Αγάπη μου
My father is teaching me greek. It is hard because we are using only an app on a telephone. We are not allowed to talk directly to each other, these are the rules. I am learning: “εγώ τρώω, εσύ τρως, αυτός τρώει”. It’s hard going - I’ve learnt conjugations before but not in a different alphabet. I don’t think I understand the difference between the nominative, genitive, accusative and vocative but you know, I don’t think Dad does either. Maybe it would be easier if he could tell me, if you say it like this, you use this one. But the app is not super helpful and I feel a lot like I am lost in this language. I imagine myself on his island, each person offering me a single word, and me trying to race around collecting them into a sentence to give back to Dad. Every so often I get an easy catch - a word like καλημέρα which he taught me when I was a child, before the app, indeed - before apps existed. It makes me smile widely and reminds me this is my Dad’s language, this is a language for me, this is a late gift from my late father and I just have to learn to use it.
