THE THINGS WE DO...: Coming home to a place you've never been (02/27/00)

THE THINGS WE DO...

by Orysia Paszczak Tracz

Coming home to a place you've never been

She sobbed into my shoulder: "Why do I feel so at home? I've never been here before. And why am I crying?!"

We were standing outside a village church in Mykulynychi, in the Hutsul region of the Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine, taking in the view, the people, and the morning.

Edie and I, along with the rest of our tour group, had just been inside at a liturgy celebrating Spasa, the Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ. The wooden church was packed with festively dressed villagers, holding baskets of fruit, herbs and flowers to be blessed at the end of the service. This was the Ukrainian Thanksgiving in mid-August, the celebration of the end of the harvest, a blend of the Christian and the pre-Christian dualism of Ukrainian tradition.

It was 1997, and we were half-way through the folk arts and culture tour I had organized. This was a benevolently selfish exercise to which I had invited fellow travelers. The folks who joined me from across Canada and the United States were an intelligent, highly educated group of enthusiasts, including four weavers, a potter, embroiderers and collectors. Our goal was to see folk art in the museums, meet with craftspeople, and shop!

Along the way, we were embraced by the amazing beauty of the landscape and the people, their generosity and hospitality, as well as by the discomforts and disappointments of a place just getting out from under Soviet conditions.

No matter what the original purpose of the tour, a constant is having at least a few individuals in the group discover their roots in an intense way. They already know that their ancestors came to Canada from Ukraine a century ago, they may still remember the village name, or at least the region, and may still be able to pronounce a few words in what they call "kitchen Ukrainian."

Yet they themselves cannot explain what overcomes them at some moment during the trip. They feel so "at home" even though no relatives remain to be found. And if there are distant relatives awaiting them as the tour bus pulls into the hotel parking lot, the emotions burst forth even though these families had never seen each other before.

All 32 of us, along with our guides and the busdriver - wept as one of our group was greeted with flowers and a traditional kolach (beautifully braided round bread) in Ternopil. Generations, oceans and decades separated the two women, but evaporated with their first embrace. The rest of us became family, too.

There was no one waiting for Edie. She was not really sure why she came on this trip. The daughter of a Swiss father and a Ukrainian mother who came to Canada as a child, she is a successful businesswoman in Central Canada, and an accomplished potter. While she learned Ukrainian as a child and remembered a bit, and knew something about her origins, she grew up High Anglican, as a family compromise between the Ukrainian Catholic and Lutheran faiths of her parents.

Contact with any Ukrainian relatives was lost long ago, especially since one uncle had been sent to Siberia. After her mother passed away, Edie thought there was no one left. She wanted to see the land where her mother was born, and held a sliver of hope of finding someone who at least knew her family.

Used to traveling comfortably, at first she was displeased with some of the inconveniences of the tour. The hotel rooms were adequate, but not deluxe in the least. In Ternopil, there was no hot water in the hotel. The locals were used to this; we were not.

But this inconvenience was so very quickly forgotten over our first dinner in the hotel restaurant. A member of the local militia was celebrating his promotion a few tables away. As the after-dinner band played non-stop, the ladies of our tour danced away with the militia partiers, as well as with their own husbands. When it comes to dancing, European gentlemen do not stick to one partner only, but make sure that all the ladies have been asked, no matter what age, size or shape. We were all home - the band and its waltzes, polkas, tangos and kolomyikas could have been playing in a community hall in Manitoba's Interlake or in Alberta's Kalyna Country.

By the time we departed from Lviv for Paris and then home to Canada, Edie was planning a return trip to find someone of her family. But then someone in our group visited a village near her ancestral home, and heard of people with her family surname. Back in Canada, Edie wrote a general letter to the village, with few specifics, hoping to hear from someone, anyone.

She received a reply from her first cousin, the son of the uncle shipped to the Siberian camps. Her cousin described what had happened to the family since the war.

Edie has family! She is now taking Ukrainian language courses, going to the Ukrainian church and participating in Ukrainian community events. She calls herself a "born-again Ukrainian", and was surprised to learn that this was not her own original term, but one commonly used to describe individuals who have rediscovered their roots.

I have gone back to Ukraine every year since 1997. The place pulls me, even though my very first time there was in 1993. In my mind's eye, at any given moment, I see myself in this museum or that ancient church, walking on medieval cobblestones and village paths, talking to people I had never met before who seem like family, singing songs with the folks there, all of us knowing the same melodies and lyrics.

Ihor, one of our wonderful guides, was right when he welcomed us at the airport in Kyiv upon our arrival.

He said we would not always find luxury (at least not yet, and not at the price our group was willing to pay), but we would be surrounded by culture, history and Ukrainian hospitality. Towards the end of the tour Edie understood this when she sighed, "It's not hard to believe in heaven after a place like this." She was home.

| Home Page |