I did not see her. I did not speak to her. One day she was simply gone, and I was not there for any of it.

I have not made peace with that. I still cry when I talk about her, which is often, and which is inconvenient. People assume a grandmother is a smaller loss than a mother or a father. It was not smaller. She left a hole in my life that I have never managed to fill.

So I started writing her down.

Some of these stories are true. They happened in her village, in her kitchen, in her hands. Others never happened at all. In those, I bring her here, to America, into my life, and I let her loose in it. I let her meet the drive through. I let her have opinions about the cereal aisle. I let her be confused, and stubborn, and right in the way that only a yiayia can be right.

So you know from the start: the Yiayia Margaró on this blog is a character. She is built out of a real woman, my real grandmother, but she says things she never said and goes places she never went. I would rather tell you that now than have you wonder later.

Why write her this way?

Because grief that only weeps is a dead end. I have done years of weeping. What I want now is to laugh with her. Putting her into my life is the only way I have found to keep her close, to hear her voice again, to be in the same room as her. Somewhere in the middle of writing, I stopped only mourning her and started enjoying her company again.

That is what this blog is for. Fewer tears. More laughing. Her, still here, a little.

If you are Greek, or half Greek, or the grandchild of somebody who left one place and never entirely arrived in the next, these stories are for you. And if you had a yiayia of your own, or a nonna, or an abuela, or a babcia, you will recognise her straight away. Somehow they are all the same woman.

I am Marg, named for her. I spend my days helping people find their way back into Greek, with books and recordings and whatever else works. This is my grandmother.