My parents never told me that we were descended from the Amazons. Neither did my grandmother. Neither did any of my aunts and uncles. You'd think they would have said something! After all, they were born on the island -- every single one of the them. Oh, I 'd pick up little odds and ends from them along the way as a child... hints that made me suspect that their Samothraki was, well, special in some way... About how beautiful the island was... and about the color of the waters that surrounded it... But never a word about the Amazons. I wonder if they even knew, back then? Probably not. Or cared? Probably not.

But the color of the the Samothracian waters - they knew and cared about that. I was standing in front of my Theo Savva. I must have been about 7 or 8 years old. I was wearing a phoustanela and carrying a little Greek flag. On any other day, no boy growing up in the Bronx, N.Y. who wanted to continue growing up in the Bronx, N.Y., would ever be caught wearing what undoubtedly looked like a dress to anyone who wasn't Greek -- flag or no flag. But it was 25 Martiou, and I, along with hundreds of other children of Greek descent, would be marching in the Greek Independence Day parade, dressed in the traditional clothing of our parents' homeland. Along the way we'd be collecting monies from spectators for the Greek War Relief Fund. So I wore the phoustanela proudly -- albeit a bit warily -- because that's the way the Evzones dressed. While Theo Savva and I waited for the rest of the family to join us for the subway ride into Nea Yorki, he looked at me admiringly, pointed to the flag and said, "You see that color blue? That's what color the waters are. Some day you'll see it for yourself." And I did. And they are.