Humanity, my Pappou told me. All you need is humanity. If you don’t have humanity, you don’t have anything.
Typical, I thought to myself, and I recall feeling the usual mix of affection and boredom. The usual headlines of my visit to the grandparents: Old Man Spouts Wisdom Towards Any Available Ears. The meaning of life, and all that trash. He had probably gotten into an argument with my Yiayia again; he always said widowers, divorcees, and disappointed men made the best philosophers.
Money, education, fame. Pappou looked at me, his small gray-blue eyes misted by cataracts, more gray than blue these days, but no less warm. Wonderful. But worthless, if you haven’t got humanity. He took the spicy aromatic chicken I’d brought, the quilt I’d finished for Yiayia when her trembling fingers gave out, the tins of fresh olive oil we’d just processed at my uncle’s factory last week after the gathering and pressing of our orchard’s olives. His face softened with a smile, but sobered again quickly. You say you want to be a writer. Do you know how to be a human?
Fair enough, I thought. What are we first and foremost, if not human? I don’t look the part, do I? I joked.
We all look the part, he continued. Happily, as if my response was his green light to plunge into an hour-long lecture. But we are all born looking the part. That is not enough. As we live and grow, we must become the part.
We set the food aside and I helped him set the table. How do we become the part? I asked then, because I knew he wanted me to, but also because I wondered what he’d say.
We believe in ourselves. We believe in our fellow human beings. We love. We absolutely completely love. He set three glasses on the table, filled them with his own vineyard’s sweet red Mavrodapne wine. It is like the difference between being alive and living. Any breathing thing can claim to be living. But it takes a happy loving dynamic soul… to really be alive. So it is with humanity. Any fool can claim to be a human. But how many can claim to be humane? We look human, but we are made in the shape of God. And God is love. And so? That is being human.
Tiny old Yiayia shuffled in from the bedroom, and I could tell from her red cheeks and sparkling eyes that they’d been exchanging words again. Probably about the dwindling retirement fund. Or how to deal with the foul-mouthed boarders in the rooms below who wouldn’t pay rent to Pappou. Or how she was losing her mind and her manners and we had to forgive her for that and why did he set the table crookedly and couldn’t he for once—just for once?—put on matching socks and not be a God-cursed disgrace in this household, the old worthless cuckold?
Pappou pulled out a chair for her and filled her plate, cutting her chicken and feeding her with a tenderness it almost hurt to watch. I kissed them both and headed out to run the rest of my errands in town before heading home to my own world and worries.
Come with a jacket next time, it’s cold outside. Give our kisses to your parents. Be human.
So simple. That simple. Almost simple enough to overlook. Almost, I said. Simple enough that I couldn’t get his words out of my head and have had them bouncing around in here ever since.
"Angreek87"
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