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“НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, КВІТЕНЬ 2019 WWW. UNWLA .ORG 13 P ysanka Party Blues A couple of decades ago my dear friend Olenka started a lovely tradition — hosting an annual pysanka party for a small group of friends. It became a pleasant annual event, a weekend during which women reinvented the ancient art of turning an ordinary white egg into an ornate and multicolored symbol of the Easter season, rekindling old friendships or forging new friendships in a comfortable atmosphere that included good food, nice background music (mostly Ukrainian with an occasional detour to folk rock or Broadway musicals), and a glass (or two or thre e) of wine that piqued the palate and enhanced the esprit de corps. The participants of this annual tradition morphed over the years: a few friends stopped coming and new friends began attending, including at least one woman who was neither Ukrainian nor C hristian but en- gaged in the pysanka extravaganza with diligence and enthusiasm. I attended the gathering each year, enjoying the music, the ambience, and the company of the other attendees far more than the pysanka - making process because my forte has alway s been words rather than colors and shapes. But I enjoyed the company of smart ladies with good stories to tell, and once I got there I felt that I should participate, so I worked on my eggs with trepidation and a less - than - steady hand. The results were co mmensurate with the process — my pysanky were either bland and boring or frighteningly overcrowded messes with blobs of color encroaching on other blobs of color interspersed with uneven squiggles or shapes that resembled squashed cockroaches. All the other ladies were kind and offered words of praise or encouragement or advice that I somehow never learned to apply to my dismal creations. And so it continued, year after year, until the year Olenka died. It was a devastating loss — a light extinguished much too soon. Those of us privileged to be part of her pysanka brigade attended the funeral along with those who knew her from work or knew her from the myriad hromada groups and organizations that she was part of or worked with her. We joined the other mourners in offering heartfelt condolences to her husband, her mother, her siblings, and her young nephew. After the funeral, we also comforted each other during phone calls or over lunch or at random chance encounters, all of us sadly certain that the pysanka part y she had hosted every year were now part of the past. But one of the members of the pysanka brigade, a lovely lady named Daria, decided that the tradi- tion Olenka had begun should continue. And so the venue changed from suburban Philadelphia to Daria’s ho me in New Jersey. I attended only once before life interfered and made various life dramas a priority over excursions to other states to engage in a process I was not very good at anyway. In all honesty, I accepted Daria’s invitation mostly because I was p rodded into going by another good friend, Natalka (an- other veteran of the pysanka parties hosted by Olenka), who offered to drive and insisted “It’ll be fun!” Needless to say, my pysanka - making skills were just as bad as ever. The blobs and squiggly lines showed no sign of improvement; indeed, for whatever reason, even the background color I selected for the three eggs I worked with was splotchy — darker on some parts and lighter on others. The other ladies were again gracious and kind, insisting that they w ere seeing some redeeming element here or there and taking great pains to point out why my creations were interesting, intriguing, and even artistic. Yeah, right. At the end of the weekend retreat, Daria asked that all of us arrange our pysanky on a large round tray for a group photo. I tried stuffing mine under other pysanky to make them invisible. When it was time to go, we all took our respective pysanky, got into our respective cars, waved to our gracious hostess, and headed home. Somewhere on the New Jersey turnpike I had an AHA moment, a primal scream from within urging me to action before it was too late. So I opened the car window and hurled one of the ugly pysanky as hard as I could and watched it bounce on the grass along the roadside, roll a bit and disappear. It was while I was hurling the second egg out the window that Natalka noticed and asked, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING??????!!!!!!!!!!! I responded to this query with one of my own: “If you made pysanky that look like these would you want to take the m home and put them on display?” Natalka shrugged and quietly answered, “I guess not.” The third pysanka flew out the window. P.S. I must conclude with an account of the most recent pysanka party at Daria’s house, which I was con- vinced to attend by the hostess and by Natalka, who offered to drive. It was a wonderful chance to recon- nect with old friends and meet new folks. Most intriguing was 10 - year - old Kateryna, who worked diligently on creating pysanky that were beautiful and interesting and who was c omfortably at ease doing so in the company of women decades older than she. And by the way, the two pysanky I worked on during the week- end came home with me. Natalka locked them in the trunk of her car to make sure of this. - tsc
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