When I was younger, I did not understand that my mother had come to the United States from another country. I understood that she was “Greek,” and somehow that made me “Greek” by extension, but I was not curious enough to ask questions. I knew that she spoke Greek fluently, but I did not know how she had learned it. But I did have one persistent question that stumped me: If my mother had been born with the inherent knowledge of how to speak this foreign language, why had I not been born that way, too?
That was the first question I had ever thought to ask, probably when I was about ten years old and attending St. Francis of Assisi School, a private Catholic grammar school in Astoria, Queens. English was my favorite subject, and I did gymnastics and was in the chorus club at school. My mom packed my lunch, a turkey sandwich with the crust cut off, every day.
With a little more knowledge of how the world works, I asked, “Why didn’t you teach us to speak Greek?”
Us meaning me and my older sister of two years, Dina Ann.
“I don’t know,” was something like what my mother had said. Then she’d changed the subject.
Now, at eighteen years old, I still know relatively nothing about how the world works, but I certainly know a lot more than I knew at ten years old. So instead, today I ask her, “Do you ever wish that your children could speak Greek?”
“Yes,” she replies without hesitation. “It’s always beneficial to know another language. I didn’t teach you because I didn’t have any other people to speak Greek with.”
While I regret not being able to call myself truly bilingual, my mother’s story of being bilingual comes with an entirely different set of emotions and reasoning behind it. She was only two years old when she and her parents, originally from Greece, packed up their things in Sydney, Australia, and headed for the United States.
My mother was born Dina Deplas, to parents Maria and Athanasios Deplas. Maria and Athanasios, or Tom, grew up in Greece. So why did they move to Australia?
“I think for better opportunity instead of hard labor and farming,” my mother says. “My mom had chickens and olives and small animals. I don’t know that they sold much of it. I think it was more for their own consumption.”
So did they find the better opportunity that they sought in Australia? My mother is not sure, but she knows that when she was just a baby, her parents heard stories about the proverbial American Dream and made the courageous decision to try it out themselves.
“My uncle, my father’s brother, was here from Greece,” Dina says of why her family moved to the US. “He said he could help my father get a job and maybe buy a house, because you make better money here.”
So why Astoria, Queens?
“My uncle was here first,” my mom repeats. “I think probably because there was a big Greek community here. He probably knew people already.”
But expectations do not always translate concretely to reality–or not immediately, at least.
“Money was very tight,” my mother says of her childhood in New York. “My mother had to work in a factory to pay bills, from the early morning to maybe six o’clock at night. If she knew English, she might have gotten a better job. And I wouldn’t constantly have to deal with plumbers, electricians, bills, doctors… all on my own at ten years old.”
So though we both grew up in Astoria, Queens, ten-year-old Lillian and ten-year-old Dina lived in two different worlds. My mother cut the crust off my turkey sandwiches when I was ten, but when she was ten, her mother relied on her to translate account information at the bank.
Every generation grows up in different circumstances. The generation gap between my mother and me, a Gen X-er and a Millennial(-ish person), is huge. Current research calls it the “ultimate generation gap,” and predicts that it will only get wider. It is a safe guess that the Internet could have helped my mother when she was a child. A daughter of instant gratification like myself, who can pull her cell phone from her pocket and have a vocal conversation with it in any language, has no idea how hard my mom worked and how creative she needed to be in order to get things done efficiently.
Like you might guess, my mother discusses how the biggest challenge in America for her family was communication. About her own mother, she continues, “She couldn’t read English; she couldn’t speak English. She had to take really crappy jobs. She had no skills, so she used to work in factories. She used to make staples and staplers. And then she was a presser in a garment factory.”
Though the American Dream came with its share of hardships, my mother’s family never began to resent their Greek background. In fact, they brought aspects of their Greek culture with them to New York.
“We celebrated Greek holidays, went to a Greek church, Greek school,” my mom says.
My mother went to school in Astoria, at a Greek school called Saint Demetrios Astoria School that still operates today.
“I liked school,” she says. “Greek school… it was okay. It was very sheltered. You knew the same fifty people from sixth grade through high school. It was very small. And I hated having to learn everything in Greek and English. And take a foreign language. I took French.”
Being bilingual was something of a burden throughout my mother’s childhood, what with having to translate everything for her mother. But as she got older, did it ever become a benefit?
“Yeah, because you could always communicate with somebody,” she replies. “When I used to work at a store called Eisenberg’s, a home goods store, I was able to communicate with customers. That was a big part of getting that job.”
You knew everybody. Even if you didn’t know them by name, you knew them by face, and they knew you.
As mentioned, Dina grew up in Astoria, and our family still resides there today. Is the neighborhood the same now as it was back then?
“No,” my mom says immediately. “It’s a lot more diverse now, and back then… you knew everybody. Even if you didn’t know them by name, you knew them by face, and they knew you. Not anymore.”
All these Greek spots are within a three-block radius.
Astoria still has a sizable Greek and Greek-American population, though not as concentrated as it was years ago. I became interested in knowing if my mother had ever experienced any other cultures.
“Italian, when I married your dad,” my mom replies to that question, which surprises me. I had assumed that, growing up, she might have been exposed to other cultures by her friends. Then I remembered that most everyone at her school and in the neighborhood was Greek, and they all had come with similar experiences that she had.
“It’s very similar,” my mother adds, making a comparison between the Italian and Greek cultures. I ask how.
It revolves around food and family.
“How is it similar?” she repeats. With a chuckle, she says, “It revolves around food and family. Except there’s more tomato sauce than tzatziki and lamb.”
I have never met my mother’s mother, but I loved interviewing my mother to gain insight to both their lives. From a Greek-speaking woman who moved across the world in search of better opportunity, to a Greek- and English-speaking woman who did all the groundwork to make that opportunity become reality… to me, an English-speaking young woman who hardly knows anything about how I ended up here–or how fortunate I am. It is impossible to ignore that, because I am part of my family’s most recent generation, I am the beneficiary of everyone’s hard work. And should I ever meet my grandmother, I would not even be able to communicate with her–without my mother translating for us, of course.
As we wrap up the interview, I ask my mother if she has anything to add.
“Have a nice day,” she says.
Well… thanks, Mom. For everything.
Comments