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12 WWW. UNWLA.ORG “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ТРАВЕНЬ 2012 From AN OCEAN BETWEEN: 100% AMERICAN - 100% UKRAINIAN by Stephanie Sydoriak Stephanie Sydoriak was born in 1926 to Elias and Mary Chopek in Bo s- ton, Mass. Her sister, Anna Chopek, active in the UNA and the UNWLA throughout her life, came to America when she was one. Stephanie was born in Boston fourteen years after Anna. Stephanie studied physics at Northeastern and Yale. She and her husband, Stephen, son of Fr. Eu s- tace Sydoriak, an early Ukrainian Catholic priest in America, moved to Los Alamos, NM, in 1948. The y had six children. In the early years, she translated Russian, German, and French scientific papers for the N a- tional Laboratory there. She then spent thirty years as a piano teacher as well as a choir and liturgy director. In recognition of her se r vice t o Los Alamos, she was named a Los Alamos Living Treasure of 2011. Part of the work for which she was honored was teaching Ukrainian Easter Egg making and her Ukrainian exhibits and lectures. She is the author of a book of poetry, Inside Passage , and most r ecently, of a bi o- graphy of her parents, An Ocean Between: 100% American - 100% Ukrainian , an excerpt from which we are happy to feature here. CHAPTER I ( Excerpt ): 1936, Chestnut Hill School Easter Assembly I stood a little behind my father only half listening to his story - telling voice streaming out over the children’s heads. The children were laughing. Were they laughing at his accent or was he saying something funny? How could these kids in this fancy Ches tnut Hill School want to hear how my father, their janitor, Elias Chopek, had celebrated Easter Day in his little Ukrainian town, anyway? What could Ukraine possibly mean to them? No one in my school had ever heard of it, including the teacher. I swallowed down the sour taste of panic. My makeshift costume began to worry me. Would the pieces hold together when I did my Ukrainian dance? I didn’t have a costume of my own, so Mama woke me early this morning to fit my older sister’s costume to my small body. Mama tightened the elastic holding the multicolored ri b- bons to the back of the wreath of artificial flowers onto a safety pin. She rolled up the sleeves of the embroidered blouse and secured them with more hidden pins. She bunched the skirt p a- nels at my w aist and wound the string of the apron tightly round and round. F i- na l ly, she wound a long, woven sash around my waist at least three times. I felt very thick in the middle now. The beaded jacket, a gift from M a- ma’s sister in Ukraine, had been too small whe n it arrived. I knew I’d have trouble lifting my arms when I danced. I took a deep breath and tried to listen for my cue. “Now, you see,” he was saying, “we always woke up well before the first light of day on Easter mor n- ing. We would make a wide parade, stumbling in the deep darkness, as we walked three times around the church b e- hind the priest. When the big doors of the bright, candle - filled church opened wide, we would enter singing the wo n- derful, exciting hymn, ‘ Xhres - tos Voskres !’ which means in Engl ish, ‘Christ has risen!’ I swallowed hard when I saw my father’s eyes moving in my direction. My heart began to bang around in my chest. This morning, M a- ma told my father that his dance music record was of a men’s dance, the Arkan , so I Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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