The Daily Write: "Look at it this way," he said (August 16, 2013)

Writing Prompt: "Look at it this way," he said

Standing beside the fridge, the plastic semi-opaque pint container with a black lid in front of me, another night, another non-dinner. Gluten free pretzels dipped into Trader Joe's tzatziki. I made my son a grilled cheese. My daughter went with friends to The Rainforest Cafe and then a sleepover. My partner was off with a new friend and me, standing in front of the mottled brown granite counter, colors more golden than when we saw the house three years ago, before we painted the kitchen warm glowing orange gold. Everything looks better in a warm glow, except the things that look better cool - like the white hot houses trimmed in cobalt blue on the islands of Greece, or a beach house perfectly rustic and empty in an old issue of Martha Stewart Living, before her name took a secondary place on the masthead.

I pry off the black plastic lid. Damn, an inside clear plastic protective film. I hate those - you have to cut them off, they don't make them with graspable pull tabs. Slimy, I carefully fold the plastic in half so I am gripping only the clean side and throw it away in the garbage under the sink behind me.

The smell transports me to the campground in Ioannina, the campground in Olympia, the campground in Delphi at the edge of the aquaduct that curves down the hillside toward the olive orchards. It's 1988 and I'm sitting on a rickety threshed chair, the four posts holding the seat pushing painfully into my thighs. Ripping bread from a fresh loaf and greedily dipping it into the thick, slightly sour, garlic and cucumber infused yogurt. Greece with grape vines over campground arbors, women stirring huge pots of tomato broth filled with giant white beans, and the shell of a cicada left clinging to a fabric seam on the inside my tiny hot blue tent.

I came to Europe a vegetarian, not a great way to visit new countries. Bread, tzatziki, beans, cheese - these are my staples, until Athens where I discover the most sublime gyros shop. The proprietor doesn't speak English, I don't speak Greek but we both know a little German. "Zwei gyros mit kein fleish" I say and repeat, aware of how strange my request must seem, proud that I dug some German out of my past.

Oh my god, the bread! Not like pita you find in the States, thin and cardboard in nature; this is puffy crisp soft bread basted in the juice of the gyros meat, like fry bread from a pow wow back home. I get one, then two, then tree with no meat, plenty of pungent tzatziki, the perfect accompaniment.

Do you know I still have sleeping dreams about Greece and her gyros 24 years later?

Dinner isn't so bad after all.