The Call of Demeter When I was seven years old, my mom had married a man named Dimitar. He was from Bulgaria and going to school at Washington University to become a lawyer. When I was growing up, he would tell me stories about the village he grew up in. "Melnik was very poor, food was scarce, and crops would barely grow. My mother would make us plain dinner like tarator and talk about how our land was cursed." When I turned 8, he gave me a book on Greek Mythology and Bulgarian Folktales. We would read it together most nights if he wasn't studying to help me fall asleep while my mom was at work. One night we were reading about the seasons and their cycles. "My mother named me after the Earth Goddess, Demeter, in hope that she would make our land more fruitful. The goddess blessed the Earth with fruit, vegetables, and grain very often. When her daughter, Kore, went missing and the Earth froze over due to her grief and constant search. Many died due to famine and illness. She only relented when her daughter returned to her half of the year. That is why we have summer, winter, fall, and spring." Ever since that moment, my call to Hellenism never ceased. The pull only gets stronger as I grow older, pulling me closer into the tightknit web. Though that man did eventually disappear from our life, the spark of passion did not die out. In fact it burns bright like a star in the night, lighting up the way forward.
