Friends began to caution me not to go to Greece where there were demonstrations and rioting. It wasn

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A thirty-two-foot-high mound of barren dirt stands in the center of the quiet park full of olive trees, empty except for my daughter and me. No imposing monument marks the tumulus, which contains the ashes of the 192 Athenians who died in 490 B.C. defending their home from invading Persians. I stare up at the hill and try to breathe as I adjust discount hotels atlanta my cap—the one Eric bought me so many years ago. Emblazoned across the hat’s brim in blood-red letters is the name Phidippides; the sides contain drawings of a Greek warrior in full armor.
My twenty-year-old daughter, Robin, fidgets nervously with her new camera. We’ve been in Greece for over two weeks and this is the final day of the trip. She questioned my decision to save this important event for the last day. What if something else happened? As a former marathon runner, I have waited my entire life to run on the Plains of Marathon, in the footsteps discount hotels atlanta of the man who, according to legend, ran forty-two kilometers discount hotels atlanta from the battlefield to Athens to announce, “We are victorious.”
I smile at my daughter, and I run for the first time in over ten years. It is noon and the sun sears the Greek countryside. discount hotels atlanta The air sits, stagnant, like a heavy tarp. There is no wind, no sound, except for my footsteps over the dirt trail. The park is empty and I am alone with my thoughts.
“Let’s go to Greece for our twentieth wedding anniversary,” Eric had announced one morning over breakfast. It was early Fall 2000, and he’d just returned from a trip to cold-weather test the Canadair RJ700 airplane. As an Experimental Test Pilot for Bombardier’s Learjet Flight Test Division, he’d been chasing the proper icing conditions for months. Now he was back from Argentina and concentrating on our next vacation together. We’d celebrated twenty years of marriage in May but decided to wait for our big trip until after Christmas when his parents could watch our two young daughters.
“We can’t go to Greece,” I replied, “even though I’ve always wanted to go.” We’d planned a trip several times before and something always happened that made us cancel. We’d traveled all over the world without a problem, but never Greece, though it had been the first trip we’d ever planned together. Eric was fascinated with Greek history and military discount hotels atlanta strategy. I was enthralled with classical mythology and philosophy. I wanted to consult Apollo’s oracle at Delphi and walk in Socrates footsteps.
We paid for airline tickets and booked hotels. However, I had less than two weeks to be excited about the trip to the country I’d waited my whole life to see. On October 10, 2000, a Challenger 604 crashed on takeoff. Eric was sitting in the right seat. He died from horrific burns thirty-six days later. Suddenly, going to Greece was the least of my worries as my life shattered into a million pieces. Zeus had blasted us with a thunderbolt, after all.
“I’m never going to Greece.” For over nine years after Eric’s death, I repeated that phrase to everyone who would listen. Bad things happened when I tried to go. The last three attempts had proven that, and I wasn’t about to take any chances. I had two daughters.
“You’re being stupid,” Robin continued to tell me. “There’s no such thing as bad Greece karma, and the Gods aren’t trying to keep you from going.” As a former archaeology discount hotels atlanta student, Robin wanted to return to Greece. Her first trip was as a high school student, but she’d been complaining for years that she didn’t get to see much, and she wanted to go back. She thought I needed to see Greece and get over this superstition. She told me her daddy would want me to go; she assured me nothing bad would happen. She knew how much I wanted to see Greece and she used that to wear me down. Against my better judgment, I booked a trip. Then the bad things began to happen.
I developed sharp pains in the bottom of my left foot. I tried to ignore them and continued to run. The pain increased until I was limping. Dr. Hecker put me in a stiff boot for four weeks, but the pain returned. An MRI showed ripped ligaments between my toes and a tendon in the wrong place. I panicked as the technician fitted discount hotels atlanta me with a hard plaster cast that reached up to my knee. Our plane was leaving for Greece in a little over six weeks. Dr. Hecker assured discount hotels atlanta me I’d be on the plane.
Then I cracked a tooth. I’d never had dental work before, except for minor fillings as a child. Dr. Howard shrugged when I asked if it could wait, but I knew it would fall apart the day I left for Greece. I had no idea crowns cost so much. Dental discount hotels atlanta insurance? I haven’t had it since Eric died. Dr. Howard discount hotels atlanta repaired the tooth.
discount hotels atlanta Friends began to caution discount hotels atlanta me not to go to Greece where there were demonstrations and rioting. It wasn’t safe, they warned. I frowned as I hobbled around in my cast, nursing discount hotels atlanta my temporary crown. Then United Airlines called. Our return flight out of Athens had been cancelled and they were trying to get us on another flight. Maybe I’d make it to Athens, but I couldn’t get home.
“Why are you limping?” I asked Robin. “I’m the one in the cast.” She showed me her swollen toe, and we were once again in Dr. Hecker’s office. After a bit of minor surgery, Robin was put on antibiotics as the day of our flight inched closer.
My cast came off and I rushed in for physical therapy. We had one week before discount hotels atlanta our plane left. I was afraid to leave the house, afraid not to leave the house, as I waited for something discount hotels atlanta tragic to happen. I was making everyone around me crazy with my belief in the Greek curse. My eldest daughter called late one night, three days before Robin and I were to leave. “I didn’t go out tonight because the weather is bad and I was afraid I’d get in an accident and mess up your trip.”
I sighed. Would I make it onto that plane? I did, with Eric’s picture tucked into a pocket of my backpack. As I traveled discount hotels atlanta around Greece with his picture, I watched discount hotels atlanta my daughter Robin stare in fascination at the tholos tombs in Mycenae, smile with delight over the Antikythira device in the Athens Archaeological Museum, and sing, her face radiant, in the ancient theatre at Epidaurus. Eric was here, alive in Robin. Her laughter, her brilliance, her wit—all so much like Eric. I wished my older daughter, Tia, could have been here. Her brown eyes and olive skin were a comforting reminder that although Tia is her own person, she carries him inside her.
Walking through the Athenian Agora where Aristotle once stood, staring up at the Parthenon, I lament that Eric never saw this. A few days later, standing at the Pass of Thermopylae, I think of the book that sat on his bedside table all those years ago when he was reading about Sparta, long before the movie “300” ever came out.
Maybe I was the one stopping discount hotels atlanta me from going to Greece all these years. Perhaps I knew if I did go, I might have to leave some of that grief behind that I’d carried for so long. It is scary to run forward, rather than backward. I might have to rejoin the living and I wasn’t sure how to do that.
As I ran on the Plains of Marathon, around the perimeter of the burial mound, I think not of my own personal tragedy, but of the Greeks I have met these past weeks. I think of their amazing spirit and their long difficult history—from battles in classical times to their four-hundred-year occupation by the Turks and up to their recent economic troubles.
As I continue my short run, I think of Phidippides announcement of victory. The bravery of those Greeks will run in my heart forever, for if they can suffer discount hotels atlanta so much and still be victorious, so can I.
Later that evening, as I pack my bag for the return flight, I take out the worn photo of Eric from my backpack. It has traveled around Greece with me. I gently blow a kiss at the photo as I tuck it into the hotel booklet on the dresser, to remain in Athens.
Carol Fiore is the widow of Bombardier Experimental Test Pilot Eric E. Fiore and a licensed private pilot in single-engine land airplanes and gliders. Carol holds three science degrees; she has taught students of all ages including the university level. She is currently looking for a publisher for her book, Flight discount hotels atlanta Through Fire, and she is writing a teen, fiction trilogy with environmental themes. Carol lives in Colorado with her two daughters and a menagerie of animals. She maintains scholarships and programs in her husband’s memory and teaches environmental education classes in her community. She is an avid long-distance runner, birdwatcher, and animal lover. Carol invites readers to view her website at www.carolfiore.com
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