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They were about gathering some periwinkle from seven different gardens, of everlasting love, of commitment that will never end, of promises of growth, of hope and faith. The melodies were rather sad but pleasant. Nearby I could see periwinkle wreaths as well as bouquets accented with periwin kle. Even the men’s boutonnieres were made of periwinkle tied with white ribbons. It took me a while, but I finally guessed from most of the lyrics, that periwinkle symbolized love and that the plant itself symbolized the man whom the future bride had selected to be her husband. The next day, everyone gathered at the bride’s house for the actual wedding. The parents blessed their children with special wedding breads adorned with periwinkle. Then we proceeded to the local French church where the couple was united by a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest. During the cere mony the bride and the groom were crowned with periwinkle wreaths to symbolize to the community that they were of childbearing age. Then we walked to the reception hall. As I entered the hall, I felt that I was greeted by more periwinkle. It had an almost human pres ence and seemed to wink at me. It faithfully looped around the main table, delicately pinned to the white tablecloths. It wrapped around every wedding bread on the table from the main Korovaj, to the individ ual Shyshkas, or small rolls in the shape of French mini breads. I never suspected that there was much more to learn about the so-called Ukrainian wedding breads and their symbolic meanings.3 From France, Maria moved to Canada and I came to the United States, but the periwinkle seems to have followed us. Its green leaves and sky- colored bloom beckoned to us elsewhere for more of its presence. And indeed we found it: in the pattern of Ukrainian women’s embroidered blouses, in the designs of Ukrainian Easter eggs, and even in the delicate wrapping of children’s Easter baskets brought to church for blessing. On the other side of the "big pond" Ukrainians were no longer isolated the way we were in France, scattered on farms or in faraway villages. Ethnic groups in their ethnic neighborhoods with their ethnic churches more eas ily maintained traditions and passed them on to new generations. They still do. At times they are able to document these traditions with the printing of post cards and the publications of articles and mono graphs. Collecting these documents as they surface, I realize more and more that my feelings on that wedding day in 1956 were instinctively the right ones. In 1981, this faithful plant brought my friend Maria and me back together again. My friend was celebrating her twenty-fifth wedding anniver sary. The place was an elegant Ukrainian church in Toronto with a reception to follow in the church hall. We had come a long way from the farms of France, and yet, the periwinkle was there, faithfully looping around the main table and delicately com plementing the beautifully decorated wedding breads, the Shyshkas, and the Korovajs. I com memorated the event by creating a postcard, a visual memento that depicts not only the elegant Korovaj but the enchanted green strand of periwinkle leaves that encircles it.4 Today I am sure that it was the periwinkle that inspired me. Copyright Helene N. Turkewicz-Sanko, Ph.D., 2004 John Carroll University The story is excerpted from "Periwinkle in Ukrainian Folklore," which was the title of a paper the author pre sented on October 18, 1989, in a session on Plant Lore of the 1988-89 American Folklore Society Centennial Meet ing held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Endnotes 1. In the desert of Sonora in Arizona this plant adapted so well that it invaded the land and became a threat to the indigenous cactus. In the 1980s the botanical garden organized teams of volunteers to pull out patches of periwinkle. 2. From author's poem at a poetry reading at Youngstown University in the 1990s. 3. It was only in the 1980s in the United States of Amer ica that I discovered the other Ukrainian breads such as Boronas, Hrebins, Dyvens and Lezhens reproduced to keep up with the old traditions. All these Ukrainian breads are documented by 8 postcards developed in the Ukrainian community of Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota. 4. The postcard is identified as Lasurko's Ukrainian wedding cake— Korovaj —because Maria became Mrs. Michel Lasurko. I brought one of the Maria’s Korovajs from Toronto to Cleveland and had it industrially pho tographed to be reproduced in postcards that I person ally financed. Unfortunately I identified it as a "cake" when in fact it is simply a "bread" adorned with little birds made out of dough. On the back of the postcard I listed myself as a “collector” and there is neither copyright information nor a date. At the time I was not aware of the importance of these two items. “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛИСТОПАД 2004 17
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