Stacey Seaside

Today, Sophie has been gone for 20 years.

Not a day goes by when she isn’t in my heart and in my head.

My mentor.

My strongest protector.

My biggest cheerleader.

My advocate.

My mirror.

My motivator.

My Mom

Sophia Koukas Harris died on April 11, 2004.

It was the night of Anastasi–Easter Resurrection Sunday.

As the calls and messages came in so many people told me that to die on such a high holiday one truly had to have been a saint.

And she was.

Her greatest sin was in not taking better care of herself.

Putting everyone else first.

Denying herself so she could give.

And the receivers were my brother, my dad, myself along with many others who she share that generosity of spirit.

Sophie was a kind, gentle and wise woman.

I cannot think of her on this day or any day for that matter without remembering her dedication to her family and the sacrifices she made.

Mom nurtured me and gave me strength of spirit by her example.

With kindness, with truth, with love.

More than ever, it is family and our love and compassion for one another that sustains us through the worst of times.

To the world she was a conservative homemaker, no dazzling career, no political spotlight, no razzamatazz.

She was a silent, strong forcefield always encouraging every dream, even if she didn’t agree with it.

An annual vigil lit in my kitchen to remind me of my Sophia.

Our memories offer comfort

The memories we make and share with our loved ones become the comfort we keep in our hearts forever when they leave us.

I have a thousand of those.

But I am not quite ready to share them.

Some still make me weep.

Others make me giggle uncontrollably.

The ache will always be there in the corner of my heart.

I feel immense guilt for not appreciating who she was and how she was earlier in my life and hers.

Strong-willed and determined, if my Mom said no to something I was bound to do it.

I wanted to be independent and freewheeling and not stuck–as I imagined she was.

Without a career, just there to serve the needs of her family; what reward was there in that?

Only when I took my own first steps as a mother did I begin to appreciate Sophie.

How much she tolerated from me as a belligerent daughter and how patient she was as she allowed me, with much pain to herself, to make my own mistakes.

Understanding myself through Mom

In the late 70’s one of my cousins shared a book with me. The relationship she had with her mother was challenging. I laid it aside for a long time–too busy to be bothered with my mother and I argued.

When Nancy Friday began her research for My Mother/My Self in the early 1970’s no work existed that explored the unique interaction between mother and daughter. Friday’s book played a major role in demonstrating that the greatest gift a good mother can give remains unquestioning love planted deep in the first year of life.

And I certainly had that from Mom.

Just 20, this was Sophie’s passport photo. She went to Greece just after WWII, by ship and spent two months in the homeland, between Athens and Mykonos. She even came back with a Greek fiancé but eventually broke it off. Only to marry my Dad a few years later.

Here we are in Mykonos, a side street coming up from the waterfront, summer of 1965.

And my Mom, with the bangs, with her Mom: Anastasia Assimomiti Kouka (but in her adopted suburban Chicago American community she was known as “Mikena,” the wife of Michael Koukas, a tavern owner. I often teased that to truly have been her namesake I should have been baptized Michelle.)

On her wedding day. Just a few months after my grandmother had died. Mom had given up her job working for an insurance company in Chicago to take care of my grandmother while she battled cancer.

Mom, moi, my other half–twin brother Paul, and my fraternal grandmother. Yiayia Marina came to the States and lived with my Mom and Dad for 9 months when my brother and I were less than a year old. My Dad thought he was doing my mother a favor by having his mother around with two little one’s under foot. Having lived with in laws I can verify that although their intent is to be helpful, sometimes it is anything but!

The other day my eldest son used one of her expressions and I was gobsmacked.

Every day something happens that makes me think of her.

And the ache remains.

That ache sits on the knowledge that there will never be another person that will love me as much as she did.

The only way I can honor her memory is by following her example.

A strong, intelligent, nurturing woman.

May we know them,
May we be them,
May we raise them.

I miss her everyday.

My Sophia.