{"id":51767,"date":"2024-10-27T06:08:43","date_gmt":"2024-10-27T10:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/?p=51767"},"modified":"2026-06-24T10:28:48","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T14:28:48","slug":"husbands-dream-my-nightmare-chapter-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/le-reve-du-mari-mon-cauchemar-chapitre-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Husband's dream, my nightmare - Chapter 8"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

We\u2019d been in Greece for more than seven months. Husband still hadn\u2019t found a job. He\u2019d come home empty-handed from his trip to Cologne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never wanted to be a prophet of doom, but I dare say that I had a sense of what was coming. A man like Husband doesn\u2019t change easily. According to his sister Despina, he\u2019d spent his youthful years chasing the county\u2019s prettiest girls. The most handsome Romeo in the village, he of course caught them all. And after his mandatory military service, his seductive power only increased when he returned as an army officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after our wedding, this Casanova even told me that the love of his life was a certain Helena, a teacher and mother of two, who had the distinction of being elected the most beautiful woman in her village three years in a row. Had he visited her since our arrival in Greece? Had he spoken to her once, twice, three times? I couldn\u2019t help myself and asked my sister-in-law Despina if Husband had visited his old flame. She replied that yes, he had seen her, \u201cbut only twice because her husband Theodoros is still jealous of him like a tiger.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Husband had certainly forgotten to tell me. In any case, he hadn\u2019t told me a thing since he\u2019d returned from Cologne. What had he done there for three weeks? Had he found job opportunities? Highly unlikely. A pizza or souvlaki counter? Maybe a foreman at a manufacturer? Nothing would be good enough for his standards. Would he finally explain to me how we were going to live with two old women and three kids at home?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were no English or French schools in Krya Vrysi, and the two eldest ones barely spoke Greek. Did Husband really want to live in Greece? His clean hands would certainly not be dirtied helping the gypsies harvest cotton. I was at the end of my rope, morally exhausted, discouraged, broken and totally disappointed. Soon I\u2019d have to sell something to buy onesies for the baby who was growing quickly. My wedding ring, perhaps? I no longer wanted to wear it anyways. I tried to calm down instead of dissolving into tears. I took the little one in my arms and sat with him in a rocking chair in the room upstairs. He babbled away and then fell asleep. The cold, rainy weather put me in a blue mood. Was it the right time to speak to Husband about our future? Was he still asleep?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was his mother who spoke first.
\u2014 \u201cYavrum, life in the village is more and more difficult. We don\u2019t have enough money to install running water or electric heat. And even Despina is getting too old to chop wood. We have a garden that\u2019s too big to weed ourselves. Our vegetables generally end up on the neighbour\u2019s table because we have a kind heart. All the grandmothers head to America to help their children with the grandkids. We want to do the same! Despina and I want to live in America. Your two brothers earn good money there and they\u2019ll help us. Yavrum, para calo, let\u2019s go to Montreal as soon as possible and Despina will cook a nice lamb to celebrate our reunion, all of us together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I, the good French Canadian wife, quickly added that I\u2019d cook my Greek specialties. \u201cI\u2019ll make stuffed vine leaves, my traditional yuvarlakia soup (meatball and rice soup in an egg and lemon sauce), spinach puff pastries, delicious kourabiedes (almond and butter cookies) and baklavas. My sister-in-law didn\u2019t miss her chance to go one further and said she\u2019d be delighted to babysit my children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Husband stayed silent and smoked one cigarette after the other until his mother and sister stopped speaking. I, like Lot\u2019s wife, transformed into a statue made of salt. Would mommy\u2019s sweet yavrum agree to go back to Canada? My eyes teared up, my heart beat faster and the sky turned a beautiful purple. Is happiness a stroke of luck, a state of being that falls into our lap without warning? I remembered the quote by Goethe I learned in college: \u201cThe highest happiness, the purest joys of life, wear out at last.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life saw fit to make me suffer; but happiness, I tried to convince myself, would surely come later. My eyes suffered, my heart suffered and even my intelligence suffered. I thought of everything I\u2019d had to give up since our wedding: my scholarly studies, the writing I loved so much, my family, my liberty and my own agency. As the wife of this Greek god, under his yoke, I had no rights, no authority, no love, no real intimacy and no right to decide anything. What could I hold onto? This marriage was like a halter that kept getting tighter and tighter, preventing me from moving forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TO BE CONTINUED\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cora
\u2764\ufe0f<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019d been in Greece for more than seven months. Husband still hadn\u2019t found a job. He\u2019d come home empty-handed from his trip to Cologne. I never wanted to be a prophet of doom, but I dare say that I had a sense of what was coming. A man like Husband doesn\u2019t change easily. According to his sister Despina, he\u2019d spent his youthful years chasing the county\u2019s prettiest girls. The most handsome Romeo in the village, he of course caught them all. And after his mandatory military service, his seductive power only increased when he returned as an army officer. Shortly after our wedding, this Casanova even told me that the love of his life was a certain Helena, a teacher and mother of two, who had the distinction of being elected the most beautiful woman in her village three years in a row. Had he visited her since our arrival in Greece? Had he spoken to her once, twice, three times? I couldn\u2019t help myself and asked my sister-in-law Despina if Husband had visited his old flame. She replied that yes, he had seen her, \u201cbut only twice because her husband Theodoros is still jealous of him like a tiger.\u201d Husband had certainly forgotten to tell me. In any case, he hadn\u2019t told me a thing since he\u2019d returned from Cologne. What had he done there for three weeks? Had he found job opportunities? Highly unlikely. A pizza or souvlaki counter? Maybe a foreman at a manufacturer? Nothing would be good enough for his standards. Would he finally explain to me how we were going to live with two old women and three kids at home? There were no English or French schools in Krya Vrysi, and the two eldest ones barely spoke Greek. Did Husband really want to live\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":414,"featured_media":51772,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"Chapitre 8 : apr\u00e8s plus de sept mois en Gr\u00e8ce, le mari revient bredouille d'Allemagne. Mme Cora raconte cette p\u00e9riode difficile.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"class_list":["post-51767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lettre-mme-cora"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/414"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51767"}],"curies":[{"name":"WP","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}