I take a slow breath. I don’t know how many minutes pass, but gradually the crest of anxiety subsides.
I rummage through my backpack for a guidebook and turn the pages till I find the myth of Demeter and Persephone that I’d scanned earlier in the taxi. This time I pore over it slowly, and it dawns on me that the myth tells my story.
Persephone never saw Hades coming. She was jerked out of her nice, sweet life and plunged into a dark underworld. On one level, she was abducted into her own depths, forced into a deep and painful confrontation with herself. Yet the time she spent in the underworld is precisely what transforms her from a naive, untested girl into a mature and conscious young woman. I reread the part of the myth in which Persephone eats the pomegranate seeds. Is that the moment she accepts the complexity of her experience and really takes it in? I wonder: instead of retreating and hiding, instead of pining for the way it was, what if I accept the way it is? This strikes me as both the most obvious thing in the world and the most profound.
It occurs to me then that Persephone came back. I could come back, even if at this moment I don’t understand how. There is an end to this .
Seeing my experience mirrored in this mythical context reassures me. I take out my journal and write three words on a piece of paper, then scroll it up and place it on one of the altars inside the cave. I stare at it, wanting to memorize what it looks like sitting between a mound of pebbles and a sheaf of wheat.
When I leave the Plutonian, Mom and I wander through the museum, where she surprises me, and I think herself, too, by opening up to me about a struggle she has long had between her writing ambitions and her desire to . . . how did she put it? To just dwell, to be. Her confession flabbergasts me. Growing up, I never saw this private tension of hers. What touches me most about the conversation is that Mom has revealed this to me at all, that she has let me see how human she is.
When we leave the museum, we return to the Plutonian. She hasn’t been there yet. Standing beneath the overhang of rock, I watch as she inspects the altars. She gazes right at my piece of paper and has no idea.
She pulls out the pomegranate she confiscated from the hotel, cuts it open, and offers me some of the seeds. The myth, I realize, is her story, too. It’s not hard to see that being here is full of meaning for her. It’s like she’s inwardly grieving. It could be because of her birthday. Turning fifty has clearly gotten her attention. But maybe, too, she feels she has lost me in some way. If I’m aware of how our relationship has changed, of the room divider that marks her world from mine, of the way I withhold, then she must be aware of it as well.
I watch Mom eat several of the pomegranate seeds.
I take a handful and swallow them.
Back in Athens, Mom and I go shopping. We spend the whole time in one art gallery. Mom goes back and forth between two museum replicas—a white Cycladic statue and a black Minoan vase. She says it’s a gift for the new house she and Dad are building, a housewarming gift . . . for herself. She has been known to buy herself birthday presents and wrap them.
As she studies the amphora, I wander through the gallery, trying not to think about Demetri. This is the night I’m supposed to meet him, and already I’m reluctant about the prospect. It feels like the same resistance that gripped me in the restaurant when the dancer held out his hand and I felt powerless to move, the same resistance I have to talking to my mother.
While Mom debates about her purchase, I have a conversation with myself about how disappointed I’ll be if I don’t see him. I tell myself it’s probably the last chance I’ll get for the rest of my life. Dancing with him all those months ago drew me out of myself into a world where I felt like I belonged. We wrote letters, traded pictures, became close. How could I not go?
“Which
I rummage through my backpack for a guidebook and turn the pages till I find the myth of Demeter and Persephone that I’d scanned earlier in the taxi. This time I pore over it slowly, and it dawns on me that the myth tells my story.
Persephone never saw Hades coming. She was jerked out of her nice, sweet life and plunged into a dark underworld. On one level, she was abducted into her own depths, forced into a deep and painful confrontation with herself. Yet the time she spent in the underworld is precisely what transforms her from a naive, untested girl into a mature and conscious young woman. I reread the part of the myth in which Persephone eats the pomegranate seeds. Is that the moment she accepts the complexity of her experience and really takes it in? I wonder: instead of retreating and hiding, instead of pining for the way it was, what if I accept the way it is? This strikes me as both the most obvious thing in the world and the most profound.
It occurs to me then that Persephone came back. I could come back, even if at this moment I don’t understand how. There is an end to this .
Seeing my experience mirrored in this mythical context reassures me. I take out my journal and write three words on a piece of paper, then scroll it up and place it on one of the altars inside the cave. I stare at it, wanting to memorize what it looks like sitting between a mound of pebbles and a sheaf of wheat.
When I leave the Plutonian, Mom and I wander through the museum, where she surprises me, and I think herself, too, by opening up to me about a struggle she has long had between her writing ambitions and her desire to . . . how did she put it? To just dwell, to be. Her confession flabbergasts me. Growing up, I never saw this private tension of hers. What touches me most about the conversation is that Mom has revealed this to me at all, that she has let me see how human she is.
When we leave the museum, we return to the Plutonian. She hasn’t been there yet. Standing beneath the overhang of rock, I watch as she inspects the altars. She gazes right at my piece of paper and has no idea.
She pulls out the pomegranate she confiscated from the hotel, cuts it open, and offers me some of the seeds. The myth, I realize, is her story, too. It’s not hard to see that being here is full of meaning for her. It’s like she’s inwardly grieving. It could be because of her birthday. Turning fifty has clearly gotten her attention. But maybe, too, she feels she has lost me in some way. If I’m aware of how our relationship has changed, of the room divider that marks her world from mine, of the way I withhold, then she must be aware of it as well.
I watch Mom eat several of the pomegranate seeds.
I take a handful and swallow them.
Back in Athens, Mom and I go shopping. We spend the whole time in one art gallery. Mom goes back and forth between two museum replicas—a white Cycladic statue and a black Minoan vase. She says it’s a gift for the new house she and Dad are building, a housewarming gift . . . for herself. She has been known to buy herself birthday presents and wrap them.
As she studies the amphora, I wander through the gallery, trying not to think about Demetri. This is the night I’m supposed to meet him, and already I’m reluctant about the prospect. It feels like the same resistance that gripped me in the restaurant when the dancer held out his hand and I felt powerless to move, the same resistance I have to talking to my mother.
While Mom debates about her purchase, I have a conversation with myself about how disappointed I’ll be if I don’t see him. I tell myself it’s probably the last chance I’ll get for the rest of my life. Dancing with him all those months ago drew me out of myself into a world where I felt like I belonged. We wrote letters, traded pictures, became close. How could I not go?
“Which
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