The moment came when I left for Athens with my mother. She really enjoyed it, even though her legs hurt, we walked a lot and climbed the Acropolis. On the last evening there, while we were drinking a glass of champagne on our terrace overlooking the Acropolis, she told me that she wished we could have stayed a bit more, and the experience never ended.
There were many moments when I asked her questions, about the past and present. Whenever we travelled together, I tried to study her, to analyze and understand her. Those kinds of trips helped me understand some aspects of my childhood, some decisions my parents had made, the behaviors that I misjudged at that time and the ones which affected me. They helped me understand and forgive, make peace with her and with myself.
One thing that surprised me now in Athens, was that despite all my efforts, education and the books I read, I still had the impulse to taunt my mother for something she would taunt me for as a child. It used to irritate her when I would bite hard on an apple; the sound annoyed her, and she would scold me. Now, she was biting from a pear and I remembered her reactions. I fought the impulse to react, I tried hard to leave her alone. I did not react; however, I was surprised how much of her is in me. There is a lot in us from our parents. Sometimes things that annoyed us about them. The only thing we can do is to analyze them, to forgive them, to understand them, to take what is the best of who they are and to move on; to move on from what they did right or wrong; to take care of who we are and to learn to appreciate them while they are still here.