It was the summer of 1973 and my family was visiting Cyprus. A lot happened that year with Nixon's second term as president, the suspension of the war in North Vietnam, the Sears Tower in Chicago being completed, and the !rst handheld cellular phone call being made in NYC. It was also the year of Roe vs. Wade with the Supreme Court abolishing state bans on abortion, and Elvis Presley's concert in Hawaii with the world's !rst worldwide telecast watched by more people than the Apollo moon landings. For my family, it was the year my brother was born while my parents and I visited extended family.
I was 3 years old, and only spoke Greek, so it was easy to acclimate to nursery school in the village of Morphou in Cyprus. Children are very accepting and I have fond memories of that summer. If you have ever visited a Greek island, you know how amazing the home cooked food is and Cyprus is no exception. Imagine farm fresh food, baked bread, milk from the goat, vegetables and fruit from our own orchards. It was how my parents were raised, and my extended family continued to live. There was no fast food, processed chips, or Mayfield ice cream. Did someone say ice cream? My fondest memory is my maternal grandfather picking me up from school everyday. He would ride his bike with an ice cream cone in his hand. It was for me! Amazing flavors of the real homemade ice cream churned with fresh fruit of the trees. I never got that in the US.
The day my mother went into labor with my brother is also memorable. Back in that day, my mom wore platform heels with dresses. On her way out the door to the hospital, she fell. It was a graceful fall on her knees with scuffs and redness. A Greek tragedy ensued with drama, her mother and my grandmother worrying for the safety of the child. My mother was fine, and so was the baby. Weeks later, my parents and I jet settled back to the states with my brother in tow. How difficult that must have been for them and my extended family; to see a baby born and a sudden divide of thousands of miles.
As I went to school daily in the village, I remember being picked up piling into the teacher's car in the back with many kids. There were no seat belt laws until the late 80's, and cars had only been required to have seat belts in them in the US by 1968. This was Cyprus, a small village with dirt roads, with a population of about 7,000 inhabitants.
Morphou is a small town in the northwest of Cyprus, situated 40 km west of the capital city of Nicosia. The name itself means 'beautiful.' The !rst settlers came from ancient Sparta, and the goddess of beauty and love in Greek mythology, Aphrodite, was called 'Morphou.' The population of the village was predominantly Greek Cypriots in 1973, with less than 100 Turkish Cypriots living in the village. In 1974 all the Greek Cypriots of the village "ed from the advancing Turkish army. About 7,500 Greek Cypriots were displaced due to the war.
In my college years, in the early 1990's, Greek Cypriots asked then President George Bush Sr. why he helped Kuwait with the Gulf War, and not Cyprus. They directly asked, 'is it because they (Kuwaitis) have oil and we have oranges?' I remember the then president Bush being described as, 'taken aback,' by the question and boldness of the Cypriots. There are many orchards remaining to this day in Morphou, and the oranges are exported to the Turkish mainland by the occupying forces. I just remember ice cream.