Last week, I shared my husband’s strange encounter with the universe. This week, it’s my turn.
Ever since I had my mtDNA test in 2010, I’ve wanted to visit Kos Island in the Aegean Sea. The results confirmed a family story my grandmother, Mary Kos Koss, told me years ago.
As a child, I had asked her where our family came from. “A village outside of Zagreb,” she said.
Something made me ask again, where had they lived before that? She paused, then told me that long ago, around the time of Christ, the family had been grape farmers on an island to the south. They left due to overpopulation and drought, moving inland.
At the time, the only “island” I knew was from Gilligan’s Island. Still, I made a quiet promise to myself: one day, I would find that place.
It took nearly sixty years.
My only regret is that my grandmother wasn’t here to hear the result.
DNA revealed that my maternal line had crossed the island of Kos. What makes that extraordinary is this: the surname had been there all along. Kos.
They had forgotten the place but carried its name for generations.
I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that when I finally planned the trip, the universe didn’t make it easy. My husband found a great deal to travel to Greece on September 11. In hindsight, perhaps the date should have given me pause but it didn’t.
Two travel agents couldn’t figure out how to get us there, so I booked the flights myself. Then I added two extra days after the tour so I could finally visit Kos.
A week before departure, we were told the trip might be canceled. The cruise ship was stuck in the Strait of Hormuz due to the Iran conflict.
Three days later, a new plan emerged: instead of visiting Turkey, Rhodes, and Santorini, we would spend four days in Crete. Not ideal but I still had my eye on Kos.
What I didn’t realize was that this detour would make the most unexpected moment of the trip possible. On our third day in Crete, the sky changed.
It shifted from bright blue…
to white…
to pewter…
and then to red.
Breathing became difficult. My eyes burned. Some people whispered about the apocalypse.
I suspected a Sahara dust storm. We probably should have stayed at the hotel that evening. Instead, we kept our plans to meet a group of University of Crete students at a taverna. As educators, neither my husband nor I felt right canceling.
The drive there was… questionable. Imagine a bus navigating mountain roads with no guardrails, in near-whiteout conditions except the sky was red.
Still, we pressed on and we arrived safely.
At dinner, one of the students sat next to me and asked what had brought me to Greece. I told her my story. She listened carefully, then stood and said, “I’ll be back.”
A few minutes later, she returned with someone else.
My husband later said it best: “She looked like you… fifty years ago.” Her name was Argy. She was from Kos.
We spent the evening talking about her future, my upcoming visit to her homeland, and the strange coincidence that had brought us together. We laughed. We sang. We danced. At one point, we looked at each other and simply agreed, we must be related. Thirty generations back, perhaps.
Of course, with European ancestry, that’s not unusual. But the resemblance… that was something else entirely. Even her academic interests mirrored my own.
And it struck me:
If the cruise ship hadn’t been delayed…
If the itinerary hadn’t changed…
If we hadn’t gone to Crete…
If we had stayed in the hotel that night…
I would never have met her.
More than that, I likely would have missed Kos entirely.
The original itinerary would have placed us on a small island that day, one without a proper port. We would have relied on ferries to return to the ship, and due to the storm, those ferries had stopped running.
We would have been stranded. On the wrong island. Missing my connection to Athens and my flight to Kos.
Sometimes, in genealogy, we’re told to be patient. What we’re not told is why patience matters.
This is why.
And the story didn’t end there.
When we arrived on Kos, I had trouble reaching the tour company I had booked for a half-day excursion. The hotel staff tried as well, no response. It appeared I had been scammed through Travelocity.
Disappointed, not just in the lost money, but in the missed opportunity, I mentioned it to the hotel clerk. She smiled and said, “If no one shows tomorrow, I will find someone for you.”
She did.
His name was George and he was extraordinary.
George had an interest in archaeology and took us beyond the typical tourist stops, to the area where vineyards had grown two thousand years ago.
Today, it’s a Roma encampment.
I couldn’t help but laugh. My grandfather was of Roma descent. His surname? Kos, later Anglicized to Koss.
Standing there, I had to wonder: Had his line once lived here, too? I don’t have the YDNA to prove it. Two cousins could test, but neither is interested.
For now, it remains a question.
But I’ve learned this much: In genealogy, we follow the paper trail. Sometimes, if we’re lucky something else leads us the rest of the way.
Some journeys take sixty years to begin.
Others have been waiting for thousands.
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