Then — Sunday morning

At seven in the morning, it was unfathomably, stiflingly hot, and in Sofia’s aunt’s kitchen, with the oven already hard at work, even more so. Sofia stepped in, and went straight to the sink, hands supporting herself while she leaned forward and took in the view. The bay, a couple of kilometres down the small hill from where her aunt’s house was perched, was stretching out to the sea in a way that it seemed as if the little village was opening its arms to welcome the boats that wandered in. On such a bright, summer day, the azure waters enveloped in the bay’s embrace glistened under the relentless, reapply-sunscreen-hourly Greek sun, and she could clearly make out the Turkish shores in the distance.

“You’re up early!” Sofia’s aunt, Poppy, told her by way of greeting, positioned next to the pot of the stuffed grape leaves she was rolling.

“Your baking woke me up.” Sofia yawned and slid into the seat opposite her aunt’s.

“Coffee?” asked Poppy and sprung to her feet, without waiting for an answer. Impressingly nimble for a woman her age, she bounced along in the kitchen, putting the Greek coffee on the stove to reach a boil— but never exceed it— and to pile mountains of koulourakia, thick slices of cheese tinged with terracotta due to the wine in which they had matured, bright red tomatoes and vinegary olives. “You know, I read on the Internet that we don’t respond to odours while in deep sleep,” Poppy said and placed the plate in front of Sofia. “Rather, we wake up and then perceive the smells around us,” she continued, keeping an eye on the coffee brewing on the stove.

“Whoever said that, hasn’t tried your olive oil koulourakia,” garbled Sofia over a mouthful of said baked goods, something that one could call “cookies”, if pressed to describe. To call them cookies though, would be doing them a disservice. Their actual name was koulourakia, and they were shaped like small braids. Not overly sweet, with a splash of wine and sesame seeds to complement the earthy, rich tones of the generously added olive oil. If there was ever a perfect embodiment of the most extra virgin, organic olive oil, that was it.

Sofia had spent many late autumns as a child, with a long wooden stick hitting at the branches of her aunt’s olive trees, so the small, black, round precious fruits would fall in the nets spread underneath the trees. “Gently, Sofia! You aren’t angry at the olives, you just want them to fall down,” her aunt would remind her. She would poke and poke until her arms grew tired, and then she would sit under a tree munching on snacks and re-reading Jane Eyre – as evidenced by the dark stains on the pages – while the adults alternated between talking and olive-picking.
Poppy puffed with pride at Sofia’s compliment. “Maybe one day I will give you the exact recipe,” she chuckled as she expertly lifted the little copper pot containing the coffee right when she should, not a moment sooner, as it started bubbling, but not just quite. She poured it in Sofia’s favourite cup, a small, chipped blue cup with pink flowers.

Sofia took a long sip of the hot beverage, savouring the smell. Normally, she was a latte girl, but there was nothing better than dunking one koulouraki (singular, koulourakia in plural) into the cup and having the hot coffee seep into it, causing it to crumble in her mouth. “Now that I am married you should really just give me the recipe,” she said, already reaching out for koulouraki number two.

“It’s a family secret and you are too young for it. And besides, isn’t your husband the one who cooks?” Poppy countered, resuming her grape-leaf rolling process, which was performed with surgical precision. The leaf would be very carefully flattened out, and a heaping teaspoon of filling – an aromatic mixture of cooked onions, rice, pine nuts and herbs – would be carefully placed on the middle of the leaf. Then the sides would be folded inwards, a thin strip of leaf on each side meeting near the middle on top of the filling. “Don’t fold them so much, this will make them boxy, and we want them long!” Poppy would chide young Sofia, as she could only manage to roll her leaves into little square wads instead of the longer ones that her aunt carefully deposited in the pot.

“Yes, he is,” Sofia smiled at the thought of her husband – she had a husband! – who was sweet and kind and funny and smart.

Poppy noticed, and she smiled at her niece. “Have I told you about your uncle?” she asked, assessing her finished layer of green, leafy tubes, before she patted down a few empty leaves as means of protection of one layer cooking directly on top of the other, risking the filling spilling out.

“Well, I know it was an arranged wedding,” Sofia replied, while secretly pondering how recent it seemed that in the early seventies arranged weddings were still very much going strong on the small island of Kos. Any local would emphasise that they were second in population in the Dodecanese region of the Aegean Sea, thank you very much, conveniently ignoring that in terms of surface area they actually came in third.

“Yes, but did I tell you what he asked me, upon meeting me for the first time, when he came with his flower bouquet? He lasted all of five minutes before blurting, ‘Why is your tooth yellow?’”

Sofia choked on her fourth koulouraki and took that as a sign she had had enough and started helping her aunt with the leaves.

“A love story for the ages,” she managed in between quiet waves of laughter.

Her aunt’s front left tooth had had a yellowish-beige hue due to its dead nerve endings, since she hit it as a kid on a door frame, while fighting with her brother over ownership of their sole “doll”.

A doll that was actually some rags stitched together by their mother, with a smile sewn in with green thread and mismatched buttons serving as eyes. Poppy’s family in the little village at the southern coast of the island was not exactly rich, hence the quite literal ragdoll. They did own, however, enough land that she qualified, if not as prime, nor even second-choice arranged-bride material, then at least as a solid third tier, which was nothing to scoff at.

“Well, things were different then,” her aunt murmured. “He is a good man though and is…was a good father for our boy.” She wiped a single tear from her cheek. Sofia’s heart constricted at the sight of it, her hand reaching out to the older, wrinklier one.

Sofia’s cousin, Renos. He was born with Down Syndrome, something that had urged the doctor who delivered him to offer what he thought was a solution to Poppy. “I can pretend he just fell off my hands, no one will know, and you and your husband can try again.” Poppy had bristled and told him to get the fuck away from my baby with as much aggression a woman who had just been torn from vulva to anus could muster.

She loved the little boy fiercely, and she grieved him quietly when he died of leukaemia twenty years later.

Her aunt smiled, her eyes glazing over at some distant memory. “Okay, enough with the crying. Let’s finish up here. And make them long, not boxy.”

Now – Sunday morning

Over the sink with the dripping faucet, dawn was just breaking, a medley of purples and pinks and deep oranges staining the shy. The bay was uncharacteristically calm for this time of the year. Such dissonance between Sofia’s mood and the weather was hard not to take personally. She got up and started opening drawers and cupboards.

The fancy cutlery with the little florettes carved on the bottom of each piece, that she thought was the most precious treasure ever, and Poppy had always laughed and said she hoped growing up she wouldn’t be so easy to impress. The cookbook that doubled as a makeshift partition that would be positioned upright in front of Sofia, so she could spread her cards on the table when they played card games, because she was not old enough for the cards to fit in her hands. She had been able to fit the cards in her hands long before she finally acknowledged being able to do so, but never said anything because she liked having a place where she was being fussed over. The way her aunt always declared, “Oh, we need the book for Sofia,” made Sofia suspect Poppy knew that as well.

The cupboard that always contained sweets and candy bars that Poppy would sneak to Sofia, whose sweet tooth rivalled her own. In the debate of nature versus nurture, scientists probably hadn’t considered the impact of the baptism oil. In Greek Orthodox baptisms, godparents would pour olive oil into the basin into which poor babies would be ceremoniously dunked, entering as unfaithful heathens and emerging as new-found Christians. This, according to folk tradition, transferred the personality of the godparent to the infant. Empirical evidence in their case was so overwhelming that she had no reason to question it.

On the top shelf was a porcelain doll dressed up as a ballerina. Her gift to Poppy for her sixtieth birthday, just two years ago. Poppy’s hands had trembled as she’d picked up the doll reverently, as it was the most precious thing she had ever encountered, and cradled her to her chest carefully, gently. “I finally have my own doll!” she had said, voice thick and eyes glistening.

Sofia couldn’t stop the tears that flowed at the memory. On strict bed rest due to her complicated second pregnancy’s first trimester, she hadn’t been there to say goodbye. It had been mercifully quick for Poppy and mercilessly painful for Sofia. She set out to make breakfast the way her aunt would have done, not bothering with the tears streaming down her face. Light footfall came up behind her and she quickly wiped her eyes with the back of her hands and barely had time to turn and catch mid-air the little figure that leaped into her arms.

“Hi mommy,” her daughter’s little voice came muffled from where she had buried her face in Sofia’s neck, her little body still warm from bed.

“Hi baby,” Sofia inhaled her daughter’s sweet scent and squeezed her. “I woke up and you weren’t there and then I got hungry and I told Daddy but he just snored.”

“Do you want some hot chocolate too?” Sofia asked, as the little girl nodded enthusiastically, curly hair bouncing at the movement. “Let’s put you down. You know what, I will give you my favourite cup, okay?”

“Yay! Mommy’s cup! Mommy’s cup!” the little girl chanted and hopped from foot to foot.

“Aunt Poppy used to put it in the back of the cupboard here…” Sofia trailed off. What was that? A small envelope, marked “Sofia”, was placed underneath the cup. Sofia tuned out the sound of her daughter jumping around and pulled out a piece of paper from the envelope.
In her aunt’s loopy handwriting, it said: “Check inside the envelope, I think it was about time, don’t you? I love you.”

Sofia pulled out a second piece of paper that she hadn’t noticed before, folded neatly in half. She began reading, and choked back a sob that was also a laugh.

Olive Oil Koulourakia Recipe – Makes about 40

“Mommy, why are you crying? Does baby Poppy in your belly hurt again? Do you need to go to bed?”

Sofia picked up the little girl and rested her atop her growing bump. “I am okay, Sweetie. Now, do you want to make koulourakia with mommy?”