If there is a world book of the most outrageous statements, something akin to the Guinness world records book, the statement above should certainly be in it! How can one confess to a city? Moreover, how can one sin against a city?
The statement is clearly alluding to the story of the prodigal son, who ran away from his father to seek freedom and independence only to return to him after a period of famine in the foreign land where he was living made him realize his failures. The ending of the story is well known and is rightly considered to be among the most touching passages of the Bible: the son, much to his surprise, experiences the increased love and forgiveness of his father and is restored to his previous state despite the protests coming from his "righteous" brother.
But how can a city play the role of the father?
To start with, it appears that someone can indeed be the "child" of a city. At least this is what M. Hadjidakis claimed in his famous song "The children of Piraeus" which earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1960 (for the record, my favorite performance is the one from Miss Piggy.) In my case, I am a child of Moschato, a city of ~25K people situated between Athens and Piraeus which got its name from the vineyards that used to cover most of its area up to not so long ago. (I still remember growing up there in the 80's, wine merchants selling wine directly from the barrel.)
Like all redemption stories, mine starts with overwhelmingly positive memories as well.
My first pictures of the world where dominated by nice mediterranean weather close to the coast, a fairly homogeneous social order which led to insane levels of security and an increasing scarcity of open/public space as the entire country was heading to 'growth' more or less in the same way a drunk driver accelerates his car to experience his eluding goal of satisfaction.
Pretty soon adolescence with its troubles came along and I found myself increasingly frustrated.
A major lack of communication between me and my fellow classmates and the sense that I had a right to something better than my city could offer me pushed me to look for an escape route. University studies captivated me and opened my horizons to places far away. I went on my way to grad school and work in the US and Europe and never looked back.
The years passed and all communication between me and my city had been lost.
But much like the prodigal son a "random" event brought me back to my senses.
For reasons outside of my control, my family decided to stay in our city and celebrate Easter this year. Every day activities during the day, e.g. shopping and attending services in the church in the afternoon "forced" me to be surrounded by familiar faces and "re-connected" me to people that had left my life for more than 20 years. The "best" part came from the mother of a former classmate who recognized and stopped me in the street. "You have not changed at all since high-school". That was it! Some-how much like the prodigal son, my city using the voice of one of its other children restored me to my previous state. Nothing has changed. Despite the years that you were away, some-how you were still part of our world. A warm thing to hear for sure.
In my story, there is no brother with "heart of stone". That is good.
But the story of the prodigal son, limits its description to the first day of the son's return, the happy day, the day where suddenly everyone thought that it was as if "nothing had changed". In my life there is a second day and hopefully more. Will the son stay true to his father? Will he do the same mistake and leave again? Nobody knows. One can only hope that the father will always be there to welcome the returning son and utter "you have not changed at all."
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