Greece. A sidewalk cafe. A waiter on break, smoking a cigarette. He sees an elderly woman crossing the street. She is carrying groceries, but she is struggling. 

He is still wearing his apron when he crosses the sidewalk to help her carry her bags. He accompanies her down the street. He is gone for a long time. Maybe forty-five minutes. 

Later, I see him return to the cafe. His boss isn’t happy. They exchange words. And although I don’t speak Greek, I can read the hand gestures. The server is explaining that he helped the old woman with her groceries. The boss is uninterested in the Samaritan’s reasons. The boss shouts, shakes his head, spits out expletives—I think—throws up his arms, and walks away. 

The server resumes his cigarette. 

A group of high-school kids. They are crossing the highway, laughing and carrying on. A few of the kids are eating fruit. Apples and oranges and such. 

A man with crutches is also limping across the street, heading the other direction. He passes the kids. 

I see a girl. She brushes past him, then turns quickly. She trots after the man, catches up, then reaches into her bag and hands him a large orange. 

He just looks at her. She smiles. They part ways. The man on crutches continues his struggle across the crosswalk. He is smiling now, too. 

A public bus. The bus is full. People are crammed into each seat like anchovies. A little girl, maybe five years old, is skipping up and down the aisles while the bus is in motion. 

The girl is soon engrossed in a conversation with an elderly woman. They are both speaking rapid-fire Greek. The little girl has a lot to say. The older…

We arrive in the little chapel, tucked away in the mountains. The wind is brisk. The Greek flag on the flagpole has been ravaged by the wind. All that remains is a tattered blue-and-white rag.

I walk into the tiny church. The beamed ceilings are slightly less than head-high. The interior chamber is adorned with paintings of Saint Nicholas. Long before he was Santa, the patron saint of Christmas and Coca-Cola, he was the protector of sailors.

I enter a little prayer booth through a swinging wooden half-door. I light a candle for a private prayer. I am not Orthodox, but I consider these saints my forefathers nonetheless.

There is a portrait of Christ. He is making the Christogram blessing with his fingers. Sort of like an okey-dokey sign.

I stand for a while, counting my breaths. I am not a big praying guy. I wish I was. But we are who we are. My mind has the hyperfocus of a caffeinated squirrel.

Still, I can count

my breaths, blank my mind, and stare into nothingness for a few minutes. And this feels like almost the same thing.

I leave the booth. I sit in one of the cane chairs in the sanctuary. If that’s what you call it—the room is about the size of a residential bathroom.

There is a hanging oil lamp before the humble altar. There is a plywood cut-out crucifix, painted with gold. Someone has braided a wreath of purple wildflowers and hung it from the top of Christ’s cross. The flowers are the same kind we saw growing on the side of the remote trail leading here.

I am silent in the chapel. I am still counting breaths. I get to three and I start over. Sometimes I only count one at…

The sailboats of Nafplio gently rock in the sunlight. They creak against their dock lines, tugging, as if trying to liberate themselves. The gulls are singing. The scent of the sea is strong. Pungent even. Like the seafood department of Winn-Dixie. 

A church bell tolls. 

I pass the church. The church is Agia Sophia, a Greek Orthodox building believed to date back to the Byzantine period. This building is old, predating the birth of Cher. 

I am struck by this building. This structure may have been here centuries before the Protestant Reformation. Before the Fourth Crusade. Before a guy named Columbus reached America. Before the Internet. This is ancient Christianity, up close. 

On the front stoop is an older man in a long black tunic. He has a bushy white beard. He is sweeping the steps with a broom. This must be the parish priest, I’m thinking. The “pápas.” 

Evidently, priests handle their own brooms in Greece. 

Or perhaps he is a monk. Which could make sense, too. There is a monastery not far

from here in the village of Aria. The monastery is home to six nuns who lead a life of contemplation. I’ve been thinking about nuns a lot lately. Particularly one I met on a bus outside Athens. 

The priest sees me walking the street alone, and he waves. 

“Kaliméra,” he says. At least I think that’s what he is saying. Which is “Good morning.” Or possibly, “Good day.” Or perhaps, “I like cheese.” 

No way to know for sure. I don’t speak Greek. 

I return the wave and smile. But I have no idea what to say back. So I say one of the only four Greek words I know: “Efcharistó.” Which is a way of saying thank you. 

The sun has risen in Greece, but the Grecians haven’t. I am walking Nafplio’s quiet streets, alone in the cool of morning. Most shops are closed. And I am followed by cats. 

Nafplio has hundreds of feral cats. Maybe thousands. They are everywhere. In every nook and hollow. And each morning there seems to be even more. 

“I don’t know how many stray cats we have,” says one embittered shopkeeper who is unashamedly anti-cat. “I think maybe we have a million cats. No way to know for sure.” 

He’s right. Cats don’t sit still for census takers. Cats won’t even sit still for other cats. 

Nevertheless, the old storekeeper doesn’t represent the majority. Nafplio is evidently full of cat people. There are food and water bowls all over town. There are cat beds and cat treats everywhere. There are cat people galore. 

You can spot cat people from a mile away. Because, of course, there will be cats around them. 

Which is why the cats feel comfortable here. They do not run and hide.

They live in a perpetual state of freedom. They chase each other openly. They play tag in the streets. Leap from the hoods of parked cars. Recline in the sunlight. Sprawl in the middle of the walkways. Lick themselves. They purr, paw, parade, perch, and preen. 

They sit prettily on the doormat as you pass by a closed shopfront, giving you a death stare. 

Cats have a talent for knowing who does and doesn’t like them. They can glance at a person and just know whether you’re a cat guy or not. 

Moreover, they are unbothered by disdain. A cat will deliberately seek out a self-professed cat-hater, rub its feline body against that person’s legs, and either win that…

After our plane landed in Athens, we boarded another airplane. A much smaller, older model plane. The carpet was dingy. The upholstery had long ago gone to be with Jesus.

Our fellow passengers were almost entirely Greek. I know this because the passengers were louder than an average SEC Championship. Almost all passengers were talking and laughing, at times leaning over neighboring passengers to shout with glee toward the back of the plane.

Greeks are not at all like Americans, I discovered. You know how when Americans fly, we sit in polite silence? Americans don’t speak to fellow passengers except in dire emergencies. (“Excuse me, I don’t mean to disturb you, but my husband is having a heart attack.”) And if, by chance, there are Canadians on such flights, all you hear is the sound of people randomly whispering apologies.

Greeks are not like this.

At least not when using public transit. They talk to each other. They laugh. They are not at all

self-conscious about conducting animated conversations with a person who might be sitting, for example, in the cockpit.

I was seated between two older, strong-voiced women, deep in the throes of loud, social discourse. They seemed not to notice me at all. It was not unlike riding in the backseat of the First Baptist youth-group bus when Allen Weatherby ate Mentos and guzzled Coca-Cola on a dare only to discover this doesn’t make your stomach explode. But worse. Everyone was forced to clean up the remains of Allen’s semi-digested lunch while Pastor Phil’s wife watched over the felons, expressing her deep disappointment between uncontrollable fits of gagging.

When that plane landed, passengers were then vomited into a much tinier airport where pretty much all the signage looked like this:

Δεν έχω ιδέα τι λέει στην πραγματικότητα τίποτα από…

O’Hare International Airport is busy. And by “busy,” I mean “an organized soccer riot.” There are people everywhere. Elbowing. Shoving. Shouldering their way through the crowds. Charging their way up escalators. Jogging past terminals. People of all shapes. All kinds. All haircuts.

Our flight departs in a few minutes. We are flying to Greece. I will be running the Athens Marathon next week. And if everything goes right, I’ll be writing about it as the adventure unfolds. That is, if I survive the full-contact sport of airport-terminal grabass.

The aggression in this place is astounding. I just got sideswiped by a small elderly woman who stormed past me on the moving walkway, grumbling at me under her breath, repeatedly barking the F-word. And I don’t mean “Fantastic.”

I will be meeting my friend Joice in Athens. Joice is running this marathon for her birthday, competing in the seventy-year-old division. And although I am decades younger, I submitted my race times and attempted to enroll in the

same age division. Officials looked over my information and said I did not qualify. I am too slow.

The Athens Marathon is technically the world’s oldest marathon route. According to legend, in 490 BC Pheidippedes ran from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens, in the nude. When he arrived, he fell over and died of exhaustion. But not before bearing news of victory, crying, “We won!” In honor of this historic event, it’s customary for runners, upon crossing the finish, to disrobe and drop dead.

I’ve run marathons before. Lots of them. I’m slow. I have even finished dead last a few times. But I love races. I love the community. I love the socialization. Above all, I love the free beer.

I started running as a teenager because I was tired of being called…

I always wondered what I’d do if I met him. I always wondered how I’d act if I met Young Me.

Well, this was my chance to find out.

“What am I doing in this elementary school?” I was thinking. “They tore this place down years ago.”

I looked at my clothes. I was in pajamas. And barefoot. My toenails needed trimming.

I was standing in the old public school. Children’s cardboard-paper creations hung on the walls. Art projects lined the corridor like triumphant little banners. Each student’s name was scrawled onto the paper proudly, some letters backward.

I saw the boy.

He was walking down the hallway. He was going to the drinking fountain.

Remember drinking fountains? Remember when the whole class waited in line to use them? Back in the days before corporations started bottling water and selling it for $8 a pop at gas stations—my father would roll over in his grave.

The little boy was strawberry blond. I say “strawberry blond” because this is how maternal

teachers would comfort Young Me whenever some heckler teased me with common redhead nicknames such as, to choose a nickname at random, “Bozo the Clown.”

“Oh, sweetie,” such teachers would say, tucking my tear-stained face into their great bosoms. “You have beautiful strawberry blond hair.”

I never believed them. I thought I was ugly. To be a redhead at that age was the kiss of death. You were different. You were a leper. You were nicknamed “Red” by adults who thought they were original. You were capable of developing a third-degree sunburn in 0.003 seconds.

The little strawberry blond used the white porcelain drinking fountain. He tilted his head and assumed the hydration stance.

And all at once, I saw this boy for who he…