Vera Sytch's Posts
Works of Art
Yuri and his mom, Summer 2005
When my husband Yuri heard that his mother broke her hip before Christmas, he booked a ticket home to visit her. Like my parents, Yuri is an immigrant from Ukraine, so visiting his family requires crossing the Atlantic -- a 24-hour trip from our doorstep to theirs.
Our family often travels to Ukraine in the summertime to visit Yuri's parents, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Thus over the years during our many visits, I have come to know not only Yuri's family, but also many villagers, especially the elderly women. While Yuri was in Ukraine visiting his ailing mother this January, a sense of urgency filled me: Would my mother-in-law pull through? And how many of my elderly friends would I see again?
Halia (left) and Nadia, 2004
Halia and Nadia are octogenarian sisters. They live in different villages but visit each other every summer. I enjoy visiting their quaint homes and hearing about their lives, which are so different from my rush-hour commute and days in front of a monitor in a cubicle. I often feel I have nothing to offer them, but they give so much of themselves when I stop by.
Halia is legally blind; Nadia had a heart attack in fall 2006 and almost didn't pull through.
Teklia, 2004
Teklia, a widow, engaged me in conversation one summer day as I walked around the village, camera around my neck. She asked me to take her picture and invited me for tea. Her only son had moved her to this village to be near him, then he left the country to make a better living elsewhere. Uprooted from her lifelong home, Teklia was lonely. I visit her every summer I'm in Ukraine, always sharing some delicious tea.
Teklia has very high blood pressure but takes no medication for it.
Orysia grazing her cow, 2004 / Orysia with dog, 2005
I met Orysia, another widow, while she grazed her cow in a common pasture. She was quite outgoing and described with amazement that during a visit to Canada, her hosts took her to a restaurant and simply left money on a table to pay for their meal -- and no one would steal the money!
Orysia had a stroke soon after I met her and fell under her cow as she was milking it. Her German shepherd saved her life by pulling her from under the cow and barking until help arrived. Orysia is now partially paralyzed. She had to sell her cow.
Orko, 2005 / Hania, 2005
I met Orko and Hania through my husband. Both were bedridden, lying in the same stuffy room as if awaiting death. Because they were both invalids, the neighbors brought them food, but their delivery was erratic, and Hania and Orko were often hungry. â€I’d give you something to eat,†Hania offered with typical Ukrainian hospitality, â€but all I have is some bread.†And it was stale. Yuri and I brought them soup and bread, meat and chocolates. But we left for America a few days later.
I was haunted by memories of this frail couple. Hania died that winter.
There are more, many more elderly, whom I've befriended and who've claimed a piece of my heart. And some are right here in Rochester.
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature,
But beautiful old people are works of art.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
You should have been there
Suntanned and sleep-deprived, my 14-year-old son Kostik recently returned from Tijuana, Mexico where he spent his Christmas break. He wasn't tanned from visiting beaches, nor was he tired from late-night parties. No, he spent his vacation catching cross-country flights at odd hours and building a house for a Mexican family with a youth team from Global Expeditions.
The teams built the pink and green houses on the right
I hadn't spoken to Kostik the entire time he was gone so I was eager to hear about his trip.
"We slept in tents with our clothes on inside our sleeping bags. We had no mattresses, and the tents had vents on top - even though the temperature was in the 30s every night! The water coming out of the faucets was so cold that I didn't shower the whole time I was gone. Water in our faucets at home never gets that cold!"
It was a real mission trip, and not one for sissies. I smiled as he went on.
"We stayed on a cattle ranch. There were about 90 of us. The girls' tents were in one area, the boys' tents in another. The girls had it good! They only got the smell of the cattle if the wind blew from the south, which it rarely did. It usually blew from the west, which meant that we boys got the smell of the latrines. If it blew from the south, we got the smell of the cattle and a dog kennel."
Nothing like a bit of hardship to build camaraderie.
"The latrines were drafty. If it was 39 degrees outside, it was 39 in the latrine. Two of the four outhouses didn't have roofs. They were the ones to use at night because the moon lit them inside."
Hm, saves on flashlight batteries.
A co-leader who had also been on the summer Mexico trip with me filled me in on more details during a phone call. "This trip took the kids out of their comfort zone," he said. "But it was really good for them. I heard one of the kids say, 'When I get home, I'm just going to sit in the toilet for a couple of hours.' Makes them appreciate what they have at home."
But the trip wasn't all hardship and "eating nasty beans," as Kostik put it. On the contrary, Kostik came back elated, already planning his next trip.
Each of the three teams spent the days (which were warm, in the 70s) framing a house, putting up drywall, cutting out windows, putting in door frames, nailing plywood sheets to the studs on the roof, nailing shingles, and painting. And when Kostik wasn't doing one of those tasks, he was playing soccer with neighborhood kids, performing dramas, or teaching children. He especially enjoyed seeing the kids get happy "over nothing," as he put it - just a trinket or the attention that they got from the visitors.
Kostik learned firsthand that it's better to give than to receive. What a sense of accomplishment to build a house. What a great reward to know that you did something for someone.
Oh, and Kostik even found a sports car he could afford.
"You should have been there, Mom! You would have loved it!"
I'm sure I would have - hard ground, cold tent, and all.
NOTE: Since Kostik was instructed to pack only things that he didn't mind losing (or having stolen), I lent Kostik my old Kodak DC4800 digital camera whose LCD burned out a year ago - after I had taken over 16,000 photos with it. Kostik took all these pictures with that favorite old camera of mine. Although you can't see the pictures as you take them, they still turn out great.