A - Β - Γ

J'ai vu le jour avant la floraison de ces si jolies fleurs mauves dont mon village natal porte le nom. Je suis un chat et l'eau est mon élément. Mais c'est du petit chinois pour moi, je suis née sous le signe de la Vierge dont je porte le prénom.

I like being more or less cryptic... but not too much this time. You can easily figure out where I was born and what my name is. You don't need to know my age, do you? But it is not relevant, is it? It doesn't matter at all, I will always be young at heart and spirit.

You will learn about our national flower some other time, there is so much to let you know about it. Meantime, you can guess what it is called.

Now, let me tell you some more about me. My official life began on 3rd September. There was a sort of hospital in the nearby town but babies were usually delivered at home back then. People had no cars, they traveled with their ass or by foot. Just imagine they had not even electricity at home. No, no, no, don't be mistaken, I'm not at least a sexagenerian, I was just born in the sixties in a small but rather well-known Greek village.

My mother was alone that day, as everyone else was out, working on the fields. I think they must have been on the family's vineyard from what she had told me, the grape harvest was about to begin. I was her fourth baby but despite the experience acquired, she needed help from a midwife, who eventually gave me a cute belly button.

I was sleeping in a low wooden rocking crib that had been used by all the babies who were born in that old house, the very same crib where I saw one of my cousins ten years later. By then, a new house had been built on the same ground and I was on holidays in Greece. You see, I had only lived eight months in that family home before being taken to Belgium.

I don't recall anything of these first eight months of my life, but who would possibly remember something? I was mostly breastfed by my mother, was baptised and named after my father's grandmother. According to the tradition, I should have been named after my mother's father but my father's family wished otherwise because my great grandmother's name was lost together with my father's little sister.

It is rather complicated, I know, and I guess you're not following me here but anyway, both names have the same meaning and the same name day so everyone was happy, including me today. I suffered enough, at school for instance, having a "weird" surname, I was more than glad to have a more "Belgian friendly" name. As you can see, Greek people have their names carefully chosen and their name days are more important than birthdays.

Whereas I sometimes wish I wasn't...