The window
At the beginning of the year, my wife and I took a short trip to Athens. It was only a two-day trip to complete all the formalities for our UK visa application, but it was our first real trip to Athens in almost three years of living in Greece. I remember we had a very cozy and quiet little apartment with a kitchen window that looked out onto an overgrown and slightly abandoned garden. One day it was raining, which is common for Greece in the winter, and I was doing dishes in our quiet little kitchen, looking outside. I saw how the water pelted the leaves and barrels. I also saw a cat hiding under a staircase and thought that this might be one of those core memories that stay with you for a lifetime. I thought about my pilgrimage: how the “me” from 2021 would never have imagined myself doing household chores in Athens. I grieved all the things I had lost and all the people who were no longer there.
The rain was pouring, the cat was sitting, and all the small, precious things around me and inside my strange life were connecting to each other. The cat eventually left, and the rain stopped, but the warm feeling inside me lingered for a while. I can still bring it back to life sometimes.
December 24, 2025