These are the questions I ask myself, crying Why deep in the night.
Well lived means well-loved, means well-worn, and sometimes worn out. Read between the lines of worry and sadness. It’s ok to be tired sometimes. Rest is respite, not weakness.
What is it that keeps us going, to love again and again, in so many ways? The longer one loves, the deeper the grief of love lost. We are so good at it now, we even have anticipatory grief. The great and wise “They” tells me. Who knew?
I do know this: Once loved, we will never be truly lost. You will live in my heart, memory and soul, and I in yours. We are memories, we are words on a page, to be read and reread, and even when I am lost and grieved, our stories will live on to be told and retold, from the tender lips of our children’s children.
My paternal great-grandparents , Elik and Anna Yurdyga, emigrated to the US in 1910, from Ukraine. They were farmers in the old country, and they continued with that tradition, raising their own food on a farm in Upstate New York. My father has fond memories of time spent in the care of his grandparents as a very young boy. His grandmother spoiled him by sharing his grandfather’s precious preserved cherries with him, over his grandfather’s light-hearted protests. Once they had a rooster that attacked my father, and that bird promptly wound up on the Sunday dinner table. From listening to the stories, I gather they were very tough, but loving people who raised 8 children who all “made good” as my grandmother would say. One was an artist, one was a NY City career woman, two fought heroically for this country, some stayed in the Finger Lakes region, and some migrated to California. All of them contributed to the prosperity, values and success of this country. My grandmother, Mary Yurdyga, was the one I knew and loved best. She was a single parent before it was common, a hard-working waitress who raised three children, bought her own home with the tips she earned and saved, and supported herself and her children by taking in boarders. One of them became my grandfather, John Juskow. Mary Yurdyga Juskow is the reason why I most identify with my Polish-Ukrainian heritage. She enriched our lives with her wonderful Ukrainian cooking, and her green thumb, no doubt inherited from her parents. Oh the sweet babka, the tart kapusta, and golden brown pierogis fried in onions! Her flower gardens were legendary. She taught me to knit, how to grow marigolds, and once took me to Christmas Eve mass at St. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church . I remember my white gloved hand in hers, the acrid scent of incense burning inside pots swung back and forth by the priest, who spoke and sang in the primal mysterious language of the old country. Grandma had distinctive features: She could look right into your soul with those piercing, deep brown eyes, magnified by thick glasses. She had a small, pert nose and a beautiful smile, paired with a sharp tongue and a core made of steel. She had a way of making me feel seen. Her house was the museum of my childhood; I spent hours admiring an oil painting made by her artist brother, of a gray horse standing in a field overlooking a valley. (I was obsessed from birth with horses) and a cast iron horse figurine purchased by her first husband, that sat nobly on a high shelf in her pristine parlor. When I was 11 years old, she gave them both to me and I still have them today.
In those days, people did not speak of the past, and so, I have no inkling of the hardships that drove them to America. If one reads the history of the Ukraine, the nature of the hardships can easily be imagined. And of course, today we can just turn on the news to see firsthand what these tough, brave people of mine are enduring.
My Ukrainian roots are aching. Every day I pray for the people who are suffering, yet fighting so hard. I have always been fascinated and proud of my Polish-Ukrainian heritage, and that old pride within is rekindled when I see that blue and yellow flag flying, and when I see people standing in solidarity with that tough, beautiful nation.
Grandma, wherever you are, I hope you see – we all made good, thanks to you. Today in honor of your memory, I am going to whip up some golumpkis for Sunday dinner, and continue praying for peace in Ukraine. Sharing a photo of my great-grandfather on his farm, holding my dad.
Elik Yurdyga, circa 1942, holding my father on the farm
“Ma, I’m BORED!” How many times did I say that as a kid? Haunting my mother like a vulture, around the kitchen table on a muggy summer morning, while she sipped coffee from a green Fire King mug, penciling on her crossword, trying to find some peace. Without looking up, she’d say “I’ll give you something to do…” And I’d disappear out the door, bing, bing, bing, like Ricochet Rabbit, past the dog, dozing in the shade, past the back yard, through the tall grass, under the barbed wire fence and down the cow path before you could say “Lickety split!” (Do not ask me where that came from just now, the voices that speak to me from those days in ancient history must be heeded.) I most surely wound up catching minnows in the cool waters of the creek to put in Tupperware containers on the back step (Mom wouldn’t let us bring them in the house) And, sadly, it took me a couple of times to realize they couldn’t live in a bowl, simply for my entertainment. They were to be enjoyed alive and well, flashing, silver in the creek, darting back and forth, as minnows and children are meant to do.
Remember when the late spring/early days of summer, so anticipated, finally arrived? Freedom, sunshine, deep greens everywhere! Bird song in the morning, and crickets heard through the screens at nightfall as you lay awake in bed, thrashing at the sheets and the injustice of a too-early bedtime. Asking for one more drink of water, crying out “I can’t sleep!”in the hopes an adult would take mercy on you and set you free from the stifling bedroom in which you were trapped. Only to hear “Don’t make me come up the stairs!” Ah, those were the days. When the adults were downstairs, in charge, and you were not, but you could fall asleep knowing there were sentinels between you and the creatures of the night.
Fast forward almost 50 years. (How did THAT happen?) It’s a lazy Sunday, the day is full of possibilities, and I have all the freedom that being an adult on a beautiful late Spring day entails. I am in charge of myself, and the day stretches ahead. I’ve done the cup of coffee on the deck, observed a Flicker sitting in the grass, his bright eye turned up to the sky. I marveled at my knockout roses with their pink and red petals glistening with morning dew. I watched neon-yellow goldfinches perched on slender tall grasses, swinging back and forth with the breeze. I served the horse and donkey their morning grain, kissed their velvet noses, and inhaled the barn perfume, blend of hay, manure and leather. There are still hours of this beautiful day left to enjoy. And yet…
“Ma, I’m bored.”
“I can give you something to do…perhaps wash the dishes? Throw in a load of laundry? The bird cage is looking pretty grim…”
Just like old times, only I am the boss of me and the conversation is all in my head. If you will excuse me, the fields, woods and streams are calling my name!
My knitting friend, Becky, likes to say “You should stop often to admire your work.” Which is to say every once in a while it’s a good idea to look over your knitting to find mistakes while they are easy to fix. It’s a lot easier to rip out a few stitches than to tear out many precious inches of work to fix the glaring hole of a dropped stitch that you (or anyone else for that matter) cannot unsee. I say this from the perspective of a person who just had to tear out an entire I-cord edging on the left front of a sweater vest because it did not match the other side, due to the fact I somehow knit it inside out. As I pulled stitches and exercised my patience muscles, which reside primarily in my jaw and fists, a thought took hold: this could be a great metaphor for life. What if I took time every so often to examine the tapestry of daily life, to “admire” my “work”, to stop what I am doing and look for any mistakes I have made? To use the time to make little fixes before they become so far gone as to become regrets along the way? I have a bag of unfinished knitting projects when as a beginner, I ignored mistakes, got frustrated and gave up. I keep them to look back on the journey and remind myself how far I have come. Life is like that. I think most of us can take out our bag of regrets from time to time, usually around 3AM, the time I find most conducive to self flagellation. I’m thinking maybe my friend Becky’s advice would be best followed during the day, once a week or so, and at best I could recognize a mistake or misstep early enough to correct it – with an apology, or a kindness, or at worst, some personal effort to not make the same mistake in the future. A life well lived is like a complicated afghan knitted with love and given to a person you care for beyond words. It will have one or two mistakes, and maybe you will be the only one who can see them. Then one day you see that person on a zoom screen, wrapped in the warmth of your gift, like the hug you cannot give in person,and your heart will sing with joy and gratefulness that you overlooked the little mistakes, and persevered to fix the bigger ones and finish the work.
Leaving the warmth of the barn last night, with its sweet aromas of leather, hay, and horse, I clicked off the lights and slid the heavy barn door shut. The snowy field looked as if all the stars had fallen from the sky and lay, glittering on the white ground, like diamonds in the moonlight. My boots made that indescribable sound that boots make when they sink into a foot of marshmallow-soft snow, a sound halfway between a muffled creak and a crunch so satisfying you want to lie down in it and make snow angels in the darkness.
Oh, this beautiful night, the sanctuary of the barn! Where lives the horse I wished for every birthday and Christmas of my childhood. The barn with the scent of horse, leather and sweet hay, has always smelled like home to me. We would not wash our riding jeans for weeks, my teenage best friend and I, so we could just close our eyes, inhale the fabric and ride our memories over and over again in the green, summertime fields of our minds. Long into the barren winters, roaming high school hallways, forever the misfits in a sea of invisible rules we could not navigate, our imaginations took us galloping far away. Until the summer when we could visit the barn of her sister and live the dream again. In high school, I wrote an essay about placing 3rd in a barrel race on a borrowed horse at a local horse show. My English teacher, Mr. Merrigan gave it an A+ and wrote in my yearbook: “Keep writing!”
Last year at this time, we were planning a family Christmas at my parents’ home way up in Maine. For the first time, our entire 15-person family would fill that little house in the woods with food, games, laughter and love, instead of them coming to New Hampshire to visit us. At the end of the weekend, my father said, “I can’t wait to see what you write about this!” I have yet to do so. The words to accurately describe such a wonderful event in the wake of Covid-19 have eluded me. Maybe the time was not right then. We were all so joyful and innocent, with no idea what was waiting for us around the corner. The pandemic has cut us off from my parents in their remote home. They are safe, but we all are starving for the warm embrace of family.
Thankfully, animals are safe to hug. If you ever have the chance to hug a horse in winter, I highly recommend it. Their winter coats make them as soft and warm as a living, breathing plush toy. Also, if you can, stare into the dark eyes of a donkey. Donkeys are the most honest creatures on Earth, and if they look you in the eye, you have truly been seen, down to your soul. Animals make me want to be a better person. This year more than ever they have been my saving grace.
Here we are on the brink of a new year. I think about last year, how innocent we all were, how unsuspecting of how much life was about to change. There is not much new to say about it all, so much has been written, philosophized, and discussed. Besides, I still have a different story to write and I am way over deadline to one of my biggest fans. Mr. Merrigan’s words still resonate: “Keep writing!”
The Writing Life of Kimberly Nash 