He Loved Greek Food

Last night we were at a little Greek Restaurant where the food was excellent. It made me think fondly of all the times we took Peter A. and Leif to Greek restaurants in Honolulu, Hawaii and Highland Park, Illinois.

It started after Peter A. came back to Hawaii from his AFS exchange to Greece. We would go to the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center to the It's Greek to Me Restaurant and order two big tasty platters to share. The boys loved the souvlaki and gyros, and the pita bread.

At the Highland Park Restaurant we added saganaki, flaming cheese.

Leif enjoyed good food from many countries, especially the two foreign countries he lived in, Germany and Japan, and also Greece and Thailand.

He had favorite family foods I'd make on birthdays and Christmases, especially tonkatsu, potetekage, and Berliner Kranse.

I wish we could take him out for a good Greek meal again, or make his birthday dinner.

Leif being silly on his grandmother's birthday

He could be so funny, so silly, when he felt comfortable and let go. He could be impish, a rascal, but only when he felt comfortable with those he was with.

This photo was taken on July 18, 2002, in his paternal grandmother's nursing home room in Manhattan, Kansas. It was her last birthday. She was 82 and dying of gangrene, but we had a little family birthday party for her, and Leif wanted to bring some amusement and smiles to the occasion, so he took two of the birthday party hats and made horns out of them. We teased him about being devilish.

My mother took this photo, which I hadn't seen until I started going through a huge box of photos she'd had packed up for years. It's too bad his eyes are closed, too bad she didn't catch the cute dimpled smile. We'll just have to imagine it.

It's so hard to believe that less than six years later he was dead.