She suddenly walks over and cups my face in her hands. Her palms are warm and papery, crosshatched with decades of wrinkles. She smells like olive oil and garlic and the lavender sachets she keeps in her dresser drawers. She smells like my entire childhood.
“Agápi mou.” She kisses my right cheek. Then my left. Then, because she’s Yiayia and three is the magic number, my right cheek again. “How are you, my love? Tell me truth.”
“I’m good, Yiayia.”
“You look tired.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re working too hard. You need to rest more.” She pats my cheek. “You help me set up food, okay? And tell me everything. How is Brandon? When am I getting great-grandchildren?”
I freeze.
The ultrasound is literally in my purse ten feet away.
“Um. Brandon’s good. Working a lot.”
“He’s a good boy. Handsome. Good teeth.” She narrows her eyes. “But you need to feed him more. He’s too skinny.”
“He’s a dentist, Yiayia. I think he knows how to feed himself.”
“Men don’t know anything.” She waves her hand dismissively. “You feed him. Make him strong.”
I smile despite myself because this is just who she is, who she’s always been. Strong-willed. Opinionated. Always has a solution. Always feeding people.
She’s been the matriarch of this family for as long as I can remember. The one who holds everything together. The one who shows up with Tupperware full of food and fixes whatever’s broken, whether it’s a sagging banner or a broken heart. She immigrated here when Dad was five years old. She and myPappoú, who I barely remember except for his laugh and his smell—cigarettes and coffee and something warm, something safe. He died when I was ten from a pulmonary embolism. Yiayia kept going. She always keeps going.
She raised two children and helped raise three grandchildren and still makes Sunday dinners for the entire family even though we tell her she doesn’t have to. She’s eighty-one years old and somehow has more energy than all of us combined.
“Okay, everyone!” She shouts, looking around. “We have work to do. Let’s move!”
And just like that, we’re all in motion.
Somehow, within the next two hours, the living room stops looking like a crime scene and starts looking like something my mother would have actually wanted.
Cori found command hooks in the junk drawer—who knew we had command hooks?—and the banner is now straight, professional, almost elegant. Phoebe and Allie came back from Party City with actual coordinated decorations: gold and cream, nothing too flashy, nothing that screams BIRTHDAY EXTRAVAGANZA. Twinkly lights are strung along the exposed brick. Fresh flowers—real ones, all white and green, arranged by someone with actual taste. The sad bodega carnations have been relegated to the bathroom, where they can live out their remaining hours with dignity.
Yiayia took over the kitchen like a general reclaiming territory.
The dolmades are warming on low heat, their grape-leaf wrappers glistening with olive oil and lemon. Thespanakopitatriangles are arranged in neat golden rows on a platter, their phyllo dough so delicate I can see the layers.Pastitsio.Moussaka. A bowl oftzatzikiso thick the spoon stands straight up. Yiayia caught me dipping my finger in it and smacked my hand with a wooden spoon, but not before I got a taste.
Garlic. Dill. That sharp, clean yogurt tang.
Mom’s favorites. I know because I’ve watched her eat them for eighteen years. The spanakopita first, always, because she says the phyllo is best when it’s just out of the oven. Then the dolmades, which she eats with her fingers, dabbing each one in tzatziki.
There’s also the catered stuff: trays of fancy hors d’oeuvres, a cheese board that puts my Murray’s platter to shame, crusty bread, hummus, tzatziki, grilled vegetables.
And flowers. So many flowers. Peonies everywhere because Mom loves them.
It looks…actually amazing. Which is good, because people have started arriving and the house is filling up fast.
I see some of Mom’s colleagues from CBS—producers, correspondents, camera operators she’s worked with for years. Dad’s friends from Columbia, professors I’ve known my whole life. Aunt Maria and her husband walking in with a bottle of wine. Joe and Allison with their daughters Lauren and Alyssa, who immediately find me and Phoebe and pull us into hugs.
The house is buzzing with conversation and laughter and the specific energy that happens when you get a bunch of people who genuinely like each other in one room.
“I think they’re here!” Allie hisses from her position by the window.
“Lights off!” Cori commands.
