line of the horizon which never ceased to enchant her. There she lay until she heard her aunt’s footsteps out in the back yard. She must be collecting eggs from the chicken coop, she thought and sprang to her feet to look out of the window.
She loved that morning ritual, which her grandmother Calliope also used to observe, and which her young self had eagerly anticipated. ‘Come, come my little one,’ her yiayia would call out to her each morning. ‘Let’s go and hunt for eggs,’ she would call again, raising the girl from her sleep. Calli could think of nothing more thrilling or more precious than the discovery of a new-laid egg, which she would hold in her child’s palm like precious treasure. She would keep it for a moment, feeling its warmth and brushing off the tiny feathers clinging to the shell, before gingerly placing it in the basket with the eggs her grandmother had already collected. Once they had finished, they would return to the kitchen and breakfast would be cooked. ‘Full of goodness,’ her yiayia would say lovingly. ‘Fresh eggs, they will make you grow up healthy and strong, my little one.’
She missed the old lady; the memory of her voice and especially her laughter lingered on in Calli’s mind. She was aware that she had resisted poor Thia Froso’s attempts to be something of a substitute but in her child’s mind all those years ago her loyalties lay with her grandmother who was irreplaceable. She now remembered with a sense of guilt, how soon after Yiayia Calliope passed away Froso tried to entice her into collecting the eggs with her, but the more the aunt tried to replace her grandmother, the more the result was to push the little girl further away until eventually she refused to visit the village any longer. The memory made her feel bad and a regretful fondness for her poor aunt flooded her thoughts.
The news about Froso’s ill health had worried Calli, but since her aunt appeared to be well and had made no mention of it, she decided to leave it to her to raise the subject. Leaning out of the window now, looking at the top of her aunt’s head, she fancied it was old Calliope walking back to the house with a basket of eggs. I suppose in the end we all end up looking like our mothers, she mused, aware that she too was starting to resemble her own mother these days. Grabbing a long T-shirt she threw it on over the cotton shorts she was sleeping in, and without bothering to look for shoes ran downstairs to join her aunt.
‘Kalimera, Calliope mou,’ Froso said, turning round to look at the young woman standing on the stone floor in her bare feet. ‘How about some eggs for breakfast?’ she said smiling, pointing at the basket in her arms.
‘Perfect!’ Calli replied; although she was not in the least bit hungry after the last evening’s feast, she could hardly refuse.
‘They said it’s going to be a scorcher today but it’s still cool outside,’ Froso said, gesturing towards the back door with her chin. ‘Why don’t you go out to the garden while it’s still fresh and pick some tomatoes while you’re about it?’
Her aunt was right, it felt refreshing in the garden; the early morning dew which had drifted from the mountains in the night was still visible on the leaves, though Calli knew that in an hour or so it would be gone and replaced by the blistering summer heat. She wandered around the back garden, paying a visit to the hens and the rabbits which again as a child she would spend hours petting, only to discover at some point that one of the furry animals that she adored had ended up in a stifado stew. She had refused of course ever to eat it; it took years to persuade her even to taste the dish and then only after her grandmother promised to replace rabbit as the main ingredient with lamb or octopus.
The unmistakable aroma of fried eggs wafted through the kitchen window out to the yard, making her salivate and instantly transporting her once again to childhood summers. She walked back into the house with a handful of red tomatoes and sat at the table.
‘Good to have you here, my girl,’ her aunt said, turning around with the frying pan ready to dish out the food, ‘and soon we’ll have your mama here too,