By Ellen Tashie Frisina

My secret was a project that I undertook every day after school for several months. It began when I stealthily made my way into the local elementary school – horror of horrors should I be seen; I was now in junior high. I identified myself as a graduate of the elementary school, and being taken under wing by a favorite fifth grade teacher, I was given a small bundle from a locked storeroom – a bundle that I quickly dropped into a bag, lest anyone see me walking home with something from the “little kids” school.

I brought the bundle home – proudly now, for within the confines of my home I was proud of my project. I walked into the living room, and one by one, emptied the bag of basic reading books. They were thin books with colorful covers and large print. The words were monosyllabic and repetitive. I sat down to the secret task at hand.

“All right,” I said authoritatively to my 70-year old Yiayia, “today we begin our first reading lesson.

”For weeks afterward, my Yiayia and I sat patiently side by side – roles reversed as she, with a bit of difficulty, sounded out every word, then read them again, piece by piece, until she understood the short sentences. When she slowly repeated the full sentence, we both would smile and clap our hands – I felt so proud, so grown up.

My Yiayia was born in Kalamata, Greece, in a rocky little farming village where nothing much grew. She never had the time to go to school. As the oldest child, she was expected to take care of her brother and sister, as well as the house and meals, while her mother tended to the gardens and her father scratched out what little he could from the soil.

So, for my grandmother, schooling was out. But she had big plans for herself. She had heard about America. About how rich you could be. How people on the streets would offer you a dollar just to smell the flower you were carrying. About how everyone lived in nice hours – not stone huts on the sides of mountains – and had nice clothes and time for school.

So my grandmother made a decision at 14 – just a child, I realize now – to take a long and sickening 30-day sea voyage alone to the United States. After lying about her age to the passport officials, who would shake their heads vehemently at anyone under 16 leaving her family, and after giving her favorite gold earrings to her cousin saying, “In American, I will have all the gold I want,” my young Yiayia put herself on a ship. She landed in New York in 1916.

No need to repeat the story of how it went for years. The streets were not made of gold. People weren’t interested in smelling the flowers held by strangers. My grandmother was a foreigner. Alone. A young girl who work hard doing piecework to earn enough money for meals. No leisure time, no new no gold earrings – and no school. She learned only enough English to help her in the daily business as she traveled about Brooklyn. Socially the “xenia/foreigners” stayed in neighborhoods where they didn’t feel like foreigners. English came slowly.

My Yiayia never learned to read. She could make out a menu but not a newspaper. She could read a street sign, but not a shop directory. She could read only what she needed to read as, through the years, she married, had five daughters and helped my Papou with his restaurant on Fifth Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

So when I was 14 – the same age that my grandmother was when she left her family, her country, and everything she knew – I took it upon myself to teach my grandmother something, something I already knew how to do. Something with which I could give back to her some of the things she had taught me.

And it was slight repayment for all she taught me. How to cover the fig tree in tar paper so it could survive the winter. How to cultivate rosebushes and magnolia trees that thrived on her little piece of property. How to make baklava and other Greek delights, working from her memory. (“Now we add some milk.” “How much?” “Until we have enough.”) Best of all, she taught me about my ethnic heritage and what it means to be Greek and so proud.

First, we phonetically sounded out the alphabet. Then we talked about vowels – English is such a difficult language to learn. I hadn’t even begun to explain the different sounds “gh” could make. We were still at the basics.

Every afternoon, we would sit in the living room, Yiayia with an afghan covering her knees, giving up her crocheting for her reading lesson. I, with the patience that can only come from love, slowly coached her from the basic reader to the second-grade reader, giving up my telephone gossiping.

Years later, my Yiayia hadn’t learned quite enough to sit comfortably with a newspaper or magazine, but it felt awfully good to see her try. How we used to laugh at her pronunciation mistakes. She laughed more heartily than I – I never knew if I should laugh. Here was this old woman, carefully and slowly sounding out each word, moving her lips, not saying anything aloud until she was absolutely sure, and then, loudly, proudly, happily saying “Look at Spot. See Spot run.”

When my Yiayia died and we faced the sad task of emptying her home, I was going through her night-table drawer and came upon the basic readers. I turned the pages slowly, remembering. I put them in a paper bag, and the next day retuned them to the “little kids” school. Maybe someday, some teenager will request them again, for the same task. It will make for a lifetime of memories.

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Ellen Tashie Frisina is an Associate Professor at Hofstra University (Hempstead, New York), where she teaches in the Department of Journalism, Media Studies, and Public Relations of the School of Communication. This article, originally printed in Newsday, has been reprinted in many college textbooks and reading comprehension manuals around the country. It has been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese and Hawaiian. Apparently the sentiment of Yiayia love is an international emotion.