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Now please excuse me while I tend the goats
May 14, 2008
When I was little, every Sunday, my grandfather would wake me up and we’d hop the 51C bus to Carson Street to attend our tiny church.
There weren’t many children, but every summer, they shipped the few of us up the mountains to Northern Pennsylvania for church camp. From ages 10 to 16, we would be grouped into cabins and assembled for Orthodox mass in between kickball and lunch. And also, swimming and dinner. And dinner and bedtime.
Aside from the churching, there were small classes arranged during the day, and while the boys learned to write in Ukrainian, the girls would be shuffled off and given linen and colored thread. Sometimes we learned to dance. Once, we were lectured on how to stuff pirogies while giving birth.
One summer, when I was 14, I had a thing with a tall, blue-eyed boy, and the match was looked on so approvingly that by the time camp was over, I cried for hours because, how will I be able to wait until next year to demonstrate my eternal love through black and red embroidery? All of my dreams! My dreams!
Somehow, word traveled back to my little church, and for two years, the fragile old women layered in long, solid fabric would scuffle over to me with smiles on their faces and joy in their eyes, take my hands, and ask in heavy accents, how is your Ukrainian friend? And then they asked who would be catering the wedding.
As I got older, the women teaching our Sunday-school classes transitioned from older mothers and once-immigrants to the girls who, at that time, were only four or five years older than my 15-year-old self, and wore the thin, gentle scarves over their hair, a sign of marriage and motherhood.
Somewhere in there, church became less of a routine. Meaning we stopped going. My sister was baptized, and that was the end of it. Molly, now 14, never attended church camp. Her dreams consist of fame and New York City. I’ve started asking her about boyfriends and she’s all, look, being interested in boys totally interferes with my plans of not being interested in boys. And sometimes I feel like she could really teach me something, but I’m too busy channeling my babushka-wearing ancestors to concentrate.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
So are you going to pull your grandfather and ask when she will tie the knot?
May 14th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
No wonder you have marriage anxieties! :)
Fantastic post, Rachel.
May 14th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Oh, Molly!
May 14th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Cute story. :-)
May 14th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Damn girl, what is the rush
May 14th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Great Guy - Hey, the point is, I’m realizing there isn’t.
May 15th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Hell, you can stuff pierogies while having babies? That’s… a freakin’ awesome mental image.
And it’s sort of a waste of time to get married if you haven’t found someone you *want* to marry. Think of waiting as saving money on the inevitable divorce.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Stuffing pierogies while having babies?
I KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING MY POLISH FAMILY FORGOT TO TEACH ME.
May 19th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
From my understanding, a babushka is a doll, so I don’t understand how one might wear one.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Arielle - ba·bush·ka
n. A woman’s head scarf, folded triangularly and worn tied under the chin.
:)