“So, you’re saying if I don’t sign this, you can’t take her?”
My mama is sitting at the dining table in the small flat they rent in Adelaide with my baba and her mother-in-law. She has a document in front of her that they want her to sign. They’ve been pressing her about it for hours. It’s one that will allow my Yiayia to take me back with her to Greece, so my parents can work to save money for a house. The year is 1975. I am two years old. Forty-five years later, my mum still talks about that moment when her pen hovered over the dotted line. She tells me of how she flew to Melbourne from Adelaide just to see me for five minutes before I flew away. Within the year, she and my dad would spend all the money they’d saved on plane tickets to Greece to pick me up. They missed me too much.
PUBLISHED ON SBS VOICES, 20 OCTOBER 2020
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