Where Are You From?

Exhibit at The Canadian Museum of Immigration, Pier 21, Halifax, NS 

"Where are you from?"

People ask this question often, possibly because I have a slight accent but it is not identifiable. That question poses a dilemma for me because it requires a lot of explanation. I usually ask them if they want the short answer or the long one!

I don't remember my country of origin (Ukraine), but I love listening to someone speak Russian or Ukrainian even though I don't understand it. Neither do I remember the four years our family spent in Germany, but I learned to read and write in German and eventually did my doctoral studies in that language. I do remember Paraguay, the way a child remembers. I grew up in Canada and that became my home, and English the language in which I felt most comfortable. My years as a young wife and mother were spent in Africa, and then we came back to live out the rest of our life in Canada. I have lived in three different Canadian provinces. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be born, grow up and die in the same place! Possibly that would have been my lot, had war not disturbed our rural Mennonite way of life in Russia.

Recently I attended a book reading by Miriam Rudolph. Miriam is an artist who has written and illustrated a bilingual children's book (English and German side by side), called David's Trip to Paraguay, the story of her grandfather's trip to Paraguay from Canada when he was a little boy.

 The author and her book fascinate me at many different levels. First, I identify with the child in her story. I feel as if I'm  looking in the mirror where I see myself but everything is  reversed. I had the same adventure, at about the same age, but left Paraguay to go to Canada. The brilliant colors of Paraguay stayed behind and I entered the Canadian prairies just as the autumn color palette gave way to the gray and white landscape of November. My adventure took place exactly a quarter of a century later than David's, and part of my trip was by airplane rather than by ship.

"Where are you from?"

Like me, Miriam too has difficulty answering that question   Her father is from Germany, her mother from Paraguay, she now lives in Canada and each of the countries she has lived in becomes a part of who she is. In her artist's statement she writes, "My paintings and prints are visual diaries that narrate my experiences and perceptions of different places I have been to. It is important for me to experience my surroundings very consciously, to be aware of details and render the essence of a place in my artwork. Beneath the narrative of memories lies the concept of my search for belonging that I experience after living in three different countries and cultures. My work shows places that I am connected to and serves to document, to evaluate and to remember."

I express myself through journaling and behind my desk is a shelf of diaries that tell of my life's journeys. I have begun the monumental task of going through them and transcribing them. I begin with a birthday book I received many years ago as a young teen, and the memories emerge one by one  . . .

"Thursday’s child has far to go"

One of  the "Nanas” by the French artist Niki de Saint Phalle

 in the Historic Grotto of the Herrenhausen Baroque Gardens in Hannover, Germany

I have finally read Miriam Toews’ book The Flying Troutmans, after it has languished on my to-read shelf for about two years. In spite of the dark topic of mental illness, the miserable situation in which the characters find themselves, and the vulgar language they use, I caught myself laughing a lot as I was reading about this family who gains a new perspective when they go on a long car trip. Trips will do that to you!

Reading Toews' book got me thinking about all the travelling I have done in my life. I think I must have been born on a Thursday! The first trip I ever took was even more miserable than that of the Troutmans. It lasted four years (1943-1947) and began when I was just four months old. I have no memory of it, and perhaps that's a good thing! My parents, my two-year-old brother and I, my grandmother and my teenaged uncle fled for our lives from Ukraine through Poland to Germany and finally to Paraguay. A sister was born en route.

The Paraguayan Chaco became our home where we settled for five years. For me, these were wonderful years of living in a small village where we all knew each other. When I was seven years old, I went to school -- a one-room building right in the centre of the village that also served as a church. Here my father preached on Sundays and we went to Sunday School. I learned to read and write, recite poetry, sing and talk about God. It was my small, safe world.

For my mother, the Chaco was a place of backbreaking labour, living in crowded makeshift quarters, battling insects and sandstorms, and birthing three babies in the midst of it all. Mom was overjoyed when we finally left for Canada, where her mother’s family had settled in the 1920s. That was the first of many airplane trips I have taken. The smells, sounds, and texture of things I had never before encountered linger with me still.

As a nine-year-old, I found life in Canada hard at first. For one who communicated so naturally and easily in both Low and High German, I had to learn to speak again, and when I did, the words came out wrong. I wore the wrong clothes and took the wrong food in my lunch box. My classmates were younger than me, but seemed smarter. Lying in bed at night, I thought about our home in Paraguay, and I so longed to go back there that many times I cried myself to sleep.

That was a long time ago. Since then there have been many trips and each one has changed me, gifted me, taught me, and prepared me for something else in my life.