For many years, Peter Papathanasiou’s parents could never find the right time or the right words to tell him the story of his birth. His mother Elizabeth worried that she might carry this family secret to her grave, and that he would never know the truth. She finally revealed it to him one afternoon in 1999 as he was preparing to embark on yet another academic pursuit.
What he found out on that hot January day was that his parents were not his biological parents. He was a gift of love and sacrifice. His parents couldn’t have children and after 18 years of miscarriages, sorrow and disappointment, his aunt and uncle in Greece decided to carry a baby for them. Mr Papathanasiou was that baby, born in 1974 and given up by his biological parents so that a childless sister living in Australia could become a mother.
“I wanted to write this story partly to share it with readers, but also to honour my parents, both my adoptive parents, the journey they went on, and my biological parents in Greece and the sacrifice they made,” Peter Papathanasiou told Neos Kosmos in an interview about his memoir ‘Little One’. “That’s why I dedicated the book to all four of my parents. I wrote about my own story as well as my mum’s, about how she came to Australia from Greece in 1956, the life she found here, and then the adoption that she went through.”
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Although it might sound incredible today, an astounding sacrifice for parents to make to another family member, Papathanasiou tells us that back in those days, it was not so uncommon.
“Families helping out other family members who weren’t able to have children of their own, giving children of their own to couples who couldn’t have them, wasn’t unusual. After writing the book, many readers reached out to me with similar stories. That was a time when there was no in vitro fertilisation (IVF) technology and the adoption process was very difficult.”
Growing up as an only child, Peter also found out that he had two older brothers in Greece, Vasilios and Georgios, who had always known about their little brother growing up in Australia.
“My brothers were around 10 and 12 years old when I was born. They remember their parents telling them that they were going to have another baby, but that that baby wasn’t going to stay – it was going to go live with their aunt and uncle in Australia.”
For twenty-five years, his brothers received photos and letters from Australia, waiting for the day when they would finally be reunited with their little brother. “It was all a bit daunting for me at first, to think about going to Greece to meet these people who had known about me for many years when I had just found out about them. But when I finally did go to meet them in Florina, I was excited.”
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It was always in Elizabeth’s plans that her son would one day travel to Greece and meet his family. “My parents always spoke Greek to me, and made sure I could speak the language,” Papathanasiou explains. “They knew a time would probably come when I would go to Greece to meet my biological family and that I would need to be able to communicate with them.”
Unfortunately, both Peter’s biological parents, Anna and Savvas, had passed away by the time he went to Greece to meet his birth family for the first time.
“I never had the chance to meet them. I regret missing the opportunity, but at the same time, I already had a mum and dad who had raised me and loved me. What was the most exciting for me was meeting my older brothers since I didn’t have any siblings growing up,” Papathanasiou said.
Now having three young sons of his own has made Papathanasiou gain an even deeper understanding of what his birth must have meant to all his parents. But he also sees how fitting it is that he has three sons – three brothers who will grow up together. His growing family has also added another bond to his brothers in Greece who yearn for news about their nephews and are looking forward to meeting them one day.
“For me, siblings are the people you grow up with. I never shared those experiences and have those memories with my brothers. But I still feel we have a deeper connection than that of close cousins. Today, I love and help and support them like brothers.”
“Do you sometimes wonder what would have happened if you hadn’t left?” we ask him.
“Sometimes, I may have wondered. I might not have had the same opportunities I had in Australia, but I probably would have turned out to be a similar person. I was always someone who studied hard and read lots of books,” he said.
“Would I have moved from the small town of Florina and gone to Thessaloniki or Athens, or abroad? Where would have I ended up…? My brothers still live in Florina as they have their entire lives. My eldest brother Vasilios is mentally impaired, and my middle brother Georgios is his carer. That has somewhat limited their world. And had I stayed in Greece, that is a situation that would have likely impacted me more. Georgios may have been able to do more things in his life because we could have shared our caring of Vasilios. My brothers support and love each other and are very happy, but you could also ask the same question of Georgios – would his life had been different if I had stayed in Greece? Or perhaps not?”
Mr Papathanasiou explains that writing the book was also an opportunity to document the family story which he could one day give to his boys and show them where their family came from. All the things they went through and how they came to be in this world.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth is now a happy grandmother of three, and is due to turn 90-years-old in December this year. “She is still able to enjoy being a yiayia, cooking for the boys and speaking to them in Greek while telling them stories about my childhood and all the things I got up to, which they absolutely love hearing.”
This memoir ‘Little One’ is Peter Papathanasiou’s first book published in 2019 by Allen & Unwin. A second book ‘The Stoning’ is due to be published in October 2021 by Transit Lounge. “This book is a crime fiction novel. The main character is a Greek-Australian detective who I have based on my brother Georgios.
“In the past, I have written a lot about race, culture, immigration, refugees, family. I describe myself as the son of migrants and the grandson of refugees. In the new novel, I wanted to write about it all in a fictional setting.”
Peter Papathanasiou is a former research geneticist who has worked in the US, UK and Australia. His passion, however, is writing, and apart from his two books, he’s completed several professional development programs in Australia (Varuna), the US (The New School), and UK (Arvon Foundation), as well as earning a Master of Arts (MA) in Creative Writing at City, University of London. For further information on Peter Papathanasiou, you can follow him on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PeterPapathanasiouWriter
Twitter: https://twitter.com/peteplastic
Blog: https://fromtheplasticpen.wordpress.com
