How to Roast a Lamb_ New Greek Classic Cooking - Michael Psilakis [6]
When I started kindergarten, I didn’t know a word of English. I had grown up in a Greek bubble. Everyone I knew and socialized with was Greek. My theios (uncles) and theias and my cousins—these were the people I saw on a daily basis; this was my family and my social network. When I went to school, my mother dressed me in a suit with dress shoes and black socks. I got the sense that all of the kids were laughing at me, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. When I first distinguished the words “black socks” and understood them, I finally knew why they were laughing at me. They were all wearing jeans and white tube socks. I was the immigrant kid dressed for school as if he were going to church. They were eating hot dogs and hamburgers for lunch. I was eating souvlaki and spanakopita.
Some things got easier—I learned the language and made a lot of American friends—but other things got more difficult and more complicated. I straddled two worlds: the Greek world I lived in at home after school and on weekends—a world my parents knew and trusted—and the American world I inhabited at school. And in each world, I was a different person.
I wavered between these two worlds because I loved my family; the foundation and principles with which I had been raised; the pride of culture, cuisine, and heritage—but I also resented it and my parents, specifically my mother, because she was essentially the one who raised us. My father was always at work and my mother made the rules in our house. The way I saw it, she was the one who stood in the way of me really integrating into the local culture. As a result, she, not my father, was the one who bore the brunt of my frustration.
But as my mother hoped and knew I would, at the end of those rebellious years I came out on the other side with a great appreciation for my family ties, roots, and Greek heritage. While I was growing up under different circumstances, my youth wasn’t all that different from that of my suburban Long Island peers. Happy childhood, rebellious and troubled teen years, and an early adulthood with a loving and caring family: I still sat at my mother’s table and devoured everything she cooked every night of the week at our daily family dinners.
Many people believe in fate, luck, serendipity. You can call it whatever you want. There are so many junctures in my life where, had I turned left instead of right, it would have altered my path—would have changed my life dramatically. Some people know what their passion is from a very young age, some people never figure it out, and, for some, destiny delivers it to their door.
After college, still living at home in my parents’ house, I was working as an accountant and I was unhappy. This was not the career for me, but, admittedly, I was lost and didn’t know what career path I wanted to take. As many of us who weren’t quite sure what to do with our lives did at that time, I decided to go to law school.
I had lived at home during college and now I wanted the opportunity to live on my own. My plan was to apply to law school in California and, after I had saved enough money, move out there and go to school. I needed a job with flexible hours so I could attend classes but still earn enough money to pay my way through school. Becoming a waiter or bartender seemed like obvious choices. But back then, you couldn’t just walk in off the street and get a job in the front of the house (restaurant-speak for the dining room staff). The restaurants wanted a résumé of related experience.
After a month of applying to countless restaurants, one day I commiserated with my sister Maria, who told me that she had a sorority sister whose boyfriend was the manager at a T.G.I. Friday’s. The restaurant was in the next county, a twenty-five-minute drive from where I lived. I never would have applied there were it not for Maria. Maria’s friend asked her boyfriend, and I had a job.
From the minute I hit the floor,