Мамо, це не сон!

as seen at St. Mike’s

A photo of Lviv popped up in my Facebook memories today and I abruptly started to cry.

Fuck me. This war needs to end.

 

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Since someone asked, and it wasn’t really a Facebook post, here is - in a nutshell - my journey. (aka: WHY THE FUCK DO YOU POST THIS UKRAINIAN SHIT ALL THE TIME? Also: fuck you, former friend.)

My grandparents were from a village in Poland, which would become a part of Ternopil Oblast, Ukraine.

They were captured by the Germans and were forced labor in northern Germany, which is where my mother was born.

When she was 3, they came to the US.

She rebelled hardcore against the old school Ukrainians.

There’s a story that I’ve heard a dozen times, that when my mother first brought my father home to meet the family, it didn’t go particularly well. For him.

Supposedly, my grandmother chased him down Pine Lane, waving a broom, and shouting ‘я тебе дам!’ (which translates to “I’m going to give it to you.”)

I think we all understand what exactly it was that my grandmother was going to give him and it certainly wasn’t going to be a bowl of her borscht.

Oh God, to hear about the reactions… you would have thought the world was going to end because my mother married AN AMERICAN.

Anyhoo… they got married in ‘69 and I came along in ‘75.

She tried to get me to go to Ukie School, but I was painfully shy back then and remember being miserable. I can’t remember why I stopped going, but I stopped. With that, my formal Ukrainian language studies ended, and I was left to pick up as much as I could by osmosis.

(It wasn’t very much, as Future Wendell would come to learn.)

So.

1992. Mom died. I became isolated from the Ukrainian community in Hartford, for a bunch of reasons, but that was pretty much the last straw. Then, I got cut off from the woman who practically raised me.

2014? I can’t remember for sure if I decided before or after Russia invaded Crimea, but I was done feeling like something was missing.

I started Ukrainian lessons. I was terrible at sticking to it - and now, *cough* years later, I still struggle with it.

But.

I went to the Ukrainian Festival at Suzy-Q.

I went to the Ukrainian Festival in Toronto.

I hired a company to do my genealogical research and had them arrange a trip to Ukraine.

Then, we went to Lviv and Medvedivtsi.

It was all over for me after that.

Something clicked. It literally felt like a switch flipped. Something in my DNA woke up and it felt like coming home.

Seriously.

I’m in this village where I barely speak the language, standing on a dirt road, and feeling like twelve different types of asshole tourist, but damn, it felt good to be there.

It felt right.

And then I came home, stopped studying Ukrainian, moved to Florida, got fired for being bipolar, and had to deal with all that bullshit.

A few months ago, I decided to pick the language back up. I’m spending more time trying to read Ukrainian and watching Ukrainian videos… and I have been finding all kinds of new music, too.

So. There you go.

Я - українська.

Not at all what I wanted to write, but it’s what you’re getting.