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Life Arts    H4'ed 3/23/17

"My Brother's Spirit" ---A Short Story of Childhood

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I noticed my parents, walking towards the granite monument of Ivan Franko, a Ukrainian poet. With them was an older gentleman who I later learned was a history professor at a German University. The other woman was "Aunt" Helen, a frequent visitor to our house in Maplewood. She wasn't really a related aunt but real aunts were scarce in this new country at the time, the fifties. Most family relatives were still left behind in Ukraine.

Ivan Franko statue
Ivan Franko statue
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Aunt Helen was a good person, fun loving. She always showered me with presents on my birthdays and Christmas. It was God's cruel plotting to leave her single and childless in her lost loving years. Her husband had died in the early years of the war. Afterwards, she had forgotten the reasons to become a mother. I was a convenient replacement.

My father told me that they had traveled to America together. The professor and Aunt Helen's husband had been good friends before the war. They were both from the same village in the Lemko district of Ukraine. He'd first met the professor while studying at Heidelberg.

There were many other such conclave circles that had traveled similar roads, Fate mapping the course. Those that were strangers in Europe let that road begin in this country. Being Ukrainian, our common bond made it easier to begin anew.

My parents were always introducing me to newfound "old" friends. Each time they'd all start recalling what they had known in Ukraine. My mother's memories were the best. She grew up with three sisters, and her sinewy youth glowed with childhood escapades. I always wondered what their versions of her stories would be like.

My Father on the other hand was often recalling the darker days of war. His father had died in 1918 on the Eastern Front in the First World War, six weeks before he and his twin brother Mikhaylo were born.

Nobody knew too much of how or why except it was when the battlefront suddenly shifted.

His Mother remarried and had more kids but he said people in the village told him she was never the same after Jacob died. (Two half-brothers and two half-sisters, and again, no nearby relatives, all in Poland and Ukraine...including, Uncle Mikhaylo, Father's twin.)

Throughout the years I'd observed some of the obstacles that had challenged my parents. Most of the earlier ones were born and spiked with the "Red Scare" McCarthy hearings that gripped a tighter prejudice during the Cold War.

Then in the Sixties returning to the simpletons' correlation code of judging accents with intellect; I'd sometimes overhear Father's remarks about the many promotions that went to those less deserving. Many nights I'd hear my father practicing speech sounds. He worked hard but his accent stayed with him till death...and I was glad. It was our most connecting waveband.

Somehow though he'd managed to overcome each obstacle in his own fashion. One time, I watched him punch a man for telling my mother to go back where she came from. It wasn't common for my father to use violence to solve things but this particular man was making my mother cry with his constant harassment. I didn't know it at the time but I was very proud of my Father.

As the sky lost its light the guests retired to their respective nightly habits. The nearby neighbors, playing volleyball, stopped by the bar for a few cold drinks before returning home.

If it were the weekend most guests would be getting all dressed up for the dances held in the ballroom. But Wednesdays were usually a day of mid exchanges and subdued vacationing.

Most of the other guests returned to their rooms or cottages, perhaps eager to catch all of tomorrow's promised sunlight. A few regulars stayed on in the large lobby, pairing off with like company, including my parents. They would always let me stay up late with them during the summers, sometimes as late as midnight.

Night time, to me, had always been the most interesting part of the day because I'd get a chance to pretend that I was also grown up. It'd made my dreamy games always seem more mature.

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Bohdan Yuri is an Ukrainian-American and the author of "Ukraina: Sons and Daughters" (short stories) and "The Letters".

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