Then again we did see the Arab Spring, and we saw the spirit of the Arab Spring cracking even the permafrost of Russian corruption and cronyism. And as we went to press we heard about the death of Kim Jong II, who will not be mourned by anyone in the world, certainly his starving people.Life

Hope springs eternal in the new year as memories become rueful of the year that just passed, and we all get a little older. There is a baby born in our family, with the joy she brings and the photos on the family refrigerators (and videos on the computer), there is the patriarch of the family who fell recently and is battling for his life in the hospital—with the photo of the baby beside him. Life has a way of giving and taking.

The profiles I’ve done over the years have fit pretty much the same pattern, though the individuals have been unique. The profiles of successful Greeks today still pay homage to their immigrant roots: father and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers immigrating from various parts of Greece and settling here and working the endless hours in the restaurants and grocery stores to give their children the opportunity to go to college, and in turn make their children go straight to college and establish professional careers, and make their children all college graduates and professionals, and in turn have the success to give their children the freedom to be anything they want: filmmakers, artists, writers, politicians.

In our cover story, Nick Lazares describes working the summers at his father’s oil heat business. An assortment of modern-day tycoons and children of immigrants describe the same thing, and while they don’t miss the hours they spent in the family business, they appreciate the lessons it gave them in working hard and being responsible. Paul Sarbanes remembers working the summers for years at his father’s luncheonette.

I don’t put myself in the category of these successful men and women, but I remember working most summers, and throughout the year in everything from my father’s school as a junior custodian (he was a school principal) to our own ventures in restaurants as a bus boy and dishwasher, and at the restaurants of relatives.

I remember working one summer in the newly-opened diner of a cousin in Brooklyn. The hours extended after midnight (we either took the bus together afterwards to go home at two in the morning or all chipped in and piled into a cab that made a record run to drop us all off because he never stopped at any red lights) and went in cycles revolving around the “rush” of diners: they came for lunch in a rush, they came for dinner in a rush, they went about their appointed rounds after dinner, and the night owls came back for a nightcap rush, to have a strawberry shortcake or slice of apple pie and coffee or a grilled cheese and fries, before the stroke of midnight (or thereabouts) when we closed. Jewish holidays the place was a ghost town—remember this was Brooklyn. I recall sitting one night with one of the hostesses (who wore a bouffant like Elizabeth Taylor) and talking about my future plans to be a writer.

“Someday,” I said, “I’m going to write about all this.”

“You’ll do it,” she said, suddenly talking like a den mother (we had just been kidding around and cracking jokes). “Places like these remind you where you want to be.”

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everybody, and let’s count our blessings.

Dimitri C. Michalakis