The Black Dress Loukia Janavaras   © Copyright 2025 by Loukia Janavaras

Photo courtesy of the author.

One of my favorite photos from childhood is of my mom and me in Corinth, Greece in the summer of 1971, the summer I turned two. She went back to Ancient Corinth, her hometown to see her dying mother my yiaya (grandma) Vasiliki who was in her late 70s and took me along so I could meet her for the first and last time. All the years I had seen this square photo with its crisp white border tightly sealed inside an acrylic photo cube, I never knew the secret it held. 

It was taken outdoors in (new) Corinth, in front of my paternal grandparents’ house just two blocks from the main beach, Kalamnia, along the Corinthian Bay. If I squint a bit, I can see the pop of blue water at the end of the road in the background of the photo. There are a few trees that line the sidewalk; their trunks are painted white. The lens somehow managed to capture the haze of the midday heat rising against bright blue above. My mom is holding me in her arms, as I am perched on her left hip, and we are standing in front of a large, white stucco house with a terra cotta roof. 

Her long black hair is up in a bun as she always wore it back then and she is wearing a knee-length, long sleeved black dress, black sheer nylons, and black strappy sandals. Her oval face is smiling brightly and looking toward the camera. I am facing her, my squared profile toward the camera, my right arm around her neck, and my long brown hair up in a high ponytail. I am tall for my age, and with my mom being only 5’4, I seem to be half covering her. I’m wearing a frilly light blue short-sleeved dress and white strappy sandals. 

All the years I remember her, my mom never wore black any other time, with the exception of when she attended funerals. She considered it bad luck because she once bought a very nice and expensive black dress that she ended up wearing for the first (and only) time to her mother’s funeral. It was almost as though she believed if she had not bought it, her mother would not have died. Her mom, my grandma Vasiliki became a widow in her 40s, and in post-World War II Greece, it was customary for widowed women in villages to wear all black and only black until they die. That’s how I met my yiaya; she was in all black. It scared me, I was later told. 

But my mom I remember always in bright colors, as loud as she was—various hues of yellow, red, and orange in paisley patterns. Her love for me was as bright and bold as her style. She had insisted on taking me, a 22-month-old, halfway across the world by herself on that two-month trip because she could not bear to leave me. In fact, she and my father argued about it. He needed to stay behind in North Dakota to run the family retail business and thought I should remain with him since my paternal grandparents were living next door to us the first five years of my life. I had no idea this trip caused a short rift between my parents, and that I was in the middle. It’s one of the surprising things I learned from my dad after my mom’s passing in November 2020. 

With my mom’s dementia worsening drastically the last few years of her life, many questions were left unanswered. After she passed away, my dad gave me a box of her things. One of the items I found in the box was a death announcement for my yiayia Vasiliki. In Greece, deaths are posted in public areas for people to see so that they are informed and can pay their respects. This was the first time I had ever seen it, so I read it over carefully in Greek. It had her name, date of birth, and date of death as well as funeral location. “Date of death: August 10, 1971.” I could not believe my eyes. The room seemed to spin on its side. My grandma died on my 2^nd birthday. I was 51 years old when I discovered this truth. Tears flooded my eyes, and the print began to look hieroglyphic momentarily.

All those years my mother never told me, all those years I had dusted that photo cube looking at my mom in a black dress, holding me. I had seen other photos of me in front of a cake blowing out candles and wearing the same light blue frilly dress, but since we were on holiday, I assumed I wore it a few times that summer. I had known we were there in August, had known my grandma died in August, a thought that always made me sad for my mom—having the birth of her only child (after suffering two miscarriages) be in the same month as the loss of her dear mother.

I had looked at this photo of my mom wearing that black dress for decades, always assuming she was wearing black because it was after her mother had already died and assumed she probably had worn black for some time afterwards while she was in mourning. Never could I have imagined that the photo was taken on the actual day my grandma died, on my second birthday. I wish I could ask my mom why she never told me the truth. Did she think it would somehow put a stain on my birthday forever? Since she was superstitious, did she think it was bad luck? I knew she was always protective of me. I knew she was always selfless and caring and brave. Now I understand just how much, how heroic. I wish I could reach into this photo, hug my mom, and tell her what I seemed to be thinking as I gazed at her then—how remarkable her smile is, black dress and all.