DOUBLE EXPOSURE: A Ukrainian summer (09/19/04)

DOUBLE EXPOSURE

by Khristina Lew

A Ukrainian summer

Growing up a "hyphenated American" was a drag during the school year (Ukrainian Saturday school definitely put a dent in the social calendar), but Ukrainian summer made up for it.

Days after school let out, we were packing for three weeks of Ukrainian scouting camp. My parents were adventurous - they sent us to Plast camps in Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo and the East Coast flagship camp in East Chatham, N.Y. After three weeks of mucking around with the scouts, we were shipped down the hill to Sports Camp (also at East Chatham).

Sports camp was followed by two or so weeks with my grandparents in Narrowsburg, N.Y., a secluded Ukrainian bungalow colony run by the Basilian Fathers on the banks of the Delaware River.

The place was - and still is - stunning. The four of us would stay in a one-room cabin with my grandmother. No running water. No bathroom. Just a lake with seven natural springs, a deck of cards, and Ukrainian friends from up and down the East Coast.

My parents then packed us up for the beach - two weeks in Wildwood, N.J., where hundreds of Ukrainians would congregate in front of the Pan Am Hotel. Then Labor Day weekend at Soyuzivka, the Ukrainian National Association's resort in the foothills of the Catskills and, violà, summer was over.

Most of my Ukrainian American friends had similar summers - some went to SUM or ODUM camps, on Ukrainian dance or bandura camps, then spent time with grandparents in Hunter or Wisconsin Dells.

Twenty-five years ago our parents sent us to all those places to immerse us in things Ukrainian, and if you talk to today's parents, you find they are doing the same, for similar reasons.

Lada and Andrei Bidiak of Astoria, N.Y., spend every summer weekend with their 2-year-old daughter, Maya, in Narrowsburg because, "she'll never hear as much Ukrainian as she does here."

"There is a strong sense of Ukrainian community here - her grandparents live in the bungalow on the left, our friends live in the bungalow to the right. It's the whole concept of "it takes a village,' " says Lada. And this despite the planes, trains and automobiles it sometimes takes for Andrei to get to Narrowsburg. Why the hassle?

"Ten years ago I may have done this because my mother wanted me to. Ten years ago [sic] there was no independent Ukraine, so in essence we needed to do this. Now it's a part of who we are, and we do this for Maya," says Andrei. Both agree that they can't imagine it any other way.

Neither, it seems, can Lusia Sos-Hayda. She not only drove her three children, Artym, 7, Maya, 5, and Taissa, 4, across the country to attend Plast's Tabir Ptashat at Soyuzivka from San Antonio, Texas, this past July, she also served as the camp's head counselor during the second session. "I wanted to show my kids that we're not some strange family - that there are other Ukrainian American like us," she says.

Lusia and her husband, Roman Hayda, maintain the Ukrainian language and culture for their children without the support of an organized Ukrainian community. Her mother, Ulana Sos, gives her children Ukrainian lessons on Saturdays - minus the paper wad wars common in Ukrainian school class, she laughs. She believes that teaching her children Ukrainian gives them "the gift of being bilingual, which for their education and growth as a person is huge."

The 50 children that attended Tabir Ptashat - Plast camp for 4- to 6-year-old future scouts - under her watch spoke Ukrainian at varying levels. "There were very accomplished speakers who spoke better Ukrainian than some of the counselors to those with very basic language skills," she says.

She is concerned that in another five to 10 years fewer children will speak Ukrainian and says that we as a community must decide how to deal with this issue. "I feel sorry for the kids of my friends who do not speak Ukrainian. We're stigmatizing them. Aren't they Ukrainian American as well? These kids don't feel welcome. It's a shame. I think maybe we're missing an opportunity to bring them into the community," she says.

Chrystia Centore of Orange, Conn., teaches in her community's small Ukrainian Saturday school because she doesn't want her son, Danylko, 8, and daughter, Arianna, 5, to "lose who they are, who their grandparents were," she says. Many of the kids at her school have only one parent who is Ukrainian, and come to Saturday school to learn the language.

Chrystia and her husband, Frank, who is Italian, vacation in Wildwood every summer so that her children can spend time with the kids they meet at Plast camp in yet another setting.

"I was in Plast and my closest friends today are the friends I made in Plast. I want my children to have that as well. When we come to Wildwood the kids see friends from camp, and that helps to build lifelong friendships," she says. "Besides," she laughs, "how else in the world would you bump into every one you know at a rest area on the Garden State Parkway?"

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