Bit by bit

There is magic to be had there yet, amongst breeze of sun-roasted fig and sun-dried wild thyme and night-filtered jasmine and resin-redolent pine and seasalt and wet sand, and open arms and wide hearts and shared memories, days playing and swimming and bare feet and Solarcained skin and tent-enclosed siestas and endless evenings visiting each others' homes and yards and tavernas and wandering the pirate-proof cobble streets or wind-swept sandy beach.

Nineteen years since my last summer there. We were kids, they were not-grey, Pension Galini was the only hotel for miles, the sand dunes and roads not covered by cement and summer homes, there was no beach bar, no deck chairs.

There's still only one bus and one driver, three taxis, one school, one disco, one bookshop, less than three thousand residents, one pirate-proofed Horio ("Village"- the village/capital), two-shopped Magazia ("Shops"- the shops), still wave-ravaged Molos ("Pier"- the pier). People and places don't change that much, after all. Twenty-five hundred years since the island was populated, eight centuries since the hill was fortressed with houses carved into the rock invisible by sea, one generation since the locals didn't have to migrate to the mainland for school post-elementary, two decades since my last summer there- people and places don't change that much, after all.

They picked me up from the port, with teary squacks and squeezes, these people who have so little yet share so much, you look just like your mother you haven't changed we rememeber. So many years of Chios and my dad's side and our family, with the people here stowed away in the corner that houses the few memories I have of my mom, those years, that time. The lock of the door to my little house, not more than a shack with a fireplace that can make a great altar someday, opened effortlessly, the door to that space took a few kicks and opened for me. We remember.