| Sunny Side Up April 23, 2003 �2003, Kathleen Gibson Color me Ukrainian around the edges When the Preacher and I moved to Yorkton a dozen years ago, we didn�t realize how strongly the Ukrainian culture affected this community. Perogies and cabbage rolls, served at every meal but breakfast, it seemed, should have provided our first clue. There were others. Miniature crop farms that occupied whole backyards: sunflowers, potatoes, beets, potatoes, garlic, potatoes. Did I mention potatoes? Strong accents. Shouting colors�like the orange and green house just up the street and around the corner from mine. I love it, but there should be a sign outside, like the warnings at eclipse time�Do not observe without protective lenses. Surnames gave the biggest hint of the cultural influence in our new city. No matter how they started, they ended �uk,� �ik,� �ack,� �ski,� �shyn,� or �ytch�. Names like Gibson were the foreign ones. Perceiving our interest, new friends invited us to sample their Ukrainian traditions. Elaborate holiday feasts with twelve courses. Wedding celebrations that continued for days. Funerals. The first Ukrainian funeral we attended lasted three hours�a nasty shock to a Protestant used to quick good-byes. I recall being embarrassed at first that we didn�t know when to sit, stand, or kneel. The incense relaxed me considerably. So enmeshed are Ukrainian ways in this community, they pass to even non-Ukrainians. Leonard, a Guyanese friend who works at Co-op Farm Supply, regularly greets customers in Ukrainian. Shocking, from someone with sepia skin and a tropical accent. It was inevitable then, that a dozen years of life in this community would color our family Ukrainian too, around the edges. We proudly pay guests� way into a community museum that relates the story of the first Ukrainian settlers. My non-Ukrainian kitchen has produced perfectly passable cabbage rolls and perogies, beet rolls, kutia, pascha and nachinka. And as I write, my kitchen table is laden with jars of egg dyes and white eggs fresh from chickens� bums�the makings of pysanky. At the farm where I picked up the eggs, a teenage boy sat at the kitchen table, carving a chunk of cold butter. A lamb, he said, for including in the family�s Easter basket of symbolic foods. To be blessed by the priest on Easter morning at the resurrection service. A lamb to symbolize the body of Christ. Cloves for eyes, to represent the spices used in his burial. Wherever else I live in my life, the richness of the Ukrainian culture I�ve observed here will follow me. I�ll always make kutia, natchinka, and pysanky. And even when Easter is behind us, as it is now, when I hear or sing songs about the Lamb of Glory, I�ll think about a young boy carving a butter lamb and talking about Jesus, and gall, and his Ukrainian family traditions. And then I�ll think of Leonard from Guyana at Co-op, chanting over and over, �Christos Voskrese! (Christ is Risen!) And in the only Ukrainian I know, I�ll whisper, with gladness, �Voistynu Voskres!� (He is Risen Indeed!) You can respond to this column at [email protected] . |
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