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12 WWW.UNWLA.ORG “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, БЕРЕЗЕНЬ 2018 Grati-Tuesday by Lada Bidiak Four generations of volunteers. (Left to right) Lada Bi- diak, Mika Bidiak, Tamara Hordynsky, Ksenia Hapij, Maya Bidiak, Photo by Roman Shyprykevych. Packing boxes of winter clothing for the needy in Ukraine. (Left to right) Mika Bidiak, Pilar Paradiso, Maya Bidiak, Ashleigh Cotter, Matthew Kelly, Photo by Ksenia Hapij. Every Tuesday morning, my co-worker Jil- lian stops me on my way into the store and says, “It’s Grati-Tuesday. What are you grateful for?” I admit that the first time she approached me with this question, I was taken aback. I told her that I had to think about it, and she replied, “Don’t think. Just tell me. What are you grateful for?” Put on the spot, I answered, “I’m grateful that our kids are healthy.” “Good one, Lada,” she replied, and went on to ask another co-worker the same question. Since that day, I come to work on Tuesdays armed with lists of things for which I am grateful. Over the years (Jillian and I have now been work- ing together for nearly nine), my answers have ranged from simple (“the warm weather” and “that we’re done with the stomach bug in our house”) to grand (“the people protesting in the streets in Kyiv” and “to be living in a country where we have the right to vote”). My responses often reflect lessons learned at home. From a young age, I was taught never to take anything for granted. We grew up with a roof over our heads, food on our table, and clothes on our backs, as well as with the clear knowledge that thousands of people in the world were not as lucky. My mother Ksenia was not only a stay-at-home mom but also a full-time volunteer. I don’t remem- ber a time when she was not involved with one pro- ject or another, helping those less fortunate than we were. Throughout my entire childhood, she col- lected used clothing, which she then shipped to Ukrainian orphanages in Brazil. My father, my sib- lings and I quickly became accustomed to coming home at the end of the day to piles of bags at the end of our driveway, all filled with clothing that had to be sorted, cleaned, packaged and shipped. The lovely people at the post office knew my mother by name, as did most people in our Ukrain- ian community. Baking babky for elderly parishioners. (Left to right) Maya Bidiak, Mika Bidiak, Ksenia Hapij, Photo by Ihor Hapij.
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