My Ukrainian grandma baked paska every year. She included a loaf in the Easter basket she hauled to the church for its annual blessing, and she sent us one too, along with apricot cookies and walnut rolls.
Baba packed her care packages with surgical precision and matriarchal devotion. When those brown paper packages tied up with a string and about four pounds of adhesive tape arrived at our house, we lined up eagerly for our treats.
Easter care packages held a special place in my heart and memory. I figured that’s where they’d stay, tucked sweetly away.
But, a package arrived on my doorstep yesterday that brought my grandma and her delicious treats right back into my house. My daughter Molly sent me an I’m-sorry-I-ditched-you-for-Easter-and-also-Happy-Early-Birthday gift that included a beautiful loaf of homemade paska, a jar of homemade strawberry/rhubarb jam, a peacock ornament from the Flannery O’Connor house, and a pysanky, a hand-decorated Ukrainian Easter egg.
Apparently, the ability to bake a perfect loaf of paska skips a generation or two, as does the inclination to pick a bunch of wild fruit and whip it into jam.
The peacock celebrates my appreciation of the writings of Flannery O’Conner, and I look forward to hanging it on my Christmas tree.
As for that beautiful egg, it honors my grandma’s homeland.
And, as we bask in the aftermath of our Easter celebrations, let’s remember Ukraine, a cosmopolitan country that continues to hold its own more than four years after the brutal Russian invasion.
May Ukrainians and all the world find the peace they so bravely seek.
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