Milwaukee, WI
Milwaukee is the city that will always be home for me. I haven’t live there in many years, but it’s always great to go back and it takes all my energy to leave. Fourteen months have passed since I’ve been to Milwaukee. It only took one old man (my dad) turning 85 and a lucky break on a $500 roundtrip ticket from Barcelona to get me back for a visit. Not many people associate a trip to Milwaukee as rejuvenating. Fact be told, I’ve been working a lot lately and I’ve been feeling the isolation of a particularly brutal winter in Greece and the demands of an increasingly busy schedule. I dropped into Philadelphia for a two hour layover and a cheesesteak, landed in Chicago, and jumped on a Coach USA bus to the Milwaukee Amtrak Station where I searched for a wifi connection to order a Lyft to take me to my parent’s house. I arrived, rang the doorbell, and basically gave my parents a heart attack. The next day I resumed my domestic duties driving my dad to his hangout spot and running errands with my mom. It’s as if I never left. On Saturday we woke up and began preparations for the big day.
A Star Is Born
If there’s anything that needs no introduction in a Greek house is the Spanakopita. The spanakopita and its equally pleasing Tiropita (briny feta cheese pie) are always an honored guest at every Greek gathering. No Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day or 4th of July would be complete without hearing the crunch of the phyllo in the background. Throughout the years, I’ve tasted and sampled every variation of Spanakopita from every Greek household and none stack up to my mom’s. The way this women effortlessly unfolds phyllo and works her magic is incomprehensible. She can fold them into triangles, lay it out on a pan sheet or roll it into a spiral in a fancy french way. Watching her work is like watching a dog play a piano.
Family
I can’t express how much I love my family. We have been forged as one monolith through broken bones, tear soaked shoulders, gut busting laughs, and communication without the need for words. Under the definition of crazy in the dictionary, you will find our family picture. I love how different we are as individuals, but strongest as a whole. I love how much my mom still keeps going strong after all these years of raising four boys. This woman should’ve been committed to mental institution years ago. I love how my dad takes an understated approach to life. He doesn’t talk a lot, but when he does, it’s like listening to Yoda speak. The next generation of Gorgolis 2.0 gives me hope. These little ones are so full of life and they’re so spoiled.
Bittersweet Symphony
I suffered from some pretty bad separation anxiety upon departure this time. Ten days passed by so fast and today it seems like I never made the trip. As always, I make an empty promise to myself to return more often. I know it’s a lie, because life gets in the way all the time. There’s a little ray of sunshine on the other side for me to return to. There’s a lot of work still to do on the olive grove and I want to see how the vineyard is coming along. As much as I love Milwaukee, Greece is now my home turf and I want to create something that is so magnetizing to the rest of my family that they cannot fathom a summer without Greece.
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