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Natural Awakenings South Central Pennsylvania

Letter from Publisher - April 2022

Mar 29, 2022 04:25PM ● By Dave Korba
A vivid memory I have as a 6-year-old is one day laughing, playing and spatting with my cousins and siblings on a glider atop my grandmother’s porch. Located at the top of a steep wooden staircase, the porch offered a bird’s-eye view high above the street and was large enough to be a romper room for nine energetic grandkids. On other days, that glider was my safe haven. It was a peaceful place where I rocked back and forth, slowly keeping watch in solitude or in the comfort of grandma’s company. Sometimes the lattice blind was unrolled all the way to the bannister, enclosing the porch in a cocoon of shade and transforming it into a womb of protection. The most peaceful and fondest childhood memory I have is of rocking on the glider during a mild summer rain, the recollection of which to this day gives me a deep sense of tranquility and comfort.

 

Our extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins were at Grandma's this particular day as we gathered for a family meal after Grandpa’s funeral. My dad’s father, Harry, a Ukrainian immigrant, was born in 1897 in a small village located just inside Poland’s border. I didn’t know my grandfather well; I was too young and he was too sick. I remember riding with my dad regularly to pick up the oxygen tanks that supplied Grandpa’s breathing after decades as a coal miner. I remember that Grandma set an empty place setting at the dinner table that day.

 

Soon after Grandpa died, I went to live with Grandma—the first grandchild to do so. We lived right next door, so the commute wasn’t far. I stayed for several years, and then swapped places with my younger sister. Grandma’s house—even though that’s where I slept for a few years, is where we all received our formal Ukrainian upbringing, which included food, work ethic, dance, holiday traditions, prayers and church, with a heavy emphasis on the prayers and church. There were no Ukrainian altar boys more adequately trained than me and my brothers.

 

When I was 6, I laughed and played on the porch after my grandfather died. I was a child, being a child. Today, 6-year-olds in Ukraine are laughing and playing in rubble as bombs rain on their homes and porches. They are children being children, finding a way forward to feel good, live simply and laugh more. Slava Ukraini!