Invitation Only

The phone call

"Honey, has your grandma called yet." My mum screams from her bedroom.  "No what time did she say she was calling?" I scream. "She said around 12:00pm, so in Greece it would be 7:00am." My mother walked down the hall saying. "Okay I'll wait another 10 minutes." The phone rings and I pick it up.

" Hi YaYa!" I say over the phone. "Hi my gorgeous Alexa! How are you?" YaYa says. "Good, very good. How are you?" I say. "Good yes good." She says. " My mana said you wanted to talk to me. What about?" I looked at my mum she had tears in her eye but her smile lit up a room. My Yaya says to me to hand the phone to my Mana. My mum walks away with the phone for a good 30 minutes. 

I look at her as she walks through the doors. She looks at me somehow excited for me but sad for herself. I walk up to her, but she just smiles at me and walks past me, going straight for the kitchen. She starts making lunch, I start cutting up the mushrooms for the risotto. She looks at me cutting them up. I want to ask her what was up, but she looked so upset. 

I finish cutting them put them in the pot. I then walk up to my mum who is washing her hands to get the rice off. I stand next to her, all she can manage to say is, "call your YaYa she has some news for you." 

I stare at the phone for the whole night, why did my mum say that she has some news for me. She lives in Greece, I can't afford to go over there and my mum doesn't want to go see that side of her family, she hasn't seem them since she was my age 17, and now she is like 32 so a full 15 years since she hasn't been there. My mum said that things happened in Greece, that just happened in Greece. I always was very confused with what she meant by that but when I went through my mum's picture books I saw all the photos of her with YaYa, she looked so happy but I also saw her with a boy her age on a boat and another boy a couple years older than her at a ball with his family, she was wearing a ring in the photo of them at the ball but not the same ring when she was on the boat with the other man.

So I decide to call my YaYa 11pm that night to ask what she wanted to tell me. She picks up in two beats of the phone. I ask her what she told my Mana before and what she so desperately wanted to tell me as a suprise. She says to me, "You are coming to Greece my beautiful Alexa!!" I asked her again and she said, "you're coming to Greece, you are living with me and your Pappous, and your older brother and sister, I'm so excited for you to come." I then have a memory 5 years back, when my brother and sister left to live with my Yaya and Pappous in Greece because they didn't like living in Hollywood anymore, I was so upset and so was my mum but Yaya said she'd pay for everything so they left 5 years ago, and it was only me and my mother. She was heartbroken when my brother Spencer and sister June said they were leaving to go live in Greece. She promised herself that I would always stay with her but now I had to leave and go and live in Greece, I didn't know how long for but I wanted to keep my mother company because then she had no one else except for our dog Tex. But I had to say yes because I wanted to go to Greece my mother did say what happens in Greece happens in Greece, and this was my one chance to escape and have fun and not worry about my studies and everything else that I would leave behind, my Yaya says worried "Darling are you still there, if you're coming you leave tommorow at 5am in the morning so get so sleep". I realise that she just said 5am tommorow morning I had no time to pack and I didn't even get to say bye to my mum I was so sad but I really wanted to go. So I said I'll see you tommorow Yaya.