to be done about it. After finally hearing back from the orthopedic doctors about her x-rays, the ER doc declared that they would put a brace on her leg and that we could leave. But it was now midnight. Everyone would be asleep at her facility. I would have to get her into my car here, and out at the other end—or pay a few hundred bucks for an ambulance. And she was pretty loopy from the morphine, not to mention tired and in pain when she moved. Moving her at the moment didn’t see like a good idea. So, I talked the doc into keeping her there in the ER overnight so that I could come and get her in the morning. Which I did.
We had an appointment with the orthopedists the following week. We sat in the waiting room. I took some pictures. Eventually we saw the doctor. The doctor agreed that surgical intervention was not worth it. But she cautioned that it would be painful for a while. Which it has been.
Hot Water
The Old Water Heater
Hot water has been in short supply around our house for a few years now. The problem is not so much that it runs out, but that it simply doesn’t get very hot. Moreoever, the water heater seemed to go to sleep with the rest of us, and wake up only when we did. This made the first shower of the day a distinctly less-than-hot one. Something needed to be done.
About a year ago, my friend Jason replaced the water heater in his new house with a tankless system. He offered the water heater, which was actually newish, to me. Naturally, I accepted it and resolved to replace my ancient water heater ASAP. There were, however, two problems: the first is that I am only moderately handy and was not confident that replacing the water heater was within my ability to do with a sufficiently high likelihood of success; the second is that my water heater is down in a small utility basement (with the furnace); draining it down there and hauling it out presented additional challenges. And Jason reported that it took more than a few hours to drain the one he’d removed. All these considerations gave me pause. I didn’t want to take such a prolonged time to replace the water heater, leaving both our house and Rocky’s house with no hot water or perhaps any water, and also risk having to call a plumber in on an emergency basis Sunday night if I screw something up.
I procrastinated for months. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing as I embarked on other projects that seemed less daunting, like painting the kitchen and dining room. That took a couple weeks right there. Or running the speaker cables through the crawl space under the house. Yes, even braving unknown insects and critters in the dark was a satisfactory delay tactic. After several months of this, I started feeling like I really needed to face it. This weekend, the threat of severe marital discord made it a forgone conclusion: this weekend was it.
Of course by this time, the “newish” water heater had been sitting out in the yard, white-trash style, for almost a year. Would it be okay? Would I be calling for an emergency installation of a brand new unit?
Draining the Old One and Pumping It Out
The first thing I had to do was disconnect and drain the old tank. The shut-off valve at the tank did not close completely, so I had shut off the water at the main to the whole house. This led to increased risk should things go sideways, but I proceeded anyway. I finally decided to drain it into a little tub and use a portable sump pump to pump the water up and out to the street. This ended up working very well. The only kink was that (those) in the cheap old garden hose I connected to the pump. (I further resolved that the hose would go into the trash after this job was accomplished.) In fact, the draining of the tank went very quickly, much less than an hour.
Drug the Body Up the Stairs
After this was done, I managed to drag the old tank up the stairs and out to the street by myself without injuring my back or reigniting an old shoulder injury incurred 10 years ago while trying to lower a stove on a dolly down a steep set of stairs. Next, I managed to get the new tank down into the basement and into it’s narrow corner with no problems. I hooked up the water. I hooked up the gas. I turned on the water. Leak…
The Old Water Heater - Connections
I took the stupid cold water connection apart and put it back together again three or four times, trying more teflon tape, less teflon tape, cranking it down more, cranking it down less, etc. Each time it leaked. Finally I got a better light and bent the flex tubing so that I could see in there. I finally realized that the washer had completely deteriorated and bits of it were in the threads. Time to go to the hardware store. I bought a 99-cent washer and, after chiseling out the remains of the old one with an awl, installed it. This time it worked–no leak.
The next test was the real one. Did it heat? Well it took a couple tries to manually light the pilot, but eventually it stayed lit. The burner fired up. Three and half hours and 99 cents later, the new water heater was working! Later that afternoon I scalded my hands at the kitchen sink; I didn’t mind it a bit.
The Replacement Waterheater - All Done!
Staying busy part 1: eldercare
Ever since I was laid off from my job in February, life has been exceptionally hectic. This seems completely counter-intuitive. This is because I obviously have much more free time than I did when I was working full time. Nonetheless, the free time seems to fill up fast with things that I either wish to do or that come up that I must do.
One huge thing that has come up is caring for my mother. This started the very day I was laid off when she fell and broke her wrist. About three weeks later, her left hip, which had been painful for months as the prosthesis from a much earlier hip replacement was rattling around loose in her femur, finally just broke. That is, her femur just started disintegrating. It was time to attempt a total revision of the hip replacement. This was a major undertaking that just a couple months before was seen as not worth the risks by an orthopedist at Kaiser Richmond. But now the risk of a failed surgery, becoming wheelchair bound, was already a reality.
The first orthopedic surgeon to look at her new situation, basically thought he could not do anything for her, but offered to refer us for a second opinion. The referral was to Dr. Bini, director of orthopedics for Kaiser East Bay. Dr. Bini was very confident he could fix her. “I can cut this and replace that; and if that doesn’t work, I have some other toys I can play with.” But he was very upfront about the risks: “For a 91-year-old, the anesthesia is dangerous. Or afterwards, she gets a clot and it goes to her lungs, that’s it. Or she gets pneumonia, which it’s unlikely she’ll recover from.”
We decide to move forward with it, and he schedules her for April 29th, at the end of an already full day of surgery for him. He just adds her in. So, there were three days of appointments for tests, including blood, urine, ekg, and biggest of all, a heart stress test with nuclear imaging.
Finally, she has the surgery. Dr. Bini calls me 5 or 6 hours after I left her with the pre-surgery team to say that the surgery went great, and that she came through it well. By Friday, she was recovering really well and they were planning on discharge to a rehab home the next day.
But the next day, Saturday, she started having terrible trouble breathing, and a chest x-ray showed patchy fluid throughout her lungs. It looked like pneumonia. By Sunday, she was moved to ICU, on an oxygen machine that helped keep her lungs inflated (bipapp?) and the doctors there were mostly talking to me about her health directive and “do not resuscitate” (DNR) status. We were all preparing for the end game. But I know these old Greeks, and her in particular. She’s too stubborn. Monday morning, the doc on watch suggested that she could be on the breathing machine indefinitely and that if she goes a couple days without change it might be time to think about pulling tubes out of her and just keeping her comfortable till the end. I said let’s see what we can pull back in terms of intervention and see how she does. So, over the course of a couple hours, we took her off the back-pressure oxygen, and got her down to just a little oxygen through a nose tube, not even a mask. And there started the big rally. The ICU docs were surprised.
She continued to improve through the week in terms of her infection and ability to breathe. However, she refused to eat, take her meds or otherwise cooperate in any way. Her lack of English, baseline dementia, and combination of lack of sleep and regular morphine all had her totally delusional. I was having to come in everyday to try to get her to eat and take some meds. By Friday, the ICU docs were again concerned that this was going to send her into decline again. And they felt like the hospital environment was a big factor in her disposition. They wanted to discharge her to a skilled nursing facility for rehab and focus on getting her on a normal routine. Saturday they did that, and sent her to Kaiser Post-Acute. Of course, that didn’t change her attitude much. They called me this morning to talk to her about eating, letting them take her vitals, and starting physical therapy on her hip. I tried. Later in the morning, we (Sarah, Theo, and my friend David) all went there for a mother’s day visit, and to see what the situation is. I actually got her to eat several bites of pureed food (can’t blame her for not liking it), and let them get her vitals. It looks like that is going to be the drill for the coming days, until she gets oriented. Assuming she ever does.
Suitcase 4
Suitcase 4, originally uploaded by neocles.
I’m slowly making my way through photographing the items in my mother’s apartment. I only vaguely remember the suitcase. It was not used very often. In fact, the only time I remember it being used was when my mom visited Greece once. When we moved my mother up here we just packed it full of curtains she had made for her house. She would not let me throw them away.
The chair and end table are part of a set purchased when we moved into a new house my dad had built on Griffith Way in Fresno, back in 1967. There are two chairs and couch which, unfortunately, were reupholstered around 1980. The sofa was cobalt blue and I’ll never forget that thing. But I can’t quite picture the original color of the chairs.
The furniture all has to be gotten rid of soon. I was all ready for that. But now I feel more sad about seeing it all go. I had a fantasy while I was going through stuff the other day that I could move my mom back into her house in Fresno and find a wonderful, reliable, relatively inexpensive 24/7 live-in caretaker for her. Then all the power objects could stay together for another couple years. But these childish dreams must be left behind…
Leaving Home For Good – Family Snapshot
The Grocery Cart #2, originally uploaded by neocles.
My mother, Efrosini Serafimidis, will be 90 years old this month. For the last five years she has been living down the street from us in a little one bedroom apartment. We moved her up here to Albany from Fresno and the home in which she had lived for over 30 years. I was resistant to moving her at the time, but my cousins insisted it was necessary. It is not easy for a person in their 80’s to switch gears like that. She still complains bitterly everyday about this place, and I think she still is a little resentful towards me on that count. But she did okay for two or three years.
The last couple years have been increasingly challenging. She has had a hip replacement and big surgery on a broken elbow. Also, she has been pretty lonely during the days when we are at work, and the lack of interaction and stimulation has taken a toll on her.
The next move is now necessary. This month, Effie will be going to a board and care facility somewhere nearby. It is going to be hard to do, and the transition is going to be a struggle, I’m sure. But her hips are not holding her up very well, and she is suffering from some dementia. She has wandered off a couple times, but her incredible luck with coming across non-Greek-speaking people who are charmed by her old-country, head-scarved, four-foot-ten-inch figure has held up. Each time we got her back none the worse for the wear.
Of course, Sarah and I both work full time, and have a five-year-old to attend to. And living in the Bay Area has its own challenges. So, I would not say I have been an overly conscientious caregiver, but nonetheless, I see her and give her her meds almost every day, try to keep her reasonably safe and fed, bring her back and forth to my home, clean her apartment, pay her bills, take care of her legal and financial matters, manage the renting of the family home in Fresno, and so on.
Chief among the challenges of moving her to a care facility is going to be the dissolving of her apartment home and figuring out what to do with all the things in it. We got rid of a lot of stuff when we moved her to Albany. But a lot of stuff is still packed away in her apartment. I am very nostalgic about these things and have a tough time just trashing them even though they are otherwise pretty worthless.
In response to all this I am planning a photo series. Right now the idea is simple snapshot-like photos of, basically, every object in her apartment. Where possible, descriptions will accompany the photos. Eventually, the series will include photos of each and every object I still have from my parents. I may be an old man myself by the time I finish.
Russian Christmas Dinner
Russian Christmas Dinner
at Chez Serafimidis
Rocky Hill, Executive Chef
Our fun, Russian-themed menu for Christmas dinner this year.
First Courses
Chicken Pate, Neo
Dolmas, Neo
Smoked Salmon, Neo and Rocky
Pickled Herring, Rocky
Black Bread, Rocky
Soup Course
Christmas Borscht, recipe ideas, 1, 2, 3, 4, Ray and Marge
Main Course
Mushroom Pie, recipe idea, Ray and Marge
Red Beans with Herb Dressing, recipe idea, Carrie
Egg Noodle and Cottage Cheese Casserole, recipe idea, Kate
Goose stuffed with Apples, recipe ideas, 1, 2, Neo
Desserts
Apple Charlotte, Rocky
Sour Cream Cake, Rocky
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